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

by Alexis Abbott

  It’s almost a shame to bring more violence to such a quaint Spanish slum.

  The residents are not to blame for the worn down block — they never are. And the gangs are just a symptom of the real root of the problem. There is a slumlord who runs this place, leeching money off his tenants like a mosquito, leaving behind a virulent and bothersome sore. His name is Juan Palomo, and he’s a step above most of the slum lords that infest El Raval like a plague.

  He’s my target tonight.

  Palomo is well known even as far out as my villa. He got his start running predatory lending offices like payday loan operations. If the transition from lender to local crime lord can be called a transition at all, Palomo’s was quick and seamless. His loan sharks got a reputation for brutality under Palomo’s orders, and they soon became his enforcers. From there, it was a small step to start demanding protection money from local businesses, all from his penthouse in this trash heap of an apartment, trapping the residents under him.

  He’s one of the local politicians now, who’s been calling for a crackdown on organized crime, amusingly enough. What a joke! Which makes me suspect him as the most likely culprit for funding the attacks on me, to secure the funding for his own anti-mob army.

  A little while ago, I thought of myself as a traitor to my roots for getting such an unquenchable desire to fuck Delaney to the point of exhaustion, a hunger I still feel amidst all this squalor. But when I look at people like Palomo, I see the true class traitors — people who claw their way to the top to stand on the rubble of their fellow people.

  I’ve studied this place from the rooftops of the surrounding buildings, and I know the routines of the gangbangers Palomo employs up on the roof of the building. As I near the lip of the roof, I ready the long knife at my side, waiting for the sound of footsteps approaching.

  Three men. Palomo has been on top so long that he’s relaxed, comfortable in his own home, and the three men patrolling the roof feel much the same. I hear the man nearing me pass by above, and can smell his cigarette smoke rolling down over the side of the building as I climb up after him.

  He doesn’t know what’s hit him, from the moment I move behind him to the second my knife plunges into the back of his head at the base of the skull. It’s a quick hit, and I doubt he feels anything more than a cool sensation as I catch him and lower him to the ground.

  There’s an air conditioning unit on the roof that obscures the kill site from view of the rest of the guards, so I slip around to get into position for the second kill.

  I feel little remorse for these people. They’re long-time thugs, likely the sons of Palomo’s friends doing his dirty work. They weren’t forced into this life, they chose it, like my target.

  But before I’m in position, the sound of a voice from one of the other thugs catches my attention. “Miguel, tiene un encendedor?”

  Shit.

  My time just became extremely precious. I hear the footsteps of the man approaching, and in a few seconds, he’ll see the corpse. I pull out my silenced pistol and decide to end things quickly and deal with the risk.

  I crouch and crawl over to the edge of the vent the speaker is about to come around, and the moment he appears in view, I stand up and slash his throat open with my knife. It hardly makes a sound, and before he so much as hits the ground, I drop the knife and aim the pistol at the other guard, whose back is turned to the scene.

  The view of Barcelona’s nighttime skyline is the last thing he sees as a soft ‘thump’ of his head ends his life as well.

  I don’t like taking such risks, but the danger of them alerting their boss to my presence is more than worth it. Without a moment to spare, I take the key to the building from one of the guards, along with my knife, and I head to the door into the top floor.

  The man called Miguel was wearing similar shoes to mine, so as I descend I emulate his gait, trying to sound like him as I walk casually down the staircase. There’s one guard at the base of the stairs with his back to me, thumbing through a dirty magazine. He doesn’t pay me any mind as I walk down the steps, nor does he notice me in his last moments before I draw the blade and bring in swinging down into his eye socket.

  I’m drawing the blade from the dead man’s head when I hear a woman’s gasp from the hallway, halfway to the door to Palomo’s residence. My head snaps up as my heart drops. One scream could mean death for me.

  The woman standing there is a middle-aged woman in an evening gown, fishnet tights, and high heels. It doesn’t take a genius to deduce that she’s an escort headed to Palomo’s room. And she seems to know better than to try to get in the way of her clients’ other business, because without making a sound, she slips out of her heels and makes for the stairwell leading downstairs.

  But I’m too quick for her. Before she can reach the first step, I grab her from behind, holding a hand over her mouth.

  “Silencio,” I order her, switching to my heavily accented Spanish as I whisper the quiet order into her ear. Her eyes are wide, and she struggles for a moment in my grasp before she realizes the futility of it. “You’ve walked in on something terrible, miss, but you can come out alive if you follow my orders to the word. Do you understand?”

  There’s a pause as she processes my words, but she nods.

  “Bueno. You were going to Mr. Palomo’s quarters for your work, yes?”

  Another nod.

  “All I require of you is that you knock and announce your entrance as usual. You will not be harmed, and I will compensate you for every last euro lost to this job. Understood?”

  She takes a deep breath and nods once more, and as I release my hand from over her mouth, I reach into my wallet and withdraw a healthy wad of cash to hand to her, which she accepts silently, a grateful nod. I get the impression that she will not miss this client’s death, either.

  She approaches the door, and I take my position beside it, gun at the ready. I notice an odd red mark on the hilt, and as I glance at it, I realize some of her lipstick has smudged off onto my hand.

  The woman raises her fist and knocks four times at the door, raising her voice. “Señor, su masajista está aquí.” She’s a talented actress. I would have had to crawl around the window to bypass the locked entrance, if I hadn’t come upon her. The door opens after a few deadbolts unlock, and she smiles at the man in the doorframe.

  Before he can say a word, I step into view with my gun raised and blow the man’s brains out, a fine red spray behind him as the woman cringes away and dashes for the stairs. This time, I let her go. She’s done well.

  Inside, I see a few men at couches, start to get up and raise weapons, but three quick shots put them down before they can so much as take proper aim at me. I grimace at the massacre when it ends before a proper fight even starts. These slumlord’s minions are easy pickings compared to the mercenaries I’m used to dealing with.

  I step across the carnage of the room, expensive furniture decorated with blood, heading for the bedroom where my target waits for his meeting. My pistol was nearly silent when it went off, but I’ve had targets be tipped off by the sound of thumping the dead bodies make. Palomo, however, is not a man used to such professionalism.

  Indeed, as I silently move down the hallway, I hear the sound of a television playing pornography on the other side, the static-marred sounds of a woman faking an orgasm loud enough to hear through the thin wood. Under that, I can barely hear the sounds of labored breathing — a man touching himself.

  Without waiting another moment, I kick the door down, and I hear a startled scream as Juan Palomo nearly pisses himself stumbling away from his bedsheets, his scrawny cock out as his white face tries to hide from me. My pistol is raised to him, and as he gets to his knees after falling off his bed, he sees all of me. And my weapon.

  “Sangre de Jesús,” he breathes, raising his hands, “Darios Esadze?!” I frown at him, looking disgusted. He’s a paunchy man without a hair on his head, save for his scraggly wisps of a beard. He draws his sheets
over himself in an effort to keep his dignity, but it’s already long gone. I glance around the room. I can see rope and duct tape half-hidden under the bed, and I raise an eyebrow.

  “My my, Palomo,” I muse, “Seems you had something uncouth in mind for the lovely woman visiting you tonight.”

  “So the grim reaper comes for me at last,” he says hoarsely, crossing himself. “Please, sir, take everything I have! I- I- had no idea I had crossed you, I wouldn’t dream of such a thing in a hundred years!”

  “Your very existence crosses me, Palomo,” I say, stepping around the bed and turning the TV off, sitting on the wardrobe it’s perched on, gun trained on him. “But tonight, I need information from you, and if you cooperate, I’ll let you hitch the next boat out of here to somewhere where you can find an honest job. I hear Corsica is lovely this time of year.”

  “Anything, sir!” he begs, terrified, and I want to end his pathetic life right here and now. But I must restrain myself.

  “I hear you have an ear for Georgian accents,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him. “You had some dealings with the Georgian mafia when we first moved into Barcelona. I need to know who else has popped up in the city who shares my proud nationality. Other Georgian gangs, Palomo, where are they?” I end on a sharp tone, pointing the gun at him meaningfully.

  “O-o-other gangs?” he stammers, looking around desperately. “I don’t know anything about that!”

  I fire the gun at the lamp behind him, making it shatter as Palomo pisses himself. “Wrong answer, Palomo, I’m not here to play games. My compound was attacked. I know the man who led them. Red hair, missing a hand. If you don’t want to match part of his description, talk.”

  “Por favor, señor,” he begs me, clasping his hands again and sobbing, “I hired a Catalan gang a few towns over! He said he could get me the money I need to wipe out my competition and secure my seat! They weren’t Georgian though! I swear upon my ancestors’ graves and all the saints, I know nothing more!”

  When I narrow my eyes at him, he gestures around wildly. “I- I beg you, look around! You’re talking to a man who’s just pissed himself in terror, I have nothing to fall back on if I’m lying to you! The Georgians will have nothing to do with me since you moved in!”

  As I look into his eyes, I know him to be speaking truth, as best he knows it. I curse my luck. There goes my lead.

  But now I have more questions to answer. If Luka is not leading a rival gang, then what am I left with? It could not be the parents, for the mercenaries wanted the girls dead. And if Palomo knows nothing about the attack on my compound, it’s unlikely Luka has merely sold himself out to some Catalan gang. What the hell is going on?

  “I believe you,” I say slowly, and Palomo bows his head in thanks. But none of that changes my predicament. I had grilled my own man on Delaney’s suspicions, but his excuses were reasonable. And I couldn’t bring myself to beat any more out of an old comrade in arms from the war. So now I’ve got nothing. No tie to the Georgian’s after me, even if I might have the chokepoint for their money. But that’s still yet to be determined.

  “Gracias,” he says, “Don Esadze, I cannot thank you enough. You will forever have my utmost loyalty for my life this day. Bless you.”

  I smile, contempt growing in my heart as the color slowly leaves Palomo’s face once again. “Even if I hadn’t told you too much about my affairs, Palomo, you are a blight on this whole community. Many a man and woman’s life has been ruined so that you can have this little throne on top of a trash heap, you know? Now tell me,” I say, drawing out my knife, “what exactly did you have in mind for that poor woman you hired tonight?”

  He won’t be leaving here alive.

  20

  Delaney

  “Oh, these are gorgeous,” I gasp, walking up to a vendor cart filled with local tomatoes. In contrast to the boring, uniformly smooth, lackluster red tomatoes in grocery stores back home, these vegetables are all beautifully misshapen and cast in varying hues of green, purple, and scarlet. I never knew there could be such a big difference until I came here with Darios. Over the past week I have learned to appreciate the simpler, more authentic life we’ve been living here. We eat better than I ever did back in Savannah, even though I dined in upscale restaurants on the regular. Everything here has more flavor, more spirit.

  I know I sound like some starry-eyed hippie, but to be fair, I’m sure at least to some extent my happiness is due to the fact that I am in love.

  Undoubtedly, inexplicably, in love with the man who captured me and turned my whole world upside down and inside out. He ripped me out of my dreamlike former life, took away all my worldly possessions and power, breaking me down to recreate me anew. I only realize now how selfish I was all those years back in the States, taking everything around me for granted, pouring all my energy into something as stupid as being the most popular girl in school. Especially because guess what? High school is over. And who would I be without my legions of simpering low-rung wannabes trailing after my every word and every move? Who would I be without my imaginary crown?

  As it turns out, I now know what I would be: happy.

  Crazy, right?

  Despite the impoverished conditions of our lifestyle here, and despite the fact that we’re technically in hiding, with danger potentially lurking around every corner, I’m finally starting to loosen up. Strange how it took losing everything to finally become a version of myself I kind of like.

  And even more strangely… I think Darios likes me, too.

  We don’t talk about our feelings. In fact, our emotions toward each other are just about the only topic we don’t talk about at all. He’s opened up to me about his dark, treacherous past, his childhood growing up in his native country of Georgia. He shares with me the cold, painful memories of being locked away in prison, and he’s spoken about his flashbacks to the Russo-Georgian War. After hearing every bloody, torturous detail of his life, I can’t help but feel a little ashamed of my own troubles. I always thought I had it bad, trying to claw my way to the top of the status quo.

  But to my surprise, Darios has been oddly understanding. Underneath that jagged exterior and cold manner of speech is a charming, shockingly gentle soul. He does his best not to belittle my struggles, reminding me that context does make a difference. Still, he also keeps me on my toes, making sure I am aware of just how lucky I have been in my life thus far. I’ve learned so much about the world, and as a result, I’ve learned a lot about myself.

  “Can we have caprese for dinner later?” I call out to Darios, who is talking to a vendor selling oranges. He glances over at me and winks, giving me a little nod even as he continues haggling with the mustachioed man in front of him.

  I smile back at him, reaching into my pocket to pull out a few euros. I lean over the display of tomatoes, picking out three plump, juicy ones and setting them in my little wicker basket.

  “Gracias, señor,” I tell the vendor, handing him the euros. When he tries to offer me change, I shake my head and say brightly, “Keep the change,” before walking away. Passing by Darios on my way, I give him a peck on the shoulder. He pulls me close and kisses the top of my head before I can get away, giggling.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he asks playfully. I bat at his arm and pull free, sticking my tongue out at him.

  “Just down the street. I want to go visit Ernesto and check out his mozzarella and serrano,” I reply breezily. I’m on a mission. I’ve already got some fantastic tomatoes, so next up is fresh cheese, dried ham, and some basil to go with the little glass bottle of local olive oil we have in the kitchen. My stomach growls just thinking about it.

  “Kargi,” Darios replies, and I’ve spent enough time around him to know that word means “okay.” I carry on down the narrow alley, turning a corner toward the little shop owned by a friend of Darios. He always has the best selection of cured meats and fresh, creamy cheeses.

  But just as I’m about to make my way onto the next street
in my journey, there’s a loud cough from behind me. Instinctively, I swivel around and stumble backward a step as I almost walk smack into a guy who has suddenly appeared directly behind me. He’s tall and broad-shouldered, dressed to the nines, and clearly several pay grades wealthier than anyone else in this barrio. He would almost be rather handsome in a rubbery, talk-show-host kind of way, if not for the cruel, smug look on his overly-tanned face.

  “Hola, señorita. Haces aquí?” he says, every syllable dripping with smarmy lewdness.

  “No te importa,” I shoot back curtly. He simply glares down his nose at me, the smile hardening on his lips as he reaches up to swipe his fingers back through his heavily-gelled black hair.

  “Cuida tus modales,” he growls, self-righteous fury flashing in his eyes. I see the warning signs lighting up like a beacon and I try to turn and run away, but he grabs me by the wrist and tugs me close, leaning down into my face. I can smell his hot breath on my cheek.

  “Leave me alone!” I cry out, not knowing how to say it in Spanish. The man laughs derisively.

  “Ahh, ella habla ingles,” he croons, “Just as I thought. American girl, sí?”

  “Get your hands off of me!” I protest, trying to jerk away from him. I yelp in terror as another man suddenly comes up behind me and wraps an arm around my neck. I immediately stand still, not wanting to push these guys any further. But I have to do something. So I do the only thing I can.

  “DARIOS!” I scream, with as much volume as I can muster before the second man claps a hand over my mouth.

  “Shut your pretty mouth,” hisses the first man. Then, he looks up at his accomplice and says, “Take her to my car and wait. I’ve got a little shopping to do. Make sure she’s, um, cómodo.”