Hard Tackle: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (34 page)

T
he distinctive noise
of a bone breaking echoed off the walls of the empty factory floor as my fist collided with Warren’s face. I checked my hand to make sure the bone wasn’t one of mine, but other than some bruising and bloody knuckles I was in good shape.

The same couldn’t be said for Warren.

The force of my punch sent him staggering back against the wall which stopped him from falling flat on his ass, but left him open for another punch.  

My right hand still stung from the first punch, so I swung my left fist into his face with all the effort I could muster. Even with my uncoordinated left hand, I still did enough damage to send him down to the floor in a sniveling heap.  

Warren spat blood onto the floor as he moaned in pain. He reached a hand up to his face to examine the damage, but the second his fingers touched his jawbone he screamed and snapped them away.  

Yeah, there was definitely a broken bone in there somewhere. I probably should have thought this through a little more. I needed him to talk. He couldn’t do that if I broke too many bones.

“Tell me where he is,” I yelled.  

“I’m telling you, I don’t know.”

I pulled back my leg and smashed my foot into his stomach. Warren half moaned, half yelled in anger as he lay helpless on the floor. God dammit, now I was almost feeling sorry for this creep. Then I remembered Kara.  

“Don’t give me that bullshit. Where do you meet? How do you get your instructions?”

“I’ve never met the boss. I’m just an enforcer. There are hundreds of people above me. Christ, I don’t get paid enough for this.”  

I suspected he was telling the truth, but there was only one way to be sure about that. I picked up his leg, and pulled a knife out of my pocket. The knife was for show; I rarely needed a knife to scare anyone, and it was much more satisfying doing the job with my fists.  

“Tell me, Warren, ever wonder what life would be like without a knee-cap?”

“Oh God no, no, please don’t!”  

I stuck my knife through the cheap denim of his jeans and tore a large gash in his pants, exposing his knee.  

“I’ll give you a clue,” I said slowly, gently pressing the knife against the skin just under his knee. “It hurts. A lot. But that’s not the worst bit. Pain goes away eventually, but then you’re left without a knee and I’m guessing Roddy Barton doesn’t provide comprehensive medical insurance for his lackeys.”  

“I don’t know where he is. Please believe me.”

“Life without knees is tough. There’s a reason millions of years of evolution gave us them in the first place.”

“I get my instructions from Ray,” Warren blurted out. “Usually. Sometimes it’s Ed, but usually Ray.”  

“And where can I find them?”  

“I only ever meet them here at the factory, but they show up randomly. I never know when they’re going to arrive.”

Warren tried to pull his leg out of my grasp, but I tightened my grip and pressed the knife deeper into his flesh. Deep enough to draw blood. Warren screamed again, probably more from the fear of losing a knee than from the actual pain of the cut on his leg.  

Fear was more powerful than pain when trying to torture someone.

“Keep still, Warren,” I said calmly. “If you struggle, I’ll assume you’re lying to me.”  

Warren relaxed slightly and I rewarded him by reducing the pressure of the knife on his skin.  

“I’m not lying, I swear. Roddy doesn’t tell people like me what he’s doing. I don’t think even Ray and Ed know. They get their orders from someone else.”

“So no one knows anything. Is that about the gist of it?”  

“It’s how he stays hidden.”

I should never have gotten my hopes up. One of my dad’s friends, James, had given me a great lead that led me here, to one of Roddy’s factories that he used as a cover for his less legitimate operations.  

I knew how to spot a fake business. Dad and I ran enough of them ourselves, after all. They were obvious when you knew what you were looking for.  

I’d been so sure that this would lead me to Roddy--Kara’s killer--that I never stopped to think things through. Now Roddy would just go deeper into hiding. I should have staked the place out, found the important people, and followed them.  

This was what I got for acting on impulse.

“Let’s pretend I believe you for a second,” I said as Warren examined his teeth with his tongue, trying to spot if any of them were broken. They were all covered in blood at this point so it was hard to tell, but it looked like he had a full set. “What do you know about Kara?”

“I don’t know anyone called Kara,” Warren replied. “I swear I don’t. We have a few women in the organization, but I don’t know their names.”

“She doesn’t work for your organization,” I replied fiercely. “She doesn’t work for anyone. Not any more. Roddy killed her.”  

Suddenly Warren laughed, or at least he tried to, but he ended up just coughing and spraying blood all over his clothes.  

“Something funny?” I asked, pressing the knife back into his flesh harder than before.

Warren yelled in pain, but transformed it into a manic laugh. “I thought this was business. It’s all about a chick. Fuck, man, all this just because of some dead bit of tail.”

Warren’s next scream didn’t become a laugh. I lowered his leg and brought my foot crashing down on it, breaking his shin bone in the process.  

I left Warren screaming in agony on the floor. The morning shift would be here soon, so he’d get help. Eventually.  

Over the past five years, I’d thrown more punches and broken more bones than I cared to count. But usually I had an excuse--my father made me. Dad ran the biggest crime syndicate in Chicago, and I was his second-in-command. I had to get my hands dirty occasionally to keep people scared of us.  

I never gave it much thought. I was dealing with scum who usually deserved a lot more than just a beating. At least, that’s what I told myself when I tried to sleep at night.  

Now though… now I was acting on my own. Dad hadn’t ordered me to chase down Kara’s killer. In fact, he’d ordered me to stay well clear of it.  

Kara’s not worth starting a war over. She was just a pawn. We’ll wipe Roddy’s crew off the face of the planet one day, but not yet. When we’re ready.

Kara might not have been important to Dad, but to me she was my world. And Roddy took her from me.  

I didn’t enjoy beating people up for a living, but I was damn good at it. Those skills were going to come in use now, because if there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that Roddy would pay for what he did.  

Roddy killed Kara to get at me.  

He wants a war.  

He’s going to get one.

“
M
r. Russell is running
a bit late, Ms. Tamworth,” the receptionist explained. “If you’d just like to go down the hall, you’ll see his office at the end. Take a seat outside, and when he shows up you can go straight in for the interview.”

I still hadn’t gotten used to people calling me Ms. Tamworth. We’d only had a week to prepare and put this assignment in place. The new name had been handed to me at the last minute, along with a fake social security number, résumé--complete with fake references--and a new hairstyle, just in case.  

At least the FBI had let me keep the same first name. There wasn’t much to be gained by changing my first name because it was so common anyway. It’s not like Mr. Russell would be able to find out my real identity just from the name ‘Chloe.’

I strolled down the hall in the direction the receptionist pointed, and found the office for Denton Russell right at the end. There were a few chairs outside, so I took a seat and pulled out my résumé to make sure I had all the information in my head.

Instead of being a Harvard graduate with a double major in sociology and criminology, I was now an experienced personal assistant, with work experience at a major fashion magazine and a Fortune 500 company in New York.  

When I joined the FBI just out of college just a few months ago, I had imagined spending at least five years stuck behind a desk before I got the chance to do any field work. I had barely been there five weeks when this assignment landed on my desk.

Instead of learning a foreign language, or being shipped off to an embassy overseas, like many of my Harvard peers, I was learning how to pass myself off as a personal assistant, which was a lot harder than I had ever imagined.  

Just trying to get someone like Denton Russell to the right place at the right time required a degree of calendar management that stressed me out more than any exam ever had done. I now knew enough to talk my way into the job, but the real challenge would be keeping it for enough time to get the information the FBI needed to put Denton and his dad behind bars for many years.

I was under no illusions as to why I had been picked for this assignment. It had nothing to do with my academic credentials--which were only average up against my peers who often had master's degrees and at least one other language under their belt--and it wasn’t because of my performance in the training.

I’d been picked because of how I looked. Not because I was especially beautiful. I wasn’t unattractive, but it would take more than good looks to catch the eye of someone like Denton. He never went out in public without at least three women hanging off him, and they were all far better looking--and far sluttier--than I ever would be.

However, the second the officer in charge of bringing down the Russell crime syndicate laid eyes on me, he knew I’d be perfect for the job. I looked like someone Russell used to date. A girl named Kara.

By all accounts, he’d been infatuated with her. But then she’d been killed. A pawn in the game the Russell family played with the Bartons. She’d been Denton’s personal assistant and they’d fallen for each other. Now he needed a new PA and who better than someone who looked like the spitting image of his former lover?

The whole thing sounded a little creepy to me, but my boss was convinced it would work. Besides, Denton was apparently the suspicious type and wouldn’t easily divulge information, so anything that made him let his guard down was considered a huge advantage.

I heard a man’s voice at the far end of the hall and a woman responded with “No, Mr. Russell.” He was here.

I’d been stressed out and nervous as hell when interviewing for the graduate program with the FBI, but that was nothing compared to this interview. At least with the FBI, I didn’t have to worry about getting caught as an undercover agent and killed or made to ‘disappear.’  

I quickly looked back down at my résumé as he approached, desperately trying to cram in all the dates and previous employers that seemed to be slipping from my memory at the worst possible moment.  

I tucked the résumé in my file in case it looked suspicious that I didn’t know my own background, and then took a deep breath to try and compose myself. That didn’t work, so I went to my tried and true back up plan.

Two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-seven, forty-one...

When I was young, Dad used to have lots of unsavory visitors calling round the house and on occasion things threatened to get violent. Mom and I would always hide out in the bedroom and wait for them to leave.  

I often got scared at the sound of the screaming, so Mom and I would recite prime numbers until the shouting stopped and they went away. Most kids my age didn’t even know what prime numbers were. I’d always been an odd one.

“You must be Chloe,” Denton’s deep voice said from beside me as he opened the door to his office.

“Yes, sir,” I replied, jumping up out of my seat and thrusting my hand towards him. Too late. He’d already turned his back to me and was halfway to his desk.

“Come in. Sit down,” he said impatiently, as he flicked through emails on his phone.

If I’d ever harbored the illusion that Denton Russell wasn’t the bad guy my boss made out, that notion was immediately dismissed when I saw the dried blood and scrapes on his knuckles.  

It was only nine in the morning, and he’d already been in a fight. He hadn’t even gone to the effort of cleaning up afterwards. Lois, my immediate supervisor, had explained that most of the employees here would be innocent of all crimes. Apparently, they thought they were working for the head office of a food packaging company.

I wanted to believe that was true, but if Denton just walked around casually with bloody knuckles, there must be a heck of a lot of people here deliberately looking away from uncomfortable truths.

I sat down and looked up, taking in my first impression of Denton in the flesh. I’d seen plenty of photos, but they hadn’t prepared me for what it would feel like to sit just a few feet from him.  

The cliché thing to say would be that the photos didn’t do him justice, but that wasn’t quite true. He looked fantastic in the photos as well. Every woman in the office had made some sort of cheeky comment when they saw him, and most of them thought I was lucky for the chance to spend time with a man like Denton.

But the photos hadn’t captured the essence of raw strength and power that he gave off. He’d thrown some aftershave on, but a heat emanated from his body, making it clear he had been sweating recently.  

In most of his photos, Denton had been clean-shaven, but he hadn’t shaved this morning, and there was a rough stubble coating his face and drawing attention away from his tired eyes.

Underneath his shirt were tattoos covering his arms and probably his chest as well, although I hadn’t seen any photos of that. He had looked every bit the low-life thug in most of the pictures I’d seen, but now he looked like any other businessman, albeit with knuckles covered in blood.

He looked just as comfortable in the suit as he did in the jeans and t-shirts the FBI usually photographed him wearing. He’d been attractive in those images, but I never thought for a second I would find him desirable.  

There was a difference between someone being easy on the eyes, and actually appealing. Much to my mom’s relief--and Dad’s when he’d been alive--I usually went for sensible, well-educated men, who spoke politely and would have good jobs and earn lots of money. I’d never brought home anyone like Denton.

I could just imagine the look on my Mom’s face if I introduced her to someone like him. Sexy, ripped, covered in tattoos, and a womanizer to boot. Oh, and he’s a criminal who kills and beats people up for a living when he’s not pushing papers around the office he uses for money laundering.  

Christ, we hadn’t even started the interview yet and already I was imagining what would happen if I introduced him to my mom. This had the potential to get awkward.

Lois had spent a couple of hours lecturing me on the importance of treading the line between sexual chemistry--which was important to get Denton to let me into his world--and actual sexual intimacy.  

Reading between the lines, I sensed that perhaps Lois had fallen for someone she was supposed to be investigating in the past, but she didn’t admit as much.  

That couldn’t happen here. I couldn’t pretend Denton wasn’t easy on the eye, but he was a criminal, and most likely a murderer. I could never be attracted to someone like that.

“You’re here to interview for the PA job?” Denton asked as he cast his eyes over a copy of my résumé that someone had left on his desk. He still hadn’t so much as looked at me, and to be honest, I’d happily go through the entire interview with him not doing so.

“Yes, sir,” I replied politely. Personal assistants and secretaries were likely deferential to their employers, so I just had to be overly polite and appear willing to take orders all day long for little pay.  

“You’re highly quali--” He trailed off as he finally looked up from my résumé and stared at me.  

His deep green eyes came to a rest on mine. That was another thing a photo couldn’t do justice to--the intensity of someone’s gaze. It was like being a kid and having my dad tell me off; I knew I had to maintain eye contact, but every instinct in my body begged me to look away before my head exploded.

I did my best to look puzzled, as if I didn’t know why he looked surprised to see someone the spitting image of his dead ex-girlfriend. I’d even had my hair specially prepared to look like hers, although the color didn’t match exactly, and I wore a pant suit similar to the ones she usually wore to work.  

We were playing with his emotions. It was a cruel form of torture, but nothing compared to what he did to his rivals on a regular basis. He deserved every bit of pain I could inflict.

“Is everything okay?” I asked sweetly.  

I didn’t sound like Kara. By all accounts, she’d had a slight Midwestern accent, and after attempting one of my own, Lois had quickly decided not to have me fake it.  

That wouldn’t have fit in with the rest of the background on my résumé anyway. To keep things simple and easy to remember, all my work experience was around New York and Boston, places I knew well from growing up and college.

Denton continued to stare at me for a few seconds that threatened to draw out into eternity, before finally blinking and shaking his head, as if snapping out of a daze.  

“Everything’s fine,” he replied. His voice sounded moody and aggressive, but I couldn’t expect anything else from someone with his background. “You’re highly qualified. How did you get the job at a Fortune 500 company without going to college?”

“I knew the personal assistant who was leaving her job, and she put me in touch with the boss. I got lucky, really.”

“I’ll say. Even the filing clerks have degrees at that place.”

Denton went back to staring at me. The longer his eyes lingered on me, the faster my heart rate got, until I felt like it was about to burst out of my chest. What if he’d figured me out? Maybe this was all a little too much. It was too obvious.  

If he knew it was inappropriate to stare at me for so long, he didn’t seem to care. It’s not like he was being subtle about it. At least I hadn’t worn a wire or any listening devices.  

Lois said there wasn’t much point at first, because Denton was hardly likely to divulge any useful information in an interview anyway. I had to gain his trust first, then I could start collecting evidence against him and his father.

“Why are you here?” he asked firmly.

“Excuse me?” I replied, my voice creaking under the pressure.
Did he know?

“I said, why are you here?”  

To put you behind bars where you belong.
“To interview for a job as a personal assistant.”  

“I meant, why are you here in Chicago. Why leave a good job in New York to come here?”

“Oh,” I replied.  

I tried to force an embarrassed smile--it was better than looking relieved at not being caught out as an undercover FBI agent--but all I could manage was a slight twitch of my cheek that probably looked like the onset of a stroke. “I just wanted a change of pace. New York got to be a little too much.”  

“You’re lying,” Denton accused.

“Sir?”  

Oh God, he knows. Will I make it out of here alive? Surely he doesn’t kill people in his office? I’ll probably be allowed back down to my car in the underground garage before some men jump me and throw me in the trunk.

“Boyfriend problems,” Denton said. “Or girlfriend problems, I suppose. People don’t just one day decide they’re going to move away from New York City and come live in Chicago. Judging by your résumé, you don’t have any connections here, so I’m guessing you had a relationship end badly.”

This was as good a time as any to weave in the next part of the made up backstory.  

“My father died,” I replied. “I just wanted to get away from the city.”  

That part was partly true, but it wasn’t recent. Dad died five years ago. His death made me want to stay at home even more to support Mom, but she’d insisted I go off to university as planned.

“Oh. Sorry,” Denton said. He didn’t sound particularly sorry. I guess that’s what happened when you spent as much time around death as he did. “What happened?”

Mom would never forgive me for this next lie, but I had to do it. Lying about Dad’s death might help save lives. If it did, it would be worth it.

“He was killed by the police,” I replied. I didn’t have to fake a lot of anguish as I spoke. “My dad wasn’t always on the right side of the law, but he wasn’t a bad person.”

“I find the police rarely distinguish between good and bad people these days. They’re too quick to hand out their own brand of justice.”

I nodded. “Don’t even get me started on that.”  

Denton smiled for the first time, but the second I returned it with a smile of my own he went back to frowning at me and looking confused.  

So far this had gone exactly to plan. I’d explained why I was moving from New York to Chicago, and hopefully convinced him that being an FBI agent working undercover had nothing to do with it.