KILLER INSTINCT (A Mafia Bad Boy Romance Novel) (7 page)

I awoke staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. I rubbed my eyes as if to vanquish a bad dream. However, the strange ceiling still remained.

I got up in a bed that was not my own.

It hadn’t been a bad dream.

My father was dead. Strange men were after me. Jackie had offered me shelter for the night.

I felt as though I had run a marathon yesterday. I wanted to lie in bed and sleep another ten hours. However, I felt compelled to get up and explore my new home. Besides, it looked like I slept through much of the day.

It was funny to think of this place as a new home. My apartment was only a few doors down. It was now a crime scene. The people after me had seen to that.

I wished I had brought a change of clothing since I had gone to sleep in my street clothes.

Jackie’s clean, unpretentious furnishings matched his personality. I barely knew anything about the man. Yet, I had placed my life in his hands.

Who was he exactly?

He knew his way around a gun. He wasn’t afraid to break the rules. He had intimate knowledge of the city’s criminal organizations. I could be assured he wasn’t out to get me. He could have easily done it at any time.

I wandered the apartment which didn’t take very long. Jackie had opted for the one bedroom style as opposed to the larger type I lived in. The man loved simplicity.

He didn’t even have a television. There was a laptop on his desk but I didn’t dare touch it. Jackie only kept the bare essentials.

I wanted to go to my apartment to pick up my belongings but I knew it would be stupid. Chances were that there was an ongoing investigation. Worse, some of the men after me could be doing a stake out.

Besides, I didn’t know I could even stand walking into the place my father hand been slain. I imagined dried blood staining the carpet. There would be a body outline on the floor.

Without warning, the front door open and Jackie staggered in. He clutched his side and gritted his teeth. I immediately knew something was wrong.

“Jackie?” I asked as he closed the door in a hurry. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

He almost did a double take on me. Jackie must have forgotten that he had taken me in. I rushed to his side. “Just give me a hand.”

I let him use my shoulder as a crutch. Then, I guided him to the couch. Jackie began to take his jacket off. He pulled out a pair of handguns from their holsters. Then, he took out a knife from a sheath attached to his leg. However, there something staining his shirt.

My eyes widened at the sight of blood. “Jackie… you’re bleeding. Put pressure on the wound!”

“It’s nothing serious but it hurts like hell,” he laughed, putting his hand on the wound. At least one of us could have a sense of humor about this. “I let my guard down and paid the price.”

“What happened?”

He shrugged. “The bullet ricocheted and the fragment hit my side. A million dollar wound if you ask me.”

“We have to get you to a hospital-”

“No hospital!”

I wanted to ask where he got shot but I held my tongue. “Where do you keep a first aid kit?”

“What are you? Some nurse?”

“Pre-med,” I answered. “Come on, tell me before you bleed out.”

“Under… under the couch.”

I found a large military grade trauma kit under the couch. It was rather fancy but it had everything I would need. I took some bandages and antiseptic medication. “Take off your shirt.”

He peeled off the increasingly bloody shirt off his body. “Do you think you can patch me up?”

Normally, I would have ogled his bare chest but there was a wound to deal with. “It looks like the bullet had fragmented before it lodged itself against one of your ribs. It’s half in and half out. Huh, I didn’t think that could happen.”

“Great…”

I rummaged through the trauma kit. “Would you like me to pull out the fragment with some tweezers and patch up the wound?”

Jackie nodded. “Do it.”

I had only read about this in my medical textbook. I began by plucking out the bullet fragment from his side. Luckily, it was split itself into two large pieces rather than a dozen small ones. Jackie grimaced as I pulled them out. “That’s the worst part, Jackie.”

Then, I applied some antiseptic to the wound before sterilizing it with a heated patch. I washed off as much blood as I could before patching him up. Whether it was dumb luck or an innate talent, I managed to clean and seal the wound.

I could tell Jackie was no stranger to violence. I saw multiple scars on his body. Some were faint but others were more recent.

Satisfied with my treatment, Jackie lied down on the couch. “I guess I owe you one.”

I shrugged. “It’s more like we’re even.”

He chuckled but stopped when it aggravated his wound. “Then we’re even.”

I paused for a moment before asking. “Jackie, what happened?”

“It seems like you’re a lot more interesting than you give yourself credit for.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Someone has put a hit out on you,” he said to my horror. “One of my regular contacts even pulled a gun on me in exchange for information on you.”

“They want me dead?”

“The Russian mob is paying top dollar for you,” he said with another strained laugh. “Whatever went down between them and your father has them scrabbling to clean it all up.”

“Who shot you?”

“Some low-ranking informant in the criminal underworld who had familial ties to the Russians,” he replied. “Apparently, the ties were stronger than I had thought. He pulled a gun on me when I dropped your name. He wanted to know where you were so he could collect the bounty.”

I eyed his patched up wound. “What happened?”

“I barely managed to disarm him before the gun went off. The bullet missed me on the first go but the ricochet hit me in the side.”

“What about the man?”

He gave me a sheepish look. “He’s not in a position to be doing anything but feeding the worms. Anyway, we can’t stay here. Neither of us are safe here. This is a much bigger deal than I had thought.”

I stared straight into his beautiful sea green eyes. They turned hazel under dimmer conditions. “Jackie who are you, really? Why do you know all these mafia families? Why do you have so many weapons?”

His face was as lifeless as a mask as he spoke. “I’m a killer.”

I felt a chill down my spine. “What do you do?”

“I solve the Pastore family’s problems,” he answered grimly. “They’re the biggest Italian mafia family in town. The only rules are that I won’t accept hits on women or children. No civilians either since it attracts the FBI’s attention. Everyone else is fair game.”

I made the connection. “You’re a hitman.”

He smiled. “That’s one term for it.”

I thought about it for a moment. “Will you kill someone for me?”

“Assuming you even had the funds to pay me,” he said with a chuckle. “Why would I take a hit from someone like you?”

“I because I want to avenge my father. I want to kill the man who took him from me.”

Jackie leaned forward in interest. “Who?”

“Harold Colman.”

He grunted. “A civilian then.”

“He’s the one who killed my father,” I retorted. “He’s not innocent.”

“And then what?” he asked. His question stumped me and he knew it. “I’ve met a lot of clients in my line of work. They have the money to kill a man but they don’t have any idea of what to do with their own lives afterwards. Regardless of whether or not I kill Harold, what will you do with your life?”

“I could work for you,” I offered. I honestly didn’t know what I would do with my life. The idea of entering college and becoming a doctor seemed like a distant memory. “I did a pretty good job patching you up, right? We could make a good team.”

He looked intrigued at the idea. “Let’s put the idea on the back burner. For now, I have to get back into full health and investigate what’s going on with your father’s murder. If we work well enough together, then… I’ll think about it.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“First, we need to get to my safe house,” Jackie ordered, heading to his bedroom. He returned with his laptop. “Our current location might be compromised. There’s also the police and mobsters who will be swarming this place and asking questions. We need to get out of here and fast. Grab only the bare essentials and let’s get out of here.”

“You’re in no condition to be moved,” I objected. “You’ve lost blood.”

“I’m not like your average man,” he countered. Indeed, he wasn’t like any other man I’ve ever met. “We’re both at risk staying here any longer than we need to. Get ready to depart. We’ll be going down the fire escape from the back. It’s too risky for you to go through the front door.”

I thought of the memories I had of this apartment. I hated it at first after leaving our big house. Then, I started to come around to it. I began to even think of it as my new home.

Now, it felt like a burial ground. It was the place where my father died. It was where my old life ended.

“Okay, let’s get the hell out of this awful place.”

“Good,” I critiqued, taking off my ear muffs. The M9 was a bit large for her size but it had plenty of stopping power. “You just need to be more conscious of the recoil in between shots.”

Kelly nodded and reloaded the gun. “I think I’m getting the hang of it.”

During the past two weeks, I had trained Kelly in how to protect herself. There would be times where she would be alone without me to defend herself. She needed to learn how to handle herself. More importantly, I had big plans for her.