Assassin (An SOBs Novel Book 2), page 1
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Epilogue
About the Author
ASSASSIN
An SOBs Novel
IRISH WINTERS
Assassin, An SOBs Novel
Copyright ©2019 by Irish Winters
All rights reserved
First Edition
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, dialogues, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Cover design: Letitia Hasser, Romantic Book Design
Interior book design: Bob Houston, eBook Formatting
Editor: Linda Clarkson, Black Opal Editing
ISBN Paperback: 978-1-942895-66-4
ISBN eBook: 978-1-942895-67-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018914445
Irish Winter’s websites: http://www.irishwinters.com and irishwinters.blogspot.com
Assassin
An SOBs novel
Angel – Chance’s story
Assassin – Pagan’s story
Coming soon:
Damned – Kruze’s story
Lost – Julio’s story
You can find Irish Winters
On Facebook
&
On Twitter
Sign up for Irish Winters’ Newsletter at:
http://www.irishwinters.com/newsletter.html
For more information about all Irish Winters’ books, visit:
http://www.irishwinters.com.
Prologue
One month earlier
Some eighteen hundred miles east of Montana, Pagan took a knee outside one of two eight-paned rear windows of a townhouse in DC proper. Like row houses, the homes adjoined but their facades differed. Some were painted in federal blue with stark white trim, others in earth tones with dark brown accents. Gray stone and red brick decorated yet others, lending to the quaint appearance of American individualistic, independent spirits.
Yeah, right. This ‘burb’ was nothing but a cookie-cutter tract of over-priced housing for the upwardly mobile near-misses and abject failures in the District’s dog-eat-dog, overly competitive business world. Inhabited by wannabe politicians who’d never been elected, it was made for men and women resigned to lesser ambitions because they weren’t good enough for political office or the famed DC beltway, where overpaid lobbyists thrived. The faded paint and shabby lawns did look halfway decent by moonlight, though.
This particular home was special. John Wesley Mills lived here with his cat, and didn’t that figure? Johnny-Boy was a cat person. Gallo, the hyperactive German Shepherd that belonged to Pagan’s big brother Chance, wouldn’t like that on principle alone. Neither would Lucky, the good girl who used to go by Meine Liebchen. Who in their right mind named a standard-size Schnauzer love of my life? An idiot like the recently deceased Mitchell Franks, that was who.
Dark had fallen hours ago, but Pagan had time. He now knew the intimate details of Johnny-Boy’s alter ego. A lackluster insurance salesman who barely made his quotas by day, Johnny dabbled in illicit drug distribution by night. Didn’t fall too far from the proverbial tree that had taken root in South America a long time ago, that was for sure. Well, not really that long ago, but back in the 1940s, when Nazis there thought they were safe from the reach of justice and truth.
Johnny’s ancestors, two brothers, Richard and Zimmer Franks, both Nazi SS guards, had settled in beautiful Bogotá, Colombia, after the war. It was a nice place to live—then. But as sure as crusted dirty snow followed the freshly fallen, pure white flakes of winter’s first storm, deceit, turmoil, and misery followed the Franks brothers.
Richard, the younger one, despised the lack of sophistication in his new country. In less than three months, he fled north to the United States, took on a new history, that of a used car salesman, but kept his old name. Zimmer, the older brother, was made of tougher stuff. After ingratiating himself to the governor of Bogotá, he began two businesses, one legal, one not. Zimmer married well and entrenched himself in wealthy Colombian society. The downside to his success was his only heir, a daughter, who in turn had married Diego Gonzales, the local crime lord. Not because she’d wanted to, but because Zimmer needed her to.
It was an arranged marriage of epic proportions, two criminals uniting their kingdoms and expanding their grasp, all accomplished in the time it took for innocent little Amanda to say two words: I do.
Zimmer lost track of Richard. To be fair, Richard had always acted as if he had a broomstick stuck up his ass anyway, and there were times Zimmer thought he’d detected homosexual tendencies in his younger brother. That perversion wasn’t tolerated in their mother country, and Zimmer wouldn’t tolerate it in Bogotá. Which explained how Richard had sent letters to his brother, but Zimmer had burned each and every one.
A staunch believer of all Der Führer stood for, Zimmer set his aims high and his means low during the war in order to acquire those aims on behalf of the Third Reich. He’d not only organized SS operations while in the Homeland, but architecturally designed several of the finest crematoriums. He was good at the death thing. That was how he did business. Efficiently. With measurable results. He said what he meant, and he followed his few words of harshly uttered direction with lethal enforcement. That was how a strong man ruled the world. A few beheadings, here. A dismemberment or two, there. All in a day’s work.
Eventually, at the age of one hundred and one, Zimmer passed away in his sleep, but not before he’d trained his grandson, a darling, blond youngster to take over the family business.
Wilhelm Gonzales immediately executed every person in the city who owed his father or his grandfather as little as one peso. That was also the day Wilhelm learned he was not alone in the world. A long-lost relative surfaced in his fair but troubled city, another blond and blue-eyed man who reminded Wilhelm of his proud German heritage. That man was Richard Franks’ grandson. Mitchell.
As for Johnny? Mitchell’s sister, Celia Franks, had married Collier Mills, a Maryland banker. Not an important banker, but a hard-working nine-to-fiver who was never good enough for the rapacious, conniving dreams of one of Hitler’s right-hand man’s progeny. At least, that was the story John told his friends down at the local German tavern.
Pagan had done his homework well, not only online, but at the tavern as well. Men on the downside of life tended to gripe about the fathers they hated, especially after a few beers loosened their tongues. Johnny loved to complain. Pagan loved to listen.
It seemed that John Wesley Mills had just earned rank in the local fascist chapter, a group with violent tendencies toward murder, chaos. The usual. They went after anyone not of the pure, blue-eyed, blond-haired Aryan race. First lieutenant now, Johnny Boy had bigger dreams for America, dreams that paralleled Zimmer’s dream for Colombia. Beheadings. Dismemberments. Hangings. Rule by terror. The tactics worked in South America. Why not here in the land of the brave and the free?
Hence Pagan took a knee, not to pray, but to aim his Sig Sauer P226 MK25, complete with SR09 suppressors. X-ray sights. Elite ammo. He didn’t plan to use its very capable twin, but kept it holstered, loaded and just as ready. Like a brother who’d bail your ass out of trouble if things went sideways.
But that wasn’t happening tonight. Donning black nitrile gloves that matched his leather jacket and his mood, Pagan ghosted into Mills’ home without the OTC doorknob making so much as a snick as it turned. But the second—the very second—Pagan entered John Boy’s space, his nostrils flared wide at the coppery scent of freshly spilled blood in the air. Damn it. Johnny wou
When a silent shadow slid down the steps from Johnny’s loft at his left, Pagan crouched low, his piece on target. He leaned into the act, anticipating it, needing to end this lowlife for the sake of the woman his brother loved. This was no sanctioned hit. Neither had it been vetted through the blackest of black operators, the SOBs. This was personal. Johnny was the last living descendant of the treacherous Franks brothers. Because of them, Chance’s wife Suede had nearly died. John needed to die, and his twisted family’s warped ideology needed to end.
Primed, Pagan had only to press the trigger, light up the night, and leave this house without waking the neighbors—until he realized he’d caught Miss Hex. Not John Wesley Mills. Damn it.
“Freeze,” he growled, lifting to his feet and into view.
She halted, her right arm across her chest, her fingertips still on the handle of the pink-as-a-newborn-baby’s-butt firearm she’d just holstered, her voluptuous breasts crushed and plumped inside that stretched-too-tight t-shirt in the process.
“Oh. Hi Pagan.” She acted like they’d bumped into each other shopping at the mall. “What are you doing here?”
“You ended John Mills?” You’d think she’d have been a little surprised to see him.
The woman smiled. She knew she was eye-candy galore, from the tips of those buxom girls that all but spilled out of her shirt to the toes of her sleek, black designer boots. That she easily managed two underarm holsters with the size of her assets, amazed males everywhere. Not that Pagan minded. He just liked watching while she put those babies, meaning the pistols, away with those other, more succulent babies, in the way.
“’Course I killed him. Why are you here? To end me because I beat you to it?”
“Hardly.” Pagan holstered his piece to prove his word, his heart thumping at the heady scent of cherry blossoms wafting from Miss Hex’s slightly sweaty, yet very sexy, body. How could a woman so lethal smell so sweet and good, almost innocent? Hex was an enigma of the highest order, an ultra-feminine goddess, yet one of the best snipers in the business. But she was definitely not the nurturer all women were meant to be, and that was her downfall.
“You knew one of us Sinclairs would be coming for Johnny Mills. You should’ve let us end him.” And she should have. Women just weren’t supposed to enjoy killing. Pagan wasn’t certain if Hex loved her work or not. She was just so good at it.
Victoria’s deep brown eyes widened under delicate brows that made her look extraordinarily innocent. Which she wasn’t. “I had a job to do, so I did it. And, oh yes, Pagan, thanks for asking. My fingers mended nicely, no thanks to your brother.” Her palms fell to cup her hips. “So why are you here?”
Pagan’s mouth went dry at the sight of all that exposed skin between the bottom of her tiny tee to the top of her low-slung jeans. Her belly. The creamy swells of her breasts above the bra. Her long neck. Of course, she’d dressed in black leather shorts that creaked when she walked, but those extra-long legs to heaven almost made a man believe in the hereafter.
Every drop of blood in his brain fled deep, deep south. But Hex was a tits-and-ass, ‘play nice with me and I won’t kill you’ kind of gal. A brazen female alpha. Possibly a dominatrix the way she wore that leather with an in-your-face confidence. Possibly with pride. He had no doubt she’d dominate any partner dumb enough to get too close to her, in bed or in a bar fight. But at the end of the day, she was still nothing more than Kruze’s type, a dominatrix who liked to play. Didn’t that reminder of who she’d probably been with last night—as in slept with—pump a gallon of bile into Pagan’s already churning gut? There were moments Pagan truly despised his brother for the way Kruze treated women. Pagan refused to analyze what that meant about his feelings for Victoria.
He stepped away from Miss Hex, then took another step back for good measure, not sure why the thought of Kruze being with this woman irked him like it did. “Fine then. It’s done. Goodbye.” And good riddance.
Instead of turning in the opposite direction, Hex’s chin went up. She took a step toward Pagan. “Would you like to double-check my work? I’m not proud. I’ll show you, Pagan. One shot. He never felt a thing. Never knew I was waiting for him.”
Pagan shook his head, as much to shake the notion of actually sharing the same air with this tantalizing but off-limits woman, as to distance himself from the scent of her lush and all too inviting body. For whatever reason, the delicate fragrance of cherry blossoms mingled with her uniquely feminine scent, made him unfocused and weak, two traits that could get a sniper dead. “No thanks,” he told her, his voice uncommonly gruff in the darkness. “Gotta go.” As in right now. Before I do something stupid.
“But Pagan,” she breathed, her perfect lush lips drawn into a pout that made a man stop and take notice and wonder what those lips would feel like. What they’d taste like. From there, it would only be a hop, skip, and a quicker-than-quick jump to finding out what her other parts felt like. Tasted like. Probably salty and sweet.
His tongue licked a quick lap over his bottom lip before he bit it. Squelched the notion rolling around in his dumb head. Squaring his shoulders, Pagan intended to leave, and he would have, damn it.
But Miss Vicki wouldn’t shut up. “You and I had a common enemy, Pagan.”
And why he loved the way she kept saying his name the way she did—soft and suggestively low—Pagan had no idea. He just really, really did.
“I got here first, that’s all. You would’ve done the same. Friends?” Miss Vicki extended her slender fingers, the nails painted pink, her trademark color, of course, reaching for him. Daring him to accept—something that she’d no doubt bartered away other nights just as dark as this one. He was pretty sure it wasn’t friendship she offered, but what was a guy to do, especially a lonely guy who just plain was not good with women?
Tugging his gloves off, Pagan stuffed them in his rear pocket, then made contact quickly. Succinctly. Barely squeezing those feminine bear traps. But sometimes, somehow, in the cosmic scheme of insignificant moments like this one, Karma intervened, and it only took…
One. Touch. A single brush of bare skin against bare skin. The melding of lifelines to lifelines. The matching whorl of fingerprint to fingerprint. The dizzying spark that sizzled up from her palm hit his brainpan like a bolt of greased lightning. It was a different kind of energy. Brighter. Crazier. Filled with promise and… So. Damned. Hot.
Miss Vicki pulled back with a hiss, a glint of shock in her sparkling dark eyes. “Pagan! Did you just—?”
“Shock you? No!” He leaped to defensive mode, because damn it. He had felt it—whatever it was. “The carpet’s full of static electricity, that’s all.” Liar. He had felt some kind of weird energy arc between them, and he knew it. Pagan just didn’t know what it was.
Her shiny black mane rivaled the shine in her eyes, even in the dark of a dead man’s house. Vicki Hex, the Sicilian Mafia’s number one killer, cocked her pretty head, and when she did, all that lovely hair swished over her shoulder. “I like you, Pagan Sinclair. You’re… different.”
Was that an insult or an attempt to be funny? Pagan wasn’t sophisticated enough to play with the likes of Hex, and he didn’t want to look like a fool. “I gotta go.” Damned if his voice didn’t sound rough and ragged instead of suave—like Kruze’s would have, had he been here instead of his lamebrained little brother.
She moved in closer. “Let’s go have a beer. Talk for a change. Just you and me. Maybe we can work a few jobs together. Please? I’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
He shook his head, not ever—EVER—working with Hex, not in this kill-or-be-killed career they’d both chosen. It seemed wrong offing bad guys with a truly beautiful woman at his side.
“No,” he told her, his lower back sore and his balls aching from standing at attention like he’d just realized he was. Least that was why he thought his balls ached. Couldn’t be—that other reason. He wasn’t attracted to her. No way. No how. Yes, he was hard as a rock, but that was just a side effect of the adrenaline thrumming through his system. That was all.
Again with the hair swish and the coy fluttering of lashes. Her eyes were blacker than usual tonight. Sparkly but deep and dark. Sultry and full of steamy promises he had no intention of fulfilling. Her full lips pinched. Deep inside, something sizzled. Pagan didn’t dare blink for fear this was all a dream.
