Hitman - the Series: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Collection (Alexis Abbott's Hitmen #0)

by Alexis Abbott

  I still hunger for more, to be up within that tight pussy of hers, yet the way she gazes up at me as she blows me...

  I want to reward her diligent efforts, and I let myself come, coating her tongue in my seed. She’s taken off guard and pulls back, and some of it lances across her mouth, to which she giggles happily before swallowing.

  “There was more,” she laughs nervously, and I nod as she wipes away my cream from her face. Her innocence and intelligence mingle, drawing me into her, and I can’t help but lunge for her neck once more, biting her and sucking upon her skin. She tastes better than any food I’ve had, feels better than any pleasure I’ve tried.

  How one person could make me feel so strongly for them in such a short time is a complete mystery to me, but I don’t intend to question it.

  I intend to mark her as mine. Again.

  After just a few minutes of exploring her body with my hands and mouth, feeling over her slender curves and hearing her moans start rising once more, my cock is stiffer than ever. I grab her legs, spreading them, less gently than her first time. That time I wanted it to be all about her. This time, I want it to be all about us, exploring what really makes each other tick.

  And when I thrust into her deep, she cries out with such a delicious moan, I know I’ve read her right. She wants to feel alive, and the perfect combination of pleasure and pain is what she seeks. I look down on her, keeping her gaze as my hips draw back, then push forward again.

  With each thrust, her small breasts bounce, and I can still see that one is wet and glistening from my mouth. I push her ankle over my shoulder as my hand reaches down, tweaking that nipple again, feeling her pussy tighten in response.

  “You like that,” I say, more than ask, and she whimpers in response.

  “Is this bad?”

  I shake my head.

  “No, malyutka. Nothing you do could ever be bad,” I say, and I mean it. She relaxes into me, taking me deeper as her body writhes against mine, and before long, we’re meeting one another at the peak of pleasure, her cries sending me over the brink. A hot fire travels down my spine, flooding my body as I flood her depths, holding her flexible body pinned against me.

  We pant for breath as we slump into one another, and I slowly slip from her.

  I smile a faded grin as I lift her limp body, her arms wrapping around my neck in a loose grip, exhaustion having taken her. I take her back into our room, and pull the blankets up over her. Already there’s a look of serenity on her face. It’s an expression I’ve never truly seen on a woman before, and it scares me how much it makes my heart pound with desire.

  Everything about her — about our relationship — is dangerous, and she knows that as well as I do. But we can’t help but collide into one another’s bodies again and again, and her expression right now... That’s what’s going to keep me coming back for more.

  She doesn’t just want me for my body, or for what I can do to hers. She feels something far more deeply, far more pure than that.

  I watch her as she sleeps, my fingers grazing over her jaw, over her shoulder, as I wonder if a killer like me even deserves something so pure and beautiful as love...

  It isn’t until the morning sun crests the sky, bathing my sleeping angel in a golden glow that I realize I missed something. I shift, reaching for my phone and heading out onto the terrace to make a quick call.

  “Felix, meet us in the lobby. I know where we need to go next. It’s… dangerous. I hoped we wouldn’t have to go there, but it looks like it’s our only choice.”

  My car tears down the country road as I speed towards my destination, my knuckles white on the steering wheel, even if my black gloves conceal them. I might be too late already, if Maggie is where I suspect she is. And I wish I had reason to doubt my suspicions.

  My route takes me far north of the city, far enough that the bright and sprawling metropolis of Paris is out of sight behind me, save for the glow over the horizon bright enough to be a beacon to everything around it.

  For kilometers, there’s nothing on this stretch of road to my left and right but farmlands and fields. The odd car I pass every few minutes is the only other source of company on this lonely stretch of road — so much so, that if I hadn’t known where I was going, I would have missed my turn onto a narrow dirt road that leads a short distance to what to anyone else would look like some kind of garage for industrial shipping, a run-down, two-story building with few features and rusty corners, half-obscured by high, weathered walls and no gate.

  The logo on the front of the walls belongs to a shipping company that has been out of business for many years. But none of the local authorities ever investigates this place, and no city official of the nearby towns and hamlets dare move to have it destroyed or repurposed.

  Each and every one of them is bought, because my target used to be one of the most valuable junctions of the slave trade in France.

  I stop just after my turn. My eyes are on those ruined walls as I silently slip out of my car and move around to the trunk, retrieving my equipment and strapping it on my person. As I strap guns to my chest and knives at my side, my eyes fall on a ski mask I’ve kept on hand for some time. I consider donning it but I reconsider and close the trunk.

  Should anyone see me and live, I’m done hiding. I want them to know who’s shutting down the slave ring again.

  Crouching low, I make my way to the walls, pressing myself up against the side and listening for what’s inside. I can hear little, but the occasional footsteps tell me there’s at least one man outside the facility. Back in the old days, the Bratva usually ran things similarly, making it look like there was a lone employee in the parking lot.

  I move up to where the walls part into an opening, just a few inches from the corner, and I slip my knife out. My other hand reaches into my pocket for my car keys. My lock has a relatively quiet horn, a light sound that won’t carry beyond the exterior of the building. Taking a breath, I click the lock button twice.

  My car gives a short beep as the lights flash once. I hear the footsteps in the courtyard pause, then start to come closer.

  I breathe a sigh of relief. If he wasn’t alone, he would have said something to his partner. A few moments later, I watch a man in a white tank top holding a cigarette in one hand and an Uzi in the other stride into view, craning his head to look for the source of the unscheduled arrival. He has time to catch sight of me and widen his eyes before I’m upon him like a tiger, wrapping a hand over his mouth and dragging him behind the wall before my knife slides between his ribs and silences him forever.

  I lay his body down in the bushes beside the wall before I start searching him. Cigarette pack, spare pistol, wallet...and a cardkey on a lanyard. I free the cardkey and slip it into my jacket pocket, poking my head around the corner before advancing into the grounds.

  The walls around me hold more than just sleazy men with more weaponry than they should ever be entrusted with. In the days of the Bratva’s human trafficking ring, this place was a shipping facility of sorts.

  Here, they prepared the women they enslaved to leave the country. This was the last stop for these women before they were sent to their new lives, if such slavery could be called living, and it was here that they would often break the more spirited women for all they could. Starvation, sleep deprivation, anything that would make them more pliable before their journeys to their buyers, whether they be in Europe or as far as Asia or, most commonly, North America.

  Maggie is a tough person. I know her to be. I recruited her personally, just like all my other students, and I looked for a particular kind of mental resilience that could flourish in another country.

  But nothing should have to prepare a human being for this. Nobody should be born to expect slavery.

  I move to the side of the building, crouching behind a dumpster where a window is situated nearby. Faint light is visible from within, and I suspect there’s someone home. But the window is shut, so I move up under it to try to listen
inside.

  “...wouldn’t even listen when Vasili roughed her up a little, we had to take her away for most of the party,” one of the men is saying in Russian.

  “Fucking Americans,” another man spits, “what are they teaching their girls over there? I bet he really gave it to her that night, eh?”

  “No,” says the first man, “boss said to keep hands off those parts of her, no wounds that show. The client has eh...high standards. Some rich fuck in the US or Canada, I don’t know, I don’t get to drive this one to the docks. They’re gonna dress her up real nice though. Shipping her up to Calais in the morning to make her look good for her new husband.”

  “Well, what’s stopping you from having some fun the boss won’t notice?” the man says with a lewd lilt to his voice that makes my grip my knife tighter.

  “Are you fucking serious? He’s still fuming over the loss of that one bitch the Russian stole. So much as an extra stain on that filthy shirt of hers, and he’ll have our balls.”

  I’ve heard enough, and I glance over at the dumpster. There’s a rotting wood palette sitting beside it, and quietly as I can, I pick it up and toss it over the top of the dumpster, making it clatter in among the garbage with enough noise that a cat goes running out from behind the dumpster and into the fields.

  “The fuck was that?” one of the men inside says after a pause.

  “Fucking cats. I’ll get it,” he says, and I’m already crouching under the window when I hear it slide open.

  “Psst! Fuck off, you overgrown rats!” he shouts, leaning out to brandish his beer bottle at the dumpster. In a swift motion, I reach up and yank him out the window, plunging my knife into the back of his neck the moment he hits the ground.

  “Adrik?” the other man cries, rushing forward in time for me to rise to my feet as I whip my pistol out, pointing it directly at his wide-eyed face and pulling the trigger before he has time to get a word out.

  Both bodies crumple to the ground within seconds of each other, I hop into the window and ready my gun. I’m on bought time now.

  At the far end of the hall, I can see a set of stairs leading down, and I have no time to waste; even if there are others in the building, I can’t risk them getting away with Maggie, so I head swiftly down the hallway, weapon raised. I don’t know how many people are lying in wait in this building. Back in the old days, there would have been far more, but I suspect this Chechen ring is just getting started. Otherwise, security would be much, much tighter. That, and there would be more girls here than I alone could rescue.

  Besides, even though I’m out of this life, I’d have heard if the ring was in full operation. It’s impossible to keep things quiet from the one person in the city who knows what to be looking for in the news reports.

  I reach the steps, descending them quickly, rounding a final corner with my gun out before laying eyes on what looks like a heavy metal door, a security panel to the left of it. Drawing out the cardkey, I watch the light flash green as the lock pops open and it opens with a loud creak. I wince, knowing that any element of surprise I have left is gone, but the whimper I hear from the other side of the door is doubly heart-wrenching.

  The room I step into is a long and windowless hallway, all stained concrete. There are what look like cells lined up on both sides of the room, each one with a steel door on the front with nothing but a slat to push food and water through. I hurry down the hall, my eyes moving from cell to cell. Each one appears empty, save for one near the entrance. Nevertheless, I make a sweep of the room to make sure there are no other prisoners before I move to the one occupied cell and slide open the barred door.

  Immediately, the young woman inside bursts into tears at the sight of me, and I step forward as Maggie buries her face in her hands.

  I kneel down and speak softly to her. “Maggie. Maggie, look up, it’s me — I’m here to get you out of here.”

  “Please, I-” she sobs before turning her tearstained face up to me, and as recognition dawns on her slowly, as if she’s waking up from a nightmare, she bursts into tears all over again. I allow her to wrap her arms around my neck and cry into my shoulder. “M-m-monsieur P-”

  “Breathe, Maggie,” I assure her, stroking her back comfortingly, and my heart wells up with sorrow for the young woman in my arms. I dearly wish I could say this is the first time I’ve encountered a woman in her condition. And I dearly wish she’d be the last. But all I can do now is everything in my power to rescue her.

  “We...we tried to go to a party and…” she gasps between sobs, trying to explain herself, but I shush her softly as I look around the room at her conditions.

  “I know everything, Maggie. I’m here to end all this.” The light in the cell is out of reach, but still flickering noisily. The concrete here is rough, and it would be painful to the touch if I weren’t wearing thick clothes. Maggie’s torn and stained clothing is thin, though, a remnant of her night out. And there’s no bed in here. All of it clearly amounts to means of sleep deprivation — torture.

  “Liv,” she gasps, looking panicked again, “Olivia, she was with me, have you-”

  “She’s safe,” I say with a smile, helping Maggie to her feet as she puts her hands to her mouth in shock and gratitude.

  “Oh my god, how?!” Maggie is in near disbelief, almost suspicious that this is happening, and not without good reason. “Are you some kind of officer?”

  “I’m a few things,” I say simply, sticking my head out into the hallway. “Let’s save that for the car ride though, we’re not out of hot water yet.”

  “What should I—” Maggie starts, but she’s cut off as I take her by the hand and move down the hallway with my pistol raised.

  “Keep my hand and move when I tell you to,” I say, and without another word, I take off as fast as I can manage to get Maggie to run.

  Up ahead, I can hear voices and footsteps down the stairs. I feel Maggie start to reflexively freeze up, and without another moment’s thought, I guide her into a different cell just as two men arrive at the door with guns out.

  As Maggie screams, I roll into the room with her as shots hit the wall behind us, and as soon as they’re off, I reach around and blind-fire two shots before popping out of hiding and shooting one of the men dead as he dives for cover. The other man hits the ground, having been caught in the leg by my blind shot, and I sprint forward, but not fast enough that he can’t let out a cry of pain that rings through the compound before I put a bullet in his head and finish the job.

  Maggie peeks out of hiding, and I give her a nod to come catch up with me, and I take her hand to pull her along before she can let her gaze dwell on the bodies around her too long. There are mixed emotions in her eyes, and I can only imagine she feels some measure of satisfaction in seeing such vile men put down.

  We move up the stairs, and I’m relieved to see nobody standing at the top of them waiting for us. But I know the men who saw the body on the way down will have called for backup, so we don’t have much time.

  I guide her down the hallway, and I’m about to round the corner towards the front door when a man lunges from the bathroom on my right, slashing across my face with a knife. I feel a sting on my cheekbone as it draws blood, and I stagger for a moment. I raise my gun as he curses and starts to lunge forward again, but the next instant, he falls to the ground with a scream as Maggie lurches forward and kicks his knee in, surprising even me with her strength. She staggers back, surprised at herself before I shoot the man in the back of the head as he holds his leg.

  “Good work,” I say to her with a nod, and she mouths something as I take her hand and bolt out the front door with her.

  “We’re still in France,” she says as we cross the courtyard, and I realize she must have been blindfolded for most of the transfers. I wonder how badly these past few days have affected the passage of time for her.

  “Just outside Paris,” I say grimly, and I glance back to see her ashen face at the realization that all this horror, all this
vile slavery has been taking place right in the heart of metropolitan civilization. It’s a reality that shook me to the bone when I first learned of it. From Paris to London to New York City, it’s often the epicenters of culture and civilization that hide the darkest vices.

  We run towards the car, but from the building behind us, I hear shouts and the sounds of running feet. Reinforcements from the second floor must be on the way, and we need to be out of here already.

  I hear the voices grow closer as we near the corner of the wall, not far from where my car is parked. Getting my keys out in one hand, I turn around to fire a few rounds with a new pistol at the door, and I see the four men who’ve come after us start to scatter as shots are exchanged.

  We round the corner and start sprinting for the car, and I look down at the keys in my hand.

  There’s a trickle of red staining the shining metal of the keys, and as it starts to pool in my hand, my eyes move to my upper chest to see a small hole where the bullet hit me.

  23

  Liv

  I’m sitting in our opulent terrace suite, chewing my lip anxiously, waiting for any updates from Max. It’s nearly midnight and we still haven’t heard back from him. All day, the three of us spent hours strategizing and trying to figure out the logistics of our next move. The two guys pored over an old map for a long time, Max showing Felix where he would be headed tonight just in case he needed to call for reinforcements or something. He assured me that it wouldn’t be necessary anyway, that he had a solid plan. He knew the area well enough and he had enough experience dealing with creeps like these — he would be able to find Maggie and get back out without too much trouble.

  But nothing he said could assuage my deep concerns. I have finally found the love I never knew I needed, and now I am poised to lose him if anything is to go wrong. I’m sending this most precious object of my affections into direct danger. And knowing his background, his extensive experience in dealing with the Chechen mafia in the past, does nothing to relieve my worry. Even though I’ve seen his skills in action, I know that it’s been a long time since he last delved into such an intense situation. Until now, he’s been living a totally different life, walking a tamer track. That’s not to say he’s out of shape or anything in the least — the way his muscles ripple under his clothing, the ease with which he can scoop me up and move my body… he’s as strong and powerful as he ever was, I’m sure.