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I didn’t even want to come here.
I want out of this goddamn life.
But when Vito Franzese called up with the second half of my password, I knew I had to come unless I wanted to cause problems.
I’m not scared of Vito or his family. If it came to it, I’d go to war with them and make them pay for crossing me, but that’d mean losing my home, possibly Chopper—losing everything I’ve worked so hard to build.
So I’ll keep the peace, for now.
I glance around the bar, empty in the late afternoon sun. It reeks of liquor and sweat and cigar smoke. Dust particles shift in the air.
Finally, the door to the kitchen bursts open, and Vito and his goons come stalking through. I know them all by name, but I never bother to say them or even think them. They all dress the same and act the same, completely subservient to their boss’s son, now that their boss is in the slammer.
Vito walks over, his face red, his eyes glassy. He’s almost as tall as I am and that’s saying something. My contacts on the street tell me he’s addicted to steroids, among other drugs, which accounts for his overstuffed look.
His men take up a table in the corner of the room and Vito drops into the seat next to me.
“Afternoon, Ryland,” he says.
“Vito,” I say, with a short nod.
“Lovely day, eh?”
“Sure,” I say.
“But I heard it’s supposed to rain later.”
He grins widely, flashing a gold tooth at the back of his mouth. His father would never indulge in something like that. But Vito is nothing like his old man. He’s brash and unpredictable and downright insane.
“I’ve got a package I need delivering,” he murmurs.
Package is code for a person, and deliver is code for killed.
I sigh. I don’t want to deal with this shit.
“Is that so?” I say, clenching my fist under the bar, tension moving its way up my arm and right into my damn skull, my temples pulsing.
“Yeah,” he grunts.
I really don’t like his tone. I imagine what it’d be like to smash his face against the bar, to make it explode like a watermelon.
“She’s seen too much,” he says. “Here.”
I flinch at the word she.
He knows I don’t take on contracts for women. His father understood that.
He reaches into his jacket and pulls out an envelope, laying it on the bar.
A thousand savage instincts rise in me, each of them aimed toward causing this bastard the maximum possible harm.
I open the envelope and glance inside, and then my life changes.
My world shatters.
I stare at the photos of the woman, my throat going tight as I move my callused fingers over the polaroid.
My fingers are too savage and hard-worked to touch a woman as beautiful as this, with her majestic curves and her cascading auburn hair, with her full red cheeks and her big brown eyes.
The photo was taken from across the street, as the woman was helping a sick-looking elderly lady toward a car.
My eyes burn into her as I cycle through the photos, my chest clamping tightly, my balls swelling with the need to put my seed inside of her.
She’s the one. All this time, all this searching, and I’ve finally found her.
I stopped believing it would happen.
But it has. It is. It’s happening right now.
Vito drops a driver’s license on the bar. I glance down at the photo, staring into her eyes, at the slight smile at the corner of her lip.
She’s twenty-one years old, which is exactly half my age.
I wonder if that’ll bother her.
But it can’t. Whatever happens, I need to possess this woman.
No, I already own this woman.
She just doesn’t know it yet.
I clench my jaw as I devour the sight of her, my body roaring at me to go and find her, to find her now, to claim her in every way a man can claim a woman.
She belongs to me…
And this motherfucker wants me to kill her.
“She’s gotta go,” Vito says matter of fact, as though that’ll be the end of it. “Make her disappear, Ryland. We don’t want a body on this one.”
“Is that her mother?” I ask, nodding at the photo.
Vito shrugs and takes my whisky, knocking it back.
I resist the urge to glare at him. Vito is notoriously sensitive. He’s a fucking idiot, truth be told, a man who doesn’t know how to control his emotions. There’s nothing more pathetic than a man like that.
“Yeah, she’s got cancer or some shit,” he grunts. “At least, that’s the sob story she tried to give me when she stuck her nose where it ain’t wanted. You got her address on the license. You got her name. We’ll pay you double your usual rate for this one.”
I run my finger over the photo again, my hand trembling.
No, motherfucker, I want to roar. If you think I’m going to hurt this woman, you’re living in a fantasy world. I’d die – I’d kill – before I let anything happen to her.
