Hit Me (The Bailey Boys #2)

by P. J. Adams

  Still deep inside her, I pushed again, saw a widening of her eyes, realized there was maybe more to come. Pressed again. Held.

  Watched as her eyebrows crept upwards, her mouth sagged open, and then – another flutter of muscles deep inside her as orgasm took her once again.

  I don’t know how long I held her, still inside her, but soft.

  I cradled her against me, arms around her, enfolding her, unwilling ever to let go.

  “I...” she said, and stopped.

  “I know.”

  I didn’t know what she had been trying to say, only sensed that it was somehow beyond words, and that I felt it too.

  “I know, Imelda. I know.”

  §

  And later, walking hand in hand like teenagers along the seafront at San Pedro: “I meant it.”

  For a moment I was confused. She’d told me she loved me and I hadn’t been able to come up with an adequate response, hadn’t been able to tell her that I, too, had fallen. Was she digging for that response now, wanting me to expose myself as she had done to me?

  I met those dark eyes and she held my gaze, determined and serious, and I realized what she was referring to.

  “So did I,” I told her. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill Hristo for you, if that’s what it takes to set you free.”

  But she shook her head, and now I was even more confused.

  “No, no,” she said. “Not him. It is not Hristo I want you to kill. It’s me. I want to hire you to kill me.”

  12

  Where had that come from?

  She’d told him she loved him.

  Told him it scared her to say such a thing, to feel it.

  This had never been the plan.

  Perhaps it was simply a part of her mind, making her say such things out loud in order to draw him in. A subconscious thing. A trap.

  She couldn’t allow for it to be anything else.

  He was her escape route. She could not allow him to become anything more than that.

  Survival.

  It was all about survival.

  §

  He had a way of combining black and white and coming up with anything but gray. A way of mixing yin and yang, and somehow retaining elements of both.

  He could be hard and brutal – she could easily imagine him in an MMA cage: any fight must surely have been half-over as soon as an opponent set eyes on him, dared to meet that intense look.

  And yet his touch could be so tender, his kiss so delicate.

  He could be clumsily inarticulate and yet they could talk through the evening and late into the night, opening her up to subjects she had never discussed with anyone before.

  He could be staggeringly strong and yet... vulnerable.

  And he could make her come like she had never come before.

  Was that it? Was it just a sex thing, clouding all her other senses and judgment?

  Was she really so shallow that good sex – okay, extraordinary sex – could turn her into exactly the kind of simpering, lovelorn woman she so despised?

  That moment when they’d both climaxed, when the boulder was hard and sore beneath her body... When he’d started to soften inside her and suddenly she’d realized... that change of sensations, the sense of still being filled and yet everything now feeling more malleable, less focused... a different kind of intense...

  And she’d felt a sudden tightening, the first inner spasm of an unexpected second orgasm.

  Meeting his look, seeing the recognition flit across his features in that split second before he took control again, pressed against her in just the right way, as if he had known her body and its responses for years, not mere days.

  Clinging to him as it swept through her, her breath snatched away and surprise stealing any ability to speak or think.

  §

  Later.

  Had she taken his hand, or he hers?

  Or somewhere in between, a brushing of knuckles as they walked, a reflex response, fingers curling together, intertwining.

  It made her feel so much more exposed. As if being spotted like this was any more incriminating than simply being seen with him, with lovesick grins plastered across their features.

  It made her feel safe, too, even though she knew that was just as illusory. He was no real protection for her, not against Hristo and his mob. Not unless...

  “I meant it.”

  A long pause until he finally met Imelda’s look.

  “So did I,” he said. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill Hristo for you, if that’s what it takes to set you free.”

  No... No, not Hristo. That wasn’t what she had meant.

  She shook her head, said, “No, no. Not him. It is not Hristo I want you to kill. It’s me. I want to hire you to kill me.”

  He didn’t get it, and she knew that’s because she wasn’t explaining well. Maybe it was the language barrier, although she doubted she’d do any better in her native Spanish.

  “Me,” she said. “A proper hit. Make it look authentic. Make it convincing, so that no-one will believe I could possibly still be alive. And then I will vanish without trace, and start a new life without him. Without... any of this. Can you do that? Can you do that for me?”

  The look on his face broke her heart, right then and there as they stood on the seafront at San Pedro, lights and music and voices spilling out from a nearby bar.

  The eyes, the mouth sagging a little open, the tightening of the jaw.

  He understood.

  She wasn’t asking him to disappear with her, and he knew it.

  Succeed in fulfilling her request and he would lose her. She had a plan: she could escape, vanish on her own. It wasn’t something he could be a part of. Two people disappearing would arouse suspicions and make them so much easier to track and anyway, why would he abandon his brother and his new life here when he barely even knew Imelda?

  But if he were to fail or refuse they could have no future, either. She would remain trapped and he would inevitably be drawn into some kind of confrontation with Hristo, a macho thing.

  This thing they had... it could never be more than a few snatched moments, and they both knew it.

  Her proposition merely underlined that.

  She met his look again, hardening herself to what was inside.

  Reminded herself once more that Lee Bailey could only ever be a means to an end for her, and not the end itself.

  §

  And maybe if she reminded herself of that often enough she might even start to believe it.

  How could fate be so cruel?

  For just as she believed that a first impression offered a brief insight into someone that could never again be achieved, so she also believed that somewhere, somehow, fates were controlled, manipulated, destined.

  And now fate had delivered her this.

  A man who would hold her hand and walk with her. Who would lead her up those narrow stairs to the room where he was staying. Kiss her and hold her, no longer any need for words. Strip her and hold her again. Lead her to his bed and lie with her, hold her, face buried in her hair.

  There should have been more sex.

  She lay with her knees drawn up, him enwrapping her from behind. His erection was long and hard against her ass and lower back, and she was newly wet for him, but...

  She felt safe.

  Perhaps for the first time since she had been a small child.

  It was an illusion, she knew, but still.

  A brief island amid chaos.

  For also, she knew, she had broken his heart.

  13

  I held her. All fucking night I held her. And I knew I had lost her already.

  There could be no other outcome.

  Sure, I could cling to stupid fantasies. That I might somehow fake her death and find a credible reason to commit my own vanishing act. Because I would have to vanish, too: Imelda’s disappearance could never be effective if I just went with her – if Dean and Jess, and maybe Fearless, knew where I was someone would inev
itably dig, work it out, and word would spread.

  I would have to cut off all connections with my past to go with her.

  And her proposal didn’t leave any opening for that, in any case. She had been quite clear: she would vanish alone, this was a business proposition. She was hiring me to fake her death.

  That’s all this was, all it could be. A bit of hot sex and easy company before we both moved on.

  And so I took her back to my room at the New Duchess and I wrapped her in my arms and I held her.

  All fucking night.

  §

  Dean stared me out, his jaw set. “You can’t do it,” he said. “I won’t let you.”

  “I’ve made the call. Fearless is setting it up as we speak.”

  We were out on the terrace, a stiff sea breeze taking the sting from the morning sun. Just me and my brother arguing, like old times.

  Imelda had left early, words suddenly awkward between us. Things had changed. We both knew we couldn’t do this again: it was too risky. If I was going to stage her death then there must be no connection between us. And if I refused, I would be condemning her to a life she could no longer bear...

  Now I had to juggle. It was only the previous evening that Hristo’s crew had come to the New Duchess and I’d seen them off. I was committed to this now: I couldn’t leave Dean and Jess unprotected.

  “If I get in with Hristo he’s not going to cause any more trouble here,” I said. “He wanted me to work for him: Fearless had already convinced him of that and then he saw me in action. He knows I’m handy, Dean. He knows he could make good use of me. Just let me get in there and make the peace.”

  Dean was shaking his head. “I feel like you’re a Disney princess and I’m marrying you off to a rival kingdom to make the peace,” he said.

  “Nah,” I said, “you’re just pimping me out, not marrying me off.”

  He laughed, which was good, although nothing was going to make him like it.

  “In the meantime,” I said, “you might want to put a bit of muscle on the door. Fearless said he could set you up with someone.”

  “Yeah, that’s all in hand. There’s a couple of lads I know here in San Pedro. Handy in a scrap.”

  “That’s good, bro’.”

  We stood, we locked hands, thumbs hooked. Bumped shoulders. Not quite a hug. I didn’t like to leave them like this, but I needed to be back in Puerto Libre if I was to be any good to them.

  “We good?”

  He nodded. “We’re good.”

  §

  Hristo didn’t improve in my estimation on a second encounter, but then he was hardly going to.

  By now I knew a lot more about him, and what I’d found out didn’t make for pretty reading. I thought of Dean’s analogy of marrying off a Disney princess: Hristo was less Disney prince and more Texas Chainsaw Massacre. On coke.

  Fearless had called me a couple of days after I got back from San Pedro. In that time I’d put in the hours at the gym, and my mind had gone over and over my time with Imelda, trying to work out what I felt, trying to work out what the fuck I was going to do.

  Sure, I could set up a fake hit. Make it convincing. Maybe even drop a substitute corpse into the mix that some bent policía might process with Imelda’s ID. Leave a trail of false clues that would point to someone with a grudge against Markov – hardly difficult to find – or a rival gang. Make it look like someone was making a point.

  Ironically, it would be a lot more work than just taking someone out, but I could do it.

  And then she would be gone.

  As good as dead, if not in fact.

  Dead to me.

  Lost.

  I kept returning to ways of escaping with her – fake my own death as well, perhaps. But how could I do that to Dean, and our father? To Fearless, who was as good as an uncle to the Bailey Boys. To our older brother, Owen, even – it was months since I’d spoken to him, and our last encounter hadn’t been on the best of terms, but I knew him well enough to know that news of my apparent death would mean at least something to him.

  There was no solution. Two high-profile deaths or disappearances, and the suspicious minds of Markov and his crew would inevitably join them together and realize something fishy was going on.

  I could take out Markov, of course, and that was always going to remain an option.

  But for all my brave talk to Imelda, there was a big difference between faking a death and actually killing someone, and out here on the Costa, at least, I had managed to keep a clean record so far.

  Killing someone was not something to rush into.

  But I knew it might come to that, even so.

  I wanted to call her. Wanted desperately to see her again. But I remembered the look in her eye that last morning when she had turned her face away from my kiss. The sense that things had moved on.

  I knew the next time we spoke it would be business: a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’, stating my price, talking logistics.

  So I hadn’t called.

  Instead I’d turned to Hristo Markov. Asked around, discreetly. Fearless couldn’t – or perhaps wouldn’t – tell me much, but I’d made a few other contacts in my time on the Costa. ‘Friends’ I’d made when I was being liberal with my share of the cash we’d brought from London; friends of those friends.

  And now, when I found myself in that back room at Hermanos once again, standing with my hands behind my back while Markov tipped back in his chair, his pointed shoes up on the desk, I had a far better understanding of the man he was.

  “You change your mind, huh? What is it? You blow some money in a poker game? Or up your nose?” He laughed at that. “You develop some other nasty habit you need to finance, yes?”

  I shrugged, back to my man of few words guise. “I’ve got the taste for it again,” I said. “I’ve seen your boys in action. I think they could do with some help.” No point trying to skirt around what had happened at the New Duchess.

  Markov laughed at that, tipping his head back and then shaking out that long hair. Then he fixed me with small, hard eyes and said, “And this has nothing to do with San Pedro.”

  I met the look, seeing nothing in those eyes. “It has everything to do with it, Mr Markov. You don’t need to slap my brother down. He’s retired. He’s not looking for any action. But I am. I want back in. You’ve seen what I can do. I have a lot of experience. I can be useful. And yes, I’m hoping to trade that for a bit of security for my brother. I come to work for you, you lay off Dean, and we all win.”

  He liked that. The ‘for’.

  I come to work for you.

  “I watch you,” said Markov. “You even blink when I don’t want you to and I will destroy you, yes? But first I will destroy your brother, and I will destroy his Jess, and I will destroy everything else you care about. Yes?”

  I nodded.

  I’m not easily intimidated, but I knew enough not to underestimate him.

  My hands are not clean. I’d be the first to admit that. I’ve done things that would put me away for life many times over. I couldn’t even begin to count the number of people who might want me dead, let alone how many of those actually had the means to do so. I’ve made choices few people would even consider.

  But always, I understand what I am doing.

  I know the value of a life.

  Maybe Hristo Markov had made those same calculations, too, but simply come up with a different figure. Because to him, other people’s lives came cheap. And other people’s suffering came even cheaper.

  Imelda was right to be scared of him. But in a perverse way, she was lucky, too. Lucky that he valued her more highly than most others. That he wanted her on his arm, his trophy. That he wouldn’t risk losing face by losing her.

  Yes, she was in danger all the time she was with him, but if she crossed him she would be at far greater risk.

  So now, as I stood and nodded and obediently averted my gaze, I knew I was looking at a man whose personal body count was in the dozens a
t least, and whose organization’s body count must be far higher. A man who had come out of Bulgaria a nobody and now struck fear into the hardest, most violent, hearts on the Costa.

  As I say, I’m not easily intimidated, but also I’m a very good judge of risk. And right now I couldn’t help wondering what exactly I’d got myself into. How I had ended up here, only a few days after making that simple decision to cross the road to where Imelda waited and not just walk the other way.

  So this is where spontaneous gets you...

  §

  He put me in with Stefan and Anton, which was nice of him.

  Stefan was early twenties, a good six inches taller than me and either very cagey or just not very bright, but he was fine enough.

  Anton was ten or fifteen years older. He had short dark hair, an old scar across his forehead and fresh stitches on the bridge of his nose and in his eyebrows, and eyes that were still blackened. He was the guy who’d been spraying bullets around in the New Duchess and whose face I’d smashed in with the edge of a metal tray. His wrist was in a cast, too, so he was hardly going to be useful in a skirmish, but then he was in charge – he was there for his brains rather than his looks, which was just as well.

  So I was working with a green young dimwit and a hardened gangster whose every look made it clear he wanted me to die. Slowly.

  And my first job was to break someone’s knees.

  Nice.

  The mark was a low-life dealer, not much more than a kid. A stupid kid who’d believed it when they said the money came easy out here on the Costa and didn’t have a clue he was so far out of his depth.

  He’d been doing the rounds in one of Markov’s clubs for a couple of nights, slippery enough to dodge security for as long as it took to cut a few drug deals. The boy had no respect for territory. And certainly no idea whose territory he was disrespecting.

  Back in London it would have been different – we would scare the shit out of someone like him before escalating – but, as everyone kept telling me, out here the rules were different. And as Anton would testify, I wasn’t shy of smashing a bone or two.

  We waited for the kid out at the back of El Divino, by the fire exit where CCTV had shown he liked to slip away. We’d already had word through Anton’s ear-piece that the kid was in the club. The plan was that security would stand off for long enough for him to cut a couple of deals, then close in so he would decide to slip away.