by M. Malone
That was last thing I needed. I gave the brunette a wave and then made my escape into the sunshine. Izzy happily sputtered against my chest as we walked.
The day was nice and warm. But still I worried about her little toes. It was spring. And she had her little booties on. But still.
Was this what it was like to be a parent? Constantly worrying if little ones were too cold or too hot? I knew that Izzy liked it cool. She liked to sleep with the window open slightly. Was she too hot now?
This was exhausting. Reason number seven hundred twenty-two why I could not be a parent.
Oh so that's a reason? And not the fact that you sometimes become a homicidal killer?
Details.
Outside of the Mommy and Me class, I walked down to the coffee cart, and I grabbed my usual coffee and a snack for me and Izzy. I broke off part of the biscotti, and she grabbed it with a dimpled little fist. She gnawed on it happily, and I was careful not to get any crumbs on her as we walked.
It wasn't until we made a left at the next street that I felt it. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing at attention, and there was a slight shift in the air around us. Of course scientists would tell you that there is no such thing as a sixth sense, but any assassin would tell you, you just knew.
Someone was tailing me.
I kept calm. There was no reason for alarm just yet. I ditched the coffee in the nearest trash can and also made a point of glancing in the mirror at the storefront.
Got you, you little cunt.
I assessed him quickly. Basic stats; tall, probably around my height, beard, white guy, maybe Latin, but I couldn’t be sure really until he got closer. Lean build, but he looked like he could fight. He moved well.
I kept up our path, and several times Izzy wiggled against my chest. She waved her biscotti and made those stuttering slobbery sounds like she was trying to make a motor sound. It was cute honestly. It is also produced a shit ton of saliva. Awesome.
And as she squealed and clapped against my chest, I rubbed her little toes, trying to keep her happy and stay focused on the idiot tailing us.
If he was tailing us to get to Isabella, then he was stupid. The only way to get to Izzy was to get her off my chest. And nobody would even know that Izzy was in any way important unless they knew who her parents were.
And if he knew who her father was that meant he should know who I am. And he should know that I was the last one to fuck with, especially if it came to protecting Izzy. It was too risky to hope that he’d be able to kill me and get to her without anyone noticing.
So it was unlikely she was the target. Which just left me as the target. Isabella was collateral damage.
So, the only question left was which enemy was coming for me. Of the only two possibilities, one was sort of an ally now. So that meant the asshole about a hundred feet back was with the Family.
I kept up the meandering stroll for one more street, then took a left into an alley. Oskar and I had once had a job here. I knew there was a little hidden alcove. I’d used it once to avoid gunshots. As I moved, trash shifted under my feet and a broken bottle rolled a few feet away. I grabbed it by the head. Yes, this would do nicely.
And then I waited, bouncing slightly to keep Izzy happy and mostly quiet. Though somewhere in the last street, she’d gotten tired of her biscotti and fallen asleep, the cookie still clutched in her tiny fist.
The seconds ticked by. Tick, tick, tick, and then I felt it. Someone was in the alley.
All right, let's party.
The guy stepped into the alley with his head on a swivel. Raising the bottle over my head, I swung hard, hitting my target directly in the belly.
He doubled over, and I grabbed for him, but he slipped right out. He was faster than he looked. Jackass. He staggered back and put his hand up to guard.
Oh, he was here for a fight. Fantastic. I wished to hell I didn't have Izzy strapped to me now. Why didn’t I bring the stroller, damn it?
You have this. You can take him out and protect her. All this meant was I couldn’t get hit.
Which meant lethal attack. I went straight on the offensive. His gaze flickered to the baby strapped to my chest. Was it a moment of concern that flitted over his expression? Was he really worried?
He lunged for me then. Okay, apparently he had no concern for Izzy. His moves were efficient. He moved well, but he wasn't exactly covert. We were in the bright sunshine of the day. Sure, an alley. But his immediate instinct was to engage in a fight.
If I’d had any concerns about him being ORUS, they evaporated. ORUS would have changed the plan to nick me when I was alone. Or they would have offed me.
This guy was Family. That told me everything I needed to know.
I hit him in the face, and he staggered but didn't stop.
Okay then, it was like that. He gave me another wild swing which I ducked easily, making sure to use my arm to protect Izzy against any blows.
I was in no mood to play. Moving forward quickly and efficiently, I delivered several punches. When he blocked, I countered quickly.
Elbow, punch, kick. He doubled over, and I grabbed his ears and delivered a hard knee strike. That was when he clattered backward, tipping over garbage bins.
I picked him up off the ground and slammed him against the brick wall. "Who sent you?"
He blinked and scowled. He looked like he was trying to speak, trying to say something. But anytime he tried to talk, blood poured out of his mouth.
"Let me repeat myself. You came after me, with the baby. For that fact alone, I need to hear you say it."
Still nothing but the glare.
I let my lips lift into a smile and leaned in. "If they sent you after me, then they must have told you about me. They must have told you how much I like knives.” I reached back for the one I kept tucked in my back pocket and pulled it out slowly. I flicked the switch blade open before placing it against his carotid. “Do you want to find out how much I like to play? Or do you want to tell me what I need to know?”
"Fuck mate. Father sent me. The Family." His East End accent was thick and took me home.
"Was the order to kill or capture?"
He groaned again and tried to weasel out of my grasp. I calmly waited for him to realize that there was no escape. I gently nicked him to let him know I was fucking serious.
“Fuck. It was kill. Order was to kill.”
I laughed. "Kill? Me? You suck. Honestly, mate, you're terrible. The Family must be slipping?" I shook my head, adding insult to injury. "It's your lucky day. I was going to kill you. But now, you get to go take a message back to Father." I leaned in for a more dramatic effect. "You tell the old man if he wants me dead, he’s got to come correct, mate. I'm not just your average bloke pissing about the street. Next time get a bloody professional."
I sliced a little deeper just to put the fear of whoever he might believe in into him, then hit him hard enough to have him yowling and his head snapping back.
Calmly, as I walked away, I slipped my knife back in my pocket. Izzy hadn’t even woken for the exchange. The Family was coming. I needed to be careful and protect the people in my life a whole lot better. Father wouldn’t stop until I was six feet under.
THANK YOU for reading the prequel to the SIN duet. The next book, Sin, is available on 5/29/18. DOWNLOAD your copy now at malonesquared.com/sin
Keep reading for an excerpt.
Excerpt of Sin
I’m a bodyguard. I walk softly and carry a big...stick.
Too bad I have no idea how to use it. I know what you’re thinking. How the hell do you end up a virgin when you live in a city known for easy access?
But my focus is protecting the women of New York...not fulfilling my every desire.
Then I meet her.
Sin Chapter 1
Matthias
* * *
“Bollocks! You can’t for the life of you actually think that the DC Extended Universe movies are better than the Marvel Cinematic Universe
movies. It’s just not true.”
Oskar Mueller shook his head. “Wait, DC… is that the one with Captain America?”
I groaned and threw my hands up. “Now you’re just taking the piss, mate. It’s as though you haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said for all these years.”
Oskar chuffed, his lips barely moving. That was his version of a chuckle. It was as if the show of emotion cost too much energy. “Nah, kid. I’m just fucking with you. I know that it’s Superman that’s DC. Of course, Captain America is Marvel. All those Avengers movies, those are Marvel. Superman is DC for sure.”
I shook my head. “I can’t even. I’m done with this conversation.”
“Don’t get your panties all in a twist. Oh sorry—knickers, right? That’s what you Brits call them?”
I just shook my head. I wasn’t going to let Oskar bait me. Although, that was the German’s favorite pastime. It was as if he sought me out just to poke at me. For someone who seemed so serious all the time, Oskar was always there for a prank or to impart some dry wit.
I was actually grateful for it. Oskar helped me feel normal. If that was even a thing. Most of the other guys were a little too careful around me. Jonas stayed ever watchful. Ryan and Dylan were cool, if not a little distant, with me.
Rafe was the worst. Despite the air of ‘cool, relaxed, and not giving a fuck,’ Rafe was always on high alert around me. But those feelings were mutual. Ever since Rafe tried to kill us all a couple of years ago, I didn’t trust him. It didn’t matter if he was Lucia’s brother and thought we were the enemy at the time. The guy made my skin itch.
Noah was different. He was… well, watchful. Considering Noah knew just how deadly I could be, I had always wondered how he could allow me around his family. But Noah had faith in me. He always had. And because of that faith, I worked hard at appearing normal. After all, I’d kept the monster at bay, hadn’t I?
Oskar playfully shoved my shoulder and the monster inside me twitched, as if trying to awaken from a long nap. I quickly shut that shit down, secured the locks again, and placed that thing from Alien in front of it on guard duty. There was no way I was letting that guy out.
Not with my family. There’d been a time when even the slightest touch meant it was time for blood. But you don’t live like that anymore. No. That had been a very long time ago. I was a different person now. This version of myself didn’t slice and dice my family for an affectionate shove.
“I swear Nerd Boy, you get wound up over the slightest things. Let’s both just agree that Wonder Woman is legitimately the hottest superhero we’ve ever seen.”
I pondered this. “Look, Diana is gorgeous but Black Widow… How can you not love Black Widow?”
Oskar frowned. “Which one is that?”
I dropped my hands. “Jesus Christ, now I know you’re a tosser.”
And then Oskar grinned. A full smile. No wonder the women fell at his feet. Even I was temporarily stunned.
You could learn a thing or two from him. No. No, I couldn’t. I wasn’t interested in any of that. Liar.
There had been a time when I had thought maybe Lucia… She was sweet, innocent—just the kind of girl I should want to go after, if I wasn’t tainted on the inside. But she’d been in love with Noah. Always Noah. So I’d shoved those feelings aside. Besides, it wasn’t as if I knew what to do with any of that.
Most women weren’t clamoring for a psychopathic former killer who liked to watch people bleed. Nope, that would make for one hell of a Tinder profile.
I started in on Oskar again just as the buzzer on my watch started to vibrate on my wrist. I had a series of alarms set just in case anyone tried to breach our security protocols. It wouldn’t be the first time. Most of the alarms were harmless. Some hacker kid was poking around in the wrong corner of the Internet. But if the secondary alarms went off as well, I had trouble.
I was so good at schooling my expression that Oskar kept prodding me as if everything was perfectly fine. Little did he know that I was silently letting out a little piece of my monster, the protective side, the one ready to kill to protect the new family I had carved out for myself. That monster, that little sliver of the death that was inside me, was all I’d ever let out. The rest of it was too dangerous, too ugly. That monster would leave me alone without anyone.
I inclined my head. “I want to go and check on something.”
Oskar nodded. “Yeah, you go ahead. I’m going to put on Wonder Woman again.”
“You’re seriously going to watch that without me?”
Oskar nodded and winked at me. “Yep, I swear, watching Gal Gadot wield the sword is almost as good as watching porn.”
I wouldn’t know. I appreciated the female form as much as the next guy, but watching porn—that took me back to a place I never wanted to go again. So it was best if I just didn’t go near it.
All work and no play makes the monster hungry.
I swallowed hard and shoved the thought aside. I took a sharp turn at the living room, heading down the hallway toward my room when I saw Rafe coming down the hall from the other end from Noah’s office. I couldn’t help it. A part of me wanted to start a fight, to test my skills again against Rafe.
It was something that happened every single time I saw him. Like the fight-or-flight instinct flared, and I always chose fight. Things had gotten a little less tense with the two of us, but there was something about him. He always reminded me that I could die at any moment so I had to be ready… on the go.
Noah didn’t give me the same feeling. Even though he and Rafe had both been killers for the same government organization that had trained me, Noah didn’t trigger that instinct in me. But Rafe always did. Maybe that’s because the guy tried to kill you.
Yeah, tried being the operative word.
Maybe, but that was supposed to be all water under the bridge now. Noah had brought Rafe in from the cold.
I met his gaze evenly as we brushed past each other in the hallway. Rafe gave me a nod but I barely acknowledged him.
The alarm on my wrist went off again. This time three buzzers. Shit. Someone was really trying a breach. We were fucked.
As soon as I passed Rafe, I jogged down to my room and went straight for my monitors.
My room pretty much made up the entire center of the penthouse. It was the largest one in the penthouse but by necessity. I’d insisted that I needed to be close to the monitors just in case anything happened. I had servers in here, hard drives that needed to be destroyed and wiped if they were breached.
Maybe you wouldn’t have so much trouble if you weren’t starting a war. Sometimes a war was necessary. I put on my earphones and quickly pulled up the monitors, checking to see where the intruders were.
Fuck a tit. Personnel files. This wasn’t the first time in the last several months that someone had tried to get access to who we had on our team. The Blake Security team information was public knowledge. Well, mostly public. Everyone’s backgrounds were so scrubbed and embellished by me that the people we described were hardly recognizable. But still someone wanted in. And so I desperately needed to keep them the fuck out.
My fingers flew over the keyboard as I fought the distributed denial-of-service attack. Fingers flew over keys from one keyboard to another. I knew who was doing this. I’d been warned.
I managed to shut down one attack. The other one was nearly close enough to penetrate employee records. Shit.
And then I had it. With swift keystrokes, I’d stopped the attack.
Bugger, that was a close one. The signature was familiar though. Something tickled at my memory as if I should know this hacker’s style… as if I should recognize it. As if it were me. The style was so similar to mine. I would have almost thought I was hacking myself.
Had the Family managed to get someone nearly as good as I was? Hell, maybe even better?
I didn’t get to dwell on that question though because Noah popped his head in. “Hey kid, everything okay?”
&n
bsp; I was used to schooling my expressions. It was really easy when most of the time I didn’t have any emotions. “Yeah, fine.”
Noah studied my face. “Are you sure? Rafe said you looked… off.”
“I’m cool. I was running a diagnostics scan and my alarm went off letting me know that it was done. So I just came in here to check.”
Noah nodded. He looked like he believed me, but some emotional responses escaped me as I was so used to shutting people out, shutting down their emotional input. I just didn’t always know when to turn it on.
Noah was almost always easy. I knew my mentor’s ‘We have trouble’ face. I knew the ‘Get the fuck out so I can fuck my wife’ face. I knew the ‘Isn’t my baby gorgeous?’ face. I knew the ‘Let’s get down to business’ face.
Everything else was nuanced and in-between and so much harder to read. But for the most part, Noah was wide open. Rafe, on the other hand, was completely impossible to read. The others were easy. The women? Jesus! JJ and Lucia—I never understood what the hell was going on with them. Diana was a little easier. She tended to have an ‘Ask Kiki’ face. So I was down with that one.
I knew Noah was assessing me for a lie. But I also knew that Noah wouldn’t find one. The guy had trained me. I hated lying to him. After all, he’d saved me. But sometimes it was necessary.
When Noah left ORUS years ago, he’d made sure I could go with him. He had legitimately saved my life. He’d been clear that he wouldn’t be leaving ORUS without me, and Noah had gotten me out not a moment too soon. One more day with that shadowy organization and that monster would have taken over my life… entirely. There would have been nothing left of myself.
“Okay, if you’re sure. The whole family is in the living room. We’re going to watch Wonder Woman. Oskar insisted. Are you coming?”
I gave a nod. “Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute.”
Noah hesitated. “Listen, kid. I know you’ve been under some pressure with Rafe back. But you know that you can talk to me about anything, right?”