Page 7 of The Mafia Assassin’s Redemption (Mafia Obsession #2)

SIX

harry

My heart’s racing and leaping, spiking my blood pressure.

I should be scared.

More scared than I am right now.

Someone tried to shoot me.

And that man, Quinn…

Instead of wanting to see him carved into tiny pieces, when he tackled me, when his body pressed into mine, I wasn’t thinking of pain and blood and death and revenge.

I was thinking something else. Something very different.

Fuck, I don’t even want to acknowledge what I was thinking.

Because how?

I swallow hard as a couple parts to let me pass through.

I sidestep others but stay close to them as I hurry down streets.

As if these strangers can offer me any protection against him.

Quinn is deadly, something I’d already known.

But now I’ve seen his calm, killer demeanor up close and personal. Just like the dead guy in the park.

Torin. Quinn. I don’t care which name is real. He’s still the monster who killed my parents, who would have killed me if I hadn’t shot him and run years ago.

But the thought still lingers, even after all this time.

Why didn’t he kill me back then?

Guns for hire don’t need reasons, just paychecks for jobs done. And that job was so long ago it’d be a closed case.

This is a new one.

Marrying me.

Does he want me to suffer for the rest of my life? To inflict a more creative form of torture so that I would wish for death every day? I mean, what the hell is the angle there?

“Like hell will I let that happen,” I mutter, clenching my hands in my coat pockets after pulling it back on.

Maybe it’s not a new plan. Maybe it’s an elaborate way to finish the job.

The moment I think it, I can see just how outrageous that thought is.

It’s not like I’m a goddess or a bombshell. Men barely give me a second glance.

All my life I’ve tried to be as invisible as possible, and I’m no beauty, not like my mom was. But that’s okay. Quiet, mousy, and plain are exactly what I needed to survive him. They’re what I need to help the women trapped by the mafia and underworld crime.

He can’t be interested in me. Probably not even interested in killing me anymore.

So why…?

Then a lightbulb goes off in my brain.

It has to be for money or power. It always is for these mafia thugs.

But really, I don’t give a damn about his agenda. And I don’t want to know. I should go to the church, wait until service is done, and ask Father Luigi if he’ll help me disappear .

A deep sigh expels from my lips. I know I can’t. Just like I can’t ask anyone in the network to help. To do that would be to put them in the line of fire.

I also shouldn’t be walking around in public, not?—

I suck in a sharp breath, the icy air stinging my lungs when realization settles in my chest.

Someone is after me…

Salvatore Ricci.

Even if Quinn killed the man sent to kill me or scare me or whatever, I shouldn’t be out here.

It’s just… I don’t know what to do. I don’t want the Ricci mafia family after me. I don’t want a monster husband, either.

But I have to keep walking, just to make sure that I’m alone.

“You’re not ten. You don’t need to have people around to pretend to feel safe. You’re putting them in danger if you’re in danger,” I mutter quietly to myself.

Besides, I’m pretty damned sure I’m alone.

So I turn and head home. Wherever Quinn is, he’s not following me. Or if he is, I can’t see him. I’ve checked enough times.

And he’s big enough and strong enough to just take me if he wants.

The fluttering in my belly makes me grit my teeth.

When he was on top of me, I could feel… everything. His thick muscles tensing, his cock swelling. Oh my Lord.

My heart pumps harder and I press my fingers against my temples.

Nope. No. Not going there.

But one thought does bounce around in my head, one that doesn’t fit the rest of the puzzle, doesn’t have any answers that satisfy me. He was the Irish man in the alley. The one who shot Bernardo and started this whole thing. He’s responsible for this hit being put on me.

He doesn’t want to marry me. If he truly wants me dead, he should just leave me on my own. That’d be achieved way more easily than through marriage, if Ricci has anything to say about it. My family has no power; the mafia element is dead and gone.

And Quinn is a man who’ll do whatever he needs for money.

Maybe Uncle Anthony’s richer than I thought. And he still does have control over my inheritance, so that could be a factor.

Or maybe a blood wedding really does mean I’m his property so he’ll get my inheritance when it comes.

I don’t know.

And I don’t care.

This so-called wedding isn’t happening.

I walk faster, my fingers finding my phone and keys in the inner zipped pocket of my coat. I fish out my keys when I get to my apartment door, exhausted from the frenzied thoughts battering my brain.

The soft sound of my key in the lock starts to soothe me as does the slick click. Then I release the second lock and step inside. I close the door, lock it, and then I lean against the painted wood, my shoulders slumping.

But the brief seconds of calm are replaced with an eerie sensation that sends the hairs on the back of my neck springing up. My eyes snap open wide as every nerve ending fires.

There, in the dark, on my sofa, is a figure.

A man.

My heart drums as heat dials up within, flooding my insides.

“Get out.”

My hissed words fill the air.

He unfolds himself and stands up, stealing more space than he should.

With the darkness of my apartment, he’s a shadowed patch of dark matter.

A black hole. Sucking at me, drawing me near.

His black curls are like a paintbrush stroke.

The broad shoulders that should be comforting send a shiver of dread through me.

My eyes drop to his hand to find the sleek outline of a gun.

The gun.

The one he took from the man he killed.

Fuck.

He creeps toward me, and I whip around, fumbling with the door lock.

“Don’t even think about it, Harry. While you took your sweet time wandering the streets and putting yourself in pointless danger, I was letting Salvatore know his friend’s dead in a community garden?—”

“So, what… do you want me to melt at your freaking feet, or are you here to finish the job you didn’t back in Dublin?”

“—and since we’re getting married, I’m taking an attack on you as an attack on me.” Quinn ignores me and finishes his sentence, his voice flat and low and somehow threatening with its utter lack of emotion. Just that Irish lilt to knock a girl sideways.

That and his hotness. Even now, his mouth a grim line, he’s easily the hottest man I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Good looks mean nothing, of course. Beneath that layer of pretty is an ugliness that mirrors his charred soul. I know it. I’ve seen it.

If I hadn’t run at ten, he’d have killed me too.

“And?” I glare, my fingers on the brass lock.

“And,” he says, closing the space between us. He reaches his hand out, and using the muzzle of the gun… the silencer… he traces a line over my temple like he’s brushing back my hair. Fear and hate spike. “And I think he listened.”

He leans in and smiles, and dear God, this man is good-looking. Too good-looking for his own good.

And mine.

My mouth suddenly feels like it’s filled with sand, cotton, and Saltines.

“But the thing is, it takes time to call off hits and scares. So someone else with a happy trigger finger might be out there right now, looking for you, waiting to collect.”

“What about in here?” I struggle to keep my voice calm, but his delicious scent wafts around my nose, making me dizzy. I clench my hand around the door handle to keep myself steady.

“My trigger finger’s never happy. It just does what it needs to do.”

I nod, my pulse thundering a beat in my temples as he runs the muzzle down my throat to the opening of my coat and my shirt. “Like when it kills innocent people?”

He mutters something I don’t catch and leans in close, so close my heart damn near explodes out of my chest. He uses his tongue to trace my bottom lip. It’s an electrifying moment. My skin tingles, my mouth aching for more of a taste.

“I know who you are, Quinn—” I manage to croak out.

“Torin.”

I swallow hard. “Torin.”

“And what’s that?”

“The man who killed my family.”

“And despite all the hatred you have for me, you liked what I just did to you.”

My head spins slowly at his close proximity, at his scent—warm, spicy wood, amber with a touch of citrus.

Intimate and fresh, full of sin and indulgence, topped off with a sprinkling of remorse…

it all invades my senses and weaves stories and creates worlds that I don’t think are really there, worlds where he’s the hero when I know he’s only ever been the villain.

Panic flares in my chest at the reality waiting for me outside this door.

Maybe I really do need a monster to get through this.

I put out a hand to hold him off just as his mouth returns to mine, capturing my lips as I’m about to speak.

And it’s too late for me. His infiltration is complete.

I’m consumed by him, and the only thing that matters is his tongue in my mouth and the darkness I can taste, a decadent darkness, one that beckons to the corners of my soul and God help me, I kiss him back. Hard. Like I need him to breathe.

Our tongues tangle and dance and a desire burns through my veins, turning them into liquid fire. I want to grip his head, haul him against me harder, deepen the kiss and see where it goes.

And I latch on.

Not to him.

To the gun.

With my heart rattling in my chest, I shove him away with my free hand and point the gun at him with my other one.

This is the second time in my life that I’ve pointed a gun at him, a monster who hides his true diabolical powers in kisses. Behind a face of masculine beauty.

“What are you waiting for,” he says calmly, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

That move slaps me in the face. I’ve been kissed once or twice. Not like that. Never like that.

But even I know that move is… insulting.

He deserves to die.

“Nothing.”

“Pull the trigger,” he says, taking a step toward me. I straighten my arm. He doesn’t know it, but I now know how to use a gun. I might not know this gun, but I’ll fucking shoot him if I have to. Or if I want to.

Which I very much do.

I swallow. “I will?—”

“Of course, then you’ll have to take your chances with the Ricci family.”

“It’d be better than being tethered to you.”

“You know marrying me is your only way out of this hit.”

The asshole’s right. But I just narrow my eyes. “I’m not marrying a man who killed my family.”

“I saved you, Harry.”

That isn’t him saying he’s innocent. At all.

Not that I’d believe him.

“And my family?”

“I didn’t shoot them.”

And that also isn’t saying he didn’t kill them. “So you’re not the monster I think you are?”

He grins, and it’s so devasting my knees almost give way. “I’m far worse than what you think. But the people Ricci hired? They’re the worst.”

Torin flicks on a lamp, and even with the gun still pointed at him, he holds out his hand expectantly. “Get your things and give me the gun?—”

But before he can finish his sentence, a bullet shatters my window and buries itself in the doorjamb next to me. I yelp and squeeze the trigger of the gun pointed directly at Torin’s heart.

All it does is click. He removed the fucking magazine. With a yell knotted in my throat, I throw the gun at him. He ducks out of the way, cursing as another bullet hits the wall, narrowly missing him as it whizzes by .

“For fuck’s sake.” He drags me down to the floor. “You know the only way to stop this bullshit is by getting married.”

“No.”

He winds a hand in my hair and presses me against the floor. And oh my God, he’s getting hard again as his dark-blue gaze sweeps over me, my pulse leaping and my pussy throbbing in response.

I don’t like him. And I don’t want my body to react to him in this way. Yet I’m lying on the floor after the third bullet in about an hour has been fired at me, turned on with soaked panties, and dammit, I want another kiss.

Shock.

That’s what it is. Has to be.

He lowers his mouth and my thoughts stutter.

But he doesn’t kiss me. Instead, his mouth comes down on my throat and he sucks, making my clit throb like someone shot a thunderbolt of pleasure-filled electricity into me.

And then he sinks his teeth into my flesh.

Biting hard.

I whimper as he sucks, then lifts his head. He brushes his lips against my ear. “There are worse monsters than me out there. For future reference, I’m not particularly into the hunt, but cornering prey, having a brat give it all up for me, her breaking exquisitely for me, yeah, that gets me hot.”

“Freak.” I can barely draw in enough breath to squeak out the word.

“Like I said, it gets you hot, too.” One hand slips down the side of my body and settles between my thighs before rubbing against my pussy. The way his fingers move make me shudder and quake. Every motion buries itself deep, every touch like a trigger for the word more .

Torin’s mouth nips my ear. “All that pent- up anger and aggression is just looking for a guiding hand. A firm hand. You’d crawl over glass for good cock if commanded right.”

My breath catches tight.

“You’d crawl and lick from the foot up, just to be face fucked into oblivion. If the commands are right. It’ll set you free, Harry.”

“I’ll crawl over anything to plunge a knife in your heart, you sick bastard.”

He laughs softly. “Maybe, but you’d wait until after you’d been tortured into earth-shattering orgasms.”

I try to breathe but it hitches, and a trickle of desire soaks into my panties, painting my thighs with wetness.

Worse than that, I’m aching, my pussy suddenly desperate to be filled.

For him.

“It takes a freak to know a freak… and you’re a freak,” he says. “I bet if you didn’t have those jeans on, I’d be able lick the trails of your juices from your ankles up to your cunt. That’s how wet you are, how turned on you are.”

He’s playing with me, doing this deliberately, saying the things he says to the hot women he fucks, the hot women who get off on that weird stuff that makes me ache, the hot women who love monsters.

I’m not one of them.

“Not true.” I push out, trying not to shake, my fingers finding and gripping the useless gun.

Part of me whispers it’s a stupid thing to do—because, fingerprints. Another part shouts that ship’s gone and sailed right over the horizon. And regardless of that, regardless of anything else, the ten-year-old in me grips it like a lifeline.

Like I did when I accidentally shot him years ago.

I wish I’d killed him then. I wish? —

“I’m going after the gunman,” he says, rolling off me. His blue eyes darken as a sinister shadow eclipses his pent-up lust. “Stay put. We’re moving the wedding up.”