by Raven Dark
“Fine, I think.” Why were my teeth chattering? I turned to my dad, protectiveness for Kane racing through me like I’d never felt before. When the hell had this happened?
“He couldn’t shoot him without the shots drawing attention, Dad. I had the silencer, and Kane knew it.”
“Here. Anika, give me the gun.”
“What? Oh…” I handed the pistol to Kane, dazed, watching him put it in the back of his waistband like an experienced gangster. My gangster. Holy shit. Mine…
“What are you gonna do with that?” my dad demanded.
“It’ll find its way into the Atlantic.” He answered in a much kinder voice than he had before. “Don’t worry, no one will trace it to her.”
Dad sighed, but nodded. “You two better get out of here before someone checks on me.” Clearly, he didn’t like having to put my life in Kane’s hands, but he saw he had no choice.
“We can’t.” I looked at both men.
“Yes, we can. I’ll have David get you as far from here as we can.” Kane pulled out his phone. “And I’ll have him keep anyone from getting in here. Yeah, David. Get up here. We have some cleaning to do.”
“Kane, I’m not leaving you to take care of this yourself. We have to do something about the…the body.” I looked at the gunman, my face draining of blood. He looked so white, so lifeless, like one of those creepy corpses in a wax museum.
Everything in me knew it was wrong, but I needed to be here for Kane in every way possible. It was wrong, but it also felt right.
“I’ll take care of it.” He rubbed my arms, and it unsettled me how easy it was to take comfort in his touch. My dad’s eyes hardened, taking in the way he touched me and my face flamed, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull away. “I’ve done this before. I’ll get the body out of here without being seen, somehow.”
“Oh?” My dad looked at him. “Moved a lot of dead bodies, have you, Davros?”
“Daddy.”
“Fuck you, Montrose.”
“It’ll go faster with three sets of hands,” I told Kane. “Besides, someone’s going to have to get my dad out of here. I can only assume that was one of Gavini’s men. As soon as he realizes my dad is still alive, he’ll send another mook.”
“I know a security guy who can watch over your dad for the time being. He’ll be safe here. And the body has to be disposed of. It’s messy business.”
Bile seared my throat and I held my stomach. Disposed of. Oh, god. I made myself nod. “Fine, I get it. Tell me what you want me to do.”
“Anika, no. Davros, get her out of here.”
Kane held my face and locked his gaze with mine. He stared at me like he’d never seen me before. I couldn’t place the odd, soft light in his eyes. “You shouldn’t be involved in this.”
“I already am involved. I shot him. Look, I’ve…” I swallowed hard and made myself go on. “I know how to h-handle the body. I’ve done it with animals. My being a nurse here will be an advantage in getting out of this place. I’m in this. All the way.”
Silent for a moment, Kane seemed to be trying to take in what I’d said. Then he nodded, went over to the gunman, and hefted him with amazing ease over his shoulder.
“All right. When David comes, I want you two to find me three hospital outfits and a stretcher. Quickly.”
I already knew what he’d had in mind. The only way we were getting out of here without landing us all in prison and costing me my nursing career, was if the staff thought we were hospital personnel with a patient.
“Got it. Daddy, I’ll be right back.”
Just as David came into the room, I kissed my dad on the forehead and ignored his vehement protests I be taken away instead of getting my hands any dirtier than they already were.
The thing was, I had a feeling my hands would get a lot dirtier than this by the time my six months with Kane were up.
7
I don’t remember exactly the moment when it happened. Maybe it was when I saw her shoot that gunman in the back before he could shoot me. Maybe it was the knowledge that she’d saved my life without thought of herself that changed things. Or maybe it was the way she defended me to her dad, or her need to help me deal with something as gruesome as a dead body. Whatever the case, something new took root inside me when it came to Anika. I’d never felt anything close to it before, so I had no words for it. It should have made me feel weak, shaky, but it didn’t. It made me feel stronger.
Perhaps it was some new intense form of respect, the kind my father would have cut out of me. But I had a sense the emotion growing inside me was something much more foreign. Something like what I felt for Gala, only…stronger. More intense, and it was all tied up with a need to possess Anika that I had never felt for any woman before in my life. It scared the fuck out of me, but it also felt awesome, like a giant tidal wave that wanted to engulf me. And I wanted to be engulfed by it, swept away and lost in it. Forever.
Fuck, what was happening to me?
I didn’t know. I only knew that the way I handled things with Anika had to change. I couldn’t cut her out of things, not the way I had been. Oh, I’d have to be careful how much I involved her. She was a woman, and not linked to the families like me. Protective measures still had to remain in place, but I had to find a middle ground.
God, I felt like a fool, thinking she couldn’t handle the crap my life threw at us. Nowhere did this become clearer than while we were standing on the deck of my boat, way out to sea, throwing that hitman’s body into the abyss.
Before we’d left the hospital, she thrown on her nursing clothes as if what we were about to do was all part of her job. Then she’d used her access cards to get us through elevator doors and halls that led to places only hospital personnel could open, including an exit in the basement. David brought the limo around, and Anika helped push the body into the back.
Aboard my boat, while David and I were down below, she’d driven out to sea, well beyond sight of other boaters. We’d done the worst of the grizzly work below. Once we were far enough out, she joined us.
We’d spread the nameless hitman out across plastic. Anika threw up twice. The rest of the time, she worked in silence, getting cloths when I needed them, a pail, rags. She never complained. No caustic remarks, no implications I was evil or how this kind of horror was my stock and trade. She was resolute. Silent. Efficient. And she was hellfire with an axe.
I vaguely recall asking her where she learned to cut, and her telling me something about pigs. Nursing school showed you how to cut muscle and bone, and she and her dad had made short work of animals countless times. Pigs were as close to humans as you could get. It felt like she was a different person. Someone who did what she had to in order to survive and didn’t shy away from the tough stuff.
Well after midnight, as Anika dressed for bed, I came into the bedroom, determined to change things between us. When her contract was over with me, I wanted to let her go back to her life. For once, to experience the freedom of normalcy, where she had a job, friends, someone who loved her, and where danger wasn’t the constant companion my life brought to her.
The thought of her with another man sliced me deep, but I couldn’t expect her to stay with me forever when I knew my life would only ruin her. I couldn’t tell her the truth about Gala. My fake relationship with Gala was the one thing that kept me from binding Anika to me in a way that couldn’t be allowed. A way that I couldn’t do without destroying any hope she had of a normal life. I couldn’t tell her everything, but there were some things I had to say now.
“Anika.” I stopped her as she turned to go into the bathroom to wash. Seated on the side of the bed, I took her hand, and she turned to me, eyes questioning. The warmth there did odd things to my insides. Her face looked a little too pale, and her hand trembled in mine. Protection for her made my muscles tense. “Angel, are you all right?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. Threw on the skimpy white negligee I loved, her features much too pale. He
r fingers shook while she slid the shoulder straps of the negligee into place. Something was eating her up inside and I hated seeing that.
“There’s something I don’t understand.” She sounded too casual while she popped a small pill into her mouth, what I assumed to be her birth control, and washed it down with a glass of water left on the dresser. “Gavini gave you two weeks to kill my dad. It seems like he wanted you to kill him. So why would he send someone to take him out tonight? He’d lose the chance to see you show him you’re really on his side.”
I scrunched my brows. “Good question. I’ll look into it.”
It occurred to me the attempt on Montrose’s life might have been retaliation for my killing those men at the dance club. Only it couldn’t be. The Inferno would have done his job well, making sure Dominic would think it was gang retaliation. Incinerated beyond recognition, the men probably hadn’t even been identified. I didn’t know squat about forensics, but even I knew that kind of investigating took time. No, there had to be something else that pushed Dominic to action against Anika’s family.
I took her hand again, and she met my eyes, but I could see it took effort. “Anika, talk to me.”
She looked at the plush grey carpet between us. Then she slowly sat down beside me. Now she wouldn’t look at me at all. “Do you have to do this a lot? The things we had to do today?”
“No. Not as often as your dad thinks. But, angel,” I turned her gently to face me. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
She nodded.
Over the next few minutes, I told her about Agent Hadler, about the summit between the Dons this coming Friday, and that Hadler would apparently be there to reveal the rat in Dominic’s ranks. When I finished, she stared at me, wide-eyed with hope.
“So we have our first real lead.”
“Yeah. I’ve already been working with David to find Hadler.”
“All we have to do is find out who the rat is before he tells the other Dons, and we have Gavini where we want him.”
“Right.”
“But how do we find that out? How do we get the information from him?”
I looked away.
“Oh.” Her face drained of color. “Oh, God.” She drew a long breath, then gave a resolute nod. “What’s the plan?”
“Are you sure you want to know this?” I scoffed and knifed to my feet, putting my back to her. “I shouldn’t be telling you any of this.”
The bed shifted behind me. “Kane. Please don’t do that.”
I could hear it in her voice. This was always the moment I shut her out. When things got too risky for her to handle. Except she’d proven she could handle it. I blew out a long breath and turned to her, determined to give her one last chance before I said something that would pull her so deep into my world she couldn’t ever come back from it. “Anika, are you sure?”
“Yes.” Solemn, utterly determined.
“We might have to do things that would cost us everything if we’re caught. Do you understand? This is the FBI. We have to make the agent talk. By whatever means necessary. Do you get that?”
Her throat worked and her fists clutched the quilt under her, but she nodded. “If…if it will protect us—protect my father—then yes. Tell me everything.”
I closed my eyes. Pushed out my father’s voice lecturing me on a woman’s place. Then I sat back down beside her and told her everything.
Anika didn’t interrupt, only nodding or asking the occasional question. I told her everything David and I had discussed earlier in the evening, while she’d driven my boat out to sea.
We were working on learning the agent’s routine, and once we found the best way to take him without being seen, we’d bring him to a secure location, the same one I’d always used when questioning people who needed more intense interrogation than my father or I could risk in a hotel room. If he cooperated, which was unlikely, we’d get what we needed from him and release him. If not, that’s where things would get dicey.
When I was finished, Anika sat in silence for a long time, looking shell shocked.
“How are you going to keep him from going back to the FBI and telling them everything? Or going to the Dons? You aren’t going to kill him, are you?”
“We’re working on that. And, not if we don’t have to.”
She stared, visibly registering the implications of what I’d said. We would if we were left with no alternative.
“I know it’s messed up shit, but Hadler isn’t an innocent in all this. If he’s in Ferrara’s pocket, he’s done things to keep Vincent Ferrara and his crew in the clear with the Feds. He’s not a good guy, here.”
Blowing out a breath, she looked at the quilt for a long moment. Then she lifted her eyes once more to mine. “If this is what it takes to keep my dad safe from the mob, I’m in.”
I nodded, squeezing her hand. Shutting down the guilt that ate at me for what I was changing her into.
After a long moment of silence, her throat worked on a swallow. “Does it ever get easier, Kane?”
I didn’t know if she was talking about what we’d done to the hitman, or what we might have to do to Agent Hadler, and it didn’t matter. I looked at the ceiling. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how to answer her. Killing wasn’t supposed to ever become a cakewalk, but the answer wasn’t the resounding ‘no’ I knew it should have been. Not for me.
“It depends.” When she looked at me, I chose my next words carefully. “For men like Dominic, I think it does. For my father. It has to, or they would kill themselves out of guilt. But for normal, well adjusted people? No.”
“Does…is it easier for you?”
The pointed way she’d asked that made me smile. “Nothing about me is well adjusted, Anika.”
She seemed to process this for a long moment in silence, so I went on.
“This life does things to you. Being connected to men like them, whose moral compasses are busted, changes you. After a while, you adjust what you see as normal or acceptable. The moral line must be always moved a little further south. You adapt, or you go insane.”
I tilted her chin up.
“Yes. For men like me, it does get easier. It has to, or you die. You always have to remember why you take a life. That’s what gives you the strength to do the unthinkable when it’s the only option you have.”
She bit her lip and I swore I saw moisture glow in her eyes. I traced her cheek.
“Did I scare you?”
She shook her head jerkily. “No, you didn’t. Not the way you mean. You make it sound so easy.”
“It’s not. Anika, do you have any idea what you did? You killed for me. No one has ever done that for me before. Not without my paying them.”
She gave a shaky laugh.
I drew her close, pressing her face into my chest. “You’re incredible, angel. Where the hell have you been all my life?”
She drew back with a weak smile. “Well, what is it they say? Friends help you move, real friends help you move the body?”
“Is that what we are?” I chuckled, but my throat was fucking tight as hell.
“No.”
“No.” I could feel her shaking with emotion, but what emotion? Uncertainty pounded off her, and I thought I understood. We were both feeling things we shouldn’t feel, not for each other. We needed to find safe emotions, ones no one could take away from us.
“No. Because you hate me.” I buried my face in her hair and she nodded, clutching me tight.
“Yes. I hate you, Kane. I hate you so much.” Her voice cracked.
“Me too, angel.” I rocked her against me, never able to get her close enough. “I hate you, too.”
Next instant, I’d turned my face just the right way, and our lips meshed. Then we were kissing, deep and hard and crazy. We were kissing, lips bruising, teeth scraping, hands clutching, but something else had happened, too. We were connecting in a way we never had.
Blood heating, I pushed her back onto the pillows and when I lifted my head, sh
e stared up at me, breathing ragged. Eyes wide and full of understanding, hope, and hunger. I ran my hand over her plump bottom lip and smoothed those thick red curls back.
“My perfect Anika.”
She ran her thumb over my cheek. “How may I please you, Sir?”
I grinned, joy ripping through me. Then I sat up and yanked her with me, pulling her until she was on her knees in front of me. “I hope you’re not tired, because I’m going to fuck you all damn night.”
“Works for me.”
I spun her onto her back, not caring that her head was at the foot end as I rolled on top of her. Kissing my way down her neck, between her perfectly generous breasts, down along the dip and curve of her belly.
Fuck, I’d never felt so bound, so close to a woman, as I did with her right then. And I’d never wanted to bring one so much pleasure.
All my life, I’d been taught to believe such connections with a woman were a source of weakness, but in this moment, they weren’t. In this moment, it was only the two of us, and here in the sanctity of our room, our bed, Anika was not my slave. She was so much more, and I could feel what I damn well wanted. And right now, my heart beat only for her.
I groaned and palmed her breasts while trailing my lips and tongue down between her legs. As I always commanded when we were in bed, she wore no underwear. Perfect.
“No more thinking. Just let go.” I looked up long enough to see her nod as she spread her legs for me and ran her hands through my hair. Then I bent and tasted her, lapping up her desire like hot cream.
Anika bucked and pushed my mouth closer to her until I pinned her wrists above her head. “No touching me.”
She reached up and gripped the end of the bed. Open for me, completely spread out. I devoured her, lashed her clit with my tongue, laved every inch of her sweet pussy until she bucked and writhed. She tossed her head back, crying out in rapture.
“Come for me, angel. Give me everything.”
She thrashed and screamed, coming apart exquisitely, fucking my face, my tongue. Her orgasm rocked her, ripped her to shreds, and I drew out the last of her tremors. Only when she was panting, covered in a sheen of sweat, did I stop.