Dating A Hitman (The Dating Series Book 4)

by Love, B. T.

  He brought his free hand up and tucked a strand of my hanging hair behind my ear. “You’re beautiful.”

  “Then why don’t you want me?”

  His eyes examined my face as he thought about what I had asked. “That’s not an easy question for me to answer.”

  “Do you think I’m too young for you or something? Because you shouldn’t; you’re just a couple of years older than my brother.”

  “No, no,” he assured me. “It’s not that at all.”

  “Then tell me.”

  He brought his hand to my chin and ran his thumb along the side of my jaw. “I think the letter will explain it for you.”

  “The letter? But it was from five years ago. How could—”

  “Just read it, Scarlett.”

  I leaned back and he took his hand away from my face. “Okay,” I gave up. I pushed off of him and went over to the letter, picking it up and leaving the lighter behind on the ground.

  “Your father doesn’t want you involved with me. He knows what’s best for you.”

  I looked over my shoulder at him and saw that he was standing. “Do you agree with him?” I asked.

  His eyes lowered to the ground for a quick moment before meeting with mine again. “Yes.”

  The word hurt. I looked back down at the letter in my hands. “Thank you for today. I feel like I can defend myself a little better now.”

  “Yeah, well, you need more practice. We’ll work on it some more.”

  Keeping my head down at the letter, I began walking away from him back toward the house.

  “Scarlett?” he called out after me. I stopped and lifted my head, cocking my head to the side but without looking at him. “Will you promise me one thing?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Promise me you won’t hate me after you read that letter.”

  I nodded, unsure of what he was talking about. “Of course I won’t hate you, Troy.” I looked ahead at the house and continued walking. “I’m having a hard enough time as it is trying not to like you.”

  Eight

  I could hear the front door shut as Troy left the house. My body trembled slightly as I sat down on the edge of my bed and stared down at the letter. Since I found out about it the day before I had been racking my brain, trying to figure out what he could have written me. I flipped it over and carefully slid my finger under the flap to open it. When I pulled out the single sheet of paper and opened it up, I noticed that it was only a few lines long.

  Dear Scarlett,

  You don’t know me, but I want you to know that your brother is doing well. He talks about you all the time and he really wishes he could get in contact with you. I was hoping this letter would get past your mother so you can read it and know that Eli really wants to talk.

  Troy

  My eyebrows pulled together. I didn’t really understand what it was about this letter that he didn’t want me to read. Maybe it was because he talked about getting it past my mom; maybe he thought what he said was disrespectful to her or something. And I had no clue why he would think I would hate him after I read it. None of it made sense.

  I flipped over the envelope and was staring down at the writing when something caught my eye. When Troy had pinned me to the bed the day before and held the envelope up by his face, I had noticed that the name above the return address was his initials, T.L.V. This envelope had Troy Valenti written above the address.

  I looked up, my blood boiling from the realization. “That bastard!” I huffed as I flew off of the bed and ran down the stairs, slipping the fake letter in my back pocket along the way. I pushed through the side door that went into the garage and began rummaging through the cases of tools that were neatly stacked in the corner, looking for something I could jam into Troy’s door. Luck was on my side, because I found a small pick that would work perfectly. I hurried back up the stairs and slid the thin pick into the hole on the knob, fishing around for the contraption to unlock it. When I felt something move I tried the knob and it turned. I actually unlocked the door. I pushed it open about a foot and was met by Machete who was staring up at me and wagging his tail. His little paws scratched my leg as he stood up against me and tried to get me to hold him. When I rejected his invitation he began complaining with his little high-pitched bark. I held my hand up and put my finger against my mouth to shush him, as if he would listen. He didn’t, of course, so I picked him up and held him under my arm.

  I slowly pushed the door open the rest of the way. The room was dark; the blinds were drawn on the windows. I flipped the switch that was on the wall next to the door, illuminating the room in soft light. My jaw almost hit the floor. Countless eight-by-ten photos of men were tacked on the walls in neat rows, more than half of them crossed out with a black marker. There was a nice large desk with two desktop computers on its surface against the wall, and a large file cabinet on each side. On the other wall there was a tall safe, a garbage can, and a small dog bed on the floor next to it.

  I had no clue what to think. The room looked like a scene out of a crime-solving movie or something. Was he a private investigator?

  Remembering that I had to act fast, I went up to the desk and began rummaging through the drawers for my letter. The top drawer in the center was filled with the usual office supplies, so I moved to the top drawer on the right side, only to find a stack of files. I moved down one drawer and found the same.

  The front door slammed shut. “Scarlett!” I jumped back and spun around at the sound of Troy’s angry call. His heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs and he flew into the room, his eyes alive with anger. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. “You were told to stay out of here!”

  “How did you know I was in here?”

  “I have a silent alarm on the room and you set it off. And you don’t get to ask questions.”

  “I want my letter!” I yelled at him, setting Machete down on the floor.

  “I gave you your letter.”

  I pulled the fake out of my back pocket and threw it at him, the folded envelope hitting his chest before falling to the ground. “You’re a damn liar! Give me my letter!”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You think you’re smart,” I huffed, “but you forgot a little detail when you made the fake: your name. The one you took from my box yesterday had your initials in the corner.” I pointed to the one on the floor. “You messed up and wrote your actual name on that one.”

  His lips twisted as he realized his mistake. “Damnit,” he said, bending down and picking it up. He stood back up and looked down at the front of it. “I’m usually really good about covering my tracks.”

  “So you admit it? You lied to me?”

  He closed his hand angrily around the envelope, crumpling it up. “Yes, Scarlett, I lied to you.” I watched as he went over to the garbage can and dropped the letter into it. He stared quietly ahead at the wall in front of him and then pulled his arm back and slammed his fist into the sheetrock, making a large hole.

  “Jesus,” I jumped. “What the hell are you doing?”

  He spun around to face me, his face passionate with rage. “Why did you have to come here?”

  “I, I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have come in your room. But I deserved to get my letter.”

  “No, I mean why did you have to come here, to visit. You should have just stayed away.”

  “Hey, you have no right to tell me whether or not I can visit my family. They’re my family, not yours.”

  “That’s not true,” he said, coming over and standing right in front of me. “Your brother is the only family I have. Even your dad is like a dad to me.”

  “Yeah, right,” I scoffed. “He’s been in prison the whole time you’ve known Eli.”

  He stepped closer. “I visited your dad in prison all the time. I wrote him letters. He wrote me back, and he made me feel like I mattered, like I was a good person.”

  My eyebrows pulled together. “Of course you’
re a good person, Troy. Why wouldn’t you be?”

  His eyes softened as he put his arm around my waist and pulled me against his body. He stared down at my lips and placed his other hand on the side of my neck, using his thumb to tilt my chin up to face him. “Does me touching your neck like this scare you?” he asked quietly.

  I swallowed hard, taken aback from the sudden attention he was showing me. “No,” I whispered my answer. “It excites me.”

  He moved his mouth lower to mine, our lips almost touching. “What if I told you that this same hand that’s touching your neck right now has strangled the life out of someone. Does that scare you now?”

  I pulled my head back and locked eyes with him. “What, what do you mean?”

  He let me go and moved around me, going over to his desk. He pulled open the middle drawer and lifted the tray of pens and paperclips out, revealing my original letter. After picking it up he put the tray back inside and closed the drawer. “Here,” he said, turning around and sticking it out in my direction. “You might as well read it now because you’ve stuck your nose in my business like you were told not to and I have no other choice but to explain myself.”

  I took the letter from him and stared down at the front of it, noticing the initials. “I still don’t understand what all this is,” I said, looking back up at him. “You’re obviously a different person than I thought you were.”

  “You’re right,” he agreed firmly. “I’m very different than what you thought.”

  I flipped the letter over and opened it up, pulling out a single sheet of paper. Like the fake one he had written for me, it too had just a few short lines.

  Scarlett,

  You don’t know me, but I’m good friends with your brother. I just wanted you to know that I took care of Jimmy Rolofo. You won’t ever have to worry about him again.

  T.L.V.

  I folded the paper and looked back up at him. “Took care of him? Is that what you meant when you said you strangled the life out of someone? Did you strangle him to death?”

  He stood solidly in front of me. “No.”

  I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. “Good,” I said as I put it back in the envelope and slid it into my back pocket. “Because Troy, that would be murder. You could go to prison for something like that.”

  His mouth twitched. “I know.”

  “Then what did you mean by—”

  “I didn’t strangle him.”

  I cocked my head to the side. “Troy, I’m really not understanding what you’re trying to tell me.”

  “I slit his throat.”

  My eyes widened. “You what? I thought you said you didn’t kill him . . .”

  “No, I said I didn’t strangle him.”

  I was at a loss for words. My body was trembling with an overwhelming amount of fear, and for the first time since I had met Troy I didn’t feel safe around him. I took a step backward, hoping to escape this new man that I just truly met for the first time.

  He stood his ground, not trying to stop me. “This is exactly why I didn’t want you to come in this room, and why I didn’t want you to read the letter.”

  I took another step backward. “I, I’ve gotta go.”

  “And I won’t stop you,” he said calmly.

  I turned around and hurried out, going right down the stairs and out the front door. Tears bled out of my eyes as I walked down the sidewalk with no destination in mind. I just needed some air, needed some time to think about what Troy had just revealed to me.

  I walked five blocks and made it to the busier part of town. I didn’t have my wallet so I couldn’t buy anything—which sucked because I felt the strong desire to down a glass of wine—but I did have my phone. I pulled it out of my back pocket and scrolled to my mom’s contact. Before pressing the call button I reconsidered. If she were to find out what I was in the middle of she would freak out. The last thing I needed was my over-protective mom to jump on a plane and fly over to save me. And technically I didn’t need saving, because my dad did say Troy wouldn’t hurt me. And I believed him.

  I waited for the signal and hurried across the crosswalk to the other side of the street. A quaint little park that was dotted with trees and filled with kids was the perfect place for me to go to take my mind off of my current life. The screaming children would be a nice distraction from the screaming voices in my head, the voices that were trying to tell me to go back home.

  I took the letter out of my back pocket and sat down on an empty bench. Pulling it out of the envelope put me right back in Troy’s room, right back to that moment of truth. I read the words over and over again as I tried to decipher what I was feeling. Fear? Sadness? Confusion? Anger? Betrayal? Those were the main ones. But I was also feeling sympathetic, worried, and a bit broken. My heart ached, ached for Troy in more ways than one. But the truth was he was a killer, a murderer. He had killed the man who tried to kill me. But, shouldn’t that make me, I don’t know, grateful? In a way, I kind of felt indebted to Troy for his sweet revenge.

  Revenge. My mind drifted to the tattoo that was scrawled across his back. The same marking that spurred my fantasies about him as I swooned over him in my bed at night also represented something about him that was dangerous, something that scared me. Against my better judgement I began to feel that he was maybe the perfect mixture of danger and seduction.

  I shook the thought away; I couldn’t allow myself to fall for him after knowing what type of person he really was. And to top it off, the room was filled with pictures of other men, a lot of them with their faces crossed off. Did he kill those men too? What would I do if the answer was yes?

  A little girl on a scooter came past and stopped in front of me. “Hi,” she said sweetly as strands of her long curly hair drifted across her face with the light summer breeze.

  I looked up from the letter and smiled. “Hi.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Scarlett.”

  “I’m Molly.”

  “Oh, hi Molly. Where’s your mom at?”

  “She’s in the bathroom.” She dropped her scooter to the ground and sat on the bench next to me. “Your hair is pretty,” she said, looking up at me.

  “Thanks,” I said with hesitation. “Uh, Molly, I don’t think it’s a good idea that you talk to strangers, especially since your mom or dad aren’t with you.”

  “But you’re not a stranger; you’re Scarlett.”

  I smiled at her naivety. “Yes, but I could still be dangerous. It’s best from now on that you stay away from people you don’t know.”

  “Okay,” she shrugged. She looked over at the paper in my hand. “What’s that?”

  A quiet laugh escaped my nose as I realized this little girl wasn’t going to leave me alone. “Well, it’s a letter from my friend.”

  “What does it say?”

  “Um, well, it basically says that he did something for me so I don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

  “Oh. That’s nice. My daddy fights the boogeyman for me before I go to sleep at night so I don’t have to worry about him. Your friend sounds like my daddy.”

  I smiled warmly at her. “Yeah, he did take care of a boogeyman for me.”

  “Did you hug him?”

  “Hug him?” I asked her. “What do you mean?”

  “Well I always give my daddy a hug after he gets rid of the boogeyman for me. You should hug your friend so he knows you’re happy that he helped you.”

  “Molly,” a woman called out from where the restrooms were.

  Molly jumped up from the bench and picked her scooter back up from off of the ground. “My mom’s done; I gotta go.”

  “Okay,” I smiled. “Bye Molly.”

  “Bye!” She pushed off and went over to her mom, leaving me once again with my thoughts.

  After an hour of weighing what I would do in my mind, I got up from the bench and started the walk home, making sure I hurried to get back before the sun started to set.

  Nine

&nb
sp; My brother was watching a movie on the couch with his fiancé. I closed the door behind me and smiled at the cute pair. “Hey,” I managed quietly, not really wanting to start a conversation with them; I wanted to see Troy.

  “Hey,” Eli smiled back. “You out exploring the town again?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know, you can always take one of the cars; you don’t have to walk everywhere.”

  “Oh, thanks. I’m actually enjoying walking, though. I drive everywhere back home; it’s a nice change.”

  “Well the offer still stands.”

  “Thanks again,” I said with a genuine smile. I went to the stairs and dragged my hand along the railing as I ascended the steps one by one. My heart was beating a hole through my chest as I went over to Troy’s door and lightly tapped my knuckle against it. “Troy?” A moment later the door opened and he was standing in front of me; he looked surprised. “Can I come in?” I asked.

  He nodded and stepped back, allowing me to pass. My eyes scanned the walls of pictures as he shut the door and locked it in place. “You came back.”

  I turned to face him. “Yeah, I did.” I took a few careful steps toward him until I was standing in front of his solid body. My arms lifted and encircled his neck and I pressed my body against the warmth of his. My action caught him off guard and it took him a second before his arms were around my waist. For the longest time we just stood there without saying a word, my nose in his fragrant neck and his cheek against my hair, holding each other like nothing else mattered in the world. “Thank you,” I finally said.

  “I . . . For what?”

  I pulled my head back and stared up at his handsomely confused face. “For taking away the boogeyman.”

  He looked down at me, his eyes contemplative as thoughts played through his head. “I wasn’t expecting you to come back here and thank me for what I’ve been keeping from you.”

  “Well, I’m here.” I brought my hand up and smoothed my fingers over the side of his hair. “Tell me my story.”