His Target: A Dark Mafia Romance Read online

  Bella King

  His Target

  A Dark Mafia Romance

  First published by After Midnight 2020

  Copyright © 2020 by Bella King

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  First edition

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  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  More by Bella King

  Chapter One

  Alexia

  The sound of a garbage can falling over jolts me awake. It’s five in the morning, judging by the lavender sky, and I’ve only managed three hours of unbroken sleep. My fingers and toes are numb from the cold, and my left leg tingles with pins and needles from my position on the unforgiving concrete.

  Last night, I finally found a place with hot air blowing out from the back of a building, but it only lasted thirty minutes before shutting off. It was long enough to put me to sleep in my exhausted state, but not long enough to keep me from waking up with ice in my bones.

  But I’m used to that. Life has been a wintery hell since I started living in alleys and eating out of the garbage. Nobody wanted to adopt the girl who refused to speak and never trusted an adult. Now, that same girl is a full-grown woman, living on the streets and doing what she must do to stay alive.

  I have no dreams, no goals, and no aspirations. You just don’t have time for that when you’re focused on survival. Life becomes primal and raw, and everything else is a blur in the background. The world isn’t fair to everyone. People don’t care.

  I’ve discovered that people pretend to care until you turn eighteen, and then they cast you to the streets. I’ve been here for six months, but it hasn’t gotten easier. It’s dangerous for a young woman out here. When you’re a nobody, the law doesn’t apply to the people around you. I learned that the hard way at the orphanage, but it’s worse on the streets of Portland.

  I sleep in a bed of clothes I took from a donation bin, curled up tightly to take up as little space as possible. Making myself small helps me stay warm, but more so, it keeps people from noticing me. I want to be overlooked, or I’ll be washed off the sidewalk by the cleaners come morning, like a dirty piece of gum stuck to the cement.

  But it’s five in the morning, a whole hour before the cleaners show up. The sound of the garbage bin isn’t from someone taking out the trash or sweeping heroin needles off the ground. It’s the sound of a threat, and I have to be vigilant in avoiding it.

  I spring up from the ground, ignoring the shooting pain through my legs and gathering up my makeshift bed of clothes to shove into my bookbag. I can hear the sound of a person coming closer, kicking bottles and breathing heavily as they approach my hideaway.

  I sling my bookbag over my shoulder, limping out into the open without looking toward the source of the noise. Eye contact involves showing your face, which is an easy way for a morally bankrupt creep to identify you as a target. I know well enough that I’m not ugly.

  It’s best not to look, only to move.

  “Hey, you,” a deep voice grumbles.

  My heart slams in my chest as I speed up my walk, eager to get away from whoever has decided that I’m worth their time. Nobody cares about me. They only want to use me. It’s been that way my whole life, and it will always be that way until I can get myself out of this mess.

  “Get back here. I just want to talk,” the voice says, slurring words and giving me the impression that no, he doesn’t just want to talk. I’ve been around the block enough times to know that a drunken man stumbling down an alley at this hour is never good news for me.

  I break out into a sprint, the pins and needles in my leg beginning to fade as I regain circulation. I’ll be able to outrun a drunk. As annoying as they can be, they aren’t the most significant threat out here. It’s the stone-cold sober pimps who are the worst. I’ve seen enough battered whores to know that I should stay far away from pimps.

  I grip the straps of my bookbag as I flee, jumping over boxes and broken glass, trying not to trip and fall, for fear that I may end up in the grimy hands of my pursuant.

  I whip around the corner, using the edge of the wall to swing around it.

  After running for a minute, I glance behind me, seeing nothing but the darkness from where I came. I turn around another corner and spring out into the street. I slow my pace, satisfied that the drunken man has either lost interest or has tripped over another trashcan and knocked his brains out by now.

  I had never seen a dead body until I became homeless, but in the past six months, I’ve seen twelve. I wouldn’t be surprised if I returned to my sleeping spot to find the drunken man as the thirteenth body. You see many things when you’re on the street in the odd hours of the morning.

  Now, the streets are mostly bare. It’s not a good thing because all it means is there aren’t any witnesses around, but that will change soon. The sun is starting to lighten the sky, and very few people are out looking to snatch up a young woman at this hour.

  I amble down the sidewalk, cold and tired from my failed attempt at getting a good night’s sleep. I’m dirty, but I think I’ve collected enough loose change to pay for a month at the gym. They have showers, and I could really use one right about now. I think I’ll count the jingling sock of change in my bookbag later today and see if I have enough.

  I push a strand of ginger hair behind my ear and rub the crust from my eyes as I pass a local bakery. My stomach growls in response to the smell of fresh bread. I’d love to get a job there, but I look too much like a beggar for them to accept an application from me.

  I hate being homeless. It’s impossible to make money when you look like shit, and so you’re forced to beg, steal, or starve to get what you need. I’ve been pulling discarded leftovers out of trash bins for months, but I’m starting to near my breaking point. One of these days, I’m going to break into a bakery and steal a whole fucking rack of fresh bread. At least I’d go to jail with a full belly.

  It’s the beginning of winter, my first on the streets of Portland, and I’m not looking forward to facing the cold here. I’ve considered moving down to California, but that means getting through miles of emptiness until I reach a major c
ity. Walking there isn’t all that easy. People take their cars for granted.

  It might still be better than enduring a Portland winter, however, so I’m considering making the move. I just need to get enough food and water to keep me for a few days while walking. A robbery is looking pretty good in my head right now, especially when I’ll be leaving town immediately after.

  And that’s what messes with me the most about my situation. I’ve always considered myself a good person. I never try to hurt anyone, I stand up for myself, and I mind my own business. Stealing is the last thing I want to do, but when it comes down to survival, it’s either that or putting myself in the hands of a pimp. I know how that story ends. I may be young, but I’m not stupid.

  So, as much as I’m drawn to the smell of fresh bread and the promise of a full belly, I keep walking. I’ll be walking until the sun comes up, and I can sit down on a park bench without fear of someone harassing me. I’m always safe during the day.

  Or at least, I was safe until I met Zeno.

  Chapter Two

  Zeno

  I squint through the scope of my rifle, lining up the target with the thin white tick marks painted on the lens. The target is eighty-three meters away, so I raise the barrel two centimeters to make up for the bullet drop.

  Technology is a wonderful thing. It makes killing a whole lot easier, but part of me misses the days when I had to do distance estimates and calculate the bullet drop to get a clean kill. Now, a computer does it for me, and facial recognition makes finding my target even simpler.

  Funny enough, even with how easy it’s become to kill a person, getting away with it has gotten considerably more challenging. Security cameras have become a more significant threat than opposing shooters, and there have been a few times in recent years that I was sure I would get caught.

  But I’m not locked in some prison, awaiting a chance to escape like when I was in Russia. I’m lying prone on the forty-ninth floor of a high-rise, rifle sticking out of a small window in the janitor’s closet, hidden from cameras, and ready to pull the trigger on an unsuspecting CEO.

  I used to kill people over drug feuds and as acts of revenge. The Mafia was all about family in those days, and when someone got killed, it was a big deal. Now, half of my targets are regular businessmen who step too deeply into Mafia territory or refuse to pay back loans. They’re a dime a dozen.

  It’s getting old, and so am I. Retirement doesn’t sound like that bad of an idea these days. If I could find a valuable enough target, I’d call it quits once and for all.

  I let the breath out of my lungs and squeeze the trigger. The shot is as quiet as a rifle can be, and I can practically hear the body drop in the other building. That’s another innocent man dead, and another ten-grand in my pocket – simple, clean, and easy. I can’t complain.

  I pack up my rifle, disassembling it, and placing it a plain leather suitcase padded with black foam on the inside. I’m dressed as though I belong here, with a fake badge pinned to my suit, and a smile on my face. Sometimes, it’s best to conceal yourself out in the open, to blend in with the people around you instead of trying to hide from them.

  I brush the fuzz from the floor off my suit jacket and push open the door to the janitor’s closet. There are cameras everywhere in this building, but it wasn’t an issue to cover the one in the hallway. It’s the only one that might get checked if they even bother to check this building at all.

  The police usually only bother to investigate crimes that they think they can solve or ones that are high profile. The one I committed was neither.

  “Hey, did you hear that noise?” a man in a blue suit asks, coming down the hallway with a puzzled expression on his cleanshaven face.

  I shrug. “I think it came from the bathroom.”

  “I swear to god… I told them to stop slamming the toilet lids. We had to replace a cracked one last Tuesday.”

  I shake my head with a subtle smirk, playing along. “Ridiculous. You know, people should appreciate their workspaces more. Toilets aren’t cheap.”

  “Right?” he replies, stopping in front of me and tossing his hands up. “Anthony is going to be pissed about this. I guess I’ll go check on it.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be the one to piss off Anthony again,” I reply, stepping around him.

  “You’re telling me,” he says, content to have found someone to share in his annoyance.

  I chuckle to myself as we part ways. The little annoyances that occupy the minds of office dwellers never cease to amuse me. I would bet that they’ve never faced a day of real danger or struggle in their life.

  In a way, I envy them.

  Pushing through the door to the stairwell, I’m met with another alarmed individual. I’m starting to think my gunshot was louder than I first perceived it to be. Perhaps my hearing is beginning to suffer. I’m only forty.

  “Did you hear that noise?” the man asks, sweat rolling from his forehead as though he ran up the entire flight of stairs from the ground floor.

  “What noise?”

  He pushes past me, hurrying down the hall where the man in the blue suit went. A loud noise is probably the most excitement he’s had all day, possibly all week. Or he’s just concerned that another one of his uninspired workers has offed himself in a cubical again. I’m sure the cleaning fees must be astronomical.

  I walk down the stairwell, taking my time with the forty-nine floors below me. I would’ve liked to take the elevator, but that would require going through the lobby, and I wasn’t able to block out all the cameras there. It’s better to sneak in and out through the emergency exits.

  I glance at my watch as I go round and round down the stairwell. It’s ten o’clock, thirty minutes before my meeting with Boris, which gives me enough time for a bagel with cream cheese beforehand. I always like a little snack after a killing. It’s a bit of a tradition.

  I pick up my pace down the stairs, realizing that I risk being late by walking down the thirty remaining flights at this speed.

  I don’t like to be late, and I doubt Boris likes it either. Lateness is usually a sign that something has gone wrong, which could cause Boris to leave his post and reschedule the meeting. I’m not keen on that, since I’m planning on returning to California in a few days. Portland is lovely, but Sacramento is where my heart is.

  It’s also where the Russian Mafia is.

  Boris is part of the same Russian Mafia, the Bratva, in Portland. There aren’t many them here, with most of our men centered down south in California, but I needed to come up here for my target.

  Plus, Boris says he has a plan for me. He says this next target will be major.

  It had better be. Ten grand seems hardly worth the risk these days, and nobody wants to pay for better work when they can gamble on a street thug to do it for them. I need better targets, or better yet, just one high-profile target to seal my retirement.

  I reach the bottom of the stairwell with a layer of sweat on my brow. The coldness of the crisp morning air is a welcome break from the stuffy overheated office I had to endure this morning. I prefer the outdoors, and I make my hits out of car windows when I can.

  I parked my car down the street in a paid lot earlier today. The city is obsessed with towing cars, so it’s better not to park on the curb, even if you think it’s legal. Chances are, they’ll find some asinine reason to tow you, and then you’ll be late for whatever you planned for the rest of the day. Public transportation is drab, and taxis are overpriced.

  I look up at the emotionless grey building across the street. The businessman that I shot is probably still in his chair, slumped over for some poor secretary to discover. It’ll be a while until the police are called, probably an hour or two, and I’ll be long gone by then.

  The gravel of the parking lot crunches under my leather shoes. It reminds me of the thick sheets of snow that would come down in Russia every winter. I froze my ass off in that god-forsaken country for twenty-five years before I escaped prison a
nd fled to the United States. I imagine what life would be like if I were still there.

  I would never go back. I doubt anyone would still be looking for me, considering that it’s been fifteen years since my escape, but I wouldn’t risk it. I have no family left alive to go back to, and no fond memories that I can think of. My formative years were filled with drug deals in rusted playgrounds and domestic disputes in pale-grey soviet khrushchyovka apartments.

  I open the door to my black sedan and slide into a leather seat, inhaling the rich scent of cigar smoke and the lingering sweetness of the fresh rose hanging from my rearview mirror. I bought it from an old woman on the street this morning on the way here. She told me to give it to my wife or girlfriend, but I have neither. I just bought it for myself.

  I pay for the two hours I spent in the parking lot, more overpriced nonsense, and I pull out onto the road. I’m looking forward to getting that bagel. I think I’ll have one with little block poppyseeds on top. They remind me of gunpowder.

  Chapter Three

  Alexia

  I’m too hungry to save money for a shower. I need to eat something after passing that bakery. My stomach is eating me from the inside out, and I’m starting to get lightheaded. I can justify some discount rolls from the grocery store down the block.

  My knees groan as I stand up, something that I assumed would only happen when I grew old. That’s not the case. It seems that walking all day and sleeping on concrete fucks up your body worse than I thought it would. How the hell do people spend their whole lives on the street?

  I pull my hoodie off from over my head and shove it into my bookbag, ignoring the cold. I don’t want to look homeless when I go into the store to buy food. I mean, they’re going to know when I pull out the sock full of loose change, but it’s better that they’re not watching me the entire time I’m inside, expecting me to steal something. I hate when people act like I’m a criminal when I haven’t done anything wrong.