Hitman's Revenge (a Forbidden Bad Boy Romance) (6 page)

“Well I’m coming for you, motherfucker,” I said to the empty room, seething as I stared down at the body on my kitchen floor. It was game on now and I was going to win.

“
M
ay
I present to you the graduating class of Lincoln High!”

Jack watched as the bevy of caps was thrown into the air, unable to fight the grin that spread across his face. Hazel had done it; she had graduated high school. He had made it back just in time to see her Salutatorian speech, surprised as she thanked not only her father but also him for helping her get to where she was today.

It had been nearly a year since he had visited, ever since that one night on the side of the road when they shared a kiss that shouldn’t have happened. He’d dropped her off at the house and roared off into the night, never looking back, throwing himself into his work as he tried to forget the softness of her lips against his or the way she had professed her love for him, drunkenly, of course. Some part of him hoped that she hadn’t remembered any of it… but others desperately wanted all the things she’d said to be true.

The crowd started to disperse, and Jack pushed away from the tree where he was standing, scanning the horde of people for Nixon and Hazel. While he knew he should leave, he wanted to see the shininess of her eyes and the proud look on the old man’s face as he saw what his daughter had accomplished. Spotting them near the exit, Jack strode over and watched the range of emotions play over Hazel’s face before she launched herself at him.

No, she hadn’t forgotten anything at all, he thought, secretly pleased.

Damn, she was beautiful. Her eyes glistened and her long hair played around her face as he allowed her to wrap herself around him. He felt the softness against his skin and tamped down the want to have her, knowing that Hazel was completely off-limits to him. Nixon would kill Jack if he touched his baby girl in any other way that wasn’t fraternal. Still, he was glad that she’d grown up; at least now it didn’t feel so weird lusting after her… He was a man with needs, after all.

“I knew you would come,” she said breathlessly as she squeezed his neck tightly, her lips grazing his skin. “I knew you wouldn’t miss this.”

“Hell no,” he chuckled softly, fighting the urge to bury his hands in her hair. Instead he let his hands dangle at his side as she pulled back, her shining eyes looking into his. “Did you hear my speech?”

“Every bit of it,” he replied, reaching into his coat pocket to extract a small box. “Here, happy graduation, Hazel.” Her eyes went round as she took the box, opening it with a gasp. The delicate chain held a perfect diamond pendant, and as she pulled it out of the box, the light caught the diamond, causing it to sparkle in the sun. “Oh my god, it’s beautiful.”

“That must have cost you a pretty penny,” Nixon remarked as he came over to Jack, slapping him on the back. “Business must be going well?” Jack shrugged as Hazel clasped it around her neck, the swell of pride rushing through his system as she smiled at him. He wanted to buy her a ton of diamonds if it meant he’d receive that smile every time, but their lives were too different now. It was too dangerous for him to be around her.

“I’ve got to go,” he said, earning a surprised look from both of them. This was getting too uncomfortable; his nerves were too much on edge. “I just wanted to give you that.”

“B-but we are going out to eat,” Hazel stammered, a hurt look crossing her face. “Please come, Jack. It will be like old times.”

Jack looked into her beautiful face and could feel the yes on his tongue, just so he could spend a few more hours in her company. But a few hours were too long now in his line of work. He’d already had to decline two jobs just to make the trip back home.

“No,” he said, looking at Nixon. “I can’t.” Nixon nodded, understanding flaring in his eyes and Jack turned to walk away, his feet feeling like they were encased in lead the entire way. She would never understand that he was trying to protect her from his world, keeping her safe from the harm that could and would follow him.

“Jack!”

Turning around, he caught a flying Hazel in his arms once more, wrapping his arms around her this time.

Nixon be damned.

Jack was going to hold her at least once when she was in front of him. It had been too long since he had seen her; he felt like a normal person, though inside Jack knew he wasn’t fit to be in her company. She was going to go on and do great things in her life, and he was a killer, plain and simple. They just didn’t mesh.

“Thank you,” she said against his chest, her warmth warming his soul. Her closeness made him uneasy as he tried to decide between throwing her over his shoulder and pushing her away. Hazel was the only real thing in his life, the only shimmer of good left in his dark soul. Damn, he should never have come. “Thank you for my necklace. I will wear it every day.”

Jack inhaled her scent, trying to memorize it for the future, and forced himself to let her go, chucking her chin like he had when they were younger.

“You do that. Goodbye, Hazel,” he said, knowing if he truly didn’t want any harm to come to her that this goodbye was forever. He turned and walked away, his heart heavy with regret.

It was for the best.

“
Y
ay
! I win again. I beat you, Jack!” Hazel smiled triumphantly as she slowly counted the pile of cards once more before presenting her matches to him. She loved having a friend on hand to play with whenever she wanted. Every time they played she beat him, and nobody was better than she was at Go Fish.

“Good job, Hazel, you got me again,” he grinned, helping her stack the cards in a neat pile. Jack could always stack the cards so well. When she tried, they ended up all over the floor, and she was forced to clean them up once more. Daddy let her get away with a lot of things, but a dirty room wasn’t one of them. Everything was easier now that Jack had come to their house, helping her with all sorts of things she used to have to do by herself. Plus, he played with her.

She watched, enthralled, as he stood and stretched his arms over his head, a yawn escaping his lips. Jack was tired a lot lately, spending lots of time in the basement with Daddy. She had tried to go down once, but her daddy had caught her and forced her to return to her room to watch her movie. She wanted to see what was downstairs that kept Jack so busy. “Jack?” she asked.

“Yeah?” he replied, looking down at her with a smile. She twisted a lock of her hair around her finger, biting her lip in the process. “What does Daddy make you do in the basement?”

“Aww, don’t worry your head about that,” he said, reaching over to ruffle her hair. “Hey, I’m going to fix a sandwich. You want one?”

She nodded, it was always the same answer but grabbed his outstretched hand, wrapping her own around his.

As they moved to the doorway, she forgot all about the basement, content to be just holding her friend’s hand.

P
ain
.

It was everywhere, in every joint and crevice of my body. I tried to move away from it, but the damn thing kept following me, haunting me and destroying me, inch by inch. With a groan I opened my eyes, adjusting to the dimly lit room where I had spent the last few days in literal hell.

Or was it weeks? I didn’t know. I had lost all track of time, no outside window to let me know whether it was day or night.

The same four walls greeted me as I sat up on the bed gingerly, rotating my jaw to ease the stiffness out of it. There was also no mirror for me to see my reflection, and for that I was grateful. I was sure I looked horrible, a bloom of bruises and cuts, my hair knotted and pasted against my head. I hadn’t had a real bath since that night that I was taken. A washcloth was all I had been given to clean myself off.

The image of my dad flitted across my mind, and I felt the fresh well of tears pool in my eyes, knowing in my heart that he was gone. My dad was dead.
Don’t think about it, you need to stay strong.
There was nothing that was going to bring him back, nothing that was going to allow me to hear his voice or smell the pungent odor of his favorite cigar that he smoked in the evenings after supper. I was no longer going to hear him singing in the garage, so off-key at times that I was forced to put my headphones on to drown him out. Now I would give anything to hear his raspy voice again.

Wiping a hand over my face, I looked about my cell, fighting the urge to beat my fists against the wall in grief. The first night had been the hardest. I had fought my captor hard, screaming at the top of my lungs, rendering my throat raw like sandpaper, hoping that someone would hear my cries.

But no one had come.

He had punched me hard in the stomach, and I’d blacked out from the pain, winded and unable to breathe, and when I’d woken up I was lying on the floorboard of a vehicle, my hands and feet bound, with no chance of escape. With stiff muscles, I had ridden like that for hours, unable to properly move, before it had stopped and I was transferred to a boat. The stench of the river was pungent and heady.

My captor, ugly fucker that he was, allowed me to relieve myself in the bathroom before tying me to the base of a fixed table in the galley and then leaving me there, alone. I had tried, oh I had tried, to get loose, the weight of my dad’s death gripping me tightly and fueling my anger. I wanted to kill them for ending his life, make them hurt like I was hurting. But they never gave me the chance.

Once off the boat, I was transferred to a cell, where I remained, awaiting my fate. Why they hadn’t just killed me, too, I didn’t know. I’d seen their faces, spat in them, but instead of putting me out of my misery, they brought me here.

They visited me each night to leer and try and touch at me as they gave me my evening meal.

“Keep still. If you fight, you will only make it worse for yourself,” the thug grunted, his hands feeling up my body like I belonged to him. I wanted to retch as his fingers snaked in between my clamped legs, hunting for what he wanted.

“Get off me!” I screamed, desperately trying to get closer to him so I could bite his fucking face off. No one touched me there without my permission. That sacred area was saved for one person, and one person only.

All of a sudden a second set of footsteps entered the basement-like cell, and my stomach plummeted. I wouldn’t be able to hold off two of them. They’d strip me bare, one holding me down while the other fucked his way into me.

“No!” I yelled, even louder than before as the other man approached. The first thug grinned a sickening smile at me, pleased that he now had help. But all of sudden an almighty crack deafened my ears and made them ring, cutting off my scream as a red mist coated my face.

The thug’s hands went limp and dropped to his side, and the rest of him fell with a thump to the floor.

I fell silent and looked at the man holding the gun, not understanding, sending him a questioning look. “No one but the boss is allowed to touch you. He was warned.”

I remained motionless as the man grabbed hold of my attacker’s foot and dragged him out the cell. At least that was one less person I had to worry about in this hell-hole.

One less person I’d have to kill. My thoughts flashed to my dad. Why hadn’t he trained me the same way he’d trained Jack? Maybe he knew deep down I wasn’t a killer, but he could at least given me a fighting chance. Rage swelled in my belly as I wiped away the remnants of blood and gray matter from my already filthy shirt. There was no use going over
what if’s
. I had to figure out a way out with just the tools I had. All I had was a pretty smile and a decent body; the thug had given me an idea. Flesh would be my currency, and maybe, just maybe I’d get out.

Because I certainly didn’t have my protector anymore. I couldn’t rely on Jack to come save me like he had when we were kids. For all I knew he was gone, too.

Don’t think like that, he’s alive, he’s coming!

Flexing my arms, I walked over to the sink, running the cool water to wash my face and neck. There was no doubt in my mind I was going to get out of here. It was my father’s voice I kept hearing, urging me not to give up, not to let the bad guys win. “
Be strong Hazel girl
,” he would say when I was on the verge of tears.
“They can tear you limb from limb, but they can’t destroy your soul. Remember that.”

I was hanging onto those words.

Where are you, Jack?
Even the thought of his name sent a shiver down my spine and my heart thudding loudly in my chest. At one time he was a close friend to me, helping me through some of the toughest times of my life. He had appeared so unexpectedly when I was just three, taken under my dad’s wing and trained to become a ruthless killer… why I still didn’t know. Maybe my father had always wanted a boy to follow in his footsteps? ’Cause he certainly hadn’t given me that chance; he was always shielding me from the bad things in life. Well, that wasn’t working out too well now, was it?

Jack was a trained hitman and a darned good one from what I had heard. Because of his “career” he’d rarely been around since he had left home for his first job, and I’d been devastated ever since.

Our bond felt unbreakable as I grew up with him always by my side, but as I become older, it was hard not to look at his toned body or the way his eyes sparkled when he laughed. He was every teenage girl’s naughty fantasy, and slowly but surely he became mine. But since he lived under the same roof, living like family, it made all my newly discovered emotions unbearable and confusing. Yet it didn’t stop me from fantasizing about him, dreaming that he would come back one day to confess his undying love for me, and we would ride off into the sunset.

How stupid I’d been.

Snorting, I looked over at the door, the dark window. I had learned on my second—or was it third?—day here that all it showed was another wall, giving me no indication of where I was or what was on the other side of the door. I also realized that they were watching me from some hidden camera that I still hadn’t been able to find. I’d learned that one the hard way.

In a desperate move, I’d tried to fashion some sort of weapon after jimmying one of the metal bars that held the bed together away from the frame. In an instant, the door opened, and two burly-looking men came into the room, snatching away the bar. I had fought then, desperate to be able to protect myself, and they had made me pay. I was lucky that my ribs weren’t broken from the kicks I sustained.

Blinking back the tears, I patted my face with the now grimy towel that was provided and started my walk around the room, stretching my sore muscles gingerly. There was nothing else for me to do but wait for my evening meal to arrive. I would stand by the door in hopes of surprising them the next time they came to visit.

I would see what was beyond my cell even if I had to scratch and bite, and maybe, if it came to it, kill every last one of these bastards.

I sighed.
If you’re alive, Jack, I really need you right now.