His Secret baby

1. Chapter One

1

Chapter One

Marina

The nightmares come just when they always do. It’s five in the morning and I find myself once again sitting up shaking as chills of terror rack my body. I press my fist against my lips reflexively, stifling a scream so that it comes out only as a tiny squeak. For a few moments, I ball up, face between knees, shivering. But then the sweet-spicy smell of scented candles brings me back to reality.

I look around as I catch my breath. I’m in my room, in my home, safe. The vast chamber is empty except for me. The polished brass of my bedframe gleams in the moonlight spilling through my bedroom windows.

Everything is still; peaceful. But I’m bathed in cold sweat and my chest hurts from how hard my heart is beating. And yet I can’t remember anything about the dream that put me into such a state.

Crap. Again. I wrap the wool comforter closer around me and huddle under it, breathing deeply until the shaking stops. This happens at least a few times a week, but I’ve never managed to get used to it, even after five years. These dreams have been haunting me since James Shea, my father, died.

Seething with frustration over my interrupted sleep and the terror I can’t do anything about, I get up and change into a sports b*a and yoga pants. At least this time I managed not to scream aloud and wake up Uncle Bradley.

Uncle Bradley is another fixture of the last five years. He moved in right after Father’s murder, and I’ve been living with him ever since. I don’t technically need a guardian anymore, but after five years, I’ve gotten pretty used to having him around. It was a real comfort at first—and a necessity, as I was only fifteen then, when he volunteered to be my legal guardian.

It’s a little awkward now that I’m a grown woman, but he insists on keeping an eye on me. If I scream too loud, his tall, chubby form will come shoving through my doorway, never knocking, his robe flapping around him and his small gray eyes focused on me like lasers.

It’s a good thing I’ve never felt inclined to start sleeping in anything sexy, or to bring a boyfriend home. That would definitely make everything even more awkward, especially considering Uncle Bradley’s nosiness. He always wants to know everything that I’m doing, but I forgive him because I know damn well why he’s so overprotective.

He’s the one who had to come home and break the news to me after that assassin sabotaged my dad’s car. He’s the one who helped me get through it all, even when the trauma left my memories in tatters. We’re the only members of the family left, now that Mom’s left the country, and I know he worries about losing me too.

I’m really not sure what I would have done without him, so I don’t mind a little intrusiveness. But not when I’m trying to sleep.

I unroll my exercise mat over the muted pink-and-green carpet, and start my stretches. Sometimes yoga can help me relax enough to fall back to sleep. If that doesn’t work, I’ll go straight to combat practice so I don’t waste any time.

I’ve always been pretty athletic, but I didn’t start intensive training until after Dad died. I knew basic self-defense and had practiced yoga since I was twelve, but I didn’t start learning Kali until the moment I stood at his graveside, back when I made my most important promise.

“Uncle Bradley’s shown me the evidence, Father. I know your death wasn’t an accident. I’ll find the man that sabotaged your car, and I’ll bring him down. I swear, Daddy, I’m going to send him wherever you are so you can personally kick his pretty Italian a*s every day of the afterlife.”

It’s harder to get in a good session without my practice dummy, but I know better than to drag it out of my closet right now. The grunts and thuds will bring Bradley out of a sound sleep.

He’s a strange guy, Uncle Bradley. He’s kind but smothering, protective but disinterested in the details of my life. He’s also supportive of my efforts to avenge his brother, but is weirdly unwilling to understand my need to get fighting fit before I face my father’s murderer.

Striking out at open air, shadow-boxing in the scant moonlight shining on my wall through the windows, I think hard about Armand Rossini. About how I’m going to destroy him.

Armand Rossini is a man who’s been on my mind almost constantly for the last five years. The unusually handsome garage attendant first caught my eye when Dad brought his blue Mercedes in for maintenance, but he has my attention now for a much different reason. He was the one who worked on Dad’s car. It was that same car that Dad was driving up the mountain alone, fresh from the garage, when the brakes suddenly gave.

We sued the garage and demanded all the information they had on their “new employee,” who had suddenly disappeared after the accident. Everything the garage had turned out to be false.

He was the one. Uncle Bradley confirmed it. Rossini wasn’t a mechanic at all, but one of Interpol’s most wanted—a killer for hire who specializing in sabotage.

I remember that moment when I first saw Rossini. I was fifteen and full of hormones, and when I glimpsed his dark curls shining in the sun and the white flash of his grin as he talked to a coworker, I thought he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. For a moment, he turned his dancing black eyes to me ... and I felt like I was falling into their warm depths.

The crush was instant, and so powerful that I had my first erotic dream that night. I woke flustered and warm, but smiling. I daydreamed about him until the night I found out what he had done.

I’ve hated myself for a long time for that stupid crush. I still feel like a fool for it—especially because I’ve never been able to get those sexy dreams to go away. Over the years, I’ve learned to distract myself by planning my father’s revenge.

I knew early on that it had to be me. Between his heart condition and his growing alcoholism, Uncle Bradley can’t handle the problem directly. And no one else will help us outside Bradley’s web of bribed contacts.

The police won’t believe us. The FBI and Interpol will do nothing with the lead, even though they’ve both been chasing Rossini for almost two decades, because they have never able to prove exactly what happened. When I made that oath over my father’s grave, it was because there was no one else left to seek justice for his death.

I tested out of high school and started training. I learned to hack, cracking passwords and mining for information online. I learned Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, as they were all languages that Rossini was fluent in, along with English. Every scrap of information about him that Uncle Bradley passed on to me, I found a way to use in my training.

Now, as I work my way through a series of strikes with my practice knife, the only thing breaking the silence are my soft gasps for air. I won’t wake him. He has no idea how long and hard I practice, or how good I’ve gotten.

Nobody does. The most powerful thing about a secret weapon is that it’s a secret.

I felt like a ridiculous klutz for the first six months of practicing. By a year in, I developed a competent grasp of the basics, but I didn’t start feeling confident about my combat skills until three months ago though, when I finally managed to disarm my instructor.

Oberst called it a lucky shot, but I saw the frustration in his face as he picked up his practice sword. I’m glad. He was the one who told me I wouldn’t take this seriously enough. I swore he’d eat his words. Now he has.

Now I need to make sure that I strip Armand Rossini of more than just his weapon.

I guess I shouldn’t have expected I’d be able to sleep a full night. After all, today is the day that my uncle finally found Armand. According to our information, he’s been holed up in an ancient, partly-refurbished plantation house in Georgia.

My packed bags wait beside my bed. Our pilot will be flying me out to Atlanta in the morning, where I’ll grab a rental car. I’ll reach his area before sunset and start scouting.

The prospect of taking a human life makes me sick to my stomach, especially if I get caught. I don’t want to go to jail, and I don’t want to stain my hands with human blood either.

But not even our vast amounts of money have been able to buy justice from law enforcement. So now I’m going to Georgia, to hunt it for myself.