Damian: A Dark Mafia Romance (Dark Mafia Kingpins) Read online

  He couldn’t immediately identify anything and rolled onto his back, spreading his arms out over his king-size bed. In an otherwise spartan apartment, it was the luxury he allowed himself. All he did here was sleep, so he’d made sure to have an opulent bed. He could, and did, crack jokes about needing his beauty sleep, but the truth was that a tired hitman was a dead hitman, and Damian took serious pride in the work he did. It wasn’t pretty, and not every man would be able to sleep with hands as bloody as his, but he’d taken dangerous men out of the world.

  And innocent men too. No point in lying about that, not even to himself. Though he would sometimes allow himself to wonder—who was really innocent? How innocent were they, really? He’d never truly met an innocent man. Not deep down.

  Stretching wasn’t the same as lying around. Damian stood up, then went through a quick series of movements and stretches designed to loosen up his hamstrings and keep his back limber and relaxed. Even the best bed didn’t stop one from feeling tight when they woke up. In a profession where a half second could be the difference between being dead and being paid, he didn’t want a neck twinge screwing him over.

  Limber and as relaxed as he ever allowed himself to get, Damian padded out to the kitchen wearing nothing but his boxers. There wasn’t anyone to show off for; the last time he’d had a woman was more than a year ago, and he’d had her in a hotel and left a tip on the dresser. He just didn’t like getting dressed before he had a shower, and he only had a shower before he had his coffee when shit was going down in a big way.

  Shit was not going down in any kind of way just now. It was starting to get worrying, and Damian was starting to suspect what had happened.

  Six months ago, his sister had fallen on hard times. Damian had distanced himself from his family as he fell deeper into the life, but he kept tabs on his baby sister. She’d gotten a frightening diagnosis, but her health insurance had started denying claims. He’d paid the tab anonymously, and now she was cancer free. Life was good.

  But he hadn’t had that kind of money just lying around. He’d gone to his contact with the Santiagos, the family with whom he did most of his work. He asked for a deal, a certain number of contracts in exchange for the money he needed to make sure his sister could keep her house. The contact had been happy to say yes. Damian had planned to either make his way on income from other jobs or pay back the Santiagos early.

  But there hadn’t been other jobs. You couldn’t exactly list your services on Craigslist when you were a killer for hire, even when you moonlighted as a bodyguard. He could have burned one of his IDs to get a job in private security, but it seemed... ridiculous.

  But what was more ridiculous was how the number of jobs he had to take—in order to pay off his debt—kept changing. The son of a bitch who he’d worked with kept saying he was “collecting interest.” Damian was more and more confident that Todd Baker had no idea either what he was talking about or who he was dealing with—but he hadn’t been able to suss out for sure whether or not Todd’s stepfather, Carlos Santiago, actually did know what was happening.

  Challenging Carlos on a debt owed was a good way to find himself in the ground. But being squeezed by Todd was getting old as well. Damian had more than a little money socked away and could easily live for the rest of his life without worrying, but there was more to it than the money. When he was still for too long, his body started to get restless. All the workouts and healthy living and careful training in the world didn’t matter; he just got restless.

  He wasn’t a sociopath or a psychopath. His urges didn’t push him towards killing. Just towards moving. As a kid, he’d had to move so often, and being still and settled hadn’t ever worked for him as an adult.

  Maybe he needed a woman. Not a pro, the kind of girl you picked up at a bar, but the kind who was willing to go a few rounds. Maybe it would be worth learning her name for once. Maybe he could fuck this restless feeling out of him. It would be worth a try anyway.

  He made his coffee and drank it, black. He went to the shower; his morning wood was still very present, and he jerked off in the shower, harsh and efficient. Like everything he did lately. A woman might be good. A soft woman, soft tits, soft hips, soft ass. The sort you could dig your fingers into and leave behind marks.

  Just the thought made him hard again before he’d even fully wilted back down to soft, and this time he stroked slow, letting the water smooth the movements of his hands as he let himself visualize that pretty girl. Vulnerable but not weak, soft-bodied but iron-willed. She’d writhe under him, maybe even put up a good-natured fight. The ‘I never said yes, and you can’t prove I did,’ sort. Bever saying yes, but absolutely never saying no, and coming so hard on his cock that he thought she would break it off.

  He groaned a second release at the thought and felt some of the tension drain out of him as he finished, smoothing out the last of the orgasm with a few short strokes of his hand. Yes. A woman or a job. One or the other, by tonight. And then, when he was calmer, he’d go to Carlos and ask what the hell was going on.

  If Carlos had sanctioned the deal, then Damian might have some hell to pay, but if he hadn’t... Carlos would want to know that Todd was going around and using his name. Todd was a stepson, not a full-blooded son, and Carlos hadn’t raised him. He’d just fallen for Todd’s mother. As far as Damian knew, the woman was barely even aware of her husband’s second business.

  Out of the shower and dried off, Damian got dressed. Clean jeans, tailored to his slim hips and strong thighs, and a black button-down shirt. Stereotypical? Maybe. Also practical. He’d run a few errands, take care of a few things around town, and then he would get in touch with people who could get him a meeting with Carlos Santiago.

  Before he so much as walked out the door, his phone rang. Not the standard phone he used as an everyday cell; the phone that came with a very specific phone number. You had to pay a lot of money to even get the number, and then dialing it—well, retainers generally started as soon as he picked up the phone.

  Of course, only one asshole had been calling that number lately. But that didn’t stop the thrill that ran through him at the thought of a job. He picked up the phone but didn’t say a word. No need.

  “It’s me,” Todd Baker said, the stupid fucking son of a bitch. Damian kept his groan and his fury entirely internal. “I have a job for you.”

  Of course Todd had a job for him; the only reason anyone called this number was because they had a job for him. Stupid shit.

  “Tell me.”

  “There’s a target. He needs to be eliminated. It’s my stepfather calling for this.”

  There was something shady as hell about that. If Carlos was involved, why wasn’t one of his official lieutenants calling? But it was another thing Damian didn’t quite dare ask. If the stepson of the capo ranked pretty low on the totem pole of family power, the hired hitter ranked even fucking lower than that. You took the job, or you didn’t take the job, but the only questions you asked were things like where and when.

  “Who is the target?”

  “Rich Chamberlain.”

  That surprised Damian so much that he almost dropped the phone. Rich Chamberlain was the city’s Tony Stark, the kind of guy who had buckets of money and was using it to do good things in the world, instead of just sitting around and using it to wipe his ass and upgrade his private jet every other month. Being a good guy put him in direct opposition to most of what the Santiagos did in the city. The Santiagos were a classic crime family; they ran drugs, guns, women, gambling rings, loan sharking, debt collection, everything. They eliminated threats to their business interests with extreme prejudice. But not Rich Chamberlain. You couldn’t take out Tony Stark, not really.

  Except, apparently, when you decided you could.

  “Carlos called for this?” Damian wanted to smack himself as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

  There was no excuse for him asking that sort of question, even if he was sure he was either being set up or
—no, almost certainly set up.

  Todd didn’t like the question, and his tone made that very clear. “Chamberlain has stepped over the line this time, and we’ve had enough. There’s an opportunity, and you are going to take it. I’ll send the packet over by messenger in two hours. You’ll need to be ready to move by tomorrow afternoon.”

  No part of this smelled good. Why would someone be going after Chamberlain now? What was going on? And why the hell was he getting tapped after so much time on the shelf? It tasted like Damian was going to be dealing with his own set of problems while this went down. But there was no option to say no. And he had—he glanced at his watch—just over 24 hours to research. He’d see what he could find out in that time, and see if he needed to disappear himself. He wouldn’t enjoy doing it, but he could if he had to.

  “Alright,” he said.

  He disconnected the call before Todd had a chance to do it. It was small and petty, but it still felt damn good.

  The messenger arrived two hours later on the dot. At least some things could be relied upon in this world. Damian sat down at his desk with the thick envelope and opened it up, then spread the paperwork out.

  Much of the information matched what he’d found during his initial research: Chamberlain was connected, protected, and a solid guy. He didn’t have financial vulnerabilities, he’d never borrowed a cent on the shady side of the financial world, and he’d never so much as blinked at rooting corruption out of his various businesses. There was no crack in his armor, no failure to protect himself, no situation where Chamberlain was really dirty but really hiding it well. The man was just plain good.

  For the first time, Damian thought he might actually feel truly bad about killing someone.

  Todd was right about one thing though; for the first time, there was an in on Chamberlain. His kid was getting married, and as some kind of victory lap honeymoon thing, he was taking the kid on a cruise through international waters. His security detail was going to be dramatically reduced, and killing him outside of the United States would diminish significantly the ability for his death to be prosecuted—and, for the first time, make his businesses vulnerable to attack. Fascinating.

  Todd had somehow gotten two invitations for the cruise, and that was supposed to Damian’s in. But it only took him a couple of seconds to realize that was the flaw in this plan. This sort of trip was going to end up being a long con; he wouldn’t have an exit until the yacht was back on the dock, which meant he couldn’t be suspicious in any way.

  To truly blend in the way that he would need to, he couldn’t stand out. He was already a six foot three muscle-bound guy who had been told more than once that his good looks would make a woman fall over faint. Showing up without the plus one specified on the invitation—when it was very clear that the plus one was “highly encouraged”—would be a problem. The theme of the honeymoon was long lasting love or some shit. Entertaining, given that Chamberlain’s wife had died ten years back. Then again, he hadn’t had a girlfriend in a decade.

  How could a person be this fucking pure and have no enemies?

  Damian ran quickly through the contacts he had, trying to think of someone he trusted enough to run a game like this with him and came up blank. Fuck it. He picked up his phone and dialed a number. Not Todd; he had no fucking use for that idiot right now. He called Carlos. He would have to ditch the phone afterward, but he’d stop in at the nearest Best Buy and get a new one before he moved on; there was a new model out anyway, and he loved fresh tech.

  “I’m surprised to hear from you,” Carlos said in place of hello.

  “I was surprised by this job,” Damian replied. “The target is unusual.”

  Carlos was silent for a moment, and then Damian heard a door close. “What’s wrong?” His tone was measured and calm, just like it always was.

  “Not wrong, exactly.”

  Bullshit. If Damian weren’t as careful as he was, this would be the kind of thing that got him chained up. Of course, maybe that was Todd’s goal.

  “But the invitation has a plus one attached, and showing up without one looks like it’ll be... problematic.”

  Carlos gave a sigh that sounded long-suffering to Damian, though he’d never dream of saying such a thing to the man directly. Yeah, Damian found himself doubting that Todd Baker had anything like the pull he thought he did.

  “A moment,” he said, and the call disconnected.

  It was about ten minutes before the phone rang again.

  “Meet Todd at the corner of Van Buren and 22nd an hour before you’re meant to board the boat,” Carlos said. “Your ‘wife’ will be waiting for you.”

  3

  Between the two of them, Piper and Marissa had eaten three tubs of ice cream, endless takeout, drunk an absurd amount of wine, and watched more old movies. Piper had passed out on the couch at least once and woken up covered with a soft blanket. Marissa had called in sick to work to stay there with her.

  But after three days, Piper was done wallowing. She was the one who had broken up with Todd after all; it was more than a little ridiculous that she be the person to be this upset. However, the hardest part of the breakup, the part she hadn’t expected, was how she kept remembering the little details of how she and Todd had been together. How he’d never quite listened to anything she had to say, or how he’d always gotten so angry out of nowhere when she’d contradicted him one too many times. How he’d been slowly, gently, wearing down her personality into becoming the person he wanted, not the person she was.

  She’d tried to think of who she would have called if Marissa hadn’t been there for her, but all of her friends had become their friends. She’d never been the type to have a million girlfriends as it was, but the ones she’d had since college had all drifted away since she and Todd had gotten more serious. It hadn’t been intentional, but the places they were going kept being couple oriented, and even though she’d tried to arrange dates for her friends, people hadn’t been interested. It was just Marissa, after a while. And only because Marissa was too stubborn to let go.

  It was a frightening thought—wondering where she would have gone if not for Marissa. Piper tried not to let the thought take root; it wasn’t going to do her any good, and it wouldn’t make her feel safer. She was away from him now; that was the thing that mattered most. She didn’t ever have to be close to him again.

  She and Marissa had been up late again, and it had been Piper’s turn to tuck Marissa into bed. She’d been sober enough to toss herself into the guest bed, so she woke up a little less stiff and uncomfortable than she had been the previous night. She stretched hard, feeling… safe. Calm. Relaxed. More like herself than she had in a very long time.

  She glanced into Marissa’s room and saw that her best friend was still sound asleep and snoring lightly. Piper grinned; even in college, Marissa had taken forever to sleep off a night of drinking, and they had gone three nights in a row.

  Piper was hungry, and she wasn’t in the mood for leftovers—well, whatever was still in the fridge. Plus, her mouth tasted like stale alcohol, and she knew she hadn’t had a shower in a couple of days.

  Okay. First things first.

  She stripped off the underwear and T-shirt she’d slept in, then stepped into the shower. Marissa’s favorite luxury was her shower; the rest of her apartment was the basic sort of place one got in the city. But she’d spent a fortune renovating one tiny corner of her bathroom. The shower had a temperature control, an in-shower music speaker, and a gorgeous rainfall designed showerhead.

  Piper set the water to a high temperature, took a second to comb out her hair while the shower warmed up, and then stepped into the spray. She was sweaty and dirty, but that wasn’t the only thing that the shower was washing away. It was like years of Todd—grime had accumulated on her skin, and as she let the water spray down over her, that sluiced down and drained away as well.

  There was a song in an old musical her mother had loved, about washing that man right out of her
hair. For the first time, Piper understood where the sentiment came from. She was washing Todd off her, and she was going to do everything possible not to think of him again.

  She scrubbed her skin, washed and conditioned her hair, and then stepped out of the shower to blow dry her hair. Marissa had completely different products than her—Marissa generally encouraged her thick, coarse hair to curl so that she could do it up in a gorgeous twist out, while Piper often went for a flat iron—but she found some basic leave-in that wouldn’t flatten her hair too much, and would at least keep her loose waves from going all kinds of frizzy.

  She poked her head into Marissa’s room again; Marissa was sound asleep. Piper sighed. She wanted a real breakfast, something good and hearty and filling.

  That’s doable, she thought after a moment.

  She snuck into the room, grabbed a pair of jeans and a clean T-shirt, and got dressed. Commando, but fine. She and Marissa were close enough to the same size that she could make it down to the local diner and back.

  She grabbed her purse, then locked the door behind her. She sent Marissa a quick text to let her know where she was going and then tucked her phone into her back pocket. Marissa turned off notifications while she slept, so Piper knew she wasn’t going to wake her friend. Although maybe she would bring back some muffins and coffee. They could start being grown-ups again. Maybe Piper would even go back to her own apartment—though she had to admit that the thought of being alone made her stomach tighten a little.

  She’d never thought Todd was a bad guy, just a slightly clueless one. But she had also never imagined the way he’d looked with his hand drawn back. She didn’t know what had stopped him from hitting her, but she had a sudden and frightening belief that it hadn’t been a sense of right and wrong. It had been a realization that he wouldn’t get away with it.