by Amarie Avant
“Who's here?” I growl, ready to kill any man who looked at her wrong.
“The guy from the trucking company and he has more men.”
I paw her cheek and press my lips into her forehead. “Who?”
Her eyes are wide. “The Armenians, or maybe they were Turkish. Jagger, they had huge guns. I know it.”
I pull Mikayla into the living room and point to the bedroom. Her gaze never leaves mine.
“Uthando lwami, I’d feel much better if you go into the bedroom,” I tell her, without the usual growl. This will go much easier without Mikayla in the middle. And most definitely, her sneering about me being “evil” won’t cross my mind if she isn’t standing there watching me get shit done. “Go!”
She’s just standing there, frozen.
I hear heavy footsteps. Just as I turn around to the open door, I see Aram fucking Petrossian in the center of his crew.
It hits me that I saw him two nights ago. He fell back and hid while his men shot at Mikayla and I. Then the African caught my attention and needed to be extinguished, while Mikayla attempted to leave in my truck, so I never got the chance to confirm if all my enemies were eradicated.
Aram isn’t even supposed to be my enemy. I murdered his brother, but it was a contract submitted by him.
“Keep it quiet, I want Jagger alive, but kill his bitch!” Aram orders.
He halts back on his heels as the men begin toward the door, MP5s with silencers in their hands. They want to torture me to death? And murder Mikayla? Yeah, not gonna happen.
They need big guns to take me down. Their mistake is underestimating my bare hands. The first guy to enter the hotel room is disengaged, by my hand grabbing the barrel and slamming it back into his neck while my knee destroys his balls.
Guy two moves inside and I’ve spun around, gripped his neck over my shoulder and yanking with a swift turn, all the while staring Mikayla in the eye. The click of his spinal cord coming undone makes her jump.
Fuck, she’ll have no choice but to believe I’m evil, now.
Guy three fires a silenced burst of three bullets into the textured wallpaper before I silently engage him and slam the handle of the MP5 into his mouth. Teeth go flying across the marble floor.
Next, I chop the flat of my hand into his windpipe. He falls down and attempts to breath.
The fourth and fifth come in at the same time and I ram their heads together.
“Jagger…” Mikayla murmurs as I leisurely pick up a pillow from the couch, bending down to grab a 9-millimeter from the holster of dead man number three.
“Jagger, please, don’t…”
The pillow masks the sound of each man receiving a shoot between their eyes.
Guy one is crawling toward the door, clutching his cock. So far, I’ve de-escalated the situation without much noise. Except for the trigger happy dead fellow.
I stomp a boot down onto his hand, crushing his bones.
“Jagger, Stop!”
Aram rushes into the room. His hands are up, but his face is drained of color. “That is my son, no! No!”
While Aram falls to his knees, taking a shaky hand to his teenage son’s face, Mikayla steps before me.
“Jagger, you’re better than this…”
They’re all talking at once, and the young motherfucker on the floor is still screaming bloody murder. Mikayla clings to my arm and tries to stop me, but I have to extinguish the threat. So far, this quick, efficient combat has been at a respectable level. My boot slams into the teen’s mouth.
Aram’s son turns onto his stomach, spitting up blood.
“Stop screaming,” my lips hardly move, and my voice is a low, steel authority.
I glance over at Mikayla. “Uthando lwami, it has to be done. Aram, here, will just keep coming back for more.”
“No, Jagger.” She wipes at tears that fall faster than rain in the Amazon, with a begging Aran as her soundtrack. “You can’t call me that–”
“I have to keep you safe.” I start to reach out to touch her, but there’s blood on my hands. All her heated words about me being ‘vile’ and ‘evil’ flood to my mind. I pat her shoulder instead. “This is a good thing.”
“I know. But you can’t. Not if you’re killing people in cold blood.”
“Listen to her,” Aram implores as he sits on the floor with his battered son in his arms. “Don’t murder my child, not in cold blood.”
In a fraction of a second, I’ve reached down to grip his neck. His son’s upper body, which was just cradled to him, slams onto the floor as Aram is yanked up, and dangling by his feet.
“No cold-blooded killer here, Kayla.” I spit at her in anger. She’s judged me without cause. Of course, she has other reasons to look at me through the lens of disdain. This isn’t one of them. “Aram, if you wanted me to murder your entire family, I would have tossed in a ‘buy one get one,’ but this is too many for free.”
“Jagger, Stop,” Mikayla is at my side, tugging my arm as Aram’s face shakes.
At least his pleas are silent. I fucking hate a crying man.
“Sweetheart, what we have here is a regular old Cain and Abel story. Aram’s big brother was the chief of their dirty operation. Mikayla, you condemned me for sex trafficking which is something I don’t condone. Aram has a nice little nest egg in drug trafficking, identity theft. What else, Aram?”
I let him go. The man falls next to his son, gasping for air.
“You still don’t have to do it, Jagger,” Mikayla pleads.
“Are you listening, uthando lwami?”
She sobs, nodding her head. Mikayla gets down on the ground, just as the teen starts to shout for help again. With her back to me, she asks him, “Aram, tell Jagger you’ll never return. Take your son and go. Promise Jag–”
“No!” Aram shouts, aware of my next move.
I silence the 9-millimeter with another pillow and shoot his legacy in the skull. Then I send one shot to Aram’s left knee to keep him under control. Aram’s son’s eyes were just as sullen as Mikayla are now as she turns around, stands, and slams a fist into my chest.
“You’re a monster!” She shouts as Aram sits back, with his limp son’s upper body in his arms, sobbing. He cries about “his boy,” in his native language.
“I asked you to go into the bedroom, to hide in the fucking closet, hell, or under the bed,” I tell at her. I move past Mikayla with ease, gripping the back of Aram’s collar.
Mikayla’s fists punch against my arm, my neck, and my face as I pull the man. Aram struggles to clutch to his son, but I yank him away.
“Fuck you!” Aram spits up at me, unable to reach back. He pulls at his leather jacket since it’s restricting his air because of how I’m tugging onto it. He goes sliding on the marble floor. He tries to sit up and grip a silver table, but I yank him away again.
Aram alternates from holding the wound in his knee to trying to reach back and hit me as he goes sliding down the hall, while Mikayla becomes a literal thorn in my side. “You’re evil, a monster!”
“Place your hands over your eyes, uthando lwami, sing to yourself, one of those gospel songs that brings you comfort.” I stop dragging him. We’re now just inside the bedroom. The room is dark, due to the blackout drapes. A slither of bright light from the colorful nightlife of The Las Vegas Strip shine through. I close the bedroom door, adding another buffer between us and anyone walking down the hall outside of my suite. He intended to kill Mikayla. Planned to have me tortured, which is exactly how he will die.
Aram crawls to his hands and knees, heading toward the balcony. Just then Mikayla slaps the spit from my mouth.
I glower at her, and she flinches, in assumption that I’d hit her back.
“Mikayla, when you ran straight into my arms not five minutes ago, you graciously allowed me to call you uthando lwami, princess. Now, I’m a monster?” I pick her up about the waist and place her behind me with ease.
Aram’s bloody handprint has just smeared onto the
glass sliding door when I place him into a choke hold. “There are times when people regret having their family members murdered. Some of them take the coward’s way…shit, I realize now that suicide isn’t the coward’s way.” I alternate from allowing my arm to constrict his oxygen, then give him just enough relief to inhale a sharp breath, before I do it again. My grandfather’s suicide pops into my mind. I never met the man. I know he was a prominent member of society in South Africa, and his death was highly publicized, due to the beachfront resort my family owned. I almost squeeze all the life out of Aram in thought of how my grandfather took his own life. It wasn’t your typical suicide. I stop compressing my arm and say, “You had the rest of the Petrossian’s believing I murdered your family as a deranged lunatic, Aram. You didn’t feel an ounce of remorse after your brother’s death, no. You made a deadly mistake assuming I was just a loose end. That you had the balls to cut me down.”
“Jagger, please,” Mikayla murmurs as Aram’s spirit begins to slip from his body, squeezed within the bulge of my arm.
We’re in front of the window’s opening and the bright lights glitter across her skin, across the tears in her eyes. I haven’t yet begun to torture him; the choking was just to render him unconscious for a moment. And here I am, consumed with Mikayla’s emotions. “You’re afraid of me, Mikayla?”
She shakes her head no, but her hands wrap around her abdomen. Her forehead is bunched in distress. I might have issues with gauging other emotions, but terror isn’t one of them. I lock Aram in one arm and reach out to her. A pang cuts through my heart when she moves an inch back.
My mother did that once.
She pulled away from my touch, my love. It was the night my father broke it to her about my X Members status. I went to hug my mother, and cushion the blow of my blood oath, with the truth that they needed money, we all needed money. Alisha Johansson’s great grandparents were head of the Christian missionaries in the western and southern points of Africa. My mother was as Christ seeking as the woman who poured an alabaster bottle of expensive perfume on Him. She married a man who had a taste for blood, but killed for the ‘good’ of the people… And, yet, when her son returned home as a paid assassin, with the ability to provide a real charitable donation to the God she believed in, she moved away, shunned my attempt to hug her, to brush away my tears and let me explain my reasoning why.
Even when I was a child, and I did wrong, my mother would pull out her worn leather Bible. She’d always read Psalms. I guess joining X Members was too far removed from being able to be forgiven by her God.
My jaw cements into a tensed frown. “Uthando lwami, you can’t be angry with me, I’m not even mad yet.”
CRACK.
Aram slips from my arm. There’s no need to torture him, greed blinded his eyes. He had his brother murdered so he can head the Armenian brotherhood. When he didn’t appear to be in enough grief to the brotherhood, Aram decided to come after me. He’s been on my tail for a while now.
In Long Beach he caught up with me, just as he did this evening. And I know how. There’s no need to torture him. I want the man who sent Aram my way to die a slow death. And I know exactly who sent him my way…
Mikayla
I’m not mad yet… Jagger had said those words while cracking Aram’s neck. He’d glared at me with disappointment. I can’t even fathom how Jagger believes he can harbor such feelings of discontentment with me. He’s the damn murderer!
I get it now. Aram had Jagger murder his own brother for a seat at the throne. He had Armenian Power tattooed on his chest.
Shit, I wanted Jagger to allow the man to live. Not for such a disgusting man who’d have such ill will for his blood. But because I’m falling for Jagger Johansson and I desperately needed to witness his willingness, his capabilities of conjuring even an ounce of humanity.
Now I know the truth.
He doesn’t have the ability of sparing a life.
Jagger placed all the men into the tub of our suite. He promised that the people he worked for owned a company around the nation…world? Maybe he said world.
The company cleans up places, making them shiny and new again. The company rids all signs of bodies, and I mean, they’d preview the security cameras around the hotel, and disposes of the virtual footage along with the bodies.
Now, the warm September night air breezes onto my face as I ride in the passenger seat of Jagger’s truck. If he’s not ‘mad yet,’ then I have to shake this temptation for him from my body.
Jagger is not a good man. I warn myself, again. How good am I with internalizing my beliefs these days? Heck, if I can finally be honest with myself, I was completely unable to numb myself from his touch.
We pull into the same flea market that houses the sleazy strip club from earlier. This time, Jagger has to park near the laundromat, which is almost half a mile away. Go figure, it’s the middle of the night, so the strip club has packed out the parking lot.
The neon sign of a woman’s shapely figure, jutting first one hip and then the other, keeps my attention as we walk up to the same door Jagger had a hard time opening not a day earlier.
“Can we just go back to the hotel.”
“No. The team takes a few hours, Mikayla.”
“To wipe up blood and trash dead bodies?” My voice breaks with the question.
As I wait for an answer, the doors open to the strip club. A crew of horny men walk out. They’re loud drunks, talking openly about other strip clubs they plan to enjoy tonight.
Jagger stands before me. “You have to trust me.”
It hurts, but I say, “You’re an assassin, I believe you.”
“At times, you might not understand my reasoning, but I will always do what’s best for you.”
“Like steal me and murder a twenty-year-old boy. The brain has yet to fully develop at that age. Heck, my brain has yet to fully develop. Will you murder me? And was Aram’s son even that old?” Okay, so here comes my onslaught of questions. I am angry enough to argue. A moment ago, I was scared and livid, too much of both to utter a single word.
Jagger grabs my arm and heads to the door of Trick’s shop. He reaches for the door handle, and I place myself in his way.
“You’re here to murder Trick,” I gasp.
He offers a slow, deliberate nod.
“You think he did this–”
“He did,” Jagger barks
“Then explain Long Beach? How was Trick aware of the trucking company, Jagger?” I cross my fingers, hoping that the organization they work for is discrete, and each assignment is delegated as such. Why am I attempting to save the life of another murderer? Well, for one reason, I have the feeling that Trick isn’t as vile and evil as Jagger seems to be. “Answer me, Jagger!” I demand.
His eyes are a dark storm. This asshole is not in the right frame of mind. He’s hell bent on revenge, and the closest person will do.
I have to do something. Taking a chance, I ascend to my tippy toes and brush a kiss against his lips. The fire we make each time we’ve kissed in the past is volcanic, burning us both until I’m ready to run away from his crazy ass! I’d rather just tell him that he’s murdered too many men tonight, but instead I murmur, “Take me to the hotel, Jag, fuck me.”
Lust softens the hard angles of Jagger’s face. The wind pushes locks of hair into his eyes, and I brush them back. “Fuck me, Jagger,” I moan. And not just because I want to save a life tonight…
My body is aching with unknown desire, and my pussy throbs in ways it never has before. It’s just that, Jagger has murdered men to protect me right before my eyes, and damn it, he did so with such finesse that any women with eyes would have to be dead not to be attracted. Maybe, the high of such danger is just…sexy. Or perhaps, I just want to save a life. I think, once again trying to fool myself.
Still, I’m getting myself hot and bothered, my hard nipples glide against my shirt as I say, “Jagger, you can do more than eat me, baby. I want your cock inside of me…”
The growl ripping through his abdomen and vibrating in his throat is pure tiger. My hands reach for his cock–
Jagger reaches behind me, places his hand on the door handle and this time doesn’t have to reposition his fingers for it to click open. “You were put in harm’s way tonight, Mikayla. This has to be done.”
I huff as Jagger pushes inside the pitch-black room, where, just yesterday, Trick almost annihilated us with a fountain pen. Since I stepped back and ended up inside first, Jagger is thoughtful enough to set me behind him. It’s the little things that keep me falling for him.
“Who the bloody hell is in my house!” Trick’s voice travels through the dark.
Light spills across the virtually empty room. Trick is standing in the center of the room, as the chain of the ceiling fan clanks against the light attached, from being pulled so hard. The suit and spiffy vest have been replaced with silk pajamas.
“Jagger, I’m not hardly complete with your rush order. Bollocks, but I actually need a few winks to survive too–” Bam!
They’re against the wall in seconds. Jagger’s bulging forearm constricting Trick’s throat. In this instant I notice just how much Jagger has on the Britt in size. Trick is much leaner than him.
“How did the Armenian’s know I’m in Las Vegas?”
“Stop, he’s your friend,” I pummel Jagger’s hard back with punches. The sides of my hands hurt, it’s so solid. “At least allow him to speak and defend himself!”
Trick bends over clutching at his throat when the beast who owns me releases him. Instead of a democratic debate, Trick headbutts Jagger, sending his jaw clicking shut.
I stumble back on the heels of my feet as Trick pushes Jagger into another wall. This one caves in with them. It’s the room I woke up in, with the shelfs of guns! The lights automatically turn on as Trick climbs onto Jagger. The beast blocks the other man’s punches and slams his fist straight into Trick’s face.
It’s the type of hit that some people don’t recover from. I expected his spine to dislocate but Trick spits out a mouth full of blood, front flips to his feet, and grabs a sword from the rack at his side.