Authors: Ashley Rhodes
The Hitman's Baby - A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance (With extra added bonus novel for a short time only!)
The Hitman’s Baby
© Ashley Rhodes 2016
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Ashley x
NICK
"One shot, one kill ... Those are the rules I live by."
Every target is just another name I add to my list, regardless of age, gender or belief. I do however take special pride when I rid the world of monsters like Emilio Gonzales, leader of one of the largest drug cartels in the world.
But having to kill his daughter, who is at no fault other than having his name, is something I can't go through with. Helping her would mean going up against my very own agency but for once I want to save a life instead of taking it.
CASSANDRA
"My father's death didn't surprise me – but then I find out that I’m next…”
I thought I had escaped my past by leaving everything behind, constantly running, but my father's killer came after me to end what he had started. Something changed his mind though….and now he wants to help me. I don’t know if I can trust him, but I don’t have much choice.
Knowing he would never see me again, my Hitman made me his for one night and I still thirst for him even after all these years. What he doesn't know is that he has a son that might need his protection – somebody has found us, and they want to finish the job, once and for all…
**The Hitman’s Baby is a full-length novel. Standalone, no cliffhanger, no cheating & a happy ending!**
Nick Graves handed over the flimsy sheet of paper that summarized in brief detail the death of Emilio Gonzales, leader of one of the largest cartels in the world. He’d gone light on the details—his boss, Lester Miles, didn’t care for minutiae. All that really mattered was that Gonzales was dead and that it wouldn’t get traced back to the organization.
Lester took the sheet of paper, glanced at it briefly, and then bent to open a locked, steel sided briefcase with his thumb print. After a short pause there was a quiet beep, and then the report of Gonzales’ death disappeared forever into the case, very likely never to be seen again.
“Well done,” Lester said as he closed the briefcase and straightened. At full height his eyes were level with Nick’s, and though the two of them were unrelated they had a similar look about them; though Lester was about twenty years older than Nick. The same trimmed, economical hair. The same broad, muscular shoulders, even the same resting stance—casual in appearance but not ever really resting.
Given that Lester had taught Nick everything he knew and trained him the same way he himself had been trained, it wouldn’t have surprised anyone that they were so similar. Swimmers all had similar bodies. Wrestlers all had similar bodies.
That trend extended to paid assassins as well.
“Thanks,” Nick said, unaffected by Lester’s praise but habitually polite to the man. Once, a long time ago, Lester had been like a father. That changed when Nick was trained up, though; and Lester made it clear that he was no longer the parental type. He had been, once, Nick thought. But that didn’t matter anymore. Now, all that mattered was the job.
“It had to have been difficult,” Lester said. “Please, sit. Tell me about it.”
They each took one of the chairs in Lester’s temporary office. The agency had outposts like this all over the world—spartan, but comfortable, built out to Lester’s extravagant standards with thick pile rugs and comfortable chairs.
“There’s not much to tell,” Nick said. “Gonzales had a security gap, at night, before he turned in. Every Sunday. I think it was a religious thing.”
“You got him while he was praying?” Lester laughed. He shrugged. “Well, at least he made peace with his God, right?”
“Sure,” Nick shrugged. God was something he generally avoided thinking about. If there was one, and he doubted it, they weren’t on speaking terms.
Lester watched Nick for a moment, and sighed quietly. “Right. Well, there’s a follow-up gig. And a ten grand bonus to go with it.” He drew an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Nick.
Nick took it, and turned it over once before he opened it and pulled out the contents. A picture, what looked like a work schedule, a tiny memory drive, and a plain white business card with nothing but an address on it.
“This,” Lester said as Nick looked over the picture of the pretty Colombian girl, “is Cassandra Gonzales. She’s abroad at the moment, but if she hears about her father’s death she’ll return. The Powers That Be want to make sure the Gonzales cartel stays down and that the other cartels stay in chaos while the power vacuum is at work.”
She was pretty. That was the first thing Nick thought about the picture. Once, a long time ago now, or maybe not that long—it was hard to tell sometimes—he would have balked at the thought of having to put a .308 through her neck. “Timeline?” he asked.
“Ideally in the next week or so,” Lester said, waving a hand. “But as long as she doesn’t make it back from the States, it doesn’t really matter.”
“And we know she’ll take over the cartel if given the chance?” Nick asked.
Lester leveled a stony look at his former apprentice and well-paid contractor. “We don’t ever know anything. That’s the order. We just fill it. Is it going to be a problem?”
Nick shook his head and tucked everything back into the envelope, and slipped that into his inside coat pocket. “No problem. Just curious.”
“Don’t be,” Lester warned. He drummed his fingers on the carved wooden knob at the end of his arm chair. “Go get yourself a drink. Get some pussy. Relax for a bit, and familiarize yourself with Ms. Gonzales’ details.”
“Sounds good,” Nick said. He stood up when Lester did, and shook the man’s hand. Lester’s grip was tight, strong. There was a subtler, further warning in it. Don’t ask questions, Grasshopper. Just do the job.
Nick nodded once in silent acknowledgment. Message received, boss. Not that it was needed.
“See you when it’s done,” Lester said.
Nick’s hotel room was on the other side of town—the side with money. His penthouse suite was lavish and comfortable, the fridge stocked, the bathtub enormous and ringed with pink marble. The bed was custom, bigger than you could get retail, and looked made for more than two lovers.
He’d been in so many rooms identical to it that it barely registered when he walked in, tossed his coat onto the back of a chair, and laid Cassandra’s death note on the table. He poured a glass of bourbon over a single cube of ice with the hotel logo molded into four of its sides, and sat in the chair by the window to watch the sky darken.
A high-profile kill like Emilio Gonzales would have excited him once. Now, it was just another Sunday. Or any day, for that matter. He remembered his first. Hands shaking, sweat in his eyes. The stakes had felt high. The guy in the scope was basically a nobody compared to the targets that Nick had taken down since—a small time drug dealer, encroaching on some New York mafioso’s territory. Poor schmuck probably didn’t even know he was doing it. Don Barbieri hadn’t even warned him, Lester said. Just shelled out two grand for a cheap trigger finger and probably thought nothing more of it after that.
But the targets had since gotten harder, more serious, and so had the money. Politicians, leaders of independent states and rebel groups. Wealthy cheating husbands. Wealthy husbands who were faithful, but married murderous women. Faithful wives who married murderous husbands who couldn’t be bothered with divorce and the alimony that inevitably followed.
One hundred and sixty seven targets in all. Nick could recite them like a litany. It was one of the first things Lester had taught him. “Remember every name,” he said. “So that when someone comes after you for revenge, you know why.”
He who lived by the gun, right?
For the past three years, Nick’s targets had been high profile, well guarded, lived in small fortresses that they rarely left—principally because of people like Nick that were outside the walls—and in many cases didn’t have a photo to go with their file because no photos existed.
So it begged the question: why was Nick being assigned to a girl like Cassandra Gonzales? Maybe to keep it in the family, he supposed. But Lester had organized bloodline assassinations before—the kind where everyone had to go, from grandpa all the way down to little Timmy. It was common in corrupt dynasty situations. You had to get ‘em all, or in twenty years it started all over again.
Nick normally took out Grandpa in that situation because Grandpa was almost always the one in the big chair. The rest were details, handled by juniors.
It was odd, was all.
It was also not worth thinking about. His mind was too active. He needed to fix that.
So he left his useless imperial suite and took the long ride down to the mid-level bar to hunt.
The thing about giant mega-hotels with the kind of luxury Nick preferred, whether he actually enjoyed it or not, was that there were always three bars. There was the ground level bar where the general public could often be found, and in a big city like this it was normally loud and filled with the dregs of society.
Just above that was the level where the more common VIPs hung out. Pop stars, label execs, the fashion crowd. They liked it because they didn’t have to reach far to pluck an adoring fan, who would never dare report a rape, out of the weeds to plop them down in the spider’s den without having to go too far. It was also typically noisy.
At the middle though, almost always, was the club—not a bar—where the people who paid those people congregated. That was important. For one thing, it was less noisy. But for another, all the high class escorts hung out in this club. The lower classes couldn’t afford them, the upper classes mistreated them, but the truly elite? Those people had secrets to hide, reasons to be respectful, and enough money to make keeping one’s mouth shut worthwhile.
Nick didn’t need an escort. That was for old rich men. What Nick had an eye for was the daughters of those rich men.
He found one in short order. He could always tell. Visually, there wasn’t a great deal of difference between a rich man’s daughter and an escort. The main tell was that escorts were aggressively demure; a special blend they had to master in order to appeal to men with power. Or women with power, for that matter. Maybe especially for them.
Daughters of the rich and powerful, though, were kept chaste, sequestered, and carefully watched over. It wasn’t enough to impress them. Getting their panties off was a puzzle, and if you promised to solve that puzzle for them the rewards were always...delicious.
“Don’t look,” Nick said as he sat on a stool one removed from the cute little redhead sipping a martini in a dark blue dress—she was about twenty or twenty one but almost certainly hadn’t been carded—and ordered a gin and tonic. “But there’s a big guy at four o’clock who’s been staring at you for a while now. Looks dangerous.”
She glanced sideways at Nick, and smiled with her painted lips. “Thanks for your concern. That’s Lars. He’s not a creeper. Well, not just a creeper. He’s my bodyguard.”
“Ah,” Nick said, “well, that explains it, then. Lucky Lars.”
“Lucky?” the girl asked.
“Sure,” Nick said. He accepted his drink in a small tumbler and sipped it once before he rested it on the bar and looked at the red-head in the mirror. “He gets to stare at your ass all night.”
“Wow,” Red said. “Does that work on most girls?”
“Only girls with bodyguards,” Nick said. “Otherwise, it doesn’t make much sense.”
“Oh, you are clever, aren’t you?” She said. She tried to be sarcastic; due diligence. But she shifted a little on the plush leather stool, ever so slightly, and her posture changed to push her modest tits out a bit more. Baited, hooked.
“I bet it gets old, having Lars watch your every move,” Nick went on. “Unless you’re screwing him. He’s a pretty guy. Screwable.”
“I’m not screwing Lars,” she giggled. “He’s gay. Daddy wouldn’t hire a straight bodyguard. And Mom wouldn’t let him hire a woman, so…” She checked Lars in the mirror and sighed. “You should see his boyfriend.”
“I’d rather see you,” Nick said. “When’s the last time Lars looked the other way?”
“Given that his job description literally entails keeping my invisible chastity belt intact?” Red sighed. “I recommend the brunette in the striped dress.” She pointed to a woman across the room, visible in the bar-back mirror. “I’ve seen her leave with a different man every night. You’re totally her type.”
“She’s not mine,” Nick lied. She was; easily. But he liked the sport. “I’ll bet you fifty bucks and a screaming orgasm that I can give Lars the slip and show you a good time.”
“I’m out of cash,” Red sighed.
“Fine,” Nick said, “just the orgasm then, but make it two.”
Red bit her lip. Hook set.
“You’re on. What do we do?”
Nick finished his drink, and set it down. “Just do exactly as I say,” he said, “and it’ll all be fine.”
She was tight, and she tasted like cream and sugar.
For a little while, Nick was more or less alive again, when her pussy held him tight inside and contracted around his cock in the throes of her second orgasm. The first time, he’d bent her over, this time she was on top of him. He rested with his hands behind his head and watched her hard nipples dance with the motion of her body as she rose and fell on him, screaming to the heavens.
He felt himself getting close, and looked down her body to see his thick flesh vanishing and reappearing in between the waxed lips of her rich-girl cunt. Probably she had an expert team of highly paid technicians who gave her a weekly once-over to make sure not a single hair survived. Kind of a let down, but he had to admit it made the show pretty easy to see.
Her fingers dipped, and found her swollen, over-sensitive clit. “Rub it,” she gasped. “I can come again if you rub it.”
Greedy little slut. Nick shook his head. “Not until you get me off. We’re Oh for Two, Red.”
She squirmed on top of him, like he was imposing on her and she was this close to throwing a tantrum.
“Stop complaining,” he said. “I’m close.”
“Are you?” She smiled, and slowed down. “Well, maybe I’m done.”
Without a sound, Nick sat up, the muscles of his trained core doing all the work, so that he didn’t have to move her out of position. With similar deftness, he spun them both so that she was on her back, and dragged one of her legs up over his shoulder. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll do it myself.”
He pistoned into her relentlessly, while she pinched her nipples and finally reached down with those long nailed, manicured fingers of hers—dangerously close to his dick—and began to work her own swollen, wet little nub.