Captive of the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Novel by Alexis Abbott, Alex Abbott Page A

is what’s really driving me wild.
    We head to the bar, with Mikhail stopping to give passing greetings now and then until drinks are brought over and poured.
    “Uh, let’s go in the back and discuss this, eh?” Leon says with his arm around Cherry’s waist. He has little hint of an accent, just a harsh voice and way of talking.
    “I need you to help me hide Alicia, bratishka, ” Mikhail says as we enter the enclosed back room, just the four of us. “A few months should do the trick. Then I’ll come back and see she’s sent along safely,” he says, and my heart stops.
    “You’ll come back?” I ask without thinking, my head turned towards him and my brow raised. I can feel the anger start to boil within me, and even the weight of his arm wrapped around me can’t stop this sick feeling from rolling around in my stomach.
    But he ignores me.
    “Mikhail, I don’t know if we can do that right now,” Leon says sadly, shaking his head. I can tell it pains him greatly to disappoint his brother. “The FBI is on our backs, brother, and there’s not a single place in this town we could hide her without them sniffing her out. It just isn’t safe here in Bayonne. It’s not like it used to be when we were boys.”
    “ Pozhaluysta . I beg of you,” Mikhail answers, a pleading edge to his tone.
    “What happened to the usual safe houses?” Leon asks, frowning.
    Mikhail looks aside as though embarrassed. “They’ve been…compromised.”
    “What? How did that—” Leon bites his tongue, and I wonder if he doesn’t want to know. If what Mikhail does, if who he is, is so unpalatable, then it’s just better not knowing. I’m on the brink of tears, but I hold it back. I’m not going to be a blubbering mess.
    “I need to get her somewhere. She won’t last in the city.”
    “You’re going to leave me for a few months? Just like that?” I ask, and even though I’m holding back tears, I don’t bother trying to contain the hurt in my voice. The anxiety I’ve felt since this morning is just rising up within me, and I can’t hold it back it anymore.
    “It’s what has to be done. If I’m missing from the city for a long time, then it’ll raise suspicions, which endangers you further,” Mikhail says to me in his deep, husky voice. He’s frustrated with me, I can tell. His brow furrows, and he looks about to say something harsh. All the same, his hand and arm squeezes tighter.
    “I am no good for you, kotika ,” he says to me in a low, gravelly voice. “You slept with a killer. That was a huge mistake. Do you really want to compound it by sticking around him and risking it becoming more?” he pushes, those dark eyes of his wide, taunting me with the truth. “You are a good girl. And when this all blows over, you can go back to living a good girl’s life. Not hanging out with thugs in a bar, hanging off the arm of a contract killer.”
    He steals the words from my mouth, the thoughts from my mind. Part of me knows he’s right. That he’s giving me a chance to move on, to find something else in my life.
    But everything I know has been tossed upside-down. I have no job, and I can’t talk to any of my old colleagues, and I’m supposed to sit here for a few months with these people I don’t know...
    And the thing that’s bothering me the most is that I don’t want him to leave. What does that say about me, after what he just said? Why didn’t that repulse me like it should? It does, partly, but it also fills me with a lustful heat that I don’t want to acknowledge. But my hand moves to his jaw, and I stroke it tenderly, because I don’t know what to say but I don’t want him to go.
    “I need your help, too. I think… maybe we can work out a deal,” Leon says, intruding on our private moment.
    “I will help you in any way I can. Whatever you need,” Mikhail says, and his tone sends a chill down my spine. He sounds so serious. So dire.
    “I need you to eliminate someone for me.”
    “Leon,