Unmasked: The Complete Series: Second Edition

by Cassia Leo

  It was difficult not to climb in her window and fuck her properly. It’s even more difficult not to get in there and taste her. My craving for her is so strong it’s agonizing. But I can’t make my presence known yet. I have to debrief Crow and set my plan into motion first.

  Crow has been keeping an eye on Alex for me this past week while I was in Monaco. And I do not like the news he’s given me about this new romance she has herself caught up in. Nicolas Costa.

  I chuckle to myself as I pass the convenience store at the end of the street. All Alex has to do is think of me and she comes. According to Crow, poor Nicolas couldn’t even get past first base when Alex was drunk. He’s a pathetic excuse for a man, and an even more pathetic excuse for a bounty hunter.

  But I’m not worried about Nicolas hurting Alex. And I’m even less afraid of Alex falling for Nicolas. Alex will be mine again. I just have to make sure I approach her cautiously and at precisely the right moment. The only problem is, I’ve been given a deadline.

  Since I failed to deliver on my promise to kill Alex in Los Angeles, I’ve been given two weeks to kill her in La Palma. My old friend Crow is eager to finish the job for me if I fail again. Twenty million dollars is a lot of money. Even in the assassination business.

  What they don’t know is I don’t have two weeks. I have only one day to convince Alex not to get on that plane with Nicolas. I don’t care if the prince is genuinely working against his wife in an attempt to keep Alex safe. Crow won’t allow Alex to step off that plane in Monaco for a beautiful reunion with her biological father. Crow will take down that plane and every person on it to get that twenty million.

  When I turn onto Dolores Street, I’m pleased to see Nicolas working out his sexual frustration in his garden. I cross the street with a spring in my step and stop next to his gate.

  “Hola, amigo!” Hello, friend.

  He looks up from the dirt he was just probing with his shovel. “Hola.”

  I proceed in Spanish and, I must admit, I’m quite impressed with my proclivity for foreign languages. “I noticed you moved in recently and you’ve already found yourself a beautiful friend from across the way.”

  I wiggle my eyebrows, though I’m not sure he can see it under my sunglasses. His lips turn up slowly in a wary smile.

  “Yes, do you know Alyssa?”

  I shake my head. “No, sir. But if you really want to impress her, I have a boat you can charter.” I draw my knife out of my holster and use it to point toward the harbor where I’ll be mooring my boat later night. “If you’d like to take it out for a little while, I’m sure your girlfriend would find it very romantic. I’ll give you a special rate, since you’re my neighbor.”

  Nicolas eyes the knife in my hand with even more unease. “Thank you, friend. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  I give him my number, then he continues digging his hole in the ground. I smile as he bends down and scoops up a dead crow. He drops the bird into the hole and begins piling the dirt on top of it.

  “Watch out for those crows,” I call out. “They’re everywhere.”

  I slap the two-pound sea bass onto the counter in my small galley kitchen. Sliding my boning knife into its belly, I cut it open and smile as the blood runs out onto the plastic cutting board. I rip out the guts with my hand and throw them into the waste bin at my feet.

  As much as I don’t want to think about Carla, preparing my own dinner always makes me think of the night she left. I knew she was planning to leave me. But I couldn’t bring myself to care.

  It had been a year and a half since I’d given up my job as a hit man. I had just begun working for the Los Angeles Police Department. Carla and I had moved into our apartment in Venice Beach recently, and all circumstances pointed to us having a happily ever after, but I was not a happy man.

  Not only was I no longer doing the job that made me who I was, I was still grieving the results of my final job as a hit man. The only thing that made me feel partially alive was chasing a perp or fucking a beautiful woman. Carla was beautiful, but she wanted more from me than just a fuck. She wanted something I couldn’t give. And, after a hundred discussions about our future that went nowhere and the countless disgusted looks she cast in my direction whenever she found empty condom wrappers in my pockets, she finally got fed up.

  After I clean and sauté the fish, I sit down on a bench seat on the deck with my dinner plate and my glass of local wine, and I watch Alex’s cottage. Moving the boat to this side of the island is part of the plan. As I finish my last bite of sea bass, Nicolas arrives at her door. Checking in on her to make sure his bounty doesn’t slip through his fingers. Maybe he’ll pretend he’s checking to see how her knee is doing.

  I really should have stopped her from going into that clinic today. I would have preferred for her to find out she’s pregnant after I make my presence known. I don’t like having an unfair advantage. But the truth is that the child inside her, our child, will make our reunion that much more interesting. No doubt she’ll be angry when she sees me. She’ll be tempted to risk her life and the life of our unborn to make me pay for my sins. But I’ve seen the softer side of Alex. The part of her that wants nothing more than to be touched, cherished, loved. She knows she can have all that and more with me.

  My chest floods with violent rage as I watch Alex open her front door and invite Nicolas inside. The thought of his hands and lips on her is the worst part of this whole mission. I want to slowly break every bone in his body and watch him writhe in pain for even thinking he could touch her. But, once again, patience is a virtue.

  I must wait for the right moment. Alex is carrying my child. Which means I’ll do anything to keep her. I’ll endure any agony to get her back. I’ll kill anyone. I’ll agree to any of her demands. But I need her to forgive me first.

  Forgiveness.

  Such a simple word with such complicated and varied implications depending on who you ask. What is forgiveness? Does it mean you forget the wrongs committed against you? Does it mean you embrace your tormentor?

  I wish I knew. The answers to these questions become even murkier when the person you need to forgive is yourself.

  I wash the dinner dishes and shower, then I get dressed to head out on patrol. Lurking in the shadows, collecting intelligence and investigating every lead is part of who I am. It’s why I was such a great detective, and why I was an even better hit man before that. It’s why Princess Amica contacted me first when she needed Alex killed.

  It’s too bad she caught me at a very low point in my life. If I had been high on another kill, I may have taken Alex out, no questions asked. But I hadn’t taken a job in three years. Though I fantasized about leaving the L.A.P.D. and going back to my old life, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  I hesitate to describe myself as broken. Broken people don’t have the capability to put themselves back together. But that’s what I did over the last few months as I investigated Alex and her family. In learning Alex’s story, I learned I was not alone. And maybe, if I wasn’t alone, I still had hope.

  I slide my .44 Magnum out of a drawer and hold it in my hands for a moment, lost in thoughts of the last time I used this gun for a hit.

  I’d been working as a self-employed hit man for two years after leaving the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence in France, more commonly known as the DCRI. I was working on high-level counterintelligence operations and realized my biggest thrill was taking out the bad guys. But not just taking them out. I took pride in completing each job without collateral damage.

  That all changed on a warm August evening three years ago.

  I was sent to London to take out a CIA operative who had gone rogue on a counterterrorism operation. I was hired to take him out before he was caught and tortured into giving up his secrets. He’d been in hiding for three months, but my intelligence had placed him in a small flat in West London. His family wasn’t supposed to be with him that night.

  Even three years later, it still make
s me sick to my stomach. I can’t shake the image of that little boy dead, looking so peaceful in the comfort of his father’s arms. I had come into the man’s bedroom while he slept. As he lay on his side sound asleep, I put one bullet through his back, where his heart would be, and another bullet in the back of his head. The first bullet ripped right through his chest and lodged in his son’s brain. His son was snuggled up against him underneath the covers.

  I tuck the .44 into the waistband of my shorts and pull my T-shirt down. Looking at my reflection in the porthole, I scratch my jaw and muss up my hair before I pull on a baseball cap. Turning away, I slide my sunglasses over my eyes.

  I am not a good man, but Alex and our child are my chance to redeem myself. I just need to convince her we are safer together. Because she’ll never be safe as long as there’s a hit on her head.

  It took a lot of sweet-talking on my part to get Princess Amica to agree to let me finish this job. She wanted to hand the job over to Crow, but as the only other person who was there with me that night in London, he knows I won’t give this one up. He knows I wouldn’t have come out of retirement for just any case. There may be no loyalty amongst thieves, but there’s a different code of ethics for hit men. Crow remains loyal to me.

  But twenty million dollars is a lot of money. He’s still hanging around the island, helping me with intelligence and waiting for me to screw this up so he can step in and finish the job. I don’t care how many years we’ve been friends, if he so much as breathes on Alex, I will gut him faster than a sea bass.

  The image of that dead boy’s face flashes in my mind again, and I take a seat at the small table near the galley kitchen. I grit my teeth against the memory and the mental self-flagellation that always follows. The inner voice telling me I don’t deserve to live after committing such a heinous act. That child didn’t deserve to die.

  I went three years barely clinging to a long list of excuses to keep on living. It wasn’t until I started following Alex that I began to see what my purpose is. My purpose is to save her. To love her. And I will stop at nothing to do just that.

  The Arkham Bar is housed inside a small, blue building with a clay tile roof. It has a warm, Spanish-island feel on the outside, but the modern, artsy interior feels cold. I feel a bit exposed in this tiny place, but that’s why I brought Crow here. Because if I feel a bit exposed, he’s going to feel downright naked.

  The bartender asks for our drink order as soon as we take our seats in the uncomfortable white barstools. Crow keeps his black hoodie pulled tightly around his face as he sits next to me and we both order an Alhambra lager. We wait in silence as he retrieves the beers from a cooler under the bar and flips off the caps before he slides them to us. I pay for the beers and tip the bartender generously, then I let him know we’re not to be interrupted.

  “If you didn’t want to be interrupted, you should have chosen a different fucking bar,” Crow complains in his British accent. “I look like a fucking wolf in a hen house here.”

  “Don’t worry about maintaining a low profile in this bar. Worry about it when you’re out there walking the fucking streets. How many times has Alex seen you?”

  He takes a long pull on the bottle of beer to make me wait. “I don’t know and I don’t care. If your girlfriend is feeling the heat, then she’s got good fucking reason to. She’s getting impatient.”

  He’s referring to Princess Amica growing impatient waiting for me to get Alex out of the picture. “I don’t give a fuck if she’s getting impatient. I have to do this my way.”

  He chuckles. “And your way is to have a go at her first? Fuck her body and her mind then kill her. Is that it?”

  “You don’t know enough about my strategies to question me.”

  “I know your strategies don’t always work.”

  I should crack his skull for that comment, but I can’t. I need to keep Crow close, where I can keep an eye on him. I’ll take his snide comments about how I fucked up my last job. But once I have Alex back, safe in my arms, he’s on his own.

  This is a not a business for making and keeping friends. Crow and I stumbled upon a friendship when I passed up a job due to a booked schedule. I’d been taking out marks for more than a year and my services were in high demand. It was Crow’s second job, and he came to me asking for advice. Two years younger than I was and thirsty for blood after a tour in Iraq, it was difficult not to feel sorry for him.

  I took him under my wing and brought him along on my last two jobs. I owe him my life for getting me out of that London apartment when I was too stunned to move. But he’s the one who screwed this up with Alex. He had to throw that fucking cigarette butt onto the street when he was following Alex on Hope Street. If she hadn’t found that, she wouldn’t have found out about her father so soon, and I might have had a chance to tell her when she was ready.

  Crow knows he fucked up, which is the only reason he refused to take the job off my hands when Amica wanted to hand it over to him. Now he thinks I’m trying to prove myself, but I have nothing to prove to him or Amica. Alex is the only person I need to prove something to.

  “What is her schedule like? Is she going to the Billionaire Club next week?”

  Crow looks at me sideways as if he knows what I’m thinking. “Don’t think of throwing away this payday for that girl, Daimon.”

  “I can’t tell you what I’m planning, but it has nothing to do with that fucking twenty million. What I have in mind will be much more lucrative, for both of us.”

  “Both of us meaning… you and me or you and the girl?”

  “You and me. I just need to get that fucking bounty hunter out of the way without raising any red flags with the local law enforcement. It will be done soon.”

  He downs the rest of his beer, but he still holds it close to his chest as he contemplates this. “She’s giving you three days to make it happen. And so am I.” He lets go of the beer bottle and slides off the barstool. “This better be good.”

  I smile as I realize he doesn’t know about Alex and Nicolas’s plans to fly to Monaco in less than two days. Typical Crow. Always one step behind when he thinks he’s one step ahead.

  The bartender brings me another beer, as if he can sense I need it. I sip it slowly as I contemplate my options here. I need Alex to start believing me and questioning her parents, otherwise she may try to kill me again. And I’m done underestimating her.

  I’m through underestimating everyone.

  I never imagined Princess Amica had hired me to kill her own biological daughter, but I should have known there was something far more mysterious about Alex from the moment I stepped inside her adoptive parents’ home. Which brings me to my other predicament: Keeping Alex’s mother, Lisa, alive.

  I had Crow watching over her when we were in L.A, but now that we’re both here in La Palma, I had to hire another man to keep watch over her.

  Lisa Carmichael is surviving in the basement of their home, just the way they made my Alex live for eighteen years. The plan was to have both Lisa and Joe down there, to get Joe out of the picture so I could get to know Alex and see if I could indeed go through with the hit. But Joe refused to be confined. Then he escaped. In my fucking Mercedes.

  A girl in a blue tube top and white shorts sidles up next to me at the bar and asks for a draft beer. She smiles at me and I turn back to my bottle. Downing the rest of the beer, I slam it down on the bar and head for the exit. If these girls knew Alex, they wouldn’t bother. If they knew the kind of woman they were competing with, they’d cower at her feet.

  No one can compare to my Alex. There is no way I could ever enjoy being with another woman now that I’ve had a woman like her. And for a man like me to swear off all women for one girl, I’d have to be insane or in love. Or both.

  I step outside into the warm island air, smiling as I gaze at the stars. By this time tomorrow night, I’ll know whether Alex and I are going to spend the rest of our lives together or kill each other.

  Chapter El
even

  I take my time packing all my clothes. Though, I’ll probably leave all my luggage and belongings behind after we land in Monaco and I kill the royals. I’m savoring this alone time while Nick and I are apart. He’s in his cottage packing. He’s not around to watch as I sniff the pieces of clothing that still smell like Daimon, one by one before I lay them down in my suitcase.

  When I’m done, I zip up my luggage and look around the bedroom. I walk to the window and push aside the sheer curtains to look outside. I can see my neighbor Ignacio working on a wooden worktable in his backyard. He’s loading his shotgun and preparing his ferrets to go rabbit hunting. He looks up briefly and I take the opportunity to wave at him. He smiles and waves vigorously, then his gaze slides off to the side. I move forward to look outside, but I hit my head on the glass. I look up, and Ignacio’s wife, Noemia, appears at his side. She squints at me for a moment, then she waves. I’ll miss the Spanish music and delicious smells that waft out of their window as Noemia cooks.

  “Are you ready?”

  I whip my head around and let out a sigh of relief. “You scared me. Your voice sounded different.”

  Nick smiles and holds out his hand, his other hand tucked behind his back. “Come. I have a very special surprise for our last day in La Palma.”

  He’s wearing a nice pair of black slacks and a white dress shirt with his sleeves rolled up. This is a very good look for him.

  “Did you say goodbye to your family?” I ask, taking his hand and leaning back to try to peek at whatever he’s hiding.

  “Yes. And they’re very pleased to know I’m leaving the island with you. They are very fond of you.”

  Very special surprise… very pleased to know… very fond of you…. Either he’s buttering me up for something he’s not sure I’m going to enjoy or he’s actually nervous. I’m pretty sure it’s the former and not the latter.