Stolen from the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (43 page)

Leon nods slowly, sizing me up. Then he just says, “Well, then, let’s go help the Lawrences make dinner. It’ll definitely speed up the process.”

He shoots me a brilliant, charming grin and we join the old couple in the kitchen to chop up vegetables and beef tips for a pot roast. It’s a relief to have something to do with my hands, and I find myself wrapped up in warm, comforting banter. Gerry and Wanda clearly adore each other, and they seem to regard Leon as their adoptive son. Throughout the evening I can’t stop smiling. Despite everything that’s happened, despite what I’ve recently lost, I can’t help but feel a little bit like I’ve come home.

* * *

“
I
wonder
if they even know how dusty it is down here,” Leon jokes as we walk down the stairs into the basement room. It looks exactly like a typical teenage boy’s hideaway from the 90s, and I assume sadly that the couple probably haven’t even looked down here since Henry’s death. It makes sense that they would want to leave it exactly as he left it, even though he was much older than a teenager when he died.

“Looks like a time capsule,” I comment, pointing to the curling Nirvana poster on the wall. There’s a long-abandoned lava lamp on a rickety little coffee table across the room, the blobs of wax suspended in the same place they were when the lamp stopped working probably decades ago.

“Yeah, when Henry went off to college I think they kinda wanted to keep everything the way he had it, just in case he ever decided to move back in.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Not particularly well-adjusted, but yeah. I suppose it is sweet. They lived for that kid.”

“It’s hard losing someone who was the center of your world like that,” I answer, biting my lip. I can feel Leon staring at me from across the room but I don’t want to meet his gaze.

“Oh, hey! Look at this!” he calls out, waving me over excitedly.

“What is it?”

He holds up a big, dust-coated bottle of amber liquid. He rubs the dust off the label and laughs out loud. “It’s bourbon. Old as hell. I doubt Gerry even knows it’s down here.”

“I didn’t take him for an aficionado,” I reply, bemused.

“He’s not. In fact, he was a bit of a boozer when he was a young guy. Wanda told me once that the day they found out she was pregnant with Henry he gave up the bottle for good. That’s probably why this stuff is down here. Henry was a good guy, too. Never touched the stuff. I doubt Anya would’ve let him, anyway,” he chuckles.

He opens the bottle and wipes the top off on his shirt. Then he holds it out to me.

“Want the first taste?”

“Oh no. Finder’s fee. You first,” I reply, grinning in spite of myself.

“With pleasure,” Leon says, taking a big swig. He closes his eyes, swallows, and smiles.

He passes me the bottle and we get comfortable on the floor, spreading out the massive mountain of pillows and blankets Wanda supplied for us. We spend the next hour or so just laughing and sharing stories about what it was like growing up in Bayonne, passing the bottle back and forth until it’s nearly two-thirds gone.

“Did you ever go to that one bakery off 23rd?” Leon’s green eyes are hooded with intoxicated relaxation. He’s sitting with his legs straight out, his back propped against a wall of cardboard boxes holding God knows what. I’m across from him with my legs tucked underneath me, my hair falling down around my shoulders.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe.”

“No, no, you’d remember if you did,” he laughs. “The woman who ran the counter wore the most obvious platinum blonde wig. She used to draw her eyebrows on with a Sharpie, I swear.”

“Give her a break!” I giggle. “It was a different time. I’m sure a lot of people thought she looked damn good.”

“Yeah, maybe it’s just me,” Leon concedes. There’s a warm, happy glow to his cheeks.

“So, I have to ask,” I start, biting my lip. “Why are you looking into Dad’s death?”

“Well, you know, he was starting to come around to us and our way of doing things. He was a stubborn guy, but he had a good heart. Once he realized we’re the good guys, he wanted to help. So he did,” Leon explains.

“Was he part of the Club?” I ask, trying to remember not to call it a gang. He doesn’t seem the sort who’d be okay being associated with that word. But my heart is racing at what he just said. How could I not have known? How could so much have changed while I was off doing my own thing in the big city? Guilt seizes my heart so tightly I feel a physical pang in my chest.

Leon shakes his head. “No, no. Just a sympathizer. He was helping us get information about his employers, as well as gathering intel about similar operations around town.”

“And is that… why he died?” I ask quietly.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” he says sadly. “I’m sorry — ”

“No,” I interrupt, getting up to move closer to him. “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault. You, my dad, the others — I know you were all trying to do the right thing. My dad wouldn’t want me blaming the wrong people for his death.”

“But if he’d never gotten involved…”

“Then he would have just continued being a cog in the machine like he was his whole life. You obviously gave my dad a new perspective he was passionate about.”

“And now you’re involved. I don’t think… I don’t want…” Leon trails off for a moment. Then he finishes, “I don’t want to be responsible for getting you in too deep.”

“Thanks for the concern, but I’m a big girl,” I answer, staring into his green eyes. Suddenly, the electricity that’s been growing between us seems to shoot a lightning bolt through my body. I feel hot all over.

“I — I can handle myself,” I add. Leon’s eyes are focused on my lips and my heart is racing in my chest. Without letting myself second-guess the decision, I dive in and press my mouth against his. Immediately his hands come up to wrap themselves in my hair.

His tongue pushes into my mouth and I moan into his, climbing over to straddle him. His hands fall to grip my hips and hold me there. The taste of bourbon burns in our mouths and my head is fuzzy with pleasant dizziness. I take Leon’s face in my hands and kiss him deeply, rolling my hips against the growing bulge in his jeans. I can feel myself getting wet. Even with everything that happened today, I know that in the back of my mind, this moment has been swiftly approaching.

He’s the one who reached down and pulled me out of the ocean when I thought I was lost forever. He’s the one who rescued me. And now we’ve found each other again. It has to be fate — some magnetic force of nature that’s drawn us back together again so many years later.

We’re inevitable.

Leon pushes the hair back out of my face and gathers it over my left shoulder, then leans in to kiss a trail down from my lips, over my neck, to my collarbone. His teeth graze my skin and he sucks delicious, bright-red marks into my flesh, causing me to cry out and push into him longingly. I need to feel his skin on mine. I crave the refuge of his hot, strong body.

He peels his shirt off and tosses it across the room, his lips promptly returning to kiss me again and again. My hands rove up and down his hard, muscular chest and stomach. I can feel every single one of his abdominal muscles defined beneath my wandering fingertips. I can only imagine how powerful he must be, how strong.

The very next moment, I find out.

He picks me up, lifts me easily off of his lap, and lays me down on the blanketed floor on my back before climbing over me and helping me out of my top. He throws it aside and then turns back to sigh hungrily, looking down at my nearly-exposed chest. He slides his fingers underneath the lace of my bra to caress my nipples and grope my breasts. I groan and close my eyes, arching up into his touch. Wordlessly, he lifts me up just enough to reach around and unclasp my bra. Then he tosses that, too.

Leon bends down to kiss me, his hands squeezing and fondling my breasts. I put my arms around him and drag my fingers down his back, clawing needily at him. He responds with a deep, resonant moan. So he likes it a little rough. A little messy.

So do I.

“
Vy prekrasny
,” he murmurs.

“I need you,” I whisper back.

He wastes no time taking off his jeans and mine and discarding them into the growing pile of our clothing. I can see the protruding shaft straining in his boxers and I suck in a tight breath at his size. Leon is huge. I can’t help but lick my lips in anticipation. I want him inside me, now. I want to feel him filling me up and closing up that void aching within. I need to be distracted, to be embraced wholly. For someone to make me feel wanted and less alone — even if just for one night.

Leon kneels between my legs, hooks a finger under my damp panties, and slips them to one side, leaving my slick flower exposed. He pushes my thighs further apart and dives in between them, his mouth devouring my pussy. His tongue drags up and down my wet slit, flicking now and again over my swollen bud.

“Oh my God,” I mumble, clutching at the blankets. What if the couple upstairs overhears us? This is definitely not a position I want Wanda and Gerry to find us in.

But when Leon plunges a finger inside my aching hole I can’t suppress a cry of surprise and pleasure. He curls his finger and strokes expertly at that deep, forbidden sweet spot inside of me while his tongue works my clit. It’s not long before I’m bucking against his face, my hands making frustrated fists in the blankets on either side of me. I’m moaning and clenching, on the verge of an explosion.

When it comes, Leon doesn’t relent, even when I have to clap a hand over my own mouth to stifle a scream as an orgasm shudders through me. It’s been ages — probably months — since I last had an orgasm. And even then, I’ve never had a climax quite like this. My whole body is trembling and weak, but Leon keeps going. He sucks my clit and pushes another finger inside of me, forcing me to keep my legs open even though it almost hurts now.

But pain is the close cousin to pleasure, and a second orgasm comes hurtling toward me, fast. I have to bite my hand to keep from screaming again, and this time Leon withdraws his finger, continuing to gently lap at my juices until I come down. Then he tugs my soaked panties down my legs and throws them before taking off his own underwear. His massive cock springs free, bouncing and erect.

Leon bends down and crouches over me, angling the head of his shaft at my opening and pushing inside with one swift thrust. I arch my back and my head rolls back, my eyes closing. He’s enormous and thick and just what I need.

“Ohh, you feel so good,” he groans. When I reach up to touch his face, he turns and kisses my palm tenderly, closing his eyes. Then he pins down my arms on either side of me so I can’t move them at all. The juxtaposition of such a soft, gentle gesture with this show of dominance is overwhelming, intoxicating. He is both kitten and tiger at once, prince and beast.

He thrusts into me hard, again and again, without mercy. My aching, shuddering cunt envelops him fully, taking him in, right to the hilt. When I feel my third orgasm getting closer, he speeds up the pace, his hips snapping with an arrhythmic frenzy until his mouth falls open and he fixes me with a blazing, green-eyed gaze.

We lock eyes just as he pushes into me and shoots a stream of hot seed deep inside my depths. He groans my name just as I whisper his, my own climax immediately following. He collapses beside me and presses his lips to mine, our arms encircling each other instantly. We press our foreheads together and pant heavily, coming down from the highest of earthly highs.

The two of us fall asleep this way, tangled up together while his hot honey slowly leaks out of me onto the blankets.

W
hen I wake
up to the smell of coffee and bacon wafting from upstairs, it’s already ten in the morning. My eyes widen in shock when I see the time on my dying cell phone. I never sleep in this late. Back in New York, I used to always get up early so I could start my commute while some of the city was still asleep. It felt like a normal town with the noise level slightly decreased — well, almost normal. But here in Bayonne, I guess my body just readjusted accordingly with the slower pace of life.

Of course, it’s also been a long time since I last had sex.

And last night was definitely enough to wear me out for awhile.

I close my eyes and wince at the thought. I can’t believe I slept with him. I’ve been back in town for less than seventy-two hours and I’ve already fucked some random guy in the basement of two kindly old strangers’ house. What the hell is wrong with me?

Is there a “slutty” phase to the stages of grief?

But then, I remind myself that Leon isn’t really a random guy. In fact, there’s a stronger connection between the two of us than has ever existed with any of my past boyfriends. We have a history, albeit a vague one. He was the boy who saved me from drowning at the beach when I was a little girl. And he has been investigating my father’s death since before I even got here.

Hell, he was probably one of the last people to see my dad alive.

This thought makes that recurring lump in my throat surface again. I sigh and force myself to get up. I rub my eyes and pull my hair back into a messy ponytail to keep it out of my face, then quickly start pulling on my clothes again. I fell asleep naked in the basement of two innocent elderly folks. This is going to be the most ridiculous walk of shame imaginable.

Then it hits me.

My car!

It’s still at Mickey’s Liquors! How the hell am I going to get back there? What if the police had it impounded? What if Mickey sought revenge and beat the hell out of it or slashed my tires or something? It’s a rental, and I definitely can’t afford to replace it if anything bad happened. My heart racing, I grab my bag and run up the basement stairs.

“Oh, good morning, dear! Come get some breakfast!” Wanda calls out to me from her perch on the couch. She’s watching the morning news, a tray of bacon, toast, and scrambled eggs steaming on the coffee table. She sips from her mug and waves me over.

“I — I’m sorry, I really need to go,” I tell her, shaking my head sadly. God, that food smells heavenly. Especially since I have a slight hangover from that bottle of bourbon I split with Leon last night. “I’ve got to catch a bus or something. My car — ”

“It’s parked outside,” Gerald says, coming around the corner with a newspaper in hand to sit next to his wife.

“Wh-what?” I stammer, furrowing my brow. I know he’s getting up there, but surely Gerry’s not old enough to be senile yet.

“Yes, yes. That’s right. Dear Leon was up before the sun to fetch it along with some of the other darlings from the Club,” Wanda says, nodding and beaming.

“Oh,” I reply, astonished and relieved. “I never got to tell him thank you.”

Gerry looks over at me with his blue eyes twinkling. “I doubt that’s the last you’ll be seeing of him.You’ll get your chance, I’m sure.”

I can’t help but blush. I hope to God they don’t know what went on last night in their basement. Too embarrassed for words, I simply stand there frozen, my mouth hanging open. Wanda swivels around in her spot, waving me over more emphatically.

“I know you’ve got places to go, but you can’t expect to get far on an empty stomach,” she scolds me gently. She’s adorable in her purple floral nightgown. There are still curlers in her hair and fuzzy slippers on her feet. Gerry has his arm around her, his eyes occasionally flicking over to her warmly. I find the whole scene utterly endearing, and it fills me with a sense of unnameable longing. I want that. I want someone to look at me the way Gerald Lawrence looks at his wife, even after all these decades together. It’s like they’re newlyweds, the way they dote on each other. I can only hope to find something so precious someday.

I obediently walk over and take a plate, loading it up with food before settling into a chair to watch the morning news with Wanda. There are the usual pieces about lost dogs and weather patterns, new businesses opening and old ones closing. Not a single mention of the liquor store incident. I smile to myself.

Samuels and Greene must have done a hell of a job covering it up.

When I’m finished, I thank the Lawrences profusely, and Wanda holds my hand in both of hers for a solid minute while she tells me how wonderful it was to meet me and how dearly she hopes I will come back to visit again. I assure her, with all honesty, that I certainly intend to.

Then I hoist my bag over my shoulder and head down the front steps to my car parked half a block down. I panic for a moment at the locked door, then realize that Leon must have slipped my keys back into my bag when I hear them jangling. He really thought of everything. My heart skips a beat when I think about the way he held me last night, so tenderly and passionately all at once. I have never been touched that way before.

I wonder if I will ever see him again. I don’t have his number or even his full name. All I know is that he’s the closest thing to a knight in shining armor I’ve ever met, and if fate brought us back together once… then just maybe I’ll be lucky enough to find him again.

I slide into the driver’s seat and pull my bag into my lap to take out a journal I found back at my dad’s house. I thrust it into my bag yesterday before I ran out to tail the motorcycle club to the liquor store, and I haven’t thought much of it until now. But I take it out of the bag and start poring through the weathered pages, blinking back tears at the sight of my father’s familiar handwriting, which is surprisingly neat and legible for a working man. There are pages of mundane observations about the weather, birds that landed in his yard, car troubles he worked out with his mechanic friend, and the frequent mentions of me.

When I turn another page, a folded-up, black-and-white print out of a fashion website I write for falls out into my lap. I pick it up and realize it’s an article I wrote about peplum dresses and statement necklaces for autumn. Then I look at the journal page:

I read another fashion blog update written by my daughter. She’s so talented, but these editors have her saddled with the most vapid material. I know she can do so much more with her skill and passion. All I really want is for Cherry to be happy. If this is what makes her happy, I will gladly spend the rest of my days printing out her gossip blog articles. I miss her, but I know she’s got her own life now in the big city. Things are too dull here for her. She deserves more than Bayonne has to offer, that’s for sure.

Finally, after days of holding back, a teardrop falls and stains the paper, blurring my name on the page. I sniffle and hold the journal tight to my chest, closing my eyes and leaning back against the seat. I had no idea my dad was reading all those dumb, silly articles I wrote. I figured he had much better things to do than track down every single useless piece I published. Suddenly I am terribly angry with myself for letting him down. I thought I had years—many years—left to prove my worth to him. I wanted him to live to see me become the writer he knew I could be, the heroic truth-teller he wanted me to be. I never expected to lose him before he got the chance to see me really shine.

And now, no matter how hard I work, he will never know. He died with the knowledge that his only child was nothing more than a puff piece writer. I swipe at my eyes furiously, my chest heaving as I finally let my emotions overwhelm me for the first time since his death. I can’t believe I’ve wasted so much time being anything less than he expected of me. All I want is to be good enough, but instead I’ve just spent my whole life messing around, taking the road
most
traveled because I’m too afraid to break free of the expectations the rest of the world puts on me. I’ve been living up to the image of my silly, girly name, instead of fulfilling who and what I really am inside.

Well, that’s going to change now.

“I can do better than that, Daddy,” I whisper aloud, shaking my head.

I’m going to prove to him that I can be tough, that I can track down the hard, cold truths that people want to keep concealed. I’m going to find out what happened to my father, really. I don’t know how I’m going to make it happen, but somehow I am going to make this right.

I look through his journal some more, turning on the radio for some background noise. After pages and pages of the same kind of stuff, I stumble upon a later entry describing something odd. I squint at the page, trying to make sense of the cryptic note:

Commercial field possibly up for sale. Suspect something off. Near the docks. Will coordinate with Volkov to investigate.

“Volkov?” I murmur to myself, trying to figure out if the name is familiar. But it doesn’t belong to anyone I can remember from my dad’s circle of friends. Maybe it’s someone he was working with at the plant. Or maybe… it’s someone from the Union Club.

What if it’s Leon?

“Calm down,” I tell myself, rolling my eyes. I’m clearly just fishing for any reason to think about Leon right now. After all, he did give me the best sex of my life last night. I know there’s not much I can do to keep him out of my mind. Those strong arms, his powerful chest, and hard stomach… and that massive, glorious shaft.

I close the journal and toss it in the bag before pressing my face into my palms. I can’t afford to be distracted right now! I have way too much to get done. There is a huge mystery surrounding my dad’s death and I did
not
come all the way back to Bayonne just to get all googly-eyed for some hot guy. Even if he is really,
really
super hot.

I turn the ignition and start up the rental car, adjusting the seat and mirrors to suit my body. Luckily, whoever drove it over must have been a woman or someone small, since I don’t have to adjust anything too dramatically. I wonder if maybe it was Anya.

“Okay. Now where am I going?” I ask myself out loud, biting my lip.

I wrack my brain, trying to figure out what field by the docks my dad could be referencing in his enigmatic note. It’s one of the last entries in the whole journal, dated only a week before his death. I don’t know if there’s any connection, of course, but it’s the best lead I have at the moment, so I need to check it out. But where is it?

I’ve lived outside of town for so long, my memory of the area is a bit rusty. I screw my eyes shut tightly and think hard.
Near the docks
. I used to play around there a lot, riding my bike up and down the sidewalk that runs along the coastline. I hung out with some kids from that part of town who treated the abandoned industrial piping and building materials from deals gone bad like a playground like an obstacle course. We had all kinds of borderline dangerous adventures climbing on top of metal heaps and hiding inside huge cement pipes. That area always needed construction, always looked rundown and forgotten to some extent. And it kind of was.

Then I remember: a field scattered with old auto parts and tires, just a half mile or so from the docks. That has to be it. I used to hang out there as a kid sometimes, picking through the rusting car doors and endless nuts and bolts. My friends and I pretended to be scavengers, like we were going to find all the necessary pieces of a car and build one like Doctor Frankenstein or something. I smile at the memory. What a bunch of dorks.

I think I can still remember how to get there.

Carefully pulling out of the parking spot, I drive off in the general direction of the coast, passing by familiar old buildings and neighborhoods, most of which have fallen into some degree of disrepair. The old general store where I used to buy sodas and pastries looks almost dilapidated now, the roof sinking in from years of harsh weather and not enough funding to get it fixed properly. I shake my head sadly at the state of things. The town I left behind was a quiet one without a lot of prospects, sure, but I never thought I would return to find it in an even bleaker place than I left it.

When I pull up to the field, a wave of memories washes over me. I get out of the car, holding the journal in my hand as I carefully step over the termite-eaten wooden fence. It’s barely more than a few stubborn pegs in the grass nowadays, and as I look out over the field, I see that the car parts and tires have been cleared away at last.

“At least somebody tried to help out a little, I guess,” I mumble to myself.

But what could be the “something off” my dad suspected? His journal entry is short, but it’s easy to see that he was concerned about something going on here. I wonder if he ever made it out here to check. And if he did, what did he find?

Then I see it. Up ahead, there’s a wide patch of overgrowth that looks… strange. Unnatural. The whole field is overgrown, of course, but that particular part doesn’t look the same. I approach it quickly, tucking the journal under my arm. Up close, I can see that someone has obviously dragged a bunch of ripped-up plants and underbrush from somewhere else and dumped it here. I kick my way through this shoddy covering to see a plot of recently upturned earth. The dirt looks rather freshly placed, as though someone were trying to bury something.

“What the hell?” I breathe, my heart starting to pound.

Did I just find a shallow grave?

I start to feel dizzy and sick to my stomach so I immediately turn and bolt back to my car. I don’t know what could be buried there, but I know one thing for sure: I am going to find out.