William.
I’d practically offered to kill the guy for being an asshole, and she’d flinched from me. That actually told me a lot, at least as far as process of elimination. She wasn’t used to a life of violence other than a drunken, abusive boyfriend, which meant all the shit I was involved in would probably freak her the hell out.
She liked her sex rough, though.
She had been the most turned on when I was holding her down and slamming into her from behind. I could practically feel the way her body gripped my cock as she came on me. I remembered that with the utmost clarity, almost to the point where the memory was going to give me a hard-on. It was only my unfortunate surroundings that kept me from considering jacking off to the images in my head.
Just what I need—the asshole guard peeking at me through the window when I have my dick out.
I shook my head and thought about what else had transpired during my brief time with Lia.
I’d told her my full name, which was probably how she managed to track me down at all. I’d told her I was retired from the Marines and that she didn’t want to know anything else about me.
What else did I know about her?
Nothing.
No wait—there was one more thing I knew, and it was kind of the key to my whole situation. I knew I would do anything and everything for her, no questions asked. I couldn’t really frame in my own head why that was, only that the moment I woke up in the Arizona cabin lying with her on that tiny bed, I had been hers.
The most bizarre thought came into my head. It wasn’t the thought itself that was so strange but more the fact that I had never considered it before.
What if I left the organization? What if I went to Rinaldo after all of this was over and told him I didn’t want to be a hit man anymore? What if I told him I wanted to retire? I had plenty of money stashed away—mostly in cash but a bit in foreign accounts as well. It might not be enough to live on indefinitely, but it was a damn good start.
Did anyone ever do that?
Not that I had ever seen. Feet first was the only way out of this kind of business as far as I knew. I’d never paid attention though. Could it be that there were some out there who had just moved on with their lives? If there were, was that something Rinaldo would let me do?
Could I really even live like that—off the edge, keeping my hands clean? Was that even remotely possible, or would I always be drawn to violence and death like I had in the past?
If I told Lia everything, would she still go with me?
“Fuck it. This is stupid.”
Too many fucking questions and no way to get answers from where I was. I rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyes and looked around at the room. With an audible sigh, I hauled myself back onto my feet and tossed the mattress back onto the bed frame before flopping down on it, grabbing the pillow to my chest and staring at the toilet in the corner. My eyes started to hurt with the strain of staring, so I closed them for a moment.
My body was still tired, but my mind was far too active for rest. As the possibilities for the future clambered around in my head, the idea became more and more attractive.
I had always been one of Rinaldo’s favorites, ever since Jonathan brought me to him, and I took out a guy he wanted put down the very next day. I was like a son to him, and he was like my father. What father wouldn’t allow his son to follow his dreams, right? Especially when he’d done so much for the father already.
Fat fucking chance.
Still, if he were going to allow anyone to leave the organization, it would be me. Hell, he allowed Nick, his illegitimate son, to basically ignore all the business shit that went on around him. The guy didn’t do a damn thing to earn his keep unless fucking every other woman he met and smoking weed were something he planned on putting on his resume.
I hadn’t thought about Nick with everything else going down, and I recalled the last conversation I had with Rinaldo on the topic of his son, who had apparently found himself an actual girlfriend, as opposed to a convenient fuck. Of course, he managed to pick Milena Severinov, the most inconvenient girl he could possibly have chosen to have hanging out in his bed.
Rinaldo had been concerned—Milena was the niece of one of Rinaldo’s rivals in the Russian mob, though she didn’t seem to have anything to do with it herself. Her brother, Micah Severinov, was one I knew. He had been quickly added to my kill roll within the first month of his arrival in Chicago. I just hadn’t gotten around to him yet. I almost did the night I came face-to-face with him at Sweetwater, but Nick had gotten in the way, basically telling me not to go after him for the sake of the chick he was banging. I had planned to follow up on it with Rinaldo but ended up finding out about Bridgett before I had the chance.
Maybe if I offered to take out the whole Severinov family, Rinaldo would consider letting me go. It would probably piss Nick off, but I really didn’t give a shit about how he felt. I needed to figure out how I could both protect Lia and stay with her at the same time. I was willing to consider any and all alternatives to getting what I wanted.
I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. My head might have been clear, but my thoughts were still leaning toward the impractical if not quite insane. I had to figure out what strategy would allow me to end up with Lia in some remote area far away from Chicago and the people who knew me based on the business I conducted.
I wasn’t going to be able to do any of that shit from where I was at the moment. Unfortunately, this was going to be a waiting game as much as anything else. Michael Beard, the attorney, and Rinaldo obviously had some sort of plan, and I was going to have to be patient enough to wait for it to come to fruition.
Patience wasn’t my best attribute.
Still, first things first. Before I could figure out how to plan a life with Lia, assuming she was even interested, I had to get out of this place.
Rinaldo’s visit had been expected. Even when my head wasn’t working quite right, I knew he would be coming to see me. Now, whether he brought a lawyer or someone to kill me right there in the visiting area was anyone’s guess, but showing his face wasn’t. He’d need to look me in the eye and make sure whatever the fuck I had done was about me and not about him. He needed to know I hadn’t betrayed him.
Lia’s visit was a little more jolting, but if I had been in my right mind, I would have figured it was going to happen. After all, she had seen me carted off by a SWAT team and was taking care of my dog. It made sense for her to show up.
The third visit though—that one caught me completely off guard and was bound to end very badly for me.
Two men.
Dark suits.
They were escorted by a short, ginger-haired man I hadn’t met but still recognized as the prison warden. He looked from me to the other men but didn’t say a word as he leaned over, spoke into the guard’s ear, and then escorted him out of the room. As he walked near the door, he reached up and pulled the cord for the security camera out of the wall.
Shit.
I saw the red light on the side of the machine go dim and then watched the suits as they sat down at the table across from me. The cuffs holding me to the bolted-down chair scraped against the chains as my hands briefly clenched into fists and then released again.
The man on the right was in his late forties, and he just stared at me without any particular expression on his pale face. The lack of emotion wasn’t a natural thing for him—he was having to work at it pretty hard to keep it going. There was a spot on his cheek that twitched every few seconds, telling me he didn’t feel at all comfortable with trying to portray himself that way. He looked a little awkward in the chair as well but kept himself poised. His suit was tailored, but there were crumbs from a sandwich or something on the lapel, so he wasn’t used to being dressed as nicely as he was. He had salt-and-pepper hair and matching beard.