He didn’t even have a television. There was a laptop on his desk but I didn’t dare touch it. Jackie only kept the bare essentials.
I wanted to go to my apartment to pick up my belongings but I knew it would be stupid. Chances were that there was an ongoing investigation. Worse, some of the men after me could be doing a stake out.
Besides, I didn’t know I could even stand walking into the place my father hand been slain. I imagined dried blood staining the carpet. There would be a body outline on the floor.
Without warning, the front door open and Jackie staggered in. He clutched his side and gritted his teeth. I immediately knew something was wrong.
“Jackie?” I asked as he closed the door in a hurry. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
He almost did a double take on me. Jackie must have forgotten that he had taken me in. I rushed to his side. “Just give me a hand.”
I let him use my shoulder as a crutch. Then, I guided him to the couch. Jackie began to take his jacket off. He pulled out a pair of handguns from their holsters. Then, he took out a knife from a sheath attached to his leg. However, there something staining his shirt.
My eyes widened at the sight of blood. “Jackie… you’re bleeding. Put pressure on the wound!”
“It’s nothing serious but it hurts like hell,” he laughed, putting his hand on the wound. At least one of us could have a sense of humor about this. “I let my guard down and paid the price.”
“What happened?”
He shrugged. “The bullet ricocheted and the fragment hit my side. A million dollar wound if you ask me.”
“We have to get you to a hospital-”
“No hospital!”
I wanted to ask where he got shot but I held my tongue. “Where do you keep a first aid kit?”
“What are you? Some nurse?”
“Pre-med,” I answered. “Come on, tell me before you bleed out.”
“Under… under the couch.”
I found a large military grade trauma kit under the couch. It was rather fancy but it had everything I would need. I took some bandages and antiseptic medication. “Take off your shirt.”
He peeled off the increasingly bloody shirt off his body. “Do you think you can patch me up?”
Normally, I would have ogled his bare chest but there was a wound to deal with. “It looks like the bullet had fragmented before it lodged itself against one of your ribs. It’s half in and half out. Huh, I didn’t think that could happen.”
“Great…”
I rummaged through the trauma kit. “Would you like me to pull out the fragment with some tweezers and patch up the wound?”
Jackie nodded. “Do it.”
I had only read about this in my medical textbook. I began by plucking out the bullet fragment from his side. Luckily, it was split itself into two large pieces rather than a dozen small ones. Jackie grimaced as I pulled them out. “That’s the worst part, Jackie.”
Then, I applied some antiseptic to the wound before sterilizing it with a heated patch. I washed off as much blood as I could before patching him up. Whether it was dumb luck or an innate talent, I managed to clean and seal the wound.
I could tell Jackie was no stranger to violence. I saw multiple scars on his body. Some were faint but others were more recent.
Satisfied with my treatment, Jackie lied down on the couch. “I guess I owe you one.”
I shrugged. “It’s more like we’re even.”
He chuckled but stopped when it aggravated his wound. “Then we’re even.”
I paused for a moment before asking. “Jackie, what happened?”
“It seems like you’re a lot more interesting than you give yourself credit for.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Someone has put a hit out on you,” he said to my horror. “One of my regular contacts even pulled a gun on me in exchange for information on you.”
“They want me dead?”
“The Russian mob is paying top dollar for you,” he said with another strained laugh. “Whatever went down between them and your father has them scrabbling to clean it all up.”
“Who shot you?”
“Some low-ranking informant in the criminal underworld who had familial ties to the Russians,” he replied. “Apparently, the ties were stronger than I had thought. He pulled a gun on me when I dropped your name. He wanted to know where you were so he could collect the bounty.”
I eyed his patched up wound. “What happened?”
“I barely managed to disarm him before the gun went off. The bullet missed me on the first go but the ricochet hit me in the side.”
“What about the man?”
He gave me a sheepish look. “He’s not in a position to be doing anything but feeding the worms. Anyway, we can’t stay here. Neither of us are safe here. This is a much bigger deal than I had thought.”
I stared straight into his beautiful sea green eyes. They turned hazel under dimmer conditions. “Jackie who are you, really? Why do you know all these mafia families? Why do you have so many weapons?”
His face was as lifeless as a mask as he spoke. “I’m a killer.”
I felt a chill down my spine. “What do you do?”
“I solve the Pastore family’s problems,” he answered grimly. “They’re the biggest Italian mafia family in town. The only rules are that I won’t accept hits on women or children. No civilians either since it attracts the FBI’s attention. Everyone else is fair game.”
I made the connection. “You’re a hitman.”
He smiled. “That’s one term for it.”
I thought about it for a moment. “Will you kill someone for me?”
“Assuming you even had the funds to pay me,” he said with a chuckle. “Why would I take a hit from someone like you?”
“I because I want to avenge my father. I want to kill the man who took him from me.”
Jackie leaned forward in interest. “Who?”
“Harold Colman.”
He grunted. “A civilian then.”
“He’s the one who killed my father,” I retorted. “He’s not innocent.”
“And then what?” he asked. His question stumped me and he knew it. “I’ve met a lot of clients in my line of work. They have the money to kill a man but they don’t have any idea of what to do with their own lives afterwards. Regardless of whether or not I kill Harold, what will you do with your life?”
“I could work for you,” I offered. I honestly didn’t know what I would do with my life. The idea of entering college and becoming a doctor seemed like a distant memory. “I did a pretty good job patching you up, right? We could make a good team.”
He looked intrigued at the idea. “Let’s put the idea on the back burner. For now, I have to get back into full health and investigate what’s going on with your father’s murder. If we work well enough together, then… I’ll think about it.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“First, we need to get to my safe house,” Jackie ordered, heading to his bedroom. He returned with his laptop. “Our current location might be compromised. There’s also the police and mobsters who will be swarming this place and asking questions. We need to get out of here and fast. Grab only the bare essentials and let’s get out of here.”
“You’re in no condition to be moved,” I objected. “You’ve lost blood.”
“I’m not like your average man,” he countered. Indeed, he wasn’t like any other man I’ve ever met. “We’re both at risk staying here any longer than we need to. Get ready to depart. We’ll be going down the fire escape from the back. It’s too risky for you to go through the front door.”
I thought of the memories I had of this apartment. I hated it at first after leaving our big house. Then, I started to come around to it. I began to even think of it as my new home.
Now, it felt like a burial ground. It was the place where my father died. It was where my old life ended.
“Okay, let’s get the hell out
of this awful place.”
“Good,” I critiqued, taking off my ear muffs. The M9 was a bit large for her size but it had plenty of stopping power. “You just need to be more conscious of the recoil in between shots.”
Kelly nodded and reloaded the gun. “I think I’m getting the hang of it.”
During the past two weeks, I had trained Kelly in how to protect herself. There would be times where she would be alone without me to defend herself. She needed to learn how to handle herself. More importantly, I had big plans for her.
I rented out a private session at a local firing range so I could teach Kelly in peace. It was expensive but most of the money went to silencing the owner. Not that I couldn’t afford it with my sizeable contract payments. Thankfully, she proved to be a quick study.
Then again, shooting at targets at firing range was a world of difference than shooting at people who could fire back at you.
In the safe house, I taught her some basic martial arts. Kelly was less of a natural when it came to hand to hand combat. She had taken her attackers by surprise but a skilled fighter would’ve been able to dispatch her with ease. It was unlikely that Kelly would be able to go toe-to-toe with any of the elite Russian mafia enforcers. However, it would be enough for her to disarm an opponent and escape.
The young woman was curious about my trade as a hitman. I was less keen on teaching her my craft. I didn’t want her to follow in my path. She was just too pure and innocent for me to corrupt.
Nonetheless, I told her of how I worked a contract. I would either receive a dossier on my target or purchase the information myself. Then, I would follow and stake out the target. I would track their movements and find patterns. I would pinpoint the moment when the target was most vulnerable. Sometimes it would take less than a day. Other times I would spend weeks waiting for the perfect opportunity.
Besides, the training kept her mind off her father’s death. She was adjusting to her new life under my wing as well as any college student could. Becoming a hitman helped me deal with the loss of my mother. I wasn’t sure I would’ve liked for Kelly to follow in my line of work.
The sound of gunfire broke me out of my thoughts.
Kelly gave me a sheepish grin. “How’s that for center mass?”
I looked across to see a bullet hole through a bulls-eye. I glanced back at her and saw her hold the gun with both hands. She still hadn’t taken her eye off the sights. “Your form looks good.”
She was a natural shot but I didn’t want to tell her that. It would be better if she never had to fire and kill anyone. This was only to be a last resort.
“You told me you’re looking into why the Russian mafia is after me, Jackie,” Kelly began. “Have you learned anything new?”
“Not much to add,” I admitted. “Other than that’s it’s not the entire Russian mafia. It’s just one branch that’s based in Ukraine.”
She put down the gun. “What do you mean-”
Bringing out a folder full of documents, I glared at her lack of proper gun handling. “Safety.”
She cursed under her breath and put the gun into safety. For good measure, she made sure to unload the gun and clear the chamber. “Okay, what have you learned?”
This information cost quite a bit of money and effort to acquire. Many of my usual contacts either didn’t know what I was after or were feigning ignorance. The few that had information clamped up when I approached them. It took some money to grease their palms before they opened up again. Nonetheless, it had the side benefit of aiding the personal investigation I had on my mother’s killers. Thankfully, none of the informants tried to attack me this time.
“When a lot of people hear about the Italian mafia or the Irish mob,” I began. “They think of some large amorphous blob under one guy. In reality, what we know of as the Italian mafia is a bunch of different families competing or working with each other. Hell, they might be at each other’s throats one day and working with each other the next.”
“I see…”
“The Pastore family is the biggest and most powerful Italian family but it’s one of several families,” I continued. “It’s the same with the Russians. Only one branch of the Russian mafia has a vendetta against you.”
Kelly nodded. “So who exactly is after me?”
“Some nasty group of men working under the banner of a Russian word I can’t pronounce,” I answered. “It roughly translates into the ‘Black Fang.’ It’s a fitting name for a pack of wild animals.”
The college girl gulped. “Who’s in charge of them?”
“The name ‘Mr. Gregori’ keeps coming up,” I answered, showing her a photo of a middle-aged man in a business suit. You’d never guess this man was a drug kingpin. “Not much is known about him other than he’s a Ukrainian national who overthrew the previous head of the group. Seymon Gregori had a vendetta against anyone Italian when a weapons deal with a Sicilian based criminal group when wrong. That was during his days was a small fry but the incident stuck with him. When he came into power, he cut off business ties with the Italians. He’s gotten too big for his britches that he’s getting into arguments with fellow Russian gangs. The only thing keeping him in check is the risk of the FBI or CIA breathing down his neck.”
Kelly stared at the bearded man in his fifties. “It’s blurry.”
“Gregori keeps a low profile. That’s the best photo anyone has of him since his days as a foot soldier.”
“I think I heard Howard say that name,” Kelly mused. “Why were they after me and my father?”
I shrugged. “That’s something I’m still trying to figure out. From what I can piece together, it had to with the company your father worked for.”
The college girl rubbed her forehead. “The Atlantic Corporation? They’re just this big conglomerate that sells everything from diapers to car insurance.”
“They also sell banking services,” I replied. “It’s not unusual for criminals to keep some of their wealth in a legitimate bank for legal or tax purposes. You also need a place to put your money somewhere after laundering it, especially when it reaches a large enough sum. Gregori seems to have an account there under an alias.”
“What’s so important about this bank?” she asked. “What’s so important that you’re willing to kill a man over it?”
“If I had to guess, then it would be that he needed your father’s help in moving the money,” I replied, stroking my chin. “That Harold character was likely working with the Black Fang. He may not have had the same level of access as your father. The bank would red flag the account if there was any unusual activity surrounding it. Perhaps, they had hoped to get your father to act as an inside man.”
Kelly’s eyes widened in shock. “Daddy was head of security…”
“He would be in a good position to move the funds and cover up their tracks from the inside. I suppose you were going to be collateral if your father didn’t cooperate. Needless to say, things didn’t go as planned.”
“Why go through all of this?” she asked in exasperation. “Why was the Black Fang willing to kill someone over a few million dollars?”
CLASS ACT (A BRITISH ROCKSTAR BAD BOY ROMANCE) Page 21