His Secret baby

2. Chapter Two

2

Chapter Two

Armand

“She left the airport at eight this morning. She’ll be in your area by early afternoon.”

The man on the phone is using a cheap voice disguiser that does nothing to hide his identity from a trained ear. But I play along with his game of anonymity, even as disgust at his cowardice turns my stomach. I was having a lovely morning—until this pig called me up with his kill order.

“What the hell did you do, stronzo?” I snap. “I told you that we’re done, now that you’ve broken our agreement. I’m not killing that innocent girl for you.”

A low chuckle punctuates the silence on the other end of the line. “Oh, I think you will, considering she’s a material witness against you and now knows where you live. You won’t have a choice when she shows up on your doorstep.”

It’s been this way for five years. Ever since I put an end to that beast James Shea, the man who hired me keeps pestering me about “the rest of the work” that he’d ordered. I agreed to both hits initially, hoping he was hiring me to take out both Shea and his unnamed partner.

But then I discovered that the second target was someone else—and killing that someone would go against the guidelines that I gave that fucker the moment I agreed to the job.

“There’s always a choice,” I reply flatly, and listen to the way his high titter of amusement is distorted by the low-toned disguiser.

A man like me has to have a personal code, or he’ll go crazy really fast. My code says no innocents and no kids. Marina Shea, daughter of James, and the only person involved in the hit who saw my face, would already be dead if it wasn’t for my code. She was a witness, after all.

But the man on the phone wants her dead for his own reasons. It makes me absolutely sick. This waste of skin should know better than to test me on an ironclad promise. I refused to complete the job, even wired him two thirds of his money back—it’s not like I need it. But this guy just won’t let it go.

“Oh, come now, Armand. You’re wanted in ten countries. Your ridiculous code won’t keep you alive if the girl or I decide to take you down, and you know it. So just say “yes, sir,” finish your kill list, and then you’ll never hear from me again.”

I was trying to be kind before now, for the sake of the girl. I should have just tracked him down and put a bullet in him for trying to con me into spilling innocent blood. James Shea was in no way innocent. But his daughter?

I still remember her at fifteen—cute and a little gawky, too young for beauty. Coffee-colored hair, big, innocent green eyes. She stared at me, whenever she thought I wasn’t looking, with a wide-eyed, dazzled smile that was charming and awkward at once.

Yes, you’re cute. You’re far too young for me. Bye, now.

She looked at me like I hung the moon. Me, who was about to arrange for her father’s untimely but completely deserved death. The irony makes my stomach clench whenever I think about it. I’ve never felt so guilty about killing a monster before.

I looked at her then, so young and sweet, and thought to myself what a shame it was that she had no idea what her father was. One of the reasons I choose my assignments so carefully, now that I’m wealthy enough to have that luxury, is because I know that when I kill, I don’t just end one person. I hurt those close to them too.

We all do. Assassins, soldiers, executioners, any cop who pulls the trigger instead of bringing someone in alive. We don’t just kill one individual. We wound families. So I am very careful who I target.

“I understand that you are sending the girl to an address that you believe is connected to me. But I also know that I have five current addresses in the United States alone, and that it will take a tremendous stroke of luck for your investigators to determine which one I’m occupying.”

I pause to let this sink in and pour myself a touch more champagne. I drop a frozen strawberry into it—Georgia heat has me parched.

The bastard found the right hideout completely by chance, and now he’s sending his second target to my doorstep with a g*n and a vendetta. Furious little Marina doesn’t know what her father did, or why I agreed to kill him. And so she hates me, and wants me dead.

I wish I could tell her the truth about everything, but she’d never believe me. I look out over the rolling lawn toward the palmettos that border my backyard. What the hell should I do?

“You’re bluffing,” he grumbles, but I hear the shake in his voice and know I have put some doubt in him.

Good. If I’m lucky, he’ll call the girl home. If I’m not, I’ll have a problem on my hands that I’ll have to deal with one way or another.

“Between the two of us, I am the more experienced and skilled in these matters. You may be wealthy and have some clever people on your payroll, but that simply isn’t enough. The girl will find nothing but an empty house.”

I hear his hard breathing and realize that I’ve pissed him off. Good. If he’s angry, he’s even more likely to make a stupid mistake.

But then I hear a beep from the laptop that lies open on the desk in front of me. It’s from a blind email address and contains a single file. I check it, then open it—and freeze, staring at my screen.

The man on the phone just sent me a photo of Marina Shea, taken a week ago. Now I’ve got two reasons to refuse to kill her. Oh, God.

The cute little teen who I felt sorry for on that fateful day so many years ago has grown up, filled out, and gotten stacked. Her frizzy brown hair now falls in sleek waves, her green eyes are lined with black, and full lips are painted a dark blood red. The black sweater, jeans, and leather jacket are supposed to make her look tough, but the denim clings to her sculpted, powerful thighs and lush hips in a way I can’t ignore.

My c**k is suddenly so hard that I can’t think straight. The voice on the phone is barking threats while I’m staring at the photo of woman he wants dead and wondering if there’s any chance at all that I can convince her to stop hating me.

“I could just tell her the truth.”

Another long silence. “What truth?” he splutters.

“You’ve been checking up on me,” I say quietly, without revealing a bit of what I have actually learned. “I have also been checking up on you. You know as well as I do that the girl is aware that someone hired me. What would happen if she found out that it was you?”

“She’ll never believe you,” he stammers quickly. “Never! I have her twined around my finger and I have for years. You’ll have to kill her. You’ll have to kill her to save yourself!”

We’ll see, I think as he hangs up in my ear. He’s just made the mistake of pissing off Armand Rossini for the final time.

The girl’s life is in no danger at all, unless I have no other choice. But the man who sent her? His days are numbered.