Assassin (An SOBs Novel Book 2), page 16
She only asked because she knew how much Vito wanted what he couldn’t have, for her to live under his roof. But wise old Cabb would never allow her to get too close to his son, much less live under the same roof with him. As old as he was, the elder Seranzino was erectile deficient, but extremely possessive and jealous. He wanted youthful, vibrant arm-candy, and she provided that illusion of a winter slash spring romance whenever he requested her company for a public event. He might kiss her on the cheek and whisper salacious words in her ear when others were near enough to hear, but he never wanted her in his room or in his bed. The poor guy couldn’t get it up any more than he could walk without his fancy cane.
Vito blinked even as the muscle in his jaw tightened. “Absolutely,” he growled. “It’s time for you to come home where you belong.” He reached for her, his long fingers stretched out to cup her jaw.
But no! Vicki turned her head and closed her eyes, hating this guy’s touch more than anything. Only one man had ever made her feel alive, and that man had bailed out of the cab blocks away from Vito’s estate. Vicki had no idea where Pagan was now or how he could possibly have her back when she couldn’t see him.
Vito froze, and she knew she’d blundered by refusing his contact. Swallowing hard, Vicki blinked away feigned tears. “I’m sorry.” She whined to achieve the right level of panic and fear in her voice. “I’m afraid I’m not yet myself, sir. The smallest things seem to frighten me.” What a lie. Coughing to clear her throat, she lifted her head and stared into his cold, dead eyes. “But with your help...”
She let that suggestion hang. Staying in Vito’s good graces meant a long life for a hired female assassin. He needed to believe she needed him as both a man and a boss. Ah, the games a woman played to survive in this world.
Vito’s gaze softened as he reached again for her. This time she allowed the gentle grasp on her chin and the way he forced her head up to meet his eyes. “You are the strongest woman I know, Victoria.” A truly sinister smile flicked to life across his cruel mouth. “I can wait for what is already mine, so yes. Take some time off until you are well. Do you need to see a doctor?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “I was struck here.” She rubbed the bump behind her ear. “The bastard knocked me out. Can you believe that?”
Vito didn’t so much as look at the injury where her hand directed him. Instead, his dark, thin brows clashed together. Elegant brows they were, and when they joined, so did the echoing wrinkles on his forehead, further accentuating his disapproval and his link to Transylvania. His hold on her chin tightened. “This was no professional hit?”
“No. This guy’s either an amateur or an idiot.”
Which sounded exactly like Romeo Seranzino. The twenty-something young man had an ego the size of Lake Michigan, but none of the family’s business sense. Known for his wild carousing and jail time more than his work ethic, Romeo and his posse of like-minded friends dabbled in drunken fistfights, car prowls, drugs, and a revolving door of willing licentious women. He’d become a liability and an embarrassment to the fierce Sicilian father who’d raised him after his mother had died in a mysterious car accident when Romeo was nine. It was a classic case of the privileged son resenting the stern but gracious hand that fed him. Only Romeo had never grown out of it. He was a man now, but he was a man with no loyalty whatsoever to his heritage, and Vito knew it.
The temperature in the room shifted. Not by much, but enough that Vicki now knew Vito also suspected his son of trying to kill her. She backpedaled before Vito caught onto her suspicion. “I don’t need a day to recover, sir. Trust me. I am ready for your next assignment. I can do it now.”
His thumb stroked the hollow of her cheek as he studied her like an insect he could crush. Vicki never blinked under his scrutiny. Never wavered. That could get her killed. Either he believed her or not. She was the one with the pink-handled pistols.
“You have never let me down, Princess. I don’t believe I understand why, however. No matter what I ask of you, you always come through. Maybe not right away—” He licked his bottom lip as his fingers turned what began as a caress into a vicious pinch that watered her eyes. “—but eventually, within a reasonable time of my orders, you comply, and then you come back for more. Like now. You stand before me a resolute warrior after surviving what you believe was an attempt on your life, while my own flesh and blood resists my authority at every turn. Yet you and you alone remain most faithful. Most obedient.”
Her heart pounded. Vito was building up to something. She just didn’t know what.
He turned her head from side to side, appraising her facial features as if trying to read her mind. “You are most certainly not Sicilian. There is no blood tie to hold you to this familia, only the pittance I pay you, which even I find a despicable reason for a woman of your talent to linger. You have no hope of ever being in my will. Romeo despises you as much as you despise him, so there is no hope of marrying into my family. Yet here you are again. Always ready to serve. Always ready to lay down your life for me. Always...” He paused. “What is the word? Willing? Why do you suppose this is, little one?”
*****
That didn’t sound good. Pagan cocked his head to better hear what was going on inside the Seranzino mansion. Paloma wasn’t wired, but her burner phone was open and reporting every word in this bizarre conversation back to him. Tucked into the holster Chance had sent specifically for her, she’d turned it on when she’d gone inside that whitened sepulcher of a building, where one of the most powerful families in America resided.
His life and his heart. Vito Seranzino sounded suspicious all of a sudden. He was baiting Paloma, err, Vicki. Testing her. Did she endure this type of interrogation often? Suddenly, Pagan wanted to know all that went on in Paloma’s rich and infamous ‘Sicilian’ lifestyle. The muscles in his back shifted as he prepared to storm that stronghold to rescue her. God bless the men who got in his way. If push came to shove, he would end them.
She wouldn’t like his interference, but damn it. He’d interfere even if she were just a guy!
Just. A. Guy. He swallowed hard. Those three words magnified his problem. Vicki Hex was so much more than any guy he’d ever worked with. She was a goddess. His morning and his evening star, and damn it. He was waxing poetic again. But while the men on his SEAL team had been brothers, they’d been mere mortals, while she was…
Damn. She was everything. Wasn’t that an incredibly ironic conclusion to this ridiculous mission he’d volunteered for. The woman he’d once disparaged because of her dalliances with his brother had now become the most important person in his life.
“Have you no answer for me?” Vito was asking, his tone icy.
Sounded like things were going sideways fast, but Pagan had no idea which room she was in. He knew the basic layout. Grand entryway. Marble statue of some Italian dude standing in the center of a tiled marble star on the entry floor. Probably Vito or Cabb in all their disgusting glory. Dining room and kitchen to the right. Parlor and bar to the left. He suspected Vicki was in what she’d called the study on the far side of the entry, but the last thing she would want was for him to barge in and interrupt whatever was happening between her and her ‘Mafia boss.’
Pagan caved. He wasn’t man enough to wait outside when she might be in danger. Fighting a wave of desperation, he deactivated the security system around the yard, rigging the very obvious laser beam so the circuit didn’t break and send an alarm while he scaled the stone fence. Vicki’s intel was spot on. Two men in business suits roamed the expansive lawn and driveway between the fence and the concrete walks around the home. Pagan used the rows of maple trees and shrubbery to conceal his path to the house. From there it was a simple matter of breaking and entering. Silently. Carefully.
He set one boot to the marble floor just as Vicki told Vito, “B-but you’re all I’ve got, Mr. Seranzino.”
Excuse me? That punch to Pagan’s gut was nearly enough to make him think twice about saving her treacherous ass. He’s all you’ve got? What about me?
“Familia,” she murmured softly. Seductively. “To be perfectly honest, I have no other family than you, your father, and your son. Where else would you have me go?”
Ah, so she was giving Vito the old soft-shoe routine, a little truth mixed with lies. Damn, she was good. Wait just a minute. Were those lip-smacking sounds coming through the connection? Was she kissing Vito? How damned low was Vicki willing to sink to keep her cover?
Pagan was angry now. She already dressed the part. She had openly declared she would do whatever needed to be done to maintain her alter ego, to get her job done. Only what job was she working on now? Hand job or blow job? It was enough to make Pagan vomit. Just the thought of what she might be doing with—to—Vito...
He gagged. Shit! How far would she go? Was she right now straddling Vito’s hips like she’d done Pagan’s just a few hours ago?
His blood ran cold as doubt for his own sanity plagued him. What the hell was he doing, putting his life at risk for someone who played both sides against each other? He ducked into the shadow of the marble statue of some other stupid naked guy in Vito’s grand entryway, just as Vito’s stiff-necked butler passed by. Had to be Leonard. But what did Vicki think she was doing? After all they’d shared? Was this just part of the sexual games she played to get her job done? Was anything she’d said or done real? Had it meant anything to her?
Sweating now, he glided nervously toward the pair of massive wooden doors at the side of the grand centerpiece of the entry, the gilded gold staircase. According to Vicki, that room was Vito’s office. Also had to be where all this ‘business’ was being conducted behind closed doors.
Pagan’s palm had barely rested on the doorknob. He’d nearly turned it and burst in when everything Vicki had said to him before flooded his brain-pan. ‘How dare you judge me. I’m no different than you. I do whatever I have to do to get the job done, and if I have to use my body to do it, that’s what I’ll do.’
“Really Vicki?” he whispered to himself. “You’d have sex with Vito to serve your country?” It actually seemed like something Vicki Hex would do. After all, she killed for her country. Why would fucking a gangster or two—her word, not his—be different?
Because I like her. That’s why. I like her a lot. And what we did is different, damn it.
Because he still termed what they’d done together as making love. Not… that.
Swallowing the bile accumulating at the back of his throat, Pagan blinked away the beads of sweat trickling into his eyes. He was no Kruze. He did not toy with women’s hearts—their bodies, either. Pagan could count on one hand the women he’d been with, as in sexually with, in his entire life. Each and every one of them had been a mystery to him, but Paloma more than the others. Which made his decision simple.
Pagan withdrew his sweaty fingers from the doorknob. As silently and as stealthily as he’d breached the Seranzino stronghold, he left it. Once over the fence again, he walked away from the strongest temptation of his life, the inherent need to step on Vicki’s mission in order to save her life.
This was her job. It was her talent and her craft. From now on, he had to respect that she knew what she was doing. He had to trust. Pagan decided to do the only reasonable thing he could do. If she were lying to him… if Vito Seranzino truly was all Paloma had in this world, she’d have to prove it the hard way. She’d have to throw it in Pagan’s face and make him eat it.
He steeled his suspicions, knowing that to trust Vicki, err, Paloma, was to put his life in her hands and on the line.
Chapter Twenty-One
Vicki endured Vito’s groping hands, his bad breath in her face, and his slimy tongue in her mouth. For two cents, she’d end him here and now, but that would only create more problems, and she had to think about Pagan. He was out there somewhere, listening. She was sure of it. He was that sunshine in her cloudy day, unseen but ever ready to spring through the darkest clouds with one of his scant smiles and save her from evil.
And Vito was one dark, ugly cloud. With a frustrated growl born of her unseemly hesitation in his arms, he set her back, his once gentle touch now cold and as hard as ice, his welcoming demeanor the same. The man had to be bipolar as quickly as he changed moods. “Go then. Rest,” he hissed. “Come back when you’re ready and able to play. Obviously, you’re not in the mood.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, avoiding his brutal stare. “Being buried alive has shaken my confidence. I will be myself tomorrow, sir. I know I can do it. I will.”
Before she could move away from him, his hand snaked out. Vito curled his long fingers around the nape of her neck, drawing her forehead back to his. “I don’t know why you stay with me, Princess, but I’m glad you do,” he whispered. “I will wait, but never forget who your true master is.”
“You,” she told him what she had so many times before. “Always you.”
He had the balls to cover her mouth with his, the second time she had to endure an actual kiss from this madman. Closing her eyes, she played along, even slid her hand around his neck as if she wanted more of his creepy touch. Now was not the time to fight this snake. Now was the time to live to fight another day. To endure anything and everything for Pagan’s sake. For him, she could do even this...
When the stifling kiss ended, Vicki knew two things. She would die before she let Vito into her bed, and she loved Pagan more than herself. He was worth waiting for. Worth dying for.
At last Vito released her, but then he wiped his lips as if he despised touching her. “That was as pleasurable as kissing a dead fish.”
She lowered her lashes, thinking ‘or a horse’s ass,’ but said nothing.
Sticks and stones...
He turned his back on her, his signal that he was finished. “Go. Rest. We’ll talk more later.”
“As you wish,” she groveled. “I’m going to collect my things from my penthouse later today. Which room may I shelter in when I return?”
He flicked his fingers at the wall dismissively. “Leonard will show you. Go now. Get that mundane chore done. Don’t be long.”
“Thank you for understanding, sir.” And that was that.
Vicki exited the Mafia Don’s office and quickly left the frigid welcome of the mansion through the front doors. She ignored Vito’s two bodyguards stationed in the yard as she strode to the gate, punched in her code, and left the way she’d come, with her dignity intact, though she looked the part of a ferocious strumpet. Let just one of them snicker or treat her like a prostitute though, and watch what happened next. She was damned good with these lethal babies tucked alongside her breasts. She could take off a man’s pinkie finger at a thousand yards if he so much as sneered in her direction. And she would. A woman didn’t get noticed like this by the Don simply by spreading her legs. Uh-huh. Vicki had never spread her legs for any Seranzino, yet she’d proven her loyalty over and over. That was how she’d conquered this arrogant Sicilian familia. With blood and pain, loyalty and pink-handled pistols.
Breathing easier now, she fully believed the Seranzinos had nothing to do with the attack on her in her penthouse. They certainly weren’t behind that mini-gunship that had strafed her apartment of last resort, either. Not unless they were suddenly working with the Feds. That just wasn’t possible. Which meant someone else wanted her dead badly enough to have sent that gunship into the city after her. Which meant they had financial resources to blow and people inside the city’s political powers to get the job done. They, whoever they were, could very well be watching her right now.
‘Well, let them watch,’ she thought as she flipped both middle fingers skyward to whatever hidden cameras might be following her progress away from the Seranzino estate. Breathing hard, she waited until she was far enough down the street before she tugged the burner phone from her holster and asked Pagan, “Did you hear all that? Crazy, huh?”
An impersonal “Copy,” came back to her.
Removing the phone from her ear, she stared at it. Really? ‘Copy.’ That was all he had to say after she’d risked her life to find out if Vito wanted her dead?
Of course, Pagan had also heard everything else, even that ghastly kiss. Vicki wiped her mouth again just thinking about it. But that had been the plan, for Pagan to listen in and come running if she’d needed help. Which she hadn’t. Instead, Pagan sounded as if he thought the worst of her. He thought she’d liked sucking face with Vito? Kissing that vampire?
Gah, she wanted to wash her mouth out with nail polish remover to get the taste and sensation of Vito’s lips and tongue out of her mouth. She settled for spitting on the grass alongside the sidewalk, then wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Now more than ever, she needed to end this obtuse relationship with the pseudo-vampire cult from Sicily. Vito might as well have been from Transylvania the way he’d kissed. The man had no finesse, and he certainly wasn’t Pagan. It was no wonder he’d fathered just one child. What woman wanted that monster for a lover?
“Where are you?” she asked Pagan impatiently.
“On your six,” he answered, his tone still aloof and impersonal as if he’d answered with his nose in the air.
She cast a quick glance over her shoulder. There he was, a good block behind her in the shade of the tall stone fence lining the other side of the street. She was well past Vito’s estate now. Lavish neighborhood homes had been built here with suburban streets and large front yards. “I had to do it, so stop sulking.”
Instead of denial, she got silence for an answer. Well, fine. Her one link to the real world was acting like a proprietary asshole. Let him. I never needed Pagan Sinclair anyway.
Pissed that she’d ever thought she had real feelings for him, Vicki disconnected from what she’d thought was a lifeline, but had ended up being a temperamental male with a big ego.
