Hitman's Bride (Bad Boy Empire)

by Vanessa Waltz

  Despite my inner voice urging me to leave the suite, a prick of fear stabs at my chest.

  I’ve no idea what’s behind this door.

  SILAS

  I ran. I ran until my feet were numb and the wind tore at my eyes, drying my tears. I ran until I couldn’t taste the salty air anymore. My feet carried me all the way across the Bay Bridge to Oakland, and then I bought bus tickets until I was out of California. I was thirteen when I got arrested the first time, and then after a few months in juvie they tossed me into the system where I was passed around.

  Pepper found Achilles in an alley, rifling through garbage in Chinatown. He was such a pathetic sight, hobbling on that disfigured leg. She took pity on him and brought him into our fold. I took one look at him and urged Pepper to kill him. I didn’t see the charming, sweet boy that the others did. I saw rage. I saw a pride that could burn down cities. There was no doubt in my mind that he would kill her for exactly the thing that had saved his life: pity.

  The smell hits me as I shove open the door to the second floor. It reeks of death after only half a day. The metallic tang hits the air, recycles through the air-conditioning. I nearly walk into a corpse, which already feels like solid rock under my shoe. Bodies are scattered throughout the second floor, and everywhere I see syndicate men with Viper’s insignia pinned to their chests. The red dragon. I try to gauge the atmosphere.

  A man dragging a dead guy toward the elevator stops for a moment to look at me with wide eyes, and I see similar expressions of shock and disbelief until I approach the throne room. The doors are wide open, probably to air out the room. Viper’s guards give me a cursory look before nodding at me. Of course. I’m the guy who helped spring Viper’s plan into action.

  They think I’m one of them, and I’ll play along until I get my chance to finish the bastard for good.

  I step inside and immediately wrinkle my nose. And I thought the hallway was bad. To my immediate left stands a pile of corpses several feet high, the smell overpowering. Brown, sticky blood clings to the floor. My eyes follow the trail of blood to the massive table, where that blond fuck sits alone. Rage hits my chest again, banking up like a huge fire, and I think again about his threat toward Fawn. I have to keep my arms stiff to stop myself from launching at that bastard and ripping off his fucking head. Viper’s men stand like sentries around him, armed with Kalashnikovs.

  Keep cool. Don’t give anything away.

  I walk toward the table and several guards accost me, buffeting me hard in the chest as they search my body for weapons. I look over their shoulders at Viper, who gives me an apologetic smile and I grin back, thinking of what he’d look like with a bullet in his head.

  “Silas. You show up when all the fighting’s over.”

  They stop patting me down and I give the guards a leer as I approach Viper at the table. He’s in his element here. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so happy. Killing off the Dragons was probably the finest moment in his miserable life.

  “I had other things to attend to.”

  “Like Fawn?”

  I stiffen when her name passes through his cold lips. “What happened? Is it really over?”

  “Oh, I doubt that, but I don’t think anyone’s going to challenge my authority anytime soon.”

  Everyone’s probably still reeling over the fact that their decades-long democratic Council was just eviscerated by one man.

  “I’ve been waiting for this for years. We’re going after the street gangs in Oakland, and then we’ll hit the Norteños in San Jose.”

  I grit my teeth. The syndicate, to my knowledge, didn’t really engage in territorial disputes beyond San Francisco. The Norteños are important allies. What the hell is he thinking? He’s a raving fucking lunatic if he thinks he’ll live long enough to antagonize every major gang in the area.

  “I need your support, Silas. Hitmen like you are in scarce supply.”

  “You’ll need to get the members who weren’t here during the coup.”

  “Exactly.” He smiles at me, glad to see that I’ve caught on so quickly. “There’s also the matter of the girl.”

  I bristle inwardly. “What about her?”

  “We should do the ceremony today.”

  Today? Is he fucking joking?

  “There are corpses rotting in the hallway and you want me to get married?”

  He smiles through his steepled fingers. “Silas, you have a lot to learn about the Dragons.”

  Not sure I want to.

  This is fucking insane. Not a bone in my body is built for marriage, especially with a girl I barely know.

  “If you won’t take her, I will.”

  My stomach clenches hard. I want to reach across the table and snap his neck for the flash of desire in his eyes. Either I bind Fawn’s life to mine forever, or he will. And then she’d be dead in a matter of weeks or months.

  * * *

  My heart pounds when I see Fawn dressed in blue scrubs, wheeling an empty gurney between two curtains. Her dark-blonde hair is tied up into a ponytail. The scrubs are shapeless, but I can still see her tight, round ass when she bends over the table, cleaning it. I’m sure she’s wearing nothing underneath because I didn’t see any underwear in that pile of clothes. I imagine her tits bouncing as she sprints down several flights of stairs. Amusement punctures the swath of anger poisoning my blood.

  She left the suite when I warned her not to. I told her to stay—it was for her own good.

  A part of me feels a grudging admiration for her. She knew the risks and wanted to volunteer at the infirmary anyway. That kind of compassion is lost to me. A painful twinge hits my heart when I think about the other girl who had a weakness for injured children and broken things. The girl who gave the hard-eyed boy with a limp a chance and paid for it.

  I’m not going to let the same thing happen to Fawn.

  Why the hell do you care so much about some girl you’ve known for less than a month?

  I can’t answer that. All I know is that I can’t let anything bad happen to her. There’s no way I could stomach that empty look in her eyes. This marriage will keep her safe, as long as I stay in Viper’s good graces, which I plan to do until I find an opening—a weakness.

  I walk toward the curtains. The infirmary is swarming with activity. A doctor sidesteps me, her eyes trained on a clipboard in her hands.

  “We need more O negative. Page the blood bank.”

  Hospital staff whisk by me in a sea of blue and white, but I don’t lose Fawn. I watch her disappear into another room, and then I lean on the doorway, waiting for her to emerge.

  She walks out a few seconds later, carrying a bundle of towels in her hands. Surprise registers on her pale face when she sees me hanging on the doorway.

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah.”

  It almost makes me laugh to see the brief spasm of terror on her face. She turns away, but I grab her arm. The blankets fall to the floor as she gives me a furious look.

  “You were supposed to stay the fuck inside.”

  “They needed my help.”

  “Do you still want to be mine?”

  “What I want doesn’t matter,” she seethes.

  “You’re right. Because I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  Then I haul her on my shoulder. Her body falls over my back as I hold her thighs, giving her ass a squeeze.

  “Put me the fuck down!”

  She grips my jacket to pull herself up. Her shrieks don’t even capture the slightest bit of attention. I’m just a syndicate man disciplining his woman. No doubt these poor bastards have seen it before.

  And it’s about to get a lot worse.

  She lets out a small scream when I smack her ass. “Be quiet.”

  “I’ll be quiet when you let me down!”

  The moment we’re cleared of the infirmary’s white double doors, I set her down. She slides down my body, red faced and hair askew. Damn, she looks as hot as she did this morning, and my cock stiffens w
hen I think of her tied up to the bed. Her wild mouth and big tits and everything else about her body that I love are about to become mine for good.

  She balls her fist and swings at me, but this time I don’t let her hit me. This shit has got to stop. I grab it out of midair almost lazily and pin her arm to her side, laughing at her trembling lips.

  “Save the foreplay for later, baby.”

  She shoves my chest with both her hands, putting all her weight into it. I barely go back a step and this seems to only incense her.

  “I’m the one who should be angry with you, sweetheart. You disobeyed me.”

  “You are not my fucking father!”

  “Thank God for that.”

  But in a way, she’s not completely wrong. I’m not her dad, but I’m taking his place.

  This is all so fucked up.

  “Come with me.”

  “Where?” she snaps.

  I take her hand as a smile plays on my lips, thinking of the nasty surprise in store for her. We walk across the loud lobby and enter a deserted elevator. The doors close with a resolute finality and I press the buttons for the basement, where the chapel is. My heart beats furiously, and as the elevator jerks into motion, I slide my arm around Fawn’s waist and bury my hand in her hair. She melts in my arms the moment our lips touch, and I feel the beginnings of something tender in my chest. I can’t let this girl go. Not this one.

  It’s probably the sweetest kiss I’ve ever given her, and when she pulls back she looks confused and her cheeks are flushed.

  “Fawn, I—”

  The doors open and there’s already a line of syndicate men waiting on either side of the black hallway.

  Her eyes widen as she takes it in. I wanted to explain it to her right before we got there, but this must’ve been how Viper wanted it. The fucking cocksucker.

  “Silas, what exactly is going on?”

  “Come.”

  Fawn slips her dainty hand in mine again. The lights are more subdued down here, but the decor is something out of a Gothic mansion whose owner happened to have a fetish for Chinese imagery. It’s tacky. Overwrought. There are columns with ivory dragon heads, candles lit inside their mouths. Chinese calligraphy painted with gold leaf. We approach what looks like a cave, but there are candles hidden in the hollows of the walls. It’s a small chapel with an altar—two very sharp, ceremonial daggers lying on red velvet, where an older man garbed in thick black robes stands.

  The fuck is it with this place and blood?

  Fawn’s hand twists in my grasp, her wide eyes alight with fear.

  “NO!”

  They explained this part to me, too. That I’d have to drag her to the altar.

  Jesus Christ.

  I twist my hand in Fawn’s hair and wrap my arm around her tiny waist. Then I bend my head to her neck, where a vein rapidly pulses.

  “We’re getting married.”

  FAWN

  “We’re getting married.”

  I stare at Silas’s mouth for several seconds. I heard the words, but I don’t believe them. I don’t believe the syndicate men surrounding this place, all wearing roses attached to their jackets with petals the color of dark crimson, or the priest standing at the blood altar, his faded black robes trimmed with gold, and the man grappling me, forcing me to become his bride. I don’t believe any of it. Silas half carries and half drags me into the chapel. I know what this is. I’ve pictured it a thousand times in my head, always wondering what my wedding day would look like.

  Weddings at the syndicate are medieval at best. I attended a few when I was younger, and lost my taste for them quickly. I didn’t want the syndicate weddings. I wanted the white dress, the flowers, and all the romance that came with them.

  I find my voice when Silas takes his first step into the chapel.

  “NO! This is not happening!”

  He’ll have to knock me out if he thinks I’m going to agree to this wedding. Harsh fingers twist around my arms, rendering me immobile. Dozens of indifferent male faces turn toward me as my shrieks rise to the ceiling.

  “I’m making you my wife.”

  I claw at his hands, twisting myself away from him. “Fuck no. I’m not spending the rest of my life married to a monster.”

  An amused grin lights up his face, and I look at the sea of black suits. They shake their heads with a little smile, as if I’m a toddler throwing a cute little tantrum.

  “No! I don’t want this!”

  My feet stagger on the floor, and then he sweeps his arm under my knees, forcing my legs to give out. Then he carries me like a rag doll, and the candle flames spiral as he deposits me on the stone floor, right next to the stone basin near the altar.

  I get up and slam right into Silas’s chest, and he wraps his arms around me in what would be an embrace, except they’re locked around me.

  My chest tightens when the priest walks up and down the aisles with a canister of smoky incense to drive away demons.

  No, this is not all right. I don’t want to do this. He’s a man I barely know, who has conned me at every turn. I can’t marry the man who killed my father. But to the syndicate, that might justify his ownership of me even more.

  His hands warm my arms, sliding up and down in soothing motions as the priest mutters archaic phrases in Latin.

  Silas’s face looks pale and slightly drawn, but determined.

  “Please don’t make me do this.”

  The crow’s feet near his eyes wrinkle as he smiles. “It was always going to come to this.”

  “Since when?”

  He doesn’t even want to be here.

  “Since you locked eyes with me when I walked in that room with your father. You were begging to become mine.”

  For a night. Not for eternity.

  Silas moves his hands to my shoulders and he presses down hard so that my knees buckle and I kneel on the concrete floor. The choking smell of the incense invades my lungs, and I cough violently as Silas’s hands tighten on my shoulders.

  “We are gathered here today to witness the joining of two souls in holy matrimony. They shall bind their bodies as one as husband and wife.” He raises his ancient head and gazes up at Silas. “Brother Silas, have you chosen a bride?”

  “I have.”

  I elbow his shins hard. “No you haven’t!”

  “Make her rise.”

  The unforgiving hands curl, wrenching me upright. All my backward steps push me right into Silas’s chest. My future husband.

  Oh my fucking God.

  I feel myself start to panic. My airway closes as the priest approaches, carrying a velvety cloth and a very long, deadly-looking ceremonial dagger.

  Fuck no!

  “Silas, please, no!” My vision is blinded by tears as the priest extends his palms, offering him the knife.

  “You must weaken yourselves in front of the other. As husband and wife, you will undergo trials that will test the bonds of your marriage. The only time a Dragon may be vulnerable will be in front of his wife. It is the only time he sheds his own blood.”

  With his arms like a vise around my body, he takes the gleaming bronze handle of the dagger. My eyes try to follow the edge, but it’s so fine that I can’t make it out.

  Sobs rack my chest as I watch him twist the blade in his hand. Then he grabs the hand locked at my waist and prizes it out. My arm shakes with the force of trying to wrench it out of his grip, and I feel his head turn. His lips brush against my ear.

  “Calm down. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  He says that as he guides an extremely sharp blade to my hand. Which part of me is he going to cut? My wrist?

  Before I can cry out, he flicks the edge across my index finger, and I watch as a tiny bead of blood swells over my finger.

  That’s it?

  His arms loosen around me as he brings my bleeding finger to his mouth. His hot tongue wraps around the wound and takes in the small drop. I see the dark stain on his lip before he licks it clean.

>   His arms drop from my sides and he hands the dagger back to the priest, who offers a narrower blade to me.

  Excellent.

  I take the handle of the knife. My finger throbs a little, but it’s really nothing. I could stab his chest. Run him through with both hands clenched hard on the handle and watch blood darken his shirt. I could make him never smile again, but I don’t want that. I fucking hate him, but I don’t want him to die.

  I sure as hell want to hurt him, though.

  Silas tenses, sensing my rage. He holds up his hands in a placating gesture as I raise the dagger toward him.

  “Easy, sweetheart.”

  “I am not your sweetheart!”

  I lunge at the arm crossed in front of his chest. His skin is like paper. It slices open as I drag a long but shallow cut along his forearm. Blood swells from the angry red line as Silas gives me another amused look.

  He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s getting himself into.

  Then I swipe my finger across his wound, my stomach rolling when his blood stains my fingerprint. Gross. And no way out of this.

  I put it in my mouth, wincing at the metallic tang.

  “You must make an offering to the syndicate, and swear to uphold the tenets of the Dragons.”

  “I swear.”

  Shadows dance across Silas’s face, made from the flickering candles. The priest turns toward me, and I think almost longingly of three weeks ago.

  “I—I swear.”

  “Good. Come closer.”

  We approach the stone basin, the inside of which is stained brown from years of use. He pulls Silas’s wrist over the basin and unsheathes a dagger from his belt. His wound is still bleeding freely, so he lets the blood spiral into the bottom. Then he grabs my hand. My heart pounds as the priest’s dull eyes pass over me and he lifts the blade to my wrist. He slashes the side, and it fucking stings. I cry out and jerk my hand away, but he holds it still. A pained look crosses Silas’s face, and he covers my trembling hand with his, giving it a reassuring squeeze.