Hitman's Promise: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance

by Naomi West

“And what does that mean?” I ask, cocking my head to one side. “What comes with the territory of being your woman?”

  He stands up in the tub and water streams from him. He reaches down and drags me to my feet. “It means I take care of your needs.”

  He grabs a towel off the hook and wraps me up in it. “It means that I protect you and keep you safe. I feed you when you’re hungry and carry your bag. I make sure you don’t sleep at the kitchen table. I get you to your classes on time. I take you to the doctor when you’re sick. And I fuck you when you’re horny. That’s what it means.”

  He stalks out of the bathroom, slightly riled up. And I follow him, grinning like a fool.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dare

  “Baby, I need your help.” Alessia stands in the doorway of my bedroom, which I pretty much only use as my office these days. Every night I sleep in her room, wrapped around her like a coat. I inwardly shrug. Maybe that makes me whipped. I really don’t care. She’s worth being whipped for.

  I put down the manual I was reading on a new kind of security camera I’m installing and give her my immediate attention. “With what?”

  “It’s Rett.” Her words and the expression on her face makes my stomach drop. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t smelled something off with Rett over the last few weeks. Really, since Alessia and I started hooking up, she was suddenly a lot harder to get ahold of. She came around way less often and she barely stayed to shoot the shit with Alessia. Which struck me as odd considering how much they would talk before Alessia and I hooked up. And I knew it had been hurting Alessia’s feelings. I could see it in her every time her calls went to voicemail or Rett canceled plans.

  I motion for Alessia to come sit with me on the small love seat under the window of my room. “What is it?”

  “I can’t explain it, just a really bad feeling. Something is really off, I think. She’s been out of touch lately and in part it’s because you and I got together and I was less available. And then she told me that she’d started dating somebody too. This guy, Anthony.”

  I rub her back and listen hard to her story, my feeling of dread growing every second. “And then last night she posted a picture of the two of them to Instagram. And I got this weird feeling like I recognized him. Only, I have no idea how. I just can’t place him. It was a really weird picture too. Rett almost looked scared in it. I was sleepy when I first saw it, but I was kind of like, why would she post this weird picture of herself? And when I looked again this morning the post had been deleted. She’s not answering her phone. And when I called her work, her manager told me she’d been fired two weeks ago because she’d stopped coming to work.”

  “Hm, okay,” I run a hand through my hair and try to think how to react. I don’t want to freak Alessia out, but all of it sounds really bad. “Do you know if she’s been going to class?”

  She shakes her head. “No. We talked last week and she made it seem like everything was great. Including her job and her relationship. So, I don’t know anything, I guess.”

  “Okay, what do you want to do?” I’m already organizing a plan in my head to have Rett checked out. I’ll get one or two of my guys from Chicago out here to track her down and trail her, look into her affairs a little bit.

  “I think I just want to swing by her house and see if she’s there. Maybe they broke up and she’s just laying low.”

  I think for a second. She’s really not going to like this. “I’ll go by myself.”

  “What?” Her back goes stick straight and her eyes flame. “Why? No way. She’s my best friend! There’s no way I’m sending my bodyguard to do my friend duties.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest but I glared right after her. “You’re not sending your bodyguard. You’re sending your man.”

  She uncrosses her arms and her eyes warm a little but I can see she’s still going to try and argue her way out of this. “Dare-,”

  “Alessia,” I cut her off, “if Rett is really in trouble, there’s no way I’m going to let you walk into that trouble? And in all honestly, the fact that you think you recognize her boyfriend but you can’t remember where from is a really big red flag to me? It means it might be someone from your past. Maybe someone you’ve seen around your father’s house. I’m not letting you walk into a Greco family trap even if it is your best friend who’s in trouble?”

  She opens her mouth to argue, but suddenly her face crumples and she drops her head into her hands. “How did this happen, Dare? What did my father even do to the Greco’s that they want to kill me this badly?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. But your father has made a lot of deals with a lot of people. And he goes back on them when it suits him. And he shoots his way out of others.”

  “Why did you work for him? He’s so awful. Why did you stay? The money?”

  I’ve been hoping she wouldn’t ask me that question. I’m not proud of the answer. “Mostly it was the money. Your father pays very well for loyalty. And I was loyal to him.”

  “What do you mean you were loyal to him? You’re not anymore?”

  I shake my head and brush the hair back from her face. “I’m loyal to you now. I’ll choose you over him every time. And to your father that’s equal to betrayal. Maybe he’s right.”

  She rests her forehead against mine and sighs deeply. “I want to go with you to Rett’s house.”

  “No, gorgeous. If something goes wrong, I don’t want to have to worry about you.” It’s a manipulative argument but I know it’ll get her to make the safer choice.

  “So I just stay in the house and wait?”

  “No. You stay locked in your room and wait.”

  “What?!” she screeches, glaring at me indignantly.

  “If I’m not here, you’re locked in your room.”

  She pushes off from my lap and stomps out of the room. “Fine! But only if you go right now. I’m really worried about her.”

  I stand and strap my gun to my chest and watch her perfect ass stomp away from me.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dare

  Rett’s front door is unlocked and my stomach is in knots as I slide into her house. I pray there’s nothing grisly for me to find. She’s a good girl and doesn’t deserve to have anything bad happen to her.

  Her apartment is small, one of many in the complex. There are signs of a struggle in her small living room. Pillows from the couch on the floor, a knocked over vase, untouched food on the stove. The refrigerator door is open and I close it as I pick my way through the small kitchen toward her bedroom. I inch the door open and see some of her clothes strewn around on the ground. The bathroom is undisturbed but a little untidy.

  I check the closets and determine that she’s definitely not there. I search around the apartment for some indication of the last time she was home but I don’t find much. Before I leave I knock on the doors of her neighbors. One of them is a totally zoned out stoner who probably couldn’t pick his own mother out of a line up but the one on the other side of the hall is helpful. She’s kind of nerdy and seems nervous to be talking to me, but she tells me that Rett left in a hurry this morning with a guy with black hair. They got in a big black car that ran over a mailbox on its way out. I look down in the parking lot and see that one of the mailboxes is splintered on the ground.

  It’s both a relief and a disappointment. I certainly didn’t want to find her hurt or dead but being missing is pretty worrying in itself.

  On the drive back to our house, I mull over a million different reasons for Rett’s bizarre behavior, but in the end, come up dry. I’m going to have to break the news to Alessia and then get some of my guys on it as soon as possible hopefully before the police get involved. Police just fuck everything up and take about a million times longer with all their paperwork and procedural bullshit.

  I disarm the three different sets of alarms I have coded for entering our house and come through the living room. I can hear her talking on the phone in the bedroom. I smile to m
yself. Good girl. She stayed in there. I half expected her to be lounging in the living room when I got back. She has no respect when it came to my rules for her security. I go to the door to knock and tell her I’m back but I freeze in my tracks when I hear the words she’s saying.

  “That wasn’t the plan, Dante! Are you out of your fucking mind?” she pauses while she listens. “The plan was to get Dare out of the way for a few months so you guys could set up Dad. Get Dad arrested and get him the fuck out of our lives for good.”

  Her voice sounds weirdly dead. What the fuck does she mean ‘get Dare out of the way’? What the fuck plan is she talking about?

  “You’ve fucked it up, huh? All this work for nothing, huh?”

  Work? What work is she referring to? Making me think we were in a relationship? Tricking me into leaving Chicago?

  My phone buzzes in my hand and I see a message from one of my guys, Artuz, flash across the screen.

  Holy Fuck, man. Check the news.

  I ignore it and stride over to Alessia’s bedroom door, yanking it open. She jumps about a mile in the air and turns to look at me, her face slack with shock at seeing me so suddenly. I just heard everything she was saying to Dante. Now I know the truth.

  Chapter Twenty

  Alessia

  I’m going out of my skin waiting for Dare to come back from Rett’s. I’m praying that he’s just going to come back with Rett in tow. She’ll have some crazy story about her sordid affair that ended in some big fight and I’ll make her dinner and we’ll chat about it.

  Something tells me that Rett is in serious trouble. If only I could remember where the hell I recognized her boyfriend from it could give me some tiny indication what kind of trouble she’s in.

  I flop down on the bed and kick off my shoes. I flip through my phone for a second, looking for anything to distract me, but I almost immediately toss my phone down. I’m strung too tight for something mindless. The only thing that’s going to calm me down right now is hearing some good news about my friend.

  I run my fingers through my hair and almost jump out of my skin when my phone rings. I feel a stab of disappointment when I realize that it’s Dante and not Dare.

  “Hey, Dante,” I say trying not to let my mood soak through into my voice.

  “Alessia,” he says and I’m immediately at full attention. Dante never sounds so solemn on the phone.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not completely sure yet. But it’s gone bad. Our plan.”

  He sounds like he’s had too much to drink. Or been drugged.

  “What plan? Dante, what’s going on?”

  “Me and Fabi had a plan. We were gonna make sure you were safe. But now Fabi’s gone missing.”

  I sit straight up on the bed as my stomach tightens and threatens to be sick. “What?”

  “I talked to him a few minutes ago on the phone. But he won’t tell me where he is.”

  “Dante, start from the beginning and try to tell me what’s going on.”

  “Fabi and I have been intentionally fucking up some of Dad’s deals with Greco. Our plan was to get him caught dealing dirty and get him sent to prison. But Dare kept getting in the way. He had good instincts. He’d always lead Dad out of the deals we’d set as traps. So when Dare went to Michigan with you, we knew it was perfect timing. We knew you’d keep him out of the way for a few months at least. Especially since you weren’t coming home for the holidays. And then we could set up Dad. But everything went to hell tonight.”

  “What happened tonight?” I feel like I’m going to be sick. My mind is racing. In the space of a few sentences Dante has brought my life crashing down around m years.

  “They got Dad. But they got Greco, too. They chased me. Car crash. I got out. Fabi never showed. And the Greco’s are mad we got him arrested.” His words are slurring badly and it occurs to me that if he’s been in a car accident tonight he’s probably badly concussed. “I gotta go, two shoes.”

  “No! Dante, stay on the phone with me. Don’t go. Just talk to me.” I put the phone on speaker and quickly text Clara.

  Do you know where Dante is? I just got a weird call from him.

  She texts back almost immediately.

  Don’t panic, but he’s in the hospital. He suffered a concussion tonight. Car accident, but he’s going to be totally fine. I’m about to talk with the doctor right now. He’s resting in the other room.

  “Do you have any idea where Fabi went tonight, Dante?”

  “Where’s Fabi?” he asks.

  “That’s what I’m asking you!” I try not to be frustrated with him, but my panic is rising. “You said he didn’t act according to the plan you guys had and he didn’t show up. Do you have any idea why?”

  “What plan? Our plan to get girls, you mean? Remember that, two shoes? We used to go to the club together and pick up girls when I was twenty and he was sixteen? We had a routine together. This whole act where he’d pretend to be my foreign exchange student. It worked like a charm.”

  I feel like I’m about to lose my shit. Dante sounds like he’s on drugs. Which, for all I know, could well be the case. I don’t know how you treat a concussion. “That wasn’t the plan, Dante!” I know my brother is hurting right now, but I don’t have a lot of sympathy for him. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  “Well, what plan were you talking about?”

  “The plan where I get Dare out of the way for a few months so you guys could set up Dad. Get Dad arrested and get him the fuck out of our lives for good.”

  “Oh, yeah,” his voice starts to sound really sleepy. “We fucked that one up good. Stay with Dare, Alessia. You’re not safe. They’re coming for you. For all of us. We fucked this one up, bad. All that work for nothing.”

  His voice trails off and I hear his breathing go even, like he’s sleeping. I’m enraged and panicked. I have no way of knowing how much of what he’s said is true. No way of knowing whether or not Fabi is hurt or scared or worse. All I can do in this insanely maddening situation is repeat Dante’s words back to him.

  “You’ve fucked it up, huh? All this work for nothing, huh?”

  Suddenly, the door cracks open behind me and I jump out of my skin. Dare fills the frame and my phone falls from my fingers. The look on his face tells me that he just heard everything I said. I go back over the words in my head and am instantly filled with terror that he’s taken everything the wrong way.

  “Dare,” I say, moving toward him. But he takes a step away from me and goes out to the living room. He flips on the TV and flicks through the channels until he gets to a news station.

  There’s a picture of my father’s face on the screen and I stare at it, completely confused. I’m trying desperately to piece together what Dante told me on the phone with what I’m seeing on the screen.

  It’s on every news channel the notorious mobster, Fabrici Patrizzio, has been arrested.

  My father’s been arrested. My hands come up to cover my mouth. I can barely feel my fingers. I feel like I’m floating on a cloud. How could this possibly be? He was caught on the scene of a big drug deal. Greco was arrested as well.

  Holy shit.

  Two of the biggest mobsters in the entire United States, caught in the same sting. And I’m pretty sure my brothers were the ones who master minded it. There’s video of my dad being dragged out of cop car and into the police station. His hands cuffed and his head held high. And then there’s Greco. His brow crowded down over his eyes. He looks murderous. He stares straight into the camera and I feel like he can see me.

  And then, more of the people who were arrested are shown on camera, being dragged from the paddy wagons into the precinct. My stomach drops as I recognize all of them. My dad’s henchmen. Some of them my distant cousins but most of them are his security detail. Dare’s men. His team.

  “Fuck!” Dare screams and the remote control almost disintegrates in his hand. “How could you have done this?”

  It takes me a second t
o even realize that he’s talking to me. “W-what?”

  “This masterplan of you and your brothers’? Did you even stop to think about the innocent people who would be involved? The men on my team who would go down alongside your father? How could you be this selfish?”

  My mouth opens and closes but I’m utterly shocked at his words.

  “Dare, you think I did this?”

  “Sure as hell sounded that way when you were talking to your brother. When you thought I couldn’t hear!” He stands up and starts pacing back and forth.

  “You didn’t hear what you thought you did.” I start to move toward him, my need to touch him almost overwhelming me but when I lay my hand on his arm he looks at me as if I’m not even there. He doesn’t respond at all. His arm is a stone beneath my hand.