My Bad Boy's Secret: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance (198 page)

“We didn’t even get each other’s names that day. I’m Rose. Rose Whitney. I just moved here with my family. What’s your name?” I asked.

He held out a hand to shake. “Name’s, uh, Robert Jackson. And I just got here too. I’m alone here. So you got a husband?” His voice shook a bit as he talked.

“I’m divorced,” I replied. “It’s just me and my kids. Two girls.”

“Oh, sorry to hear that.”

I smiled just a little. “Don’t be. He was a dick.”

Robert laughed out of the blue. “Sounds like you don’t miss him. So where are you from? What are you doing in Atlanta?”

“I got a job as a lawyer here. What about you? What do you do?” The smile on Robert’s face faded.

“I’m actually between jobs right now. But, I’ve done all sorts of jobs.”

“Such as…”

“Personal trainer, truck driver, delivery guy, lot of freelance work.” Robert looked like he didn’t want to talk anymore about it.

He then pulled out an envelope and gave it to me. “This is money. To, you know, get your car fixed. And I’m sorry. Again. Just please don’t tell no one about me. I’d like to keep this between us.”

There was an honesty in his voice that I hadn’t ever heard from him. I felt touched.

“Thank you,” I replied. “How about we enjoy the gifts you brought?”

We sat together on the couch and ate some of the chocolates, and I poured us two glasses of champagne. I was amazed at how happy I felt around him. It was a feeling I hadn’t had in a very long time.

I took my time to take Robert in. That day, he was like a human pit bull, lashing out at everyone and everything. Today, he was like a big puppy. He had vibrant brown eyes that were constantly moving and shimmering, and charisma flowed from him when he talked and moved.

I think he had some similar interest in me as well, since I caught him eyeing my body several times. It was kind of exhilarating to feel that.

“So you got out of a bad relationship,” he asked in a half-question, half-statement way. “It sucks, but everyone has them. I have some girlfriends I’d like to forget.”

I grinned slyly. “Oh yeah? So is there anyone special in your life right now?”

He shook his head. “Nope, I’m all alone. Poor me.”

“Sometimes, it’s just better to be on your own,” I said.

“But sometimes you meet a person who makes you not want to be alone,” replied Robert as he looked directly towards me.

Butterflies danced in my chest and my heart skipped several beats. When did we go from merely talking to flirting?

“I know what you mean,” I said, hoping my cheeks weren’t blushing.

“Listen, I don’t do this often,” began Robert. “But I’ve been kind of lonely ever since I came to this city, and you seem really cool. Would you…you know…ever be interested in hanging out again soon?”

Was this going to be hanging out or dating? I didn’t dare to ask.

“Yes!” I agreed with a little too much enthusiasm.

“How about next Saturday night? Are you free?” he asked.

I thought for a moment. Maybe Luciana had already planned something for us, but I absolutely wanted to spend more time with him instead of her.

“Yes, I’m open then. I have nothing planned yet. Until now,” I said with a wide smile.

He smiled back. “Awesome! I’m looking forward to it.”

I hadn’t dated in years. I was apprehensive and ecstatic, simultaneously. I wondered if Robert had the same emotions.

I broke out of my pensive mood to be reminded that the girls just woke up from their nap. They strolled in, still somewhat groggy, and spied me and Robert sitting and scrunched together.

I got up and pushed my girls forward to let Robert see them. “Robert, these are my daughters, Jessica and Amber. Girls, say hello to one of our neighbors, Mr. Jackson.”

Then I saw the look on Robert’s face. He’d been easy going the whole time, but now his face was one of fear. He breathed erratically and seemed to be on the verge of throwing up. What was wrong?

“Sorry, but…I just gotta go,” he wheezed out, grabbing his coat from the couch and turning.

Just as suddenly as he arrived, Robert dashed out. He almost tripped at the door on his way out, and sprinted away like he was being chased by wild animals.

The girls and I stared for a few seconds, unsure of how to react.

“Who was that man, mommy? He was weird,” ventured Amber.

I cleared my throat before responding. “He was our neighbor, sweetie. He came to say sorry for arguing with me yesterday.”

“He was kind of scary,” declared Jessica. “Please don’t bring him here again. I don’t want him to know where I sleep!”

I nodded. I was fine with him not coming over. In my heart, though, I wanted to go over to his place. I wanted to be with him. He was crude and frightening and mysterious, but something about him felt real. Real and passionate. 

Chapter 6 – Blake

I pulled back the trigger as hard as I could, and let the bullets fly until the magazine was empty. After this many years on the job, aiming was no big deal. I’ve had plenty of practice, and there wasn’t any room for hiding. Location is half the battle.

The Blood Brothers were paying me for this job. I’d been their go-to guy for years, and they paid generously. Today, I was supposed to silence some key witnesses who were going to make or break an upcoming trial against the gang. Some of their top brass were due in court for every crime on the books, and the federal government had a lot riding on this case. They’d been after this biker gang for decades, and wanted to put them all behind bars. Ten people, including informants, eyewitnesses, and law enforcement, were going to be testifying for the prosecution, and the media said it was an open-and-shut case.

Not if I had anything to say about it.

The gang sent some emails around and managed to convince all the targets to get together for what they thought was one final meeting to discuss the trial and their testimony. It was a final meeting all right, just not the kind they were all thinking of. The only person there to greet them was me. In the lobby of an abandoned office building, I hid behind a dark corner with my silenced pistol, and when everyone got there, I opened fire.

Sure, they tried running, but that didn’t work for any of them. In less than a minute, nine people were lying dead on the marble ground. If I hadn’t run out of bullets, maybe I wouldn’t be running for my life right now, in a city I don’t know, trying my best to remain invisible.

But I had to reload, and I looked up to see the last person on my to-kill list. Clarissa Petersen.

I knew her name, but I never would have guessed she was just so…young. So little.

In over twelve years of killing people, I never had to work with kids. I never made an official policy of not killing kids, unlike some guys in the business. I just thought to myself that I’d never have to do it. Not that I thought it was impossible, it was just one of those things I like to imagine would never come up.

And now I was standing in front of a kid I was supposed to kill.

She had stopped screaming. Now she had moved on to crying quietly.

I had a new magazine loaded. The gun was cocked. Just one more thing for me to do.

“Please…don’t,” she whimpered out.

This was business as usual. That was what I started repeating to myself in my head. I tried telling myself that I could just shoot her and run. Get my money and go on with my life. It should’ve been that simple.

I’d killed more people than I could even try to count. Killing one little girl should’ve been nothing.

Seeing her like that, an actual child crying and shaking, and begging for her life, was getting to me. I never knew I was this soft inside. I just always tried to keep the minimum amount of emotion in my life. I never spent time feeling sorry about never seeing my mom, made sure not to cry when my dad died, never thought about who all the people I killed were.

I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t kill a little girl who only just started living her life.

I don’t know how much time I spent standing and watching her. I thought about what I should do. If I didn’t get rid of her, there’d be hell to pay. But if I did get rid of her, I didn’t know if I could live with myself.

I walked over to her. She remained standing, stuck to the floor with fear. Her braids were swaying slightly, and she was drenched in sweat.

“If I let you go,” I slowly said, “you have to promise never to say anything to anybody. You have to promise not to go to the trial. Can you do that?”

“Yes!” She shrieked. “I’ll refuse to testify. I’ll disappear. I’ll never say anything to anybody. Just please let me live.” She had her hands clenched together, praying to me for a miracle.

I paused for a minute. “I wish I could believe you, kid,” I replied. Then I slammed down my pistol butt over her forehead. I heard a full cracking sound, and she collapsed instantly.

I brought my foot down over her throat, putting all my weight to make sure that she’d never say anything. Then I got to work with my fists, punching down on her face, chest, arms, legs, and every other part of her small body.

When I was done, she wasn’t dead, but she sure looked dead. The only two people in the room that were alive were me and her, and you could just barely hear her breath if you concentrated hard enough. Otherwise, she seemed just as dead as everyone else on the floor.

Then I dashed out, got on my bike, and called my clients, telling them that the job was done with no problems. The news next day came out saying that the job wasn’t done, and ---

I shot up out of my bed. Holy crap, it was all replaying in my head. I was just dreaming about all that again. Now I didn’t want to fall back asleep.

My sheets and pillow were wet. So were my face and neck. Seeing those kids today was a shock. When I saw them, I instantly remembered the girl I was trying to forget. I ran out on Rose like a punk. But right now, embarrassing myself in front of her was the least of my worries.

The Blood Brothers, to my knowledge, didn’t operate in this part of the country. But they never forget anything, and I knew that at this very moment, they were asking around and looking in every nook and cranny to try and find me. I might have to skip this town too, and maybe even leave the country.

Why couldn’t I have just manned up and killed her?

Chapter 7 – Rose

Another week, another paycheck. Yet as I left my office with Luciana, I felt nothing but defeat. We had been cooperating closely with our media contacts, the FBI, and half a dozen police departments across the Midwest and the Deep South to dig up any information on the killer. So far, all we knew conclusively was that he was a man, that he was most likely from the Milwaukee, Chicago, or Detroit metropolitan areas, and that he had been linked to deaths spanning from the Pacific, to the Atlantic Ocean. This person had been to cities all over the country and was responsible for assassinations on behalf of virtually every criminal syndicate in existence. After his latest killings, he had gone dark and seemed to have vanished off of the face of the Earth.

Besides these scant facts, we had nothing else to work with. There were no solid leads from anyone. Every criminal in custody either had no knowledge of the killer, or had completely shut down and refused to say anything for fear of being offed for snitching. We had one survivor, an 11 year old girl, but she had yet to say a word. It was a miracle that she wasn’t in a coma, and the trial she was supposed to testify at was indefinitely postponed. If we didn’t get results fast, the defendants, a group of bikers who had done everything to deserve going to jail for the rest of their pathetic lives, would go free.