Hitman's Promise: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance

by Naomi West

  Clay, however, was a man used to getting his way. “Fine, Felice. I try to come here and stitch fences, and you act like a spoiled little bitch.”

  Felice made a face. “You mean ‘mend fences,’ Clay,” she said, automatically. She hadn’t meant to correct his idiom, but it was so incredibly wrong that she couldn’t help herself.

  Throwing his hands in the air, Clay just made a disgusted sound. Felice could feel Pierce’s hand tighten on her shoulder, probably in anger. “Seriously?”

  Felice cleared her throat, trying to get Clay to settle down a little. His anger along with Pierce’s was making the massive front room of her house feel small. She needed to defuse this situation before it got any worse. “Just tell me why you are here, Clay. Please. Calmly.”

  “Fine,” he snapped, turning to face her straight on, his eyes locked with hers. “I was hoping that you and I could talk about this misunderstanding and get back to where we had been. But I see there’s no point. Once you’re done sleeping with the help, you selfish cow, give me a call and maybe I’ll think about taking you back.”

  Felice felt hot, then cold, then hot again. Her skin crawled, her chest inflating with hot, angry air. Never in her life had she ever wanted to actually tear someone’s hair out, but Clay was really pushing the right buttons tonight. Taking a deep breath, Felice didn’t know what she was going to say, but it was not going to be nice.

  Unfortunately, Pierce had the same sort of idea.

  Before she could say anything or think to stop him, Pierce had thrown himself forward, grabbing both of Clay’s arms into what looked like a wrestling hold. It looked painful, but not in a permanent way. But one small movement of Pierce’s arms could pop Clay’s arm out of his socket or break a bone.

  Felice gasped, every muscle in her body locking up like someone had put her in a freezer.

  Pierce’s voice was void of all emotion when he said, “Take that back; that is the last time you show disrespect to Ms. Domiano.”

  Chapter Nine

  Pierce

  “There’s a right way to do things and a wrong way,” Felice said, her voice soft like she was talking down a rabid animal. “And this is the wrong way, Pierce.” Her beautiful green eyes were locked with his, her tone pleading.

  The worst part was that Pierce knew she was right. But more than anything in the world, Pierce wanted to break this little bastard’s arm and show him what disrespecting women got you where he came from.

  “If you do it, it will bring police reports and scrutiny, neither of which you can afford.” With a huff, Pierce twisted just a tiny bit harder, making the wimpy idiot cry out in pain before finally releasing him. He wanted to clock the kid in the face so badly, he had to force himself to take a step away from the sobbing bitch to keep from doing it. That pretty face of his needed a little rearranging, but sadly, Pierce was not going to be the one to do it.

  “All right now, if you don’t mind. Pierce, your job is to protect me from physical threats, not insults.” Her eyes are like fire as she stares him down. “Please apologize.”

  “I am sorry, Clay,” Pierce responded, sounding a little robotic. Although it was completely insincere, Clay seemed to take it at face value. Maybe he was just as bad at social cues as he was with everything else.

  Clay rubbed his shoulder delicately, a sulky look on his face.

  But Felice knew how to handle him. She was like a diplomat, able to get anyone to agree with her, given enough time. “Now, Clay; you know there is no reason to insult me or the ‘help’ as you so brutishly referred to Pierce. He’s a man that works for his bread, just like your father was before he made all of that money. There is no shame in working, and I expect you will treat my employees as you would anyone else.”

  Looking slightly ashamed, Clay looked away from Felice but didn’t say anything. Pierce was shocked at the use of cajoling and stern talking-to that she used to turn both of their rages into faint shame. She defused the situation like a bomb technician, and Pierce knew he’d found a woman with an incredible talent. She didn’t yell or curse, even though the man-child in front of her had cheated on her less than a week before.

  By the time Clay left, Pierce was filled with a kind of admiration he’d never felt for another human before. Felice was one-of-a-kind. And, holy shit, was she hot.

  # # #

  Felice

  Closing the front door behind her, Felice locked the door and took a deep breath. Well, that was over at least.

  But now there was Pierce to deal with.

  She turned to face him, ready for a fight. Self-centered jerk was just staring at her like nothing had happened, a blank, almost bored expression on his sexy face. She kind of wanted to strangle him for causing all this trouble then having the nerve to look like he hadn’t done a single thing wrong.

  “You know that Clay has the right to press charges if he wants to.” She crossed her arms over her chest as she stared Pierce down. Anger honed his already sharp features, making the muscles in his jaw tense and making those sculpted features even more becoming. Felice wanted to run her hands over that face again, feel his skin under her trembling fingers as she kissed him. Wrapping her arms close…

  She had to shake herself to get away from the heated memories of Pierce’s body so close to hers. Turning on her heel, she headed into the kitchen, mostly because she needed some coffee, but also to keep her eyes off of Pierce’s beautiful body for just a few moments.

  “I am a wealthy woman in the public eye, Pierce. I can’t have my bodyguard assaulting people for insulting me. I’m constantly insulted. There are entire Reddit and Facebook groups devoted to how much I suck and how I should go die,” she said, putting fresh beans into the coffee grinder. She slammed the lid on a little harder than she meant to in her anger. “Insults aren’t why you’re here.”

  Pierce followed her into the kitchen, a silent shadow.

  “You’re here to make Clay jealous enough to beg for me to come back to him. There is a lot of money on the line here, and I refuse to lose this bet.” When Felice turned back to Pierce, she saw his mouth twisted in surprise. “Did I not tell you about the bet?”

  The blank look in his pretty, chocolate eyes was answer enough.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I need Clay to come back to me, and I need to remember that you are here for that and that alone. Okay?” The coffee began to brew, filling her white-on-white kitchen with the beautiful scent. There were only two things in the world that made Felice happy: the color white and the scent of freshly-brewed coffee. And that made her kitchen one of her favorite places in the whole world. Paula, the maid who looked after her home, had a way with keeping the whites as white as possible, no matter what Felice spilled or tracked into the house. She was a blessing.

  “I’m sorry, Felice,” Pierce said, looking sincere. “I don’t know what came over me.” Looking a bit like a puppy that was just kicked by an owner, Pierce disappeared up the stairs and into “his” room, closing the door behind him with a click.

  Felice watched him leave, enjoying the view, reliving the scene at the front door again in her mind. “It was sort of hot the way he jumped to my defense like I was a lady and he was my knight in shining armor.” But that sort of behavior couldn’t continue. Pierce wasn’t her knight, and his possessiveness was a little weird. They barely knew each other!

  Sighing, Felice poured some of the coffee into her favorite mug and poured in some cream. The milk swirled into her coffee like clouds, lightning the black brew until it was just the perfect shade of mocha brown. Just like Pierce’s eyes.

  Frowning, Felice pushed that thought away, taking a big sip of her brew. “No, I have to keep my eye on the prize. And the prize is not Pierce. It’s Clay. I can’t let Pierce, no matter how pretty his eyes are or how amazing his ass looks in that suit, get in the way of my mission.”

  And with that, Felice settled down in front of the TV. For a few moments, she wanted to forget Clay, forget the sexy man just upstai
rs, and forget the demands of her mother and her show. And some mindless TV was the perfect cure.

  Chapter Ten

  Pierce

  Mostly to keep up appearances, Felice had a state-of-the-art security system installed at her beautiful, white mansion in the desert. Once again, Pierce found himself absolutely stunned at the flagrant way Felice has of just tossed money around like it was nothing. It still shook him up that someone could have so much that they didn’t check the price of anything they bought. Cars, jewelry, clothing, security systems; no matter the cost, it didn’t seem to even put a dent in her bank account. Not to mention the exorbitant fees she was paying him to pretty much sit around and look “mean and sexy.”

  “I guess this is how pretty trophy wives feel.” He thought darkly, sitting in front of the monitors. The new security system was absolutely the most high tech thing he’d ever seen, and he mostly fumbled around with the buttons for fun more than having an actual goal in mind.

  There were three cameras focused on the front of the house; one showed the street immediately in front while the other two pointed at the driveway. After a second of fumbling, Pierce managed to get the street view to pop up on the TV screen attached to the system, watching to see how often cars actually drove by this little patch of desert. He was a little surprised at the sheer amount of traffic coming through this lightly populated part of town, but perhaps he shouldn’t have been. There were quite a number of other mini-mansions on this strip of land, and he doubted most of the owners made do with one or two household helpers like Felice did.

  More than likely, most of these people have whole sets of staff devoted to them.

  As he watched, a police vehicle drove by the house, not even slowing as it crossed in front of Felice’s house. Even so, his heart skipped a beat in his chest. “If the cops ever stop in here for me, what will I do?”

  Sighing, Pierce turned away from the screens, his head spinning. Half of him is sure he’d just be able to leave, roll right out of here and down to San Diego without a glance backward. But the other half of him wasn’t sure.

  “I’m getting too tangled up in a woman I’ll never have.” Visions of Felice slipped across his mind. Knowing when he left here, she would be wrapped in the asshole Clay’s arms made him want to put his fist through the TV screen. What was it about Felice that made him so crazy?

  He walked away from the security system, trying not to think too hard about Felice and utterly failing.

  # # #

  Felice

  Much to her delight, Felice found herself in Pierce’s arms again. Rippling muscles wrapped close, her heart thundering in her chest. Warm bodies, skin-on-skin contact. Beautiful chocolate eyes heated her whole body up from the tips of her toes to her scalp, sending delightful little shivers over every inch of her. A moan, a kiss, the press of tongues. A whisper, “I want to be inside of you, Felice.” The voice filled with lust. And then the sound of Felice begging, pleading for him to merge with her, just this once…

  When she woke, Felice had to fight her way out of her tangle of blankets and sheets. She could feel her thighs throbbing in time with her heartbeat, her underwear soaked after her racy dreams.

  And much to her delight, Pierce was pictured front and center in those dreams. “He’s so hot. If I was anyone else, I would have tackled him to the floor by now.” Sighing through her nose, Felice ran her fingers through her tangled hair. “But I’m not anyone. I’m Felice Domiano, and I play by the rules. No matter how much I hate them sometimes.”

  Shaking herself, Felice realized what she had been thinking and cursed herself. “This isn’t helping, Felice,” she told herself in the huge mirror across the room from her bed. “Pierce isn’t the prize here. Clay and your pride are the prizes.” Felice forced herself to get out of bed, discarded her pajamas and hopped into the shower. A very cold shower. She hoped the icy water would wash away her dreams and ready her for a new day.

  Standing up straight, she looked into her reflection’s eyes. “Alright, Felice. You got this. You’re going to get Clay to crawl to you like your mother wants, and you’re going to be happy.”

  Repeating the word “happy” over and over to herself like a mantra, Felice skipped down the stairs, bounding into the kitchen to get herself a cup of coffee.

  She stopped at the foot of the stairs, her eyes going wide and her heart turning to ice inside of her chest. On the counters, there were three, huge vases full of white roses, each one tied in a gold ribbon. The flowers blended seamlessly with the kitchen; even the vases were white with gold leaf. They were perfect.

  And there was only one person in the world who would have sent them.

  Felice picked up the card in shaking fingers, unsurprised to see Clay’s name.

  Babe:

  I’m sorry for what I said yesterday. I was jealous. Please forgive me.

  Clay

  Felice cringed, unable to feel anything but ill at the sight of the present. “Odd, before, something like this would have made me happy.” Tears pricked the edges of her eyes, and she had to swallow hard around the lump that formed in her throat. “So if you don’t want Clay, what do you want?” she asked herself, pretty sure she didn’t want to know the answer.

  “No, you want Clay back. That’s what’s best for the show and your family.”

  Sighing, Felice was pretty sure Pierce wouldn’t like the flowers one bit. He’d know who sent them immediately, too. Glancing down at the counter, she noticed another little gift for her; it was a little red box with a ribbon around it, containing a gold and diamond tennis bracelet. It was ugly, but then Clay’s taste in jewelry had always been a little too austere for her. The bracelet was a little simpler than what she would have picked for herself. “But it’s the thought that counts,” she thought, but even that seemed to fall flat. “You think after months together, he would have picked up on the type of jewelry I liked to wear.”

  But perhaps that was asking too much of anyone who didn’t care much for jewelry; Clay never wore it himself and would hardly know the difference between a tennis bracelet and a bangle.

  Glancing around at the flowers and the bracelet, Felice frowned, then tossed the card into the garbage and the bracelet into one of the kitchen drawers. “Perhaps I can play it off like I got them for myself. When Pierce learns they are from Clay, he might think his work done and just leave. I have to keep him from thinking I’ve won.”

  “I really don’t want him to leave.” That thought filled her with a little more worry than she wanted to admit to anyone. Even herself.

  Chapter Eleven

  Pierce

  Pierce had a bad feeling about this “meeting” from the very start.

  When Felice called him downstairs into her kitchen for a serious sit-down, Pierce could feel the tension in his shoulders building. He hadn’t missed the flowers delivered that morning, nor did he have any delusions on who sent them. He wasn’t stupid; he could see that the flowers, which were very beautiful and matched her obsession with the color white, didn’t make her as happy as she thought she should be.

  “We need to start working harder to ensure that I get Clay groveling and back to me as soon as possible. This,” she waved her hand dismissively at the roses, “is a good start. He’s missing me, but he isn’t begging. I need him to beg before I take him back. I need him to be depressed and realize what he’s missing, or else nothing will even change. I won’t have him cheat twice, so he needs to remember how much he used to love me.”

  Tapping her chin with a manicured finger, Felice pursed her perfect lips, drawing Pierce’s attention. The cupid’s bow of her lips was the perfect shape; they always looked like she was aching for a kiss. And that warmed Pierce’s blood in ways he didn’t want to admit out loud.

  “So, we need to have to seen with me in public more often. That TMZ interview will come out tomorrow, and I want that same kind of energy for our next outing.”

  Pierce growled in the back of his throat. “I think th
at’s a little too subtle for your airhead ex, Felice.” He was frowning, remembering how much he’d wanted to strangle the guy the night before. “We need to be seen as a couple, or else he’ll never take me as a serious threat.” Standing, Pierce starts to collect the flowers. “We should also throw these away in a way that can be seen from the street. If he drives by, it will make it absolutely obvious you’re over him and have moved on.”

  Gasping, Felice ran the tips of her fingers over some of the soft, beautiful roses in front of her. “But they are so pretty.”

  “Do you want to win this bet and your idiot ex back or not?” Piece turned his burning brown eyes to her emerald ones, getting caught up her in gaze. It was hard to break away from those beautiful eyes, but he managed, turning to pick up two of the vases and taking them out to the trash.

  Felice said nothing, though she pouted adorably when he took the rest of the roses out too, positioning the can so the roses could be seen from the street. Pierce took a wicked kind of glee at throwing Clay’s money away, even though this sort of display probably didn’t even register to someone with his kind of money. He really hoped that spoiled little brat would drive by and see those wilting white blooms sticking their heads out of the trash by the street.