The Hitman's Property (A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Book 2) Page 5

  It was then that I realized I would rather die than give her up. I saw Tess being pulled from the car, legs kicking, and arms flailing. I saw her being delivered to Zharkov and saw Zharkov’s slimy hands all over my woman. My mind recoiled from the thought of it. I would have died a million fucking times to stop that from happening.

  “Because I love her, that’s fucking why!” I had screamed before I knew what I was going to say. My words shocked me as much as it must have shocked them. But it was true, I realized. Despite the craziness of it, I loved Tess; I loved her like I had never loved anybody else, not even my little brother. The force of the realization washed over me. My breathing increased, my heartbeat pounded, and my head pulsed. I could give a fuck that Tess, and I have only known each for a short period of time but that was my woman, and I would kill anyone who had a problem with it.

  “Love?” Samson let out a squealing laugh, leaning forward and placing his hands on my knees. “You hear that Boss? The fellas are going to have a field day once they hear about The Animal falling in love with a whore!”

  Boss looked at me like he had never seen me before; it was the same way that a zookeeper would look at an angry gorilla who suddenly became kind, holding a human child to his chest instead of crushing it. His eyes were wide, and his mouth was open in awe.

  Samson laughed on and on, and I pressed against the restraints, the zip-ties digging so hard into my wrists that blood poured down my hands, beading on my fingertips and dripping to the floor.

  “Love her?” Samson panted, coughing out another laugh. “Love Zharkov’s little whore? Love Zharkov’s fucking slut?”

  “Quiet!” Boss commanded, and Samson fell silent immediately, standing up straight and wiping a tear from his eye. His face was red, and he clamped his mouth shut, trying to contain his laughter. Boss’ eyes turned to steel. “That’s enough, Samson.”

  I glared at Samson as he tried to contain his laughter.

  “A man like you shouldn’t bother with love, Liam,” Boss said. “Look what it’s done to you. Look at the mess it’s gotten you into. Love, for a man like you, is a waste of time. Hell, your own father never loved you. Just forget about the bitch and find somebody else. Now, tell us where she is!” He spat the last words, his full lips trembling, and his jowls quivering.

  “No,” I breathed, as I strained and strained against the zip-ties. My arms were bulging, and the muscles in my shoulders were becoming massive and tense. I could feel the zip-ties cutting deeper into my flesh. As much as I was straining to break free, I wouldn’t be surprised if the zip-ties cut down to the bone. Pain flared up my arm, but I ignored it and kept pushing.

  “Very well,” Boss muttered. He pointed at the wall behind me: the wall which was covered with torture tools. “See if you can make him talk, Samson. I’ll be upstairs enjoying some Jack Daniels.”

  Boss turned and went toward the wooden staircase. The creaking noise sounded as he waddled up to the door. He pushed the basement door open and was about to walk into the light, the music, and the laughter when he peered down between rafters and said: “You know, Liam, your father was right about you after all. You are a worthless waste of space.”

  With that, Boss left, and the basement door slammed behind him.

  I wished that I could say Boss’ words didn’t hurt, but they did. They hurt a damn lot. First my father, and now Boss—my surrogate father—had pushed me away. Apart from Tess, I was alone. But I would even lose her soon, too; I wouldn’t be able to appreciate her breathtaking beauty or loving compassion when I was dead.

  “You got it, Boss,” Samson said. “Time to get to work.”

  Samson walked past the chair and to the wall. I heard metal clinking against metal and guessed that he’d picked up the cudgel: a baton of wood stuck through with pieces of broken metal, made for crushing bone and caving-in chests. I pressed even harder against the zip-ties and thought that I could feel them leaving deep marks in my flesh. I imagined I could see the thin black strips squeezing through my skin, through my muscle, and laying taut against my exposed bone. Knowing that probably wasn’t the case did nothing to displace the image.

  Samson returned into the view holding the cudgel by his side. “If it means anything, Liam,” he said, “I don’t want to do this.”

  “But you’ll do it anyway,” I said, “because you’re a fucking coward.”

  Samson shrugged. “If I’m a coward, so were you up until a few days ago when you decided to go against the family.” He hefted the cudgel, resting the head in his opposite hand. “I’m just baffled,” he shook his head. “Do you really love her? Like, love her, Liam? Boss is right, you know. Men like us shouldn’t love, especially not other men’s women.”

  “She’s nobody else’s,” I snarled. “She’s mine.”

  Pain shot up my arm in streams, pain so sharp and potent that I thought I might pass out.

  “Oh, well. Not my problem.” Samson said, taking a step forward and lifting the cudgel high over his head, ready to smash it into my shoulder.

  The pain felt like my wrists were being gnawed on by pit bulls as the sharp razor-like teeth bit into my skin. My muscles bulged more than they ever had in my life, every vein standing on the edge, every tendon was taut and tight.

  “Sam—son! Don’t do this!” I roared with all my might.

  “Boss’ orders.”

  “Sam!”

  Suddenly, there was a snap! And the zip-ties finally broke, freeing my wrist, and dropping to the floor to the pile of blood. Samson brought the cudgel down, and I threw my hand up, my wrists scarred and bleeding, and caught it. Metal smacked into my palm, and piercing pain shot up my arm, reverberating throughout my body.

  “What the fuck!” Samson cried, trying to pull the cudgel back.

  I held the cudgel tight and looked up into Samson’s eyes. “You’re a dead man,” I grunted, and yanked the cudgel from his grip.

  Samson fell forward as he tried to hold onto the cudgel, right into my lap. I threw my head forward and bit into Samson’s neck, blood filling my mouth, mixing with my own blood, metallic and sharp. I bit down harder until I felt my teeth sink into the harsh texture of Samson’s flesh. Samson’s body writhed, his hands flailed, his legs kicked, but I just kept biting. Call her a whore again, I thought, clamping down my teeth harder. She’s mine!

  There was a bloody, wet squelch and something in Samson’s neck snapped. His body slumped down, onto my knees. I pushed him to the floor. Dropping the cudgel, I reached down and grabbed the rope that tied me to the metal chair. I gripped near the knot, and then pulled as hard as I could. My muscled arms strained, and the rope snapped. Then I reached down between my legs, to my ankles, and hooked a finger around the zip-ties. Pushing my legs in the opposite direction, I pulled with my finger.

  The zip-ties snapped.

  Soaked in blood, I rose to my feet and stepped over Samson. Bending down, I picked up the cudgel then reached into the back of Samson’s jeans and took out the silver Desert Eagle pistol. The smell of blood and death was heavy in the air, and just when I was going to beat and smash his face into mush with the cudgel, I heard somebody heading toward the basement door from upstairs.

  I grunted with disappointment and quickly darted across the basement and crouched under the stairs, forcing my breathing to be quiet, ignoring the pain that burned all over my body.

  “What’s going on down there?”

  I recognized Quick-Toes’ voice, raised in worry.

  “Samson?” he ventured. “Samson, you alright man?”

  I crouched deeper into the shadows, holding the cudgel in one hand and the gun in another.

  6

  “Samson? Everything good down there, buddy?”

  Quick-Toes stopped at the top of the stairs and turned back into the Drunk Harpy. “Guys! I think something’s wrong!” I heard him shout.

  “Then go and check, idiot!” I heard Boss grunt back.

  I crouched in the darkness, like a panther waiting for h
is prey, pistol aimed up between the gaps in the steps.

  Quick-Toes muttered, “Fuck!” and he then began to hop down the stairs since he had taken a bullet to the leg. “Samson?” he called, the stairs creaking above me, the flaking wood falling on me like brown snowflakes.

  “Samson, is something wrong?” Quick-Toes, beanie pulled almost to his eyes, made it to the floor, eye-level with me, and then looked down at Samson.

  His eyebrows surged up. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they rose all the way past his forehead and into the air. He turned toward the door and cupped his hands around his mouth, ready to scream.

  I sprinted from the shadows, jumped through the air, and clotheslined him across the neck. Quick-Toes grunted and fell to the floor with a thud. He landed in a tight ball and then he stumbled as he tried to get back up but he failed miserably as I pinned him down with my boot.

  “Boss!” Quick-Toes breathed hollowly. “Ahhh! Ahhh!” I stepped on his neck, my boot digging into his flesh and cutting off his breathing.

  “I’m sorry, Quick-Toes,” I said, pressing my boot harder into the man’s neck. “You should have stuck to soccer.”

  Quick-Toes grabbed at the bottom hem of my black jeans, pulled at the laces of my boots, his legs quivering, the life writhing out of them. His eyes bulged out of his sockets as I kept pressing down on his neck, crushing his vertebrae.

  All I cared about now was getting my money back and getting back to Tess: about making sure my woman was safe. If I had to kill a thousand men to do that, I would. Nothing would stop me from getting back to her. I stomped ever harder on his neck, and Quick-Toes’ breathing became labored as he panted and began to fall into silent wheezes.

  After a moment, the life dimmed from his eyes. I had seen the life dim from the eyes of too many men to count, but as I killed Quick-Toes, I felt a pang I had never felt before. From this day on, I wouldn’t be able to claim that I was not a monster. An animal. I had killed a man who wanted to be a soccer player, who wanted to enjoy life, who wanted to break out of this hellish place and do something different. I had killed a man who was only here by sheer, desperate chance. But I couldn’t think like that now. I could only think of getting my money back and returning to Tess. She was all that mattered; my world had shrunk into crosshairs, and they were aimed at Tess.

  I lifted my boot from Quick-Toes’ neck and knelt down. Grabbing him by the feet, I dragged him across the floor to where Samson’s body lay sprawled on the ground before I dropped him down on top of his dead friend I took the cudgel and beat brutally on Samson’s head until I was satisfied. I wiped his blood from my face with the back my hand as I stood still and listened to hear if any of the Harpy crew heard the beatings. They didn’t.

  If anybody opened the door at the top of the stairs, they wouldn’t see the Quick-Toes and Samson’s dead bodies, and the light was too dim to properly see the flecks of blood that dripped from me wherever I walked. When the bodies were out of view, I returned to the shadows and crouched.

  A large of part of my job was waiting. Most men died in this game because they were impatient and they couldn’t sit still for more than five minutes. They got skittish before a job and started talking big like they were the biggest, badass bastard who had ever lived. And then they rushed into the battle without any plan and got their head blown off for their rashness. I, on the other hand, had never been like that. I was hotheaded and had anger issues, sure, but when it came to working, I knew better than to let it take me over. I knew better than to rush, charging, into battle without a plan. The killer who stayed alive was the smart killer, the killer who didn’t throw himself into his enemy’s line of sight.

  Upstairs, I could hear Smithie shout: “Where the hell did ’Toes go to, boys?” I could track the footsteps from the sound that they made through the ceiling and the dust that fell as he walked across the floor upstairs which and settled on the ground and on top of the crates of liquor. The basement door opened, a beam of square light resting on the floor, and Smithie called down the stairs: “Quick-Toes, you alright?”

  I held my breath and looked up through the gap in the stairs. From where I was, I could see Smithie’s legs, chin and not much else. But I knew what Smithie looked like. After all, last week we had been brothers-in-arms. Smithie was a stocky man with arms that dropped down almost to his knees. His chest was broad, and his muscles were large, but his legs were thin and reedy, giving him a top-sided look of a T-rex. He wore a tight navy suit with pants that were two inches too long, and a jacket that never fit correctly.

  “Liam,” he paused. “You’re free, aren’t you? You’ve killed Quick-Toes and Samson, huh?”

  I didn’t say anything, just held my breath, only breathing slowly and quietly out through my nose. With each breath, my battered nose hummed with pain. But I ignored the agony, ignored everything but the hunt. Just as a cheetah ignores plants with sharp leaves and thorns that cut into its fur as it stalks through the long grass, I disregarded the aches and pains that plagued my body. I was a hunter, now, and a hunter does not acknowledge pain. A hunter only recognizes the hunt.

  “Fuck!” Smithie growled. He turned into the Drunk Harpy. “Boys, he’s free! Liam’s fucking free!”

  “What!” I heard Boss roar, his voice shaking the ceiling, dust particles filling the basement. “How is he free? Samson! Samson!”

  The ceiling screamed in the effort now as the Harpy crew ran around picking up guns, cocking them, loading them with shells and bullets. I heard the sounds of guns loading, shotguns being pumped and bolt action rifles being loaded. Then the footsteps moved across the floor to the top of the staircase, until a group of men was standing at the top, all of them armed to the teeth, and ready to kill.

  The only one who was not at the top was Boss. I watched the dust fall from the ceiling as Boss’ heavy footsteps moved toward his office. There was the quiet sound of a door being locked, barely audible over the Harpy crew’s frantic breaths.

  Hide all you want, Boss, I thought. I’ll be coming for your head next.

  “Liam,” Smithie called down the stairs. “Liam, this is stupid, man. You’re outnumbered twenty to one. I know that you can hear me.”

  I smiled to himself. Smithie was exaggerating; and if he was exaggerating it was because he was shit-scared and wanted to play the puffer-fish, making himself bigger than he really was. I moved the Desert Eagle pistol slowly, carefully, aiming it up between the gap in the stairs, directly at the underside of Smithie’s chin.

  “You can’t get out of this alive, Liam, Give yourself up, and we’ll let you go. But go to war, and it’ll end with you dead. I promise you that.”

  Didn’t anybody ever tell you not to make promises you can’t keep? I thought.

  “Let’s just fucking get that bastard. He’s a rat and went against Boss!” I heard one of the men grunt from upstairs.

  “Yeah!” I heard another man laugh. “What are we waiting for? It’s one man!”

  “It’s The Animal,” I heard another man muttered, his voice strained. “It’s Liam the fucking Animal! That’s not just ‘one’ man!”

  “He’s still a man, ain’t he? He’ll bleed if we shoot him.”

  “Liam!” Smithie shouted. “This is your last chance!”

  “Is it?” I laughed like a madman, shouted loud enough so Smithie could hear where exactly the laughter was coming from.

  “What the fu—” Smithie looked down between his legs.

  I pulled the trigger.

  The Desert Eagle pistol fired, filling the basement with a whining, clanging noise and blotting all sound to my ears. The front of Smithie’s head wrenched away from the rest of him, flying into the air and splattering the wall, sliding down the wall like the Chinese food in the motel. The men who were grouped at the top of the stairs screamed as Smithie fell to his knees, fell forward, and toppled down the basement stairs like a sack of potatoes.

  “Where is he?” somebody breathed. “Where the hell is he? Where’s Lia
m?”

  “He’s a fucking ghost, man!” I heard another man shout out.

  “Get him! Somebody, stop him!”

  My ears rang, and the voices came to me as though through a long, narrow tunnel, but I kept the barrel of the gun poked up between the stairs.

  “Come on!” I growled.

  “Let’s just fucking rush him!” I heard one of them screamed shrilly. “Let’s just rush him and get it over with, damn it!”

  I bit down on my lip and kept the gun aimed. My hand was steady, as steady as a surgeon’s hand; and in many ways, it was a surgeon’s hand. What was I doing, if not rearranging the human anatomy? Sweat and blood flecked my body, making my skin glimmer, and my wrists were all dried blood and scabby flesh and deep gouges. But none of it distracted me. None of it moved me from my purpose.

  “Fine, fine,” I heard another man breathed. “One, two, three...”

  I stroked the trigger with my forefinger, the metal cool and reassuring against my fingertip. The ringing sound abated somewhat, but there was still a dull ringing in my ears, cushioning my hearing. My legs were parted, ready to absorb the kick of the Eagle, and my dark brown eyes were narrowed, focused and deadly.

  “I ain’t going first!” somebody cried out.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “You go first!”

  “Pussies!” I let out a malicious laugh. “Come on!” I roared the last words like a lion, my voice strong and fierce. Smoke drifted up from the end of the gun barrel into my nose, and up my nostrils.

  One man stepped forward, a man I only vaguely recognized. I aimed for his neck and pulled the trigger. I could see the blood and goo spray outward onto the walls of the staircase. The man gurgled, reached up and touched the cavernous hole in his neck, brought his hands to his eyes, and looked at his bloody fingertips as if the bleeding was perfectly normal. “Shit,” he muttered, collapsing face-forward down the stairs; brown snowflakes drifted in the air around me, and a drop of blood fell between the stairs and landed on my forehead. My ears rang higher in pitch, and I could hear the men shouting, but their voices were far away.