Owned by the Beast Read online

  I’ve wondered many times since then what I would have done if I’d known what was going to happen next.

  My heart skipped a beat when I heard the deadbolt turn and the front door open, then close again, followed by another turn of the lock. I had been told to wait for the signal—was that it? No, it couldn’t be. That didn’t fit with what Moretti had told me.

  I expected sounds, like keys dropping on the table by the door, or someone kicking off their shoes, anything to show that someone was making themselves at home. But there were none. Once the door closed again, I didn’t hear anything for more than ten minutes. It was enough to make me wonder if maybe I’d imagined the whole thing.

  Then the lock turned again, and this time, I did hear the keys hitting the table, followed by the sounds of one side of a phone conversation.

  “You heard me,” said a gruff male voice. “Tell them to go fuck themselves. If they think I’m handing over my waterfront operation just because they threatened me, they’re out of their minds.”

  Cliff was obviously agitated, but all I was concerned about at that moment was staying quiet and trying to figure out what the “signal” was supposed to be. I was sure it wasn’t him griping into his phone. My heartrate doubled as he moved deeper into the apartment and closer to my closet, still shouting into his phone.

  “Just do it!” he barked. “And you tell that greasy bastard that I got people of my own who’d be more than happy to take him out—” He stopped suddenly, and there was silence for a moment.

  The next thing I knew, there was a sound like two loud claps, followed by a thud. My heart was racing, but my mind was clear: if that wasn’t some sort of signal, I didn’t know what could possibly qualify as one. I stood up, bracing myself against the walls of the closet, but when I tried to take a step, my legs filled with pins and needles and I almost fell back to the closet floor. There was no way I would be able to walk out of the closet in that state, so I pushed the door open just a tiny crack and peered into the living room beyond the hallway.

  A few seconds later, I saw a man in a dark suit walk through the hall and into the living room. At first all I could make out in the dim light were basic features: not quite as tall as me, but muscular, filling every inch of that expensive tailored suit like a mannequin in a Brooks Bros. store. His hair was dark and styled meticulously, not a single strand out of place. The way he moved was almost mesmerizing, despite the adrenaline coursing through me. He stalked silently through the room, taking each step deliberately, with a confidence that made me think of a jungle cat on the hunt.

  Who was this man? Was it Cliff? Why had he stopped talking so abruptly?

  Then he turned and looked in my direction.

  My body reacted before my brain, sending a jolt of electricity through me. But was it fear or something else that was making my nerve endings tingle? His dark green eyes shimmered in the lamplight, but I could tell they hadn’t seen me. Not yet.

  I kept my gaze glued to him for a few seconds as he continued to stalk through the living room. That was when I noticed that his hands were the wrong color. Then he disappeared from view, heading back down the hall from where he’d emerged.

  My mind raced. Moretti had given me specific instructions on what to say when someone asked me about Cliff, but nothing about what to do in a situation like this. What was I supposed to do now?

  Before I could think about it for long, the man returned to the living room. I held my breath as I watched him drop something into the breast pocket of his suit coat. Suddenly, I remembered that there had been the sound of the door opening before Cliff had arrived—did this man come into the apartment before Cliff?

  With that thought came another realization that filled me with a sick, horrible dread: this man had done something to Cliff. Something that silenced him. I didn’t want to think about what that would be,

  What was I supposed to do?

  Before I could give it another moment’s thought, the closet door swung wide, filling my eyes with the light from the living room and sending yet another shock through my insides. A hand grabbed my arm in a steely grip and yanked me out into the hallway on my wobbly legs. I could barely stand as my eyes adjusted as my mind raced. It took a moment for my vision to adjust so that I could see the man’s deep green eyes glaring at me. At this distance, I could see why his hands were a strange color—he was wearing latex gloves.

  Then the barrel of a gun was between my eyes and that became all I could think about.

  Chapter 5

  Duncan

  This can’t be happening.

  That thought kept flashing through my mind, even though I could feel the woman’s skin in my grip, see the look of shock on her face, smell her sweet, panting breath as she struggled to deal with her panic at being caught and seeing a silenced 9-millimeter pistol pointed at her.

  It couldn’t be happening. I never left witnesses. And yet here one was, standing there as plain as day, tall and athletic and gorgeous—and scared out of her mind. Her breasts heaved under her tight, red dress with every breath she drew in. Her marble-gray eyes glistened as tears welled in them, threatening to overflow.

  This. Can’t. Be. Happening.

  But it was.

  My finger should have squeezed the trigger already. One round. No witnesses. No evidence. I’d picked up the shell casings of the two slugs I’d put in the guy’s skull, and that should have been it. I should have been on my way out of the building already, taking the route that avoided the security cameras until I emerged into the alley that would take me to my car and the perfect getaway.

  And yet there I was, still in the apartment, not pulling the trigger.

  She and I must have stood like that for at least five full seconds, staring into each other’s eyes. Then suddenly she spoke, startling me.

  “I didn’t see anything,” she said in a papery whisper. “I swear.”

  “Who are you?” I growled.

  “My name is Aria.”

  Her voice was stronger now and her eyes were no longer almost popping out of her head which made me feel relieved for some reason. I shook it off, knowing I couldn’t let this go any further. No witnesses.

  Still, I found myself lowering the pistol. She let out the breath she’d been holding and stopped wringing her hands.

  “I didn’t ask for your name,” I said. “Who are you? Why were you hiding in there?”

  “Cliff is my boyfriend!” she blurted. Her eyes were wide again. “We’ve been dating for three months. I, uh… I was going to surprise him when he got home.”

  I looked her up and down: the sexy dress, the bursting cleavage, the legs up to here. She could turn on any red-blooded hetero male who still had a pulse. Cliff was a lucky man.

  At least he would have been, if I hadn’t just put two rounds into his head. Now, instead of lying in his bed and letting this woman pleasure him, he was lying in his bed and bleeding all over it. Not that it mattered. Cliff Esterhouse had moved on to whatever afterlife there might be within thirty seconds of me pulling the trigger. I was proud of the fact that he hadn’t made a sound.

  Goddammit, I cursed inwardly. There had been nothing about a girlfriend in the dossier Moretti showed me. As if I needed another reason to hate the deal we had just made with him.

  “I know Cliff was involved in organized crime,” Aria said out of nowhere. “I mean, it wasn’t a secret.” She stared at me, unblinking, like an owl. “You killed him, didn’t you?”

  I let out a heavy sigh. Part of me had held out some hope that maybe she didn’t know what was going on, but that was just foolish. She may not have seen me pull the trigger, but she knew what had happened. And she had seen more than enough of my face to describe me to the cops. Even Quinn, the crooked cop the Outfit had on the payroll, couldn’t make that disappear.

  “Yeah,” I said softly. “I did.”

  I gripped my pistol, readying myself to lift it again. My stomach turned at the thought.

  “Good!” Aria cried out of nowhere. Her face showed more emotion than it had since I pulled her out of the closet. “He was a bastard! I’m glad he’s dead!”

  I blinked and shook my head to clear it. “What are you talking about?”

  Next thing I knew, she had taken my free hand in both of hers and was kissing it with her full, warm lips.

  “Cliff beat me,” she said. “That’s why I was hiding from him. I only stayed with him because he threatened to kill me if I ever left. If I could have, I would have killed him myself.” Suddenly her eyes lit up. “Wait! I’ll tell the police that I did it out of self-defense! You could take off right now and no one would ever know you were here!”

  I must have been out of my head because I actually allowed myself to hope that her story might work, but only for a fleeting moment. It was impossible.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, surprised by just how much I meant it. “But you would know. You’ve seen my face.”

  “I can forget it,” she said instantly. She waited a beat before adding, “Not that I want to. It’s a nice face.”

  I felt a blush start to fill my cheeks and immediately clamped down on it, cursing myself. Pull your head out of your ass, you idiot! This is serious!

  I motioned with the pistol. It was a customized Luger with a suppressor and subsonic rounds, all designed to be as quiet as possible. It was quite obviously the weapon of a silent assassin, not something a desperate woman would pick up on the street to protect herself from an abusive boyfriend.

  “Even if you hadn’t seen my face, no cop would ever believe you had access to a gun like this,” I said.

  “I could tell them it was Cliff’s,” she said, letting her hands doing half the talking like so many Italian
s did. “He was a thug, and it’s the kind of weapon he’d have!” Then she realized what she’d just implied and all the color drained from her beautiful face.

  “Not that you’re a thug!” she added quickly, almost babbling. “I mean, you seem like a very nice man. You’re very attractive.” Again, she appeared surprised by what had just come out of her mouth. “I mean that platonically! I’m not hitting on you! Oh, God, Aria, please just shut up…”

  My reaction to it all shocked me: I actually started to chuckle. If you knew me, you’d know I do not chuckle. Or giggle. Or snicker. Or smile.

  And yet here I was.

  What the hell was I going to do with her? I couldn’t let her go. If I did, she’d be marked anyway. There were only two options here: either I killed her, or someone else would. In my world, witnesses died. Period.

  As if reading my mind, Aria dropped her gaze to the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’m not stupid. I know how this works.” When she looked up, her eyes shimmered with tears. “I got into a bad situation, and I couldn’t get out. Now I don’t know what’s happening. It’s like someone pulled the rug out from under my world and suddenly I’m running in mid-air trying to keep from falling, like in those old cartoons.”

  A fist clenched around my guts as she spoke. Aria wasn’t part of my world. The people I killed have always been enemy soldiers, people who chose this life and chose which side they were on. They knew what they were getting into when they signed on.

  But she was innocent in all this.

  Suddenly, my phone buzzed in my jacket pocket and it surprised me so bad that I almost dropped the Luger. I slid my thumb over the screen and a single message showed up. Three simple words: Is it done?

  Before I knew what I was doing, I’d typed out yes and sent it.

  Immediately, a new word bubble popped up: Any problems?

  I took one more look at the bleak expression on Aria’s face and typed: None.

  And with that single word, the path of my life changed forever.

  Chapter 6

  Aria

  When I walked through the front door of Duncan’s apartment, I still thought I was dreaming.

  I couldn’t believe I wasn’t lying dead on the floor of Cliff Esterhouse’s living room. And I definitely couldn’t believe that the man who had killed him had brought me back to his own place. As I crossed the threshold, I gave myself a tiny pinch on the back of the hand. The sharp pain from my long nails was enough to jolt me out of my reverie and realize that yes, this actually was happening.

  Duncan (he told me only his first name) had led me out of Cliff’s building through a series of hallways, then to a service elevator that stopped in a maintenance room. That room led out to the alley behind the building, and he’d pulled me along until we reached the street. He glanced over at a nearby bus stop before shaking his head and motioning for me toward a black sedan that was parked on the corner. He’d been silent for the entire drive from Edgewater to Ohio City.

  I did catch him stealing glances at me while he drove which gave me a feeling of dread. Had he spared me at Cliff’s just to take me down to the docks and throw me in Lake Erie? But I quickly realized we were driving away from the lake, not toward it, and it was enough to keep me from giving in to full-blown panic. Besides, I thought, this is all just a nightmare, so what do I care?

  When Duncan pulled up outside a nondescript mid-rise building, I had no idea what was happening. Would he kill me here? Would he let me go? It turned out that he didn’t do either.

  “Where are we?” I asked as he motioned for me to follow him into the lobby.

  “My place,” he said grimly. Nothing more.

  We took an elevator to the third floor, and he opened a series of locks on a door before ushering me inside. I tried hard not to think about what it might mean to my future that I now knew not only what Duncan looked like but also where he lived.

  I looked around the apartment. It was a spartan space that reminded me of a pre-furnished short-term suite that you rent online instead of a hotel room, with bland furniture and zero charm. No art on the walls, no color, just sterile whites and deep blacks. I found myself wondering if it was a reflection of the man who lived there, and that made me wonder whether I could possibly make Duncan see me as a shade of gray.

  “This is your place?” I asked, hoping to start a conversation. It was all I could think of to do.

  “Yeah,” he grunted.

  So much for conversation, I thought.

  He had shucked off his suit jacket and revealed the Roman-statue physique underneath it. He still had that panther quality to his movements, only now he looked more like a caged animal as he paced the living room.

  I was determined to make him talk, because now that I’d seen not only his face but his home, I knew I was even more of a liability to him.

  “Nothing,” he muttered before I could speak.

  “Excuse me?”

  “There was nothing in the dossier about a girlfriend,” he said, more to himself than to me.

  My heart thumped hard at that. I had never met Cliff Esterhouse before I hid in his closet, and the story I’d told Duncan wouldn’t hold even a drop of water. But there was no way he could know that at the moment, and I needed to make sure he didn’t think about it long enough to figure it out. It was obvious this man was sharp as a razor blade, and I needed to keep him off balance if I was going to have any hope of surviving.

  I thought furiously, trying to come up with a believable story. Then it came to me.

  “Cliff didn’t talk about me to his friends,” I said, keeping my gaze on the floor. “He didn’t want them to find out about… well, about what he did to me.”

  Duncan’s green eyes flashed for a moment and I knew that had struck a chord with him. He may have been a killer, but he was no fan of men who hit women. I seized desperately on the idea and made up my mind to take it as far as I could, no matter where it led. Dario Moretti had told me no harm would come to my parents, but there was no way I could be sure he would honor that promise.

  “I can tell you’re not like him,” I said, closing the distance between the two of us. “Cliff had no honor. No moral code. You’re different.”

  My stomach dropped when he frowned and looked away from me. “You don’t know anything about me,” he said coldly.

  Before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed his hand in both of mine and pulled it close to my cleavage. The skin on the back of his hand was touching the skin of my breasts. It gave me a thrill to feel the heat there despite the craziness of the situation.

  “But I want to,” I said quietly as his eyes met mine again. “I want to know the touch of a good man.”

  With that, I took his hand and placed his palm under my right breast. He squeezed reflexively, sending an electric jolt through me that I couldn’t have imagined even a few seconds ago. Amazingly, I felt a tingle between my legs despite the insanity of the situation. Duncan was a killer, of that I was sure, but he was also turning me on.

  The craziest thing was, at that moment I didn’t know whether I was making this play as a desperate attempt to save my life… or because I really was desperate for his touch. If I’m being honest, looking back I think it was actually both. The idea of losing my life, of having no more time left on Earth, seemed to drive me into the most basic of desires. I’d spent my whole life trying to take the safe route, and look where it got me. If I was going to die anyway, what did I have to lose?

  And it didn’t help that the man in front of me was a chiseled Greek god with a smoldering stare that made me weak in the knees. The fact that he was dangerous—maybe even deadly to me—just made my desire that much harder to resist.

  He made no move to back away from me. We simply stood there, staring into each other’s eyes. I had no idea what was going through Duncan’s mind, but my thoughts were in complete disarray. My body, on the other hand, seemed to have no problem knowing what to do next. I pulled closer to him and kicked off my heels so that we were eye to eye. He still hadn’t taken his hand off my breast, so I grabbed his other one and brought it to my lips.