by Lane Hart
“I hate guns,” she grumbled.
“Hand her over, Decker,” the Russian called again.
Armed with a tried and true weapon, one I’d kept under my pillow most nights, I raised my arm again. This time when I pulled the trigger, the gun fired, and the bullet hit its mark.
“Fuck,” I heard the second Russian swear as the first one fell to the floor.
His single word gave away his location, allowing me to blindly target him. The shot rang out, the bullet hit, but instead of dropping to the ground beside his counterpart, he staggered out of the room, wounded.
“You’re a dead man Decker,” he swore, pain lacing his curse as he scrambled down the hall. “Fucking dead!” His voice echoed from the first floor, shortly followed by the slam of the front door.
Now the room was silent, nothing but the pant of her breath and the drumming of my heart in my ears.
“Time to go,” I growled.
With a tight clutch on her arm, I stood, lifting her to her feet alongside me. I kept her close, gun at the ready, even as she tried to jerk out of my grasp. She looked lean but was built of solid muscle—strong and agile, with a dancer’s body.
“Get your fucking hands off me.”
And a trucker’s mouth.
Despite our circumstance and her nasty attitude, a jolt of attraction ran through me when we brushed close. A flash of heat scorched a trail from the top of my head, straight to my cock, pushing the boundaries of my restraint.
But control was my middle name. I blocked my unnecessary senses—ignoring the way her hands molded to my chest—and focused on logic. It didn’t matter that her touch was bewitching. She was fighting me, pushing away, and our time here was well past expired.
“We’re leaving.” I raised my weapon, reminding her I was in charge. “Together.”
As I dragged her from the shelter of the bed, a low moan caught my attention.
Stasevich.
The scientist had been shot in the chest but was still alive. With a final act of brave strength, he raised his head to plead with her, “Please…help…”
As expected, the wildcat was suddenly breaking free. But not for long. I easily caught her, crushing her back to my front, and trapping her arms in my tight hold. Then, I forced her to watch as I plugged two rounds into Pavel Stasevich’s head.
A light mist of back-spray hit us, but she didn’t react. At least, not the way I expected. She didn’t flinch, scream, or cry. She didn’t lash out in anger. She simply sagged into me, like all her fight had been drained the minute chunks of Pavel’s brain had hit the wall behind him.
“Now it really is time to go.”
She didn’t move.
After tucking my gun away, I lifted her solid weight over my shoulder. She let out a despairing groan as I secured her legs with one arm and allowed her body to hang limp down my back—her tight, tempting ass practically in my face. I hauled her past the dead men, out of the house and into the chill of the night.
We’d made it to the end of the Stasevich’s large backyard before the house alarm finally sounded. A deep, tree lined woodlot ran the course of the property. For me, it was a planned, easy escape. For her, it seemed to be a tipping point.
Rousing out of shock, she started struggling against me. “Put me down, you prick,” she hissed, low and menacing. “I’m going to kill you.”
“I’m sure you’d try. But you’ll have to wait until later. Right now, we’re both getting out of here. Unless you want me to leave your ass to face the consequences of my actions. Or maybe you wanted to wait for more Bratva men to find you?”
“Why?” she screamed, like no one could hear her. “Tell me! Why?”
“Calm down,” I ordered, squeezing her legs tighter, forcing her kicks to stop.
“You killed him.” Her fists pummeled painfully at my back. “You fucking killed him!”
My heart hammered wildly. My stomach seized.
Others might mistake this feeling as guilt, but not me. Emotions were the things that got you killed, and I preferred living.
“I killed him because I was paid to,” I answered, despite knowing I didn’t owe her a goddamn thing—especially not an explanation. “Besides, he was already dying, I just put him out of his misery. Hell, I did that man a favor.”
“I needed his information,” she lashed. “And you… you killed him.”
“Whatever information you think he had, he was never going to give up. Men like him know the game. Men like me can see you’re an amateur.”
“I’m not a fucking amateur!”
“Right,” I huffed. “Your gun wasn’t even loaded. I don’t think anyone’s going believe you’re a pro with a stunt like that. Not even the goons in blue, and they’re a bunch of amateurs themselves. We’re hitting the road, kitten—"
And then she proved me wrong.
Before I could inhale for my next sentence, she had me flat on my back with her knees pushed painfully into my chest, one hand clutching hard at my neck, and the other cocked in a fist over my head. She’d taken me down like a champion, swift and fluid, and without breaking a sweat.
“I’m not an amateur, but I’m also not a murderer. Not like you,” she snapped. “The information he had could’ve saved lives. Lives far more important than yours or even mine. And you just fucked it all up. Fuck you, Bodhi Decker. Take your own heat, cocky motherfucker.”
Her weight left me just as quickly as she’d hit, and in seconds, she was gone.
Staggering to my feet, I took off after her, sucking in air despite the crush of my lungs. She wasn’t much more than a shadow ahead of me, making it next to impossible to track her through the trees, but I chased her anyway, tripping over branches and my own feet.
Now I was acting like an amateur, crashing through the woods like a lunatic on a bender.
I broke through the tree line onto a paved roadway, just as she was pulling a motorcycle out from a cover of dense brush. Expertly, she maneuvered the sport bike to the edge of the road, her leathers gleaming in the moonlight. The outfit made sense with the bike at her side, but she still looked like a badass in it. Like a pro.
“Wait!” I called.
She turned to me, light finally catching her face, and I was struck again. This time by her beauty.
Ink black hair. Narrowed, golden eyes that flashed under the light. Twisted lips and bared teeth. She looked at me like she wanted to eat my soul. And, hell, I was ready to let her.
She was lethal, disastrous, cataclysmic beauty.
Beauty that could’ve ended me right there.
Hopping on the bike, she revved the engine once and then sprayed dirt at me as she took off into darkness, never looking back.
I stood, breathless, wondering what the hell had just happened.
Where was my control?
Kira
The city was lifting out of darkness, welcoming a new day. Dawn had arrived, but my heart was too heavy to embrace it. Daylight only illuminated my failure. I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into the night and live there—in perpetual twilight where this never-ending grief belonged.
I’d wound my way through the streets, taking the extra-long way home, making certain I was alone.
Last night, I’d learned another lesson about caution. Another lesson about survival.
By some miracle I was still alive, but even that seemed a small consolation after losing my access to Stasevich and the information he’d held. It was a brutal crush of defeat.
One more bruising loss to top off the pile.
For a moment, I’d thought about giving up. It wasn’t much of a thought, really, more of an instinct. My body had tried to shut down from the overflow of debilitating emotions—negative emotions. Feelings I had no way to rein in, so I’d allowed them to tumble out in hostile words and actions. It was a wonder I had any feelings left. Yet, even after all the torture, I still hadn’t grown numb.
Not like Bodhi Decker. He’d saved me, despite his nature and m
y anger. If it weren’t for him, I’d have likely died right alongside Pavel Stasevich, or at the very least, been taken captive. Captivity or death. Neither were an option, and up to now, I’d avoided both on my own. So, it burned me that I’d needed someone else to come to my rescue.
Tears slid down my face as the wind whipped me at the last turn. I wasn’t going to lie to myself and pretend the blast of air was the cause of those tears. I knew better. Lying to myself would get me nowhere, and I’d been down that road before.
I parked my bike in the neighbors’ garage and sulked home through the alley. It wasn’t the type of alley a woman should navigate on her own in the dark, but I wasn’t an ordinary woman. I wasn’t afraid of who I might run in to or what kind of danger they may pose. In my current mood, I was the dangerous one. The one to be feared.
The door closed softly behind me as I crept into the apartment.
“Finally, you’re home,” Gigi sighed softly from her usual spot.
My grandmother liked to position her old wooden chair at the window in the small dining alcove and look out over the city streets. She always sat ramrod straight, with her hands folded politely in her lap and a welcoming smile on her face.
“Please tell me you didn’t wait up all night again.”
“Don’t worry, Akira-chan, I’ve only been sitting for one hour. The dawn singers woke me.” Her accent was thick, and sometimes she’d slip into full-on Japanese. Sometimes, her mind would slip as well.
During World War II, when my Grandmother was six-years-old, she and her family were held in a Japanese internment camp. She insists her only memory of that time was the kindness of the boy who she eventually married. Despite starvation, disease, and degradation, they’d survived. Nineteen years, three miscarriages, and one house fire later, she lost her husband to violence—a robbery gone wrong. Yet, even after all that misery, Grandmother remained a compassionate and happy woman. She’d run a small fish market with the help of her two surviving sons, both of whom she’d now also outlived. Not to mention, she’d helped raise me and my sister.
The woman was my hero.
For all she’d been through, I figured if she was a bit lost in the past, or even completely senile, she’d earned it. Now, at eighty-seven, she was helping raise another generation, watching over her great-granddaughter while I was out searching—chasing shadows and wrestling invisible demons.
“It was a restless night,” she told me, her gaze stuck on the view outside. “She was asking for you again.”
“Me or Nori?”
“Oh, I don’t know anymore… So hard to tell. She calls for comfort and I think of you. You give her a home and keep her safe. Maybe she doesn’t know, either.”
Another tear slid down my face, and even though my grandmother wasn’t watching, I quickly wiped the evidence of my weakness away.
“Thank you, Gigi. For everything.”
She turned to me with a soft smile, the kind she always wore when thinking of the past. She donned that smile a lot. “Did the universe send you any fortune this evening?”
“Well, I’m no closer to finding her, but fortunately, I’m still alive to keep looking.”
“Fall down seven times, stand up eight, Akira.”
I’d heard this idiom thousands of times. It was one of her favorites. One I understood. Like her, I kept picking myself up, dusting myself off, and soldiering on. But there was no way I’d do it with a smile.
There would be no gratitude for injustice. No acceptance of atrocity. No forgiveness for evil. What was I supposed to do, take whatever shit was given, say thank you, and then stick out my hand for more?
No. I refused to simply endure.
There was no choice but to fight.
Besides, I didn’t believe the horrors of the world had much to do with fortune, the universe, or even God. Every crime I’d witnessed, every act of terror, and every hurt I’d ever suffered, was committed by the hands of men.
“Fall down seven times, stand up eight,” I murmured.
Gigi nodded, her gaze falling back to the window.
“I’m going to check on her and then sleep for a bit. I’ll get up when she does and make us all breakfast.”
“Okay Sharon-chan. See you soon.” Once again, she’d forgotten who I was, calling me by my mother’s name. Her eyes were on the streets below, but her mind had drifted even further.
Sometimes, I wasn’t sure if I knew who I was. Certainly not the optimistic, unjaded woman I’d once been. My life was unhinged. With no job, my family in pieces, and danger at every turn, I felt like a puppet on strings. I’d been violated and depredated. Robbed of my free will. Did Akira Nakamura even exist? If so, who was she?
That question became easier to answer when I checked in on the sleeping girl. She was too young to understand the world in which we lived. Too innocent to know the truth of our life. I was her protector. For now, that was all I needed to be. It was all that mattered.
Kissing the rosy-cheeked cherub on the forehead, I marveled at her strawberry blonde hair and pink complexion. She may only be one-quarter Japanese, but other than her mother’s dark eyes, she had none of our family features. Her father’s genes were exceptionally strong, but it seemed absurd that a child so sweet could be born of a man so vile.
As I pulled away, her eyes flew open. “Mommy, stay.” She latched onto my hand.
“It’s okay, Anna. Go back to sleep, little dove.” I couldn’t bring myself to correct her. She was barely three and her mother, my sister Nori, had been missing for almost a year. I was the closest thing to a mother Anna had. I couldn’t take that comfort from her. Not when there were so few comforts in this world.
She sighed contentedly as I stroked her hair, cuddling further under her fluffy purple blanket before promptly falling back to sleep.
My tired sigh was less content, more contempt.
I’d been so close to getting what I needed. The scientist would have given it up. Although, maybe if I’d done what the killer, Bodhi, had suggested—if I’d had the balls to follow through on my threats—my sister might already be safe with us. She’d be the one comforting her daughter.
I winced as I stood, my leathers creaking with the movement, but Anna slept peacefully.
The catsuit was meant to be practical, protecting me from the elements and helping me blend into the night, but right now, it felt like nothing more than a cheap costume. A lie I put on to convince myself I could be someone else.
Someone hard and unyielding. Someone not so broken.
In the bathroom, I peeled off the leather, allowing the outfit to drop to the floor. I caught my reflection in the mirror. The mottled bruising across my skin highlighted all my hard edges. Even the small swells of my breasts seemed to lack softness. After a year of chasing and fighting, I didn’t feel much like a woman. Physically, I didn’t feel much more than pain. Emotionally… well, that was its own long, sad story, wasn’t it?
A chill ran through me at the sight of the blood streaked across my cheek. Blood that wasn’t my own. That trace of crimson reminded me how close I’d been to death.
It wasn’t the first time I’d witnessed it, I’d nearly met it myself a few times, but I’d still been a mess when Stasevich died. I’d frozen, not in fear, but in disbelief at how easy it was to snuff out someone’s light.
Bodhi hadn’t even blinked. He’d acted like killing was second nature, and for him it was. It was his fucking job.
God, he disgusted me.
Yet, he also fascinated me. What did it feel like to be so far removed and void of feeling? What would I give for just a moment of that kind of peace?
I pushed aside the memory of the night. Violence and death could wait for later. So could Bodhi Decker. Fuck him. I had no room for a man like him in my life. Handsome savior or not, I couldn’t abide another killer.
Shrugging off the morbid shroud of sadness, I stepped into the shower and allowed the scalding water to wash my body, mind, and soul.
; When my head finally hit my pillow, most of the evening had been washed away. My dark thoughts had been cleansed. The only thing remaining was an image of Bodhi’s face and his startled expression when I’d handed him his ass.
My lips twitched with the memory. It was a good one. I didn’t need the man, but that memory was one to keep.
Bodhi
For the first time ever, I needed information I wasn’t sure I could get on my own.
Not just information. Answers.
I needed to know how two Bratva men had managed to tail me without my awareness. I couldn’t figure it out, and that bothered me. A hell of a lot.
It showed the fissures in my carefully constructed life.
Because this wasn’t just a job. I lived this.
Going under the radar and blending in was more than an operational standard while I was working a hit. This was me. All the time. No fancy clothes. No flashy cars. No beautiful women hanging on my arm. It didn’t matter that I could buy them all if I wanted, in my line of work the money was irrelevant. I needed to stay invisible.
The unexpected confrontation with two armed men had put a major crack my confidence. I wanted to know why they’d been so eager to shoot at me. Why the hell would these Russians want to make me an enemy? I may only be one man—a small speck in the throngs of organized crime—but my cold-blooded reputation and tightly sealed lips had kept me out of the crosshairs. No one had reason to mess with me. I needed to understand why that’d changed. More importantly, I needed to know why they were willing to fuck with me just to get to her.
The wildcat.
She should’ve been my first warning sign that something was off, only I’d been too caught up in her to notice. I’d charged in like an idiot waving a red flag. No precaution. No surveillance. Just ego and a hard dick.
Who was she? What did they want with her? And why the hell hadn’t I thought to demand answers when I’d had her in my arms?
Fuck, maybe because I’d been too busy getting the wind knocked out of me to ask.
Freshly showered, I sat at my kitchen table with a bottle of bourbon at my side and my scowl-wearing sister, ready to stitch the gunshot wound in my shoulder. As she pushed the needle through my flesh, I punched Finn’s number into my phone.