by B. B. Hamel
I sink back into my chair. “You have thirty seconds before I call the police.”
She nods a little. “I just came to say I’m sorry. I know what my husband’s doing is wrong. If you leave the city, I think you’ll be okay.’
I stare at her for a second. “Are you telling me to run?”
“Yes,” she says, nodding. “And I brought you some money, to help you out.”
I gape as she pulls an envelope from her purse. She passes it over and I stare at a ton of twenties, all shoved in there. I hold it in my hands for a second, but I shake my head.
“I can’t take this,” I say. “It’s blood money. I can’t take it.”
“Please, take it,” she says. “It’s my money. I work part time as a waitress.”
I pause. “Seriously?”
“Sure,” she says. “It’s actually kind of fun. Anyway, that’s my tip money, so Mario doesn’t know about it.”
I stare at the money again. It’s a lot of money, and if it’s really her tips, this is probably, well, it’s probably all of it.
“I still don’t feel good taking this.” I hold the envelope out again but she stands.
“I won’t take it back. Burn it if you want to, I don’t care. I just came… I just came to say sorry. And to give you that.”
She looks at me with a frown before turning to the door and quickly walking over. I stand and follow her, not sure what to say. She pauses with her hand on the knob and looks back at me.
“I really am sorry, honey,” she says. “Please, take the boy and go, leave the city. I don’t think Mario will bother you guys.”
“What if we don’t go?” I ask her.
She shrugs. “I think he’ll kill you both.”
I watch as she leaves without another word, shutting the door behind her. I stand in the living room alone, anger and rage and sadness all ringing through me.
All of this is happening because I was born into a fucked up, dysfunctional, broken fucking family. Now they’re going to kill me if I stay in this city. I didn’t plan on staying anyway, but it still stings to hear it out of my own aunt’s mouth.
“We should get going,” Connor says from the top of the stairs.
I look up at him, and it’s amazing how one second can be the best moment of your life, and the next can be the worst.
He comes down the steps. I meet him halfway, and he hugs me, holding me tight, right there on the staircase. I don’t cry, because I’m done crying for these people. I’m done with all of this.
“I’m ready,” I say softly to him. “I’m so fucking ready.”
‘Good.” He tips my chin up to him. “I love you, Leah. I’m going to take care of you. I promise.”
“I love you, too.” It feels so good to finally say it out loud.
It’s been true for a while now. I’ve loved him ever since he came into my life and changed it completely. I’ve loved him ever since he saved me and Ryan, kept us away from the Gallos, kept us safe. I’ve learned so much from this man and his son, and now I want to be a part of their family for real.
“You’ll like it in California,” he says after a short silence. “We’ll start a new life there. We’ll have a real family.”
“Yeah,” I say softly. “Yeah, we will.”
He hugs me tight again before we kiss softly and head upstairs. We help Ryan pack his things, and an hour later, we’re leaving Philadelphia. As we head down the turnpike, driving fast from the place where I was born, I don’t feel any regrets. I don’t feel anything at all but happiness and love every time I look over at Connor or back at Ryan.
This is the freest I’ve ever been. I’m floating on a cloud, with the man I love and the boy I want to raise as my own. I think about Harper briefly, and I’m happy she left Ryan with me. I’m happy she blew into my life and changed it so much.
Because it led me to Connor and to this. I reach over and take his hand. I squeeze it. He glances over at me and grins.
I grin back at him and I finally feel like I’m home.
26
Leah
Two Years Later
Michael looks up at me with his big blue eyes and smiles. “Mom,” he says.
I laugh and pick him up. “That’s right, big man,” I say. “I’m your mommy.”
He laughs as I lift him up into the air. Michael’s just over one year old, and although he was conceived in Philadelphia, he doesn’t know anything about that city.
I’ve made sure of it. Ever since we came out to Arcata, I’ve put Philly behind us. We were afraid of the Gallos at first, but after two years of hearing nothing about them, we’ve pretty much moved on.
Although Connor still keeps a gun in the house, and we make sure we arm the security every night. Some paranoia may never go away.
“Ryan,” I call out, walking into the back yard. It’s a nice yard with a big brown fence all around it. Ryan’s sitting in the dirt, playing with our black lab Rocky. I’m sure I’ll have to clean grass stains out of his clothes, but that’s okay. Grass is easier to get out than blood.
“Mom!” Ryan scrambles to his feet and comes running over. I laugh as he takes Michael from my arms. “Come on, little brother,” he says. “We’ll go play.”
I laugh again and he takes Michael over to where Rocky’s lounging in the sun. The two boys torture the poor dog while I sit down on a chair in the sun, stretching my legs and watching them play.
It was a struggle out here at first, but it’s gotten better. Connor sold his house from afar, which helped us buy this place. He got a new job and he’s even thinking about starting another business using some of the contacts from his old place. I work part time but mostly I just watch the boys, which isn’t something I ever thought I’d be doing.
Being a stay at home mom is a lot of hard work, but it feels good. I feel like I finally have a purpose. I used to toil away as a nurse, working crazy long hours for people that didn’t care about me one way or another. I busted my butt to try and make them comfortable and even to save their lives sometimes.
My boys though, they actually love me. They care when I work hard to make their lives easier. Sure, they’re little kids and can be big brats sometimes, but they’re family and I feel so much better being around them than I ever did working as a nurse.
I smile to myself, looking up at the sky. It is nice to get out a few hours a week though, I can’t even pretend otherwise.
“How are the little monsters?”
I look over my shoulder as Connor walks out toward me. I smile at him and he bends over to kiss me softly on the lips. “They’re good,” I say. “Creating more laundry problems for me.”
“That’s what little boys do best,” he says, sitting down next to me.
“Tell me about it.” I sigh. “You can do this load.”
“Gladly.” He leans over and kisses me again and I laugh.
Our house is a little bungalow, barely enough room for all four of us, but it’s like heaven for us. We have big trees in the back yard, lots of clean grass, and privacy. I can’t ask for anything more.
“Are you nervous?” he asks me.
I shake my head. “Not really.”
“You haven’t seen them in almost two years.”
I sigh. “I know. But you’ll be here. And we have a family now.”
“Yeah, we do.”
“Plus, they had a good reason to not come to our wedding.”
“Yeah. I guess a threat from a homicidal maniac is a good reason.”
I laugh a little. “I think so.”
He shrugs a little and shades his eyes as he looks out over at the boys.
We got married a month into coming to Arcata. We invited my parents, but my mom told me that she felt too afraid to follow us out here, since she thought she was getting threatening calls from the Gallo family. Nothing came of that, since my mom and dad are both still alive and well, so I think she might have been imagining it. Still, it was a pretty good excuse.
Except
they haven’t met their actual grandson yet. He’s been alive for over a year, and they haven’t been out to visit. I think they’ve been afraid, but I finally convinced them.
I don’t really want to see them if I’m being honest. I’ve moved on from all that by now. But my family comes first, and my boys need to meet their grandparents, even if their grandparents don’t care about them.
I lean against Connor’s shoulder and he nudges me a little. “Look, we can skip it entirely,” he says to me. “Blow them off, go on a trip. We can go camping again.’
I grin at him. “Last time we went camping, you left some food out and a freaking bear almost killed us.”
“There weren’t any bears,” he grumbles, but he did leave food out.
“No, I can’t do that. I’ll be fine. We’ll have a normal time, pretend like nothing crazy happened, and move on with our lives.’
“That’s the dream.” He grins at me and kisses me again. “Or we could just go upstairs and fuck all afternoon.”
I blush a little bit. “What about the boys?”
He shrugs. “They’ll be fine. Rocky can watch them.”
“I like the way you think.”
He laughs and we kiss one more time before I lean back in my chair, stretching one more time.
Things with Connor haven’t slowed down. I think we’re getting ready to have a third baby, or at least it’s looking like that based on the way we’ve been having sex lately. It’s never ending and always amazing, and I don’t know how I got so lucky with a guy like him.
Sometimes I think about his life before me, with Harper and baby Ryan, but I don’t get sad about that anymore. All I know is, we have a nice life out here, comfortable and cozy and happy. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
“I should get going,” I say, standing up. “You’re on duty, dad.”
“Thanks, mom,” he says. “I’ll make sure they don’t ruin their clothes.”
I shrug a little bit, squeezing his shoulder. “I don’t mind. You’re cleaning it, remember?”
He laughs and I grin at him as I disappear into the house.
I get changed, get into the car, and head out. I’m a little early, but that’s okay. I’m not in a rush to get anywhere, and I won’t mind sitting in the cell phone lot, reading on my phone. It’ll be nice to have some alone time, although I’m already looking forward to getting back.
It’ll be nice to sit outside with my parents and to introduce them to my world. They’ll see how I’ve grown, how my family has grown. We’re the real thing, a real family, despite how difficult things were first. Our life is so different now out here compared to how it was in Philadelphia. Things are slower, more comfortable, happier.
I can’t wait to show them that. I can’t wait to see our life through their eyes, at least a little bit. Because as far as I can tell, our life is perfect.
Well, maybe not perfect, but as perfect as any life can get. I have my boys, my dog, my home. I have my health and my happiness and some of the best sex of my life. My parents don’t need to know about that last part, but everything else they’ll see.
I’m finally proud of myself and all the things around me, and I hope my parents are proud of me too. I want to show off. I want them to see how happy I am.
All of my worry slowly evaporates as I get closer to the airport. I’m not afraid to see them and I’m not afraid to have them see me, because I’m doing great.
I’m doing better than great. I’m doing perfect.
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Kissing the Killer: A Bad Boy Romance
Prologue: Emma
They say killers can’t love.
They say killers don’t feel a thing as they move through a room like an angel of death, their guns blazing, bodies dropping all around them. The hit men that work for the Russians and for the Italians don’t care about life or death, only cold hard cash.
He was one of those angels. Instead of wings, he had thick, roped muscles and black tattoos all along his perfect skin. His cocky smile said I owed him my life, and maybe a little bit more.
I never wanted to be owned, not by anyone, not for any reason. My father thought he owned me, and all I got from that was a roof over my head and a black eye every other week.
My father was a stupid man. He was a member of the mob, but not an important one. The only thing he loved more than drinking was gambling, and he owed thousands of dollars that he couldn’t pay to bookies all over Chicago.
It didn’t surprise me when the angels of death came for him with lead and steel. They killed my father and were going to kill me until he changed his mind.
“Look what we have here,” he said to me later, after he’d dragged me from my home and locked me in a closet. Fear and something else lanced through my chest. “You’ve got lips that make my fucking dick hard.”
He was crude and so cocky. He was good with his hands and with a gun, and he thought that made him unstoppable.
But I could see through him.
“I’m taking you with me,” he’d said earlier, his voice deep and soft in my ear. “Unless you want to die here.”
I hadn’t had a choice, of course. I either let him take me or his partner put a bullet in my head.
I knew what he wanted from me. He wasn’t pretending it was anything but my body.
“I’m going to make you glad I took you,” he whispered to me days later, after so much had happened, his hands moving down my skin. “You’ll be begging me to sink my thick cock between your legs before this is done with.”
I couldn’t argue with him. I could barely speak, my body rolling with desire and anger.
I wasn’t going to be owned by anyone, not ever again. I didn’t care if people wanted the both of us dead.
I didn’t care that he was the only one who wanted to see me alive.
My angel of death. He sent chills down my spine. “I’m going to taste you,” he said. “I’m going to slide my tongue along that clit until you can’t breathe.”
I wanted to feel him, his muscles, his dangerous smile. I wanted everything he promised.
But I wasn’t his. I wasn’t giving in, no matter how much I wanted to.
I was going to escape from my angel of death if it was the last thing I did.
1
Brooks
It was supposed to be an easy fucking job. We go in, kill the old, drunk, Russian asshole, and then we get the fuck out of there.
Nothing I hadn’t done a hundred times before, maybe a thousand.
I parked the car at the end of the block. It was a quiet neighborhood, especially at three in the morning. Nobody was moving around and the houses were all dark.
“Nice spot,” Abram commented.
“Not bad,” I grunted. “Which house does the old man live in?”
Abram nodded toward the end of the block. “Last on the left.”
I killed the engine. “We got a plan?”
He shrugged. “We’ll break in the back, kill the guy, and then get back home.”
“Works for me.”
I pushed open the car door and then checked the gun tucked into my jeans. I cocked back the slide and chambered a round and made sure the silencer was on tight. Abram was behind me, checking his own weapon.
He nodded at me and then headed down the block. I followed
behind him, keeping my head on a swivel.
I’d done this hundreds of times before. We were hit men for the Italian mob, angels of death working for the Barone family. I had more blood on my hands than I could ever hope to wash off, and mercy wasn’t something I had ever thought about before.
I was young when I joined the Barone family. When I was five, my father ran off with some cheap stripper he’d met downtown, and that only pushed my mother deeper into the bottom of a bottle.
Mom died by the time I was thirteen, drank herself to death in less than ten years, though she’d been warming up for that drinking marathon for years before that. After Dad left, Mom lost her will to live completely, and she did nothing but drink and drink vast amounts of cheap fucking liquor.
One day I came home and found her tipped over in the bathroom, vomit leaking from her mouth. I’d never forget that image, not for as long as I lived. It didn’t matter how much death and violence I saw; I’d never outrun the image of my mother dead in the bathroom.
The state took me in after that. I entered the foster system, but that shit didn’t sit right with me. I was in and out of care homes, the good people at the adoption services trying hard to find me a permanent place to live, but I was a troubled kid. I got into fights, I stole shit, I pushed back against my guardians. I did everything in my power to raise fucking hell, because I didn’t know any better.
Until one day, I met Gian. He was just a young, mid-level asshole in the mafia back then, but he gave me my first job. I was working in the back of a deli, slicing meats, cleaning up, and after hours I would serve drinks to the wise guys and empty their ashtrays.
Slowly they took me in. The mafia taught me everything I knew about being a man and then some. Gian rose up through the ranks and brought me with him, eventually promoting me to full-time hit man. I didn’t see much of Gian anymore, since he was one of the big bosses, but I owed him and the mafia everything.