Page 1 of Mine to Keep (Bloody Desires #10)

one

the fuck up

Nothing was going according to plan. The man on his knees in front of me, begging me not to kill him, was already supposed to be dead. He was supposed to be lying at the bottom of the stairs, the victim of an… accident .

But he spotted me before I could drug him and push him to his end, and decided fighting would be in his best interest.

Spoiler alert: It was not.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks, his nose bleeding profusely from the elbow I slammed into it. His lips have ballooned to twice their size because of the jabs he couldn’t duck or dodge. He put up a good fight, but not good enough.

I sigh in irritation, pissed that my plan went awry. “That’s unimportant.”

Sweat rolls down my spine, as much from the heat as from our tussle. Adelane, Arizona in early summer is hot, even when it’s the middle of the night. It was 103° earlier today. Now, it’s 85°, but no less hot because of the temperature drop.

I fucking hate Arizona. Right now, because of this job.

But above that, it’s where my past began and where I want it to end.

If it weren’t for the price tag on this kill, I would have turned it down.

But this is my highest payday, and I need to stack my money before I disappear from the world of contract killing.

“Unimportant?” my target asks, wiping his bleeding nose, an indignant set to his jaw. “You broke into my house. You tried to kill me. Why isn’t it important?” His swollen lips make it hard to understand all of his words, but they reach my ears.

“You don’t need to know why,” I say in irritation. “That won’t matter when you meet your maker.”

“Just…let me die on my feet. Like a man.”

I barely suppress a huff of frustration. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that plea and it won’t be the last. It’s a stupid request. Whether on their feet or on their knees, they’ll still die by my hands.

“Come on, man,” he says, tears clogging his voice. “You owe me that much after breaking into my home.”

Sliding my hands in my pocket, I pull out a set of keys and shake them at him. “Didn’t need to break in. You lost your keys last month, remember?”

His face pales as he stares at the bottle opener with his name engraved on it. There’s no denying they’re his keys, although he didn’t lose them. I’m good at picking pockets as well as killing for hire.

The man’s throat bobs as he swallows roughly. “You’ve been watching me for a month?”

“Longer,” I tell him with a shrug. “You should really pay attention to your surroundings.”

He spits at my feet in anger. “Fuck you.”

“Do you want to stand or do you want me to shoot you right here?”

He holds up trembling hands. “Stand. Let me stand.”

I nod and take a few steps back to give him some space. But I don’t step back far enough.

As soon as he’s standing, the man charges at me, taking me off my feet, causing my gun to skitter across the floor. A heavy fist lands on my mouth, splitting my lip and making me bite my tongue.

I roll with the punch, not letting the pain affect me as I jab two fingers just under his ribs. He screams out and rolls off me, holding his ribs while trying to scramble away.

Before he can get far, I jump on his back, wrapping an arm around his neck to choke him out. Fuck making this a clean kill—I need to get this job done so I can clean up the scene and get out of here.

I don’t have a chance to tighten my arm around his neck before he thrusts his head back, catching me in the face with a headbutt. I howl and release him, forced to move away so he doesn’t have the chance to do it again.

Instead of attacking me, the man takes off up the stairs, trying to take them three at a time, but falling every other step.

With a snarl, I give chase, catching him just as he reaches the second-floor landing. I reach out and grab one of his ankles, the momentum of his headlong run making him fall and knock his head on the hardwood. He’s dazed, his arms pinwheeling on the floor as he tries to get his bearings.

I don’t allow it.

Grabbing him by the back of his shirt, I lift him to his feet. His eyes bug out at my show of strength, which is probably why he tried to attack me earlier.

Most people would find me unassuming. I’m about five ten—five eleven on a good day—one hundred and seventy pounds of lean muscle, and what most people would call a baby face when I don’t grow out my beard.

My mark is a burly, barrel chested man that stands close to six three, with large hands and massive thighs. Side by side, one would think he could take me down easily.

Unfortunately, we both underestimated each other.

Since he’s not a small man, my ability to lift him without effort is probably a mindfuck.

He fights against me, trying to dislodge my hand. He manages to briefly, and he tries to run into the room ahead of us.

I grab him by his stringy hair and yank him back so I can wrap my arm around his neck. Kicking the door in, I push him into the room and onto the floor.

Back on his knees.

He turns around to look at me with wide, watery eyes, breathing like he just ran a marathon. He looks like he wants to try me again, but my back-up pistol is aimed right between his eyes.

“What do you want?” he asks gruffly. “Money? I have money. We have a safe. Please.”

I raise an eyebrow. Half of my fee is already paid, the other half will be transferred after this hit is complete, but for the bullshit I just went through, I deserve a tip.

My fingers trail over the split in my lip.

Fuck, I’ll have to call the cleaners to come and wipe everything down so none of my DNA is left behind.

That’s a cost that won’t come out of my pocket if he’s offering money from his safe.

My target was supposed to go down after I injected him with a tranquilizer, but somehow he heard me and he slapped the syringe from my hand before I could depress the plunger. For a guy his size, he was quick and got the drop on me.

I lick my lip once more, dying to spit out the coppery fluid, but not wanting to add to the cost of the cleaners. “How much?”

He looks up at me, eyes lighting up with hope. Too bad for him it’ll be extinguished soon. “Eighty grand. You can have it all. Just…don’t kill me.”

That’s twenty grand less than what I was paid for this hit. I’m not a greedy man, but I hate being inconvenienced. I was told this would be an easy hit, the easiest hundred grand I’d ever make. It’s turning out to be my biggest failure.

In the early years of being a hitman, I’d made plenty of mistakes, some targets harder to kill than others.

But after ten years, I shouldn’t be making rookie mistakes.

I’ll have to have a talk with the person that hired me.

They assured me I would be in and out, able to administer the tranquilizer and make his death look like an accident.

I did my own recon, but my reliance on their intel fucked me up and almost got me killed.

If I were a greedy or vindictive man, I’d make them pay double for their shitty assurances.

“Show me,” I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

He nods and hustles over to his closet, still on his knees. I follow close behind, making sure he doesn’t try anything cute, like reaching for a gun or trying to run again.

“You’re doing the right thing,” he says as he opens the closet door—a closet bigger than most people’s apartments—and crawls to the far back corner. “You must know who I am. Cops will be all over you for killing a judge. You don’t want that.”

That’s what he thinks. Yeah, most judges are almost revered by cops when they’re let off for their police brutality, but the good judge here isn’t one that’s on their payroll.

My mark, Judge Bowers, is too fair, too by the book for them to want to do more than the bare minimum they do for anyone else.

I don’t deflate his hope, though. I allow him to think that he’ll live, and if he doesn’t, the cops will come down on the bad man that broke into his house and took his life.

Judge Bowers pushes some blouses that look like they belong to a woman in her late eighties out of the way, and reveals a floor safe. He puts in the combination and it pops open. Inside, there are stacks of cash, as well as jewelry and paperwork that look like birth certificates and the like.

He pulls a bag from the bottom of the safe and stacks all the cash inside. “Here. That’s all I have. Now, leave. Let me go, and I’ll forget this ever happened.”

The way his eyes bounce around my face, I’m sure he’s cataloging my features so he can tell the authorities what I look like.

Even if I let him live and he does a composite sketch, he wouldn’t get it right.

Contoured makeup has my features looking smaller than they are, the contacts make my brown eyes brighten to hazel, and the bald cap I have on covers my waves.

I also covered the freckles that dot my nose, the makeup blended perfectly to my brown skin.

I take the bag, not worried about counting the money. If it’s not eighty grand, I don’t really care. Most of it will go to cleaners anyway.

“I appreciate the tip,” I say. “But I have to finish the job. Nothing personal, though. You understand.”

He shakes his head, his bottom lip trembling. “No! I gave you money! You said?—”

Raising my hand, I silence what I’m sure will be a long-winded tirade. “I never said I’d let you live, you assumed. Come on, Judge. You know better than that.”

Before he can retort, my phone rings. I exhale in annoyance, but know I have to answer it. Only one person has this number and she hasn’t stopped calling since I gave it to her.

“Is it done?” she asks as soon as I answer the phone, sounding both eager and terrified.

I look at her father, whose bloody face is leaking like a sieve, his wide eyes locked on mine. “No. Your dad decided to fight me, so his death won’t look like an accident. Sorry.”

Judge Bowers’s mouth drops open, disbelief coloring his face. “Teresa, you did this? You’re behind this asshole trying to kill me?”