by Tia Siren
Please check the Table of Contents at any time to choose what to read next.
xx Tia
Mafia Romance Collection
Bought by the Hitman
1
It was Saturday, and it was my first off day on a weekend in a really long time. I couldn’t remember having a Saturday off since I started working for Mr. Black. That wasn’t his real name, of course; I was pretty sure there wasn’t anyone in Russia with the last name of Black, and my boss was as Russian as they got. His accent was so thick it was hard to understand him sometimes.
I was Russian in the sense that my great-grandfather came over and built a life for himself. His name had been Pitor Anismov. He did pretty well for himself, the old guy. My own grandfather told me a lot of stories about him. Grandpa was Alan Anismov. Alan was as American a name old Pitor could come up with. He wanted his son to be American. He hated Russia. It was cold; it was hard living. America represented something to him: an opportunity.
Grandpa had two daughters. My mom he named Rebecca, and her sister was Rose. I never met Rose; she died when she was only five. My mom married a guy named Mike Jones, and they had me, Peter Jones. Doesn’t sound very Russian, and it took me a while to convince Mr. Black that my family came from there. Having Russians, it was important to him.
I was named after Pitor, but with the American spelling. When he came over, he made money any way he could. I’ve taken that up too. I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, and a lot of things that could land me in jail, but hey, a job is a job. I keep my head down, steer clear of cops, and make sure the guys I rough up really have it coming to them.
Mr. Black is a fair guy, believe it or not. He’s big and round, with a bald head and a fat stomach, but he calls it like he sees it, and he plays everyone straight. There’s something honorable about that, really: a criminal who tries to do right by his own ethics and moral code. I’m the same way. I won’t knock over some mom-and-pop shop unless they’re laundering money for another guy or something like that. My boss is the same way.
But he works us a lot. I do this, I do that. I’m on call twenty-four seven. That’s why I was looking forward to that Saturday.
I slept in. I didn’t wake up until after noon. I lounged in bed for a bit until my stomach told me I needed food, and then I got up. I was halfway through my second bowl of Frosted Flakes when my cell rang. I grabbed it and sighed. It was Mr. Black.
“Peter, my boy,” the old man grumbled, “I need you.”
I knew better than to argue. “What can I do for you, Mr. Black?” I asked.
He gave me an address and told me I was working security at nine that evening. I hung up and finished my cereal. Nine wasn’t so bad. Of course, if Mr. Black told me nine, he expected me there by eight thirty. But I at least had the day. I went back to bed.
At six I climbed out of bed and slowly got ready after wolfing down a sandwich. By eight twenty I was parking across from the address I had been given. It was a place downtown, in a seedy-looking neighborhood. The building was squat and wide, just one story, with no windows that I could see. It was all gray and closed off. The door was large and metal, and a man in a suit was loitering outside it.
I locked my car and made my way across the street. I realized I knew the man standing by the heavy door, and he nodded to me as I got closer. His name was Marco, and he worked for David Zinga, a Mexican arms dealer Mr. Black was friendly with.
“Marco,” I said, stopping for a minute to chat with the guy. He was smoking, and he took a long drag on the cigarette he held between two fingers before answering.
“How goes it, Peter?” he asked, his voice low, like a tiger’s growl. He was a big guy, muscles upon muscles, with a scar running down one cheek.
“All right. It was my day off,” I complained, and Marco laughed, but his eyes were sympathetic.
“What’s a day off?” he asked, and it was my turn to laugh. I slapped him on the back and stepped inside. I expected the building to be dark, but it was well lit. There was a small hallway right at the entrance, a door propped open at the end, and beyond that was a large open room. Lights hung from the ceiling, buzzing softly as I passed underneath them. At the far end of the room was a small stage of sorts, a raised section of flooring that came up to my waist. There was a door there, built into the wall on the rear of the stage. A friend of mine stood there, another guy who worked for my boss, someone I had pulled a few jobs with. His name was Vlad, and he was about ten years older than my twenty-five. His last name was Nikitin, and he was like Mr. Black, right from the mother country. His accent wasn’t as pronounced, however. He had apparently moved to America with his family when he was only three. He was tall and angular, with a long crooked nose that had been broken more than once.
“Hey, kid,” he said to me as I found the steps to the stage and moved up to greet my friend. He always called me kid.
“Hey, Vlad,” I said. “Mr. Black coming?”
Vlad shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows,” he said. “I think a lot of big hitters will be here, though.”
“What is this?” I asked. “Arms deal?”
Vlad laughed and shook his head. “Not quite, kid,” he said. Then he nodded to the door that stood off to the side, leading from the stage. “Go check it out.”
I looked at him, wondering if he was trying to get me in trouble. I was just working security. Mr. Black, and the others like him, they didn’t like us small-timers getting our noses where they didn’t belong. I was muscle, plain and simple, with my gun in a shoulder holster under my suit jacket. Mr. Black always had us in shirts and ties.
I made my way to the door at the back of the stage and then looked over my shoulder, back at Vlad. He laughed and waved me on. “It’s fine; just us grunts here so far.”
I nodded and opened the door. It was dark in the back room, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light. There were fewer lights here, their bulbs orange and slight instead of bright and yellow. In front of me was a cage, big enough for a man, but it was empty. I moved on.
I found another cage, but this one wasn’t empty. It was six feet high and four feet wide, and two women stood in it, holding one another and crying. They looked young, both of them no older than twenty. They had fair skin and dark hair, and their eyes were dark and hard to see in the low light. They looked at me and shrank away. It made me feel terrible. I was a bad guy—I did bad things, I knew that—but these two women, as scared as they obviously were, seeing me and reacting physically like that, it made my head swim with shame.
“I won’t hurt you,” I said as I walked by. Beyond that cage were others, each with one or two or sometimes three young women inside. I felt nauseous, and I hurriedly turned back to the door, rushing out onto the stage.
Vlad saw me and laughed. I felt a wave of anger roll through me. “First rodeo?” he asked.
“What is this?”
“What do you think, kid? Come on, you’ve done too many bad things to be naive.”
I knew what it was of course. Those women were going to be sold—sold to rich weapons dealers and drug kingpins for their beds. They were sex slaves. Young women, twenty, nineteen. God, one had looked fifteen. I shook my head. I wanted to leave then and there, just walk out the door. I would have if I hadn’t stopped and thought about what Mr. Black would do if I did. If I walked out on a job, there was a chance my legs would be broken. And broken legs was the best-case scenario. I could also wake up at the bottom of a river, cement blocks strapped to my legs.
I didn’t say anything to Vlad. I didn’t know what to say. I moved to the edge of the stage and sat for a moment. My adrenalin was pumping, my heart beating a thousand miles a minute. I had been calmer in gun fights. Something about those cages, those women, it really got me. I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat.
Half an hour passed and men started streaming in. Not grunts like me, but rich guys. Mobsters, crime lords, all in expensive suits. Old guys, fat guys, one guy wi
th a giant scar running from eye to chin that made Vlad’s look like a scrape a kid got falling off his tricycle. These guys were big time, though I noticed none of them were good looking. They were the kind of guys who had to throw their money around to get chicks. And what was an easier way than just buying a woman outright? I tried not to think about what was about to happen around me as I stood off to the side of the stage. Vlad was at the other end, and a few guys from different crews were dotted around the room. I didn’t expect trouble. In all it would be an easy job, if not for the fact that I was about to see women sold into sexual slavery.
Mr. Black wasn’t there, and I was thankful for that. Though if I was there, I knew he had his fat fingers in the pie somewhere and was profiting off the night. I tried to push it from my mind as the first woman was brought out.
I was expecting them to pull the cages out, but they didn’t. A man walked a woman out, bound at the wrists with thick rope. She was beautiful, wearing a short dress with a plunging neckline. I guessed she was thirty or a bit older, and then the bidding started.
Men in the audience, standing in front of the stage, held up small paddles. An auctioneer was onstage, standing next to the woman. It was over in a matter of minutes. An old man with a lazy eye I didn’t recognize bought the thirty-year-old for thirty thousand dollars. It was a lot of money to me, but somehow it didn’t seem as though it was enough for someone’s life.
The night wore on; women were paraded out, one after the other. All of them were pretty, and none were older than that first woman. I tried not to look at them, and I didn’t for the most part, but as they were led through the door at the back of the stage, I would steal a glance. I couldn’t help it. I had to see them, if only for a moment.
Then she walked through. I didn’t know her, of course, but something about her struck me. She was gorgeous. She seemed a few years younger than me. She had dark olive skin and dark hair. Her eyes were the brown of coffee with too much milk in it. She wasn’t American; I could tell that just by looking at her. She was Mediterranean. She had to be from Greece or someplace similar.
The young woman was wearing a short dress, much like the first one had been. She was curvy, with well-defined hips and large breasts that pushed at the top of her dress. Her nipples were hard—natural in the chilly warehouse. She looked terrified. Her lips were plump and sensual, and they were pulled into a tight frown. I saw her, and I felt as though I had known her for years.
The bidding was fast and furious for her. It got up to fifty thousand, and the next thing I knew it was at seventy thousand. I thought quickly. I had a couple hundred thousand in the bank. Not bad for a grunt like me; I knew how to save. The bidding was up to one hundred and fifteen thousand when it started to slow. I stepped forward just before the auctioneer could award the olive-skinned woman to a fat guy with a bad comb-over.
“One hundred twenty thousand,” I said.
Silence. Every face turned toward me. I ignored them and I looked to the fat man with the bad hair to see if he would bid more. He didn’t.
“Sir,” the auctioneer started, “that’s quite a sum.”
“I’m good for it,” I growled. Vlad made his way over to me from the other side of the stage.
“What are you doing, kid?” he asked.
“What I can,” I said. I was saving that beautiful woman, saving her from that horrid fat man, from a horrible life. I had to do something. I had to do something for her. I pulled my checkbook out of my pocket. I wrote a check and handed it to the auctioneer, and then I took the woman by the hand and undid the rope at her wrists. When she was free, I took her by the hand and pulled her off the stage.
“Kid,” Vlad said to my back. He didn’t say anything else, but there was a lot of unspoken meaning. I knew what he was saying, and I didn’t care. I led the woman outside and then across to my car. I helped her in and then climbed behind the wheel. I looked over at her. She was terrified.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, wishing she wasn’t afraid of me. She didn’t say anything, just stared at me with wide eyes. I turned the key in the ignition, my car roaring to life, and sped off toward my downtown apartment.
2
I knew I was in trouble. I knew I had no right to do what I had done, and I knew Mr. Black was going to come after me. I didn’t care. I welcomed it in a way. My boss was involved in sex trafficking? It was too much. It wasn’t something I was comfortable with, and it wasn’t something I was going to put up with. I would have to run or end it. As I pulled into my apartment’s parking garage, I swore to end it. I wasn’t going to run. I had saved one woman—the beautiful woman who sat beside me, who hadn’t taken her eyes off me, who looked terrified—but what about the rest of the women who had been there? The ones who had been sold before the Mediterranean beauty I had bought? Those who were sold after?
“We have to hurry,” I told the scared woman. “I want to make sure you’re safe, and then you can go. You can go home—I can help you—but you can’t yet. You’re going to have to stay with me for a bit.”
“You’re letting me go?” she asked. Her voice was low and soft; it sounded sweet like honey.
“Yes,” I said simply, and then I was out of the car and rushing around to her side. I opened her door and helped her out.
“You saved me,” she said. Then she threw her arms around me. I let her, sliding my own arms around her, and took in her scent as she buried her face in my chest. She smelled wonderful, like peppermint. She looked up at me and placed her hand on my face. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. They’ll be coming for me, and you. For both of us. We have to get to safety, and then we’ll get you home. We have to get out of Brighton Beach,” I said.
Brighton Beach was the Russian equivalent of Chinatown. It was in New York, ocean on one side, city on the other. From my bedroom window I had a view of the water. We rushed upstairs, and I took a minute to glance at it. Silver moonlight was reflecting on the slow-rolling waves. A boat slid through the dark water, churning up white behind it.
My new bride of sorts stood by the door while I packed. I took my guns, some clothes, and the fifty grand I kept in cash hidden in a safe behind a painting in my bedroom. We hurried down to my car. We had only been in the apartment for five or so minutes before we were peeling out of the parking lot.
“What’s your name?” I asked the woman. She had an accent, and I was confident that I had been right about her being from Greece.
“Chloe,” the woman said softly.
“I’m Peter,” I said. We drove through the city, the night traffic not as bad as the day-time traffic but still forcing us to go much slower than I would have preferred. We were stopped at a red light when a dark sedan pulled up behind us. I kept my eyes on my rearview mirror. It was exactly like my own car, exactly like the ones Mr. Black gave all of his grunts. I realized I was an idiot for driving my own car, but there was nothing I could do about it now. I watched the vehicle behind us, waiting for the door to open, waiting for Vlad or someone else to step out and open fire. The light turned green and I pulled through the intersection. The car behind me turned, and I realized I had been holding my breath the whole time. I let it out in a gasp and glanced over at Chloe. She was looking at me, her legs pulled up, knees to her chest, and her arms wrapped around them. She didn’t say anything, but she smiled at me, and I was reminded of why I was throwing my life away in the first place. There was something about this woman, something that made it all worth it.
We got out of the city and drove for two hours before we finally stopped at a small motel. It was situated along a lonely two-lane highway. The clock on the dash read one in the morning. An hour before I had stopped in a diner parking lot and swapped my plates with those of another dark sedan. It wouldn’t stand up to a cop running the plates, but it passed the eye test. I hoped I wouldn't get anyone hurt, but years of being the bad guy had given me a healthy sense of self-preservation.
We parked behind the mot
el and walked around to the front office. The clerk was a guy of only about twenty, and his eyes were glued to a small TV with some superhero movie playing. I paid for a room and took Chloe to it before getting my bag and joining her.
“I could use a shower,” she said, and I nodded. She went into the bathroom and shut the door, but she seemed to rethink that and opened the door back up halfway. From where I sat on the end of the bed I could see the bathroom mirror, and her reflection—facing away—as she undressed. She pulled the dress off, up and over her head, and tossed it onto the floor. She wore no bra and was now standing in just a pair of black silk panties that hugged the rounded curves of her ass perfectly. I felt myself harden. She bent then, sliding the panties down, and I got a glimpse of her pink slit from behind. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the mirror.
She stepped out of her panties and bent again, starting the water in the shower. I yearned to go to her, to take her there, bent over the side of the tub, but I knew I wouldn’t do that. The woman was almost sold into sexual slavery. She just wanted to go home. I wouldn’t take advantage of Chloe like that.
As she showered, I went over to the window, curling one finger around the edge of the blinds so I could pull them away from the window and peek out. I didn’t see anyone. In the bathroom, the water stopped after a while. I heard the floor creak as Chloe stepped out of the tub. I glanced into the bathroom from where I stood, but I could only see a sliver of the mirror, just her arm reflected as she dried off. I was still trying to peek when the door opened all the way to reveal her standing there, nude save for a towel wrapped around herself.
“I have no other clothes,” she said. I nodded, cursing myself on the inside. That was something I should have thought of.
“I have some gym shorts and T-shirt you can wear,” I said. “It will be big, but we can stop tomorrow.”