Teach Me: A Bad Boy Professor Romance (The Me Series Book 1)

by Penelope Marshall

  Hunter kneeled next to him, laying his hand on his back. "Why?" he asked.

  Ari could only gurgle at this point. Hunter sat down next to him, and picked up Ari's body, cradling him in his arms. "Why, Ari?" he whispered.

  Ari didn't answer as his eyes closed for the last time. I stood there paralyzed, not knowing what to say to comfort Hunter. He had lost his friend because of me, and the guilt was eating me alive.

  After a few moments, he looked up at me. "I'm gonna kill that muthafucker!"

  "No! Let's just go."

  "There is nowhere to go. He's going to keep coming. Don't you see?"

  I shook my head as the thought of having to see Rez again frightened me to the core. He laid Ari's body on the ground, and walked back into the house, coming back out with keys and his cell phone.

  "What are you doing?" I asked.

  "Calling, Riley. I need guns. Get in the car," he ordered, holding the phone up to his ear as he unlocked the car doors.

  Slowly, I walked past Ari's body, contemplating the impact of my decisions on the lives of others. My parents, Ari, and now Hunter, had put their lives on the line. How could I justify all this death for one life? One insignificant life.

  "C'mon, Celeste," Hunter called from the car.

  REDEMPTION

  The drive over the Coronado Bridge toward North Island was a short one. The water below was calm in comparison to the chaos we were entrenched in. We pulled into a parking lot in front of a big gray concrete building hidden behind some boutiques off the main drag. You would have never known it was there if you weren't looking for it.

  "Where are we?" I asked.

  "Citadel," he said, stepping out of the car.

  "Should I come?"

  "Yes."

  I stepped out of the car, and followed him through the heavily secured metal door, where Hunter had to enter a code, place his thumb over a small holographic screen, and have a retinal scan before the door clicked open. The security was impressive. Fort Knox could've been secure in this building. The minute I walked in, and the door locked behind me, I immediately let my guard down. I felt safe behind Citadel's fortified walls. Who wouldn't?

  We were greeted by a beautiful woman with blonde hair pulled back into a tight bun, dressed in a tight, sharply pressed, black, pencil skirt, with a white chiffon short-sleeved blouse. Her look was finished off with a pair of thick dark-rimmed glasses which hid her striking hazel eyes.

  "Hello, I'm Riley," she said, holding out her hand to me.

  I shook her hand. "I'm Celeste."

  Hunter chimed in. "I need some guns Ri—"

  "Already having them loaded into your trunk," she interrupted.

  "And I need—"

  "I have a room already ready for her."

  "Is there—"

  "No, there is nothing else you could need that I haven't thought of," she said with a grin.

  I was impressed, and I wondered if, in another world, I could be her?

  "What did Jackson say about me taking on Torello?"

  "What does he always say?" she laughed.

  He nodded. "Right."

  I was curious. "Wait. What does he say?"

  "Don't get dead," a deep voice came from behind me.

  I glanced over my shoulder to a tall, older man, with flowing salt and pepper hair and a matching goatee. Although he was older, he still looked like he could take on Torello, and his men, all by himself.

  He held his hand out. "I'm Jackson, the owner of all of this," he said, motioning around the building.

  I shook his hand. "Celeste," I replied, still in awe of his imposing presence.

  "I can see why Hunter is willing to fight the mob for you," he said with a wink and a smile.

  "That's enough flirting, Jackson," Hunter chimed in.

  "Flirting? I would never," Jackson said, pressing the back of my hand to his lips.

  "Let me show you to your room, Celeste," Riley interrupted.

  "No. I want to go with, Hunter."

  "You can't go with Hunter. You'll get yourself killed," Riley said, looking to Jackson for help.

  "I'm already dead. At least this way I can watch Torello die, too. I need this," I said, earnestly looking to Jackson for approval.

  Riley shifted her gaze over to Jackson, who nodded.

  "Okay, I guess we should at least get you a vest," Riley said.

  "Jackson, what about Ari's body? It's laying in the middle of my driveway," Hunter asked.

  "That's been taken care of," Jackson replied.

  "I appreciate it," Hunter said.

  "We don't need any questions; that's for sure. Riley took care of it the minute you called," Jackson said.

  "Please take good care of him?" Hunter asked Riley.

  "Of course, although I don't see why. He tried to kill you," Riley said, shaking her head as she fitted me with a Kevlar vest she had produced out of thin air.

  "Where did you get this?" I asked, holding my arms up as she strapped me in.

  "It's my job," Riley replied with a wink.

  "He was my brother. I just want him taken care of," Hunter replied.

  "Are you going to need a team?" Jackson asked.

  "No. I don't wanna drag anyone else into this. I'll take care of it."

  Jackson walked over to me, laying his hand on my shoulder. "Take care of him. He's my best."

  "I'll try," I replied, worried I wouldn't be able to keep my word.

  "I have other business. Hope to see you two later. Riley, you're with me," Jackson called.

  "Yes, sir," Riley replied, turning, and walking down the hall with Jackson.

  "They are certainly a pair," I said.

  "They're the reason Citadel gets all the government contracts. They're always one step ahead of everybody," Hunter said, walking toward the exit.

  I turned and followed him out the door.

  HUNTER

  "You need to stay in the car," I said, driving over the bridge.

  "No. I want to go in."

  "I can't do what I have to do, and think about keeping you safe at the same time. It's gonna get us both killed," I shifted my gaze from the road, looking deeply into her eyes, her need for revenge apparent.

  She turned toward the window, shaking her head. I knew she was mad.

  "Where do I need to go, Celeste?"

  She didn't speak the rest of the way, only pointing a few moments before I needed to turn right and left.

  "I know you're mad," I replied.

  "You don't know how I feel."

  "I promise. I'll kill him for the both of us."

  "I want him to suffer, and you won't make him suffer. You'll just kill him."

  "You don't know what I'm gonna do, baby girl," I said, taking a corner too fast, my back wheels sliding across the intersection, leaving a trail of rubber and smoke.

  "We're here," she said, pointing at an old dilapidated restaurant.

  "All that money and this is where this asshole hides?" I asked.

  She nodded.

  Parking in the alley, I pulled out two Beretta 92's from the trunk, attaching a suppressor to each one. Riley always thought of everything. I stuck a mag in each side pocket, and shut the trunk, looking through the back window at Celeste.

  I nodded at her as I placed each gun in my shoulder holster. She glared at me, and I knew I was in for a heap of trouble for not letting her come when I got back to the car.

  Rounding the corner, I walked right up to the two men guarding the door. I pulled my guns out of my holster and shot both of them in their foreheads before they even had a chance to think about pulling their weapons out. They fell to the ground like a ton of bricks.

  The screaming from inside began, and a flurry of women, young and old, began to scurry from inside the restaurant. My head was clear, using my training to drown out the sounds of their screams. I was laser focused on the task at hand—making sure Torello couldn't hurt anyone else, ever again especially Celeste.

  A large mus
cular man, wearing a tattered gray shirt jumped up from behind the bar, holding a rifle, aiming it directly at me. I aimed the gun at him, firing a single round at his throat, the blood splattering on the dirty aquarium behind him. His finger must have been on the trigger because he let off one shot before falling back behind the bar.

  The next attempt at my life was a knife careening toward my head, which I snatched out of mid-air, quickly returning it to its sender. The knife zipped through the air finding rest in his left eye. He stood there for a bit, maybe out of shock, or maybe the adrenaline which still coursed through his body kept him from falling dead to the ground. Either way, by the time I reached him, all I had to do was push him over with one finger, and he fell dead on the round wooden table next to him.

  One last lackey jumped out from behind a wall with an AR-15, spraying the scene with bullets. I didn't even try to dodge his bullets or waver in my approach toward the door to Torello's office, and with all that heavy artillery, he missed.

  How did he miss?

  I aimed at his arm, then shot, causing him to drop his trigger finger from the gun. I fired another round at his chin, and he dropped to one knee, screaming like a little girl. He raised the gun to me one last time, but I shot him in the mouth before he could fire a shot. He flew back, his arms and legs sprawled out on the dirty, sticky floor.

  I kicked the door open, and there sat the man himself, in a comfy leather office chair, and an Uzi pointed right at me.

  "Torello," I said.

  "You got my property?"

  "I have Celeste," I said, sitting in the chair situated in front of his desk, still aiming my guns at him.

  "Like I said, my property."

  "I would say we could work this out, but by the looks of that Uzi, I'd say you had your heart set on keeping her. Am I right?"

  "You are pretty observant."

  "So I guess we're stuck at the proverbial impasse."

  A shot rang out from behind me, a bullet zipped by my ear, followed by a bright red dot which formed in the middle of Torello's forehead. He looked at me, his brown eyes glazed over as he took short quick breaths. A single stream of blood escaped from the hole, cascading between his eyes, and over the bridge of his nose, dripping onto the desk.

  "No, we're not," a woman's voice came from behind me.

  I didn't have to turn around. I knew she had defied my orders and had come in to exact her revenge. Torello's breaths slowed, but I could see his finger was still fixed on the trigger.

  The moment stopped, as I watched him try to squeeze the small piece of metal to eject a bullet or two from his gun. Just then, another shot rang out, this one propelling Torello's body and the chair toward the wall.

  She fired at him again. I turned to look at her; the tears streaming from her eyes as she continued to fire the gun until its clip was fully unloaded, and even a few pumps after the clip was empty.

  I stood next to her, laying my hand over the trembling gun as I slowly pulled it away.

  I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her close. "Shhh…"

  She sobbed into my chest uncontrollably as I walked her out of the restaurant and toward my car. I pulled out my phone and dialed Riley.

  "Hunter," she answered in a low monotone voice.

  "I need a clean-up crew."

  "How bad?"

  "Remember the lobby in that Syrian hotel last summer?"

  "That bad?"

  "Worse."

  "Alright, I'll let Jackson know you didn't die. Just get out of there. I already have your coordinates from your phone. I'll take care of everything."

  "I'm headed to Phoenix. I'll be back for the op next week."

  "Take your time. Actually no, don't take your time. I need you back for that mission."

  "Do you ever take time off, Riley?"

  "I wouldn't know what to do with myself."

  "That's why you're the best."

  "I know," she said, hanging up the phone.

  I smiled, shaking my head as I stuffed the phone back in my pocket. I unlocked the car door and helped her in, but before I could close it, she looked up at me standing over her and parted her lips.

  "I owe you everything."

  "You don't owe me anything."

  I closed her door and circled the car to get to the driver's seat. As soon as I sat down, she leaned over and grabbed my face, crashing her lips onto mine.

  She pulled away, smiling, still gazing into my eyes. "You know I don't have to go to Phoenix anymore," she whispered.

  I grinned as I pressed on the gas, burning rubber as the car zipped down the street. "I know."

  BROTHERS

  DETECTIVE MORRISON

  An hour later…

  "So you think this was a rival mob hit?" I asked, leaning over the body, peering directly into his, still open, eyes. "Who killed you, Rez?"

  "You think he's gonna answer you, Detective?" the officer nearest the door asked.

  I chuckled. "Shit, I hope not. We'd need a priest instead of a coroner in here."

  The officer snorted out a laugh.

  "Looks like someone did us a favor. This is gonna put a big dent in the drug running game in SoCal for a while."

  I was still staring into his eyes when the sound of a woman's sharp voice zipped in from outside the office. "I don't care who you are. I'm above your pay grade. Now let me through."

  I walked around from behind the desk, leaving the body to investigate the commotion. Coming toward me was a beautiful, tall, slender woman, wearing the tightest official skirt I'd ever seen.

  "Let her through," I said, motioning to the officer, who kept trying to insert himself between her and the crime scene.

  Passing through the threshold of the door, she flashed a badge then threw it in her purse. "I'll be taking over this investigation."

  "Wait. Who are you?"

  "Is that a question you're willing to lose your job over?" she asked in a nonchalant, yet threatening way.

  "I'm going to need to see your badge again," I requested.

  She turned to me, slowly nearing as she spoke. "If I have to put my freshly manicured hand back in my purse to pull out a badge that I've already shown you once, I'll have you out of that thirty-dollar suit and into an itchy polyester uniform so fast…"

  "Okay, okay. I got it," I said, holding my hands up in surrender.

  "Thank you," she said smugly as she turned and walked toward the body.

  "What do you think happened here?" I asked.

  She straightened her posture and glared at me. "Are you still here?"

  "Fuck, don't shoot."

  I watched as she pulled out her phone and pressed on one button for a second or two. If she had taken the time to reach back into her purse for the phone, she could've at least pulled her badge back out, but I wasn't going to ask again.

  "Jackson," she said, pausing for a moment. "Send everyone to clean."

  My brows furrowed as I pondered her words. "What do you mean 'clean'?

  She didn't even bother to look at me this time.

  What a disrespectful woman.

  But her arrogance was pretty enticing to a guy like me.

  I took in a breath. "At least tell me what your name is?"

  She banged her palm against the desk, narrowly missing the pool of blood. "It's Riley. Do you need a fucking blood sample to go with that?"

  Damn, I think I love this girl.

  HUNTER

  Five weeks later…

  Dropping off all my equipment at Citadel after having just come back from another week long op in the Sudan, I couldn't wait to get home and get my hands on Celeste. She was everything that every other woman wasn't—perfect for me.

  After killing Rez, she had nowhere to go, so I offered her my home, but what I wanted to give her was something more real. After all, guys like me didn't get second chances at love—or so I thought.

  Tapping on the large round glass table, I impatiently waited to debrief with Jackson, but before that could hap
pen Riley walked into the briefing room with a look on her face I had never seen before—terror.

  "What's wrong?" I asked, shooting up from my chair, immediately going into high alert.

  Riley wasn't the type of woman who looked scared. She was the type of woman who ate scared for breakfast, so I knew it was something bad.

  "I just got off the phone with Torello," she said in a low, monotone voice.

  I chuckled. "Quit fuckin' with me, Riley. We killed Torello. You cleaned it up yourself," I said, sitting back down, relieved nothing was wrong.

  "Not Rez. Ryker," she said, walking around the table while pressing some buttons on her phone.

  "Who the fuck is Ryker?"

  "His brother," she said, handing me her phone.

  "Brother?" My brows furrowed as I took in her body language. "What's going on?"

  "Watch this," she said, shoving her phone into my hands.

  I looked down, to a video of a man, a younger version of Rez, yelling and waving a gun in the air. My eyes narrowed when I saw who was sitting behind him, bound, and gagged on the floor.

  My eyes shot up from the phone to Riley. "What the fuck?"

  "Turn the volume up. He called right after he sent this."

  "How'd he get your number?"

  "These people have connections, Hunter. Obviously a lot of them."

  Clicking on the volume button on the side of her phone, the man's voice grew louder, searing through the cold, stark room.

  "— that was my big brother you fuckin' killed. Eye for an eye, that's what the bible says! Your bitch is about to lose hers and a whole lot more —" the man in the video screamed before I clicked the pause button mid-sentence.

  "Riley, what the fuck am I looking at?" I asked, unable to formulate a coherent thought as I focused in on Celeste's bloodied and bruised face. "Why is Celeste…where…what the fuck?" I said, pressing play to catch the rest of his sentence.

  "— meet me if you want her back in one piece," the man continued.

  Riley grabbed the phone from me. "We're going to get her back," she said, lodging a tendril of hair behind her ear while clearing her throat. "He already set up a meet with you."

  I brushed by her toward the door. "There's no 'we'. She's my responsibility."

  "We all care about Celeste, Hunter. Where are you going?"