Sinful: A Bad Boy Hitman Romance (Guns and Glory Book 1) Read online

  "Thank you," she said, her voice very soft. "Thank you so much." She leaned close, and soft as anything, pressed her lips against his cheek.

  It was the most chaste thing possible, and yet it sent a bolt of electricity straight to his dick, which was suddenly painful in his pants. He wished for a way to casually rearrange himself, but that wasn't going to happen.

  Alina stayed in close after her little peck, turning her head to rest her cheek on his shoulder. "You saved me, Vincent. You're such a good guy. Thank you."

  He looked down at her, and she turned her face up to him, that same soft, grateful smile on her face. His dick hardened further; something he hadn't known was all that possible from just a smile.

  "Least I could do," he managed to say, and Alina smiled broader.

  She leaned up a little further and pressed another one of those delicate kisses on his jawline. There was no way to pretend this one was chaste though. Friends didn't go kissing friends on the jawline – that was absolutely a move out of some romance novel or rom-com movie that he would never be cast in. He was built like a brick, and she was—Dammit, she was a twelve-year-old kid who was grown up, wearing a V-neck top that he could see right down, and she was so far out of his league and off-limits that just thinking the things he was could get him killed.

  Her hand moved, and he knew without question that if she touched his cock, which was now obvious (at least to him) in its valiant efforts to rip right out of his pants, he would growl and he would take her. And he wouldn't try to stop himself – pull her into his lap and fuck her right here by the side of the road, no matter who she was or had been in his past. She wasn't a gawky kid anymore, dammit, and it had been a long time since he'd had a woman the ways he liked best.

  But he held perfectly still, and instead of grabbing his cock and taking him for a ride, she pulled back, brushing her hair behind her ear. Her cheeks were a pretty pink that he didn't think had anything to do with makeup. She rinsed out her mouth one more time, then pulled the passenger seat door closed behind her, buckling up again.

  "So, Vincent," she said, using her very best "Welcome to the restaurant" artificially chipper voice. "What brings you all the way out here to Small Town, USA?"

  He flipped the key in the ignition and pulled back onto the road. "You, obviously."

  He did not want to have this conversation. He hadn't wanted to have it with the little girl that had lived in his head. He did not want to have it with the pretty, drunk young woman he'd rescued from God knew what on the front lawn of a house he knew wasn't hers. And he really didn't want to have it with his dick rock-hard in his pants. He tried to think of all the horrible things he knew until the erection started to fade.

  "Of course, me," she said, but not in a smug way. "I didn't figure you ended up at Courtney's parents' house at total random. But why were you out here in the first place?"

  If he didn't tell her, it would just get worse.

  "Your father's hurt. "He's – Well, he was alive the last time I checked in. He was shot, Alina. He's in surgery. His odds are good, but still. Nick sent me for you."

  "Nick Amato?"

  Vincent nodded.

  "He sends people for people now?"

  "Your father made him capo after Nick's father Michael died last year."

  Alina nodded quietly. "And Daddy is okay?"

  The sensation of blood hitting his face was suddenly incredibly sharp. He had to shake his head hard to remember where he was. "The bullet tore him up. But like I said, the doctors are optimistic. Nick will get in touch with me when there's more for you to know. Do you have your phone with you?"

  "Yes."

  "Turn it off."

  Alina nodded, pulling out her phone and powering it off. "Who was it?"

  "That's why Nick's so high-stress. We don't really know." He wasn't sure how much detail he was supposed to go into.

  Frank always talked highly of Alina – spoke about her being a big part of his eventual transition of power, looked forward to her wedding day and made a big deal over whatever man would be lucky enough to eventually win her love. But Alina hadn't been around much after she was a preteen. There'd been a kidnapping attempt just before her thirteenth birthday – Vincent didn't think she'd ever known about it – and Frank had made the call that his baby would be safer at boarding school. She'd hardly been home after that. Frank set her up in exotic locations on holidays, then went and visited her there. He jokingly called it his pre-retirement.

  Did Alina know anything about how bloody the Costa family really was? Vincent had no idea, and it wasn't going to be easy finding out.

  "Have the police found any clues?"

  Well, that right there told him a hell of a lot about how much she didn't know. As if the police would have been called to manage a situation like this. The ER had been forced to report the GSW, and Nick decided to let that happen, but he'd slipped plenty of money around the cop station to make sure that no one else investigated until the Costas had decided who was guilty.

  Still. It wasn't Vincent’s place to tell her about her family's story. That was up to Frank. Vincent's job was to make sure that whoever was hunting Frank didn't come for Alina next.

  "Nothing yet," he replied. "I'm sure Nick will be following up with them as soon as we know Frank's in recovery." And surrounded by half a dozen Costa guards. And Vincent would not allow himself to think that being sent away from that detail, out of town to collect and hole up with the boss' daughter, was some kind of demotion. If Frank woke up from surgery and something had happened to his kid, he would murder everyone in the room with his bare hands. This was Vincent being trusted.

  He was practically sure of it.

  "Are we going back to the city?"

  This part he wasn't going to lie about. He just wasn't to do that. "Not tonight, Alina. Tonight, we're going to find somewhere to rest. We're going to see if Nick calls us in the morning. And then we'll see what we do next."

  "Okay." Her eyes were blinking owlishly. "I'm going to get some sleep, okay? But if you see a coffee stop in this oasis of road, let me stop and get some to shake off this – impending hangover."

  "Done deal," he said.

  She was back asleep in moments, light snores emanating from her throat.

  What the hell was he getting himself into?

  Chapter Three

  Alina woke with a jerk when the SUV Vincent was driving came to a stop. The sun had come up while she'd been sleeping. She wiped her mouth as subtly as she could, and tried to tell how much liquor was still in her system. She felt achy, like her joints had been used just a little wrong... that was definitely a sign that she was moving from drunk into hungover. Thankfully, that never hit her too hard. Since she'd thrown up so badly, twice, it wasn't likely to get too much worse.

  She stretched. Vincent was out of the car, which meant that she could let herself relax into the warm sensations she'd felt when she saw him. She'd had a huge crush on Vincent when she was a kid. He'd been brand-new in her father's sphere back then, just eighteen, but he was tall and built like a tree trunk. He had thick, curly hair that was an incredibly dark shade of brown, and eyes that stayed warm even when his face went cold.

  Eight years since the last time she'd seen him, he was just as yummy. Yummier, in fact. She'd thought he looked like some kind of handsome prince, but now, she imagined him fucking her up against a wall or tossing her down and drilling her into a bed, or eating her out, biting down her clit as she started to come...

  She was painfully aware, at that moment, that she wasn't wearing panties. Her skirt was incredibly short, and it would be easy to slam two fingers home into her and get herself off, hard and fast. She was so damn easy after a party like that, dancing and drinking and feeling entirely free. He would get back, and the car would smell like sex, and she would lick her fingers, and he'd—

  She forced herself to stop. Life was not a porn movie, and as much as he'd clearly reacted to her before, it wasn't a good idea to serv
e herself up on a platter like that. She was sure of it – even if she couldn't remember why at this precise moment.

  Everyone thought Alina didn't know about the time she nearly got kidnapped when she wasn't quite a teenager. Everyone spoke in circles around it, never quite admitting what had happened. As if pretending that the man who'd grabbed her arm and hauled her into a dark alley outside her Catholic school in the city was just a dream.

  She'd never forgotten the relief when a couple of her father's men appeared from nowhere to grab her back. One of them tucked her in a car while the other beat the would-be kidnapper onto his knees. That night, Alina had been in bed before she heard sounds that made her sneak out and peek down into the basement. She would never forget the image of a man – the man who looked like her father but wasn't because her father would never do such a thing – beating the kidnapper with brass knuckles until his face wasn't even a face anymore.

  She knew perfectly well what her father's life was. It was why she'd never fought back when her father started to send her to schools well away from the city, why he let her register under different names at every exotic hotel around the world. It seemed to be a fun game to him, a way to feel like he was keeping his baby girl safe. And she wanted him to have that.

  Vincent was part of that. Tall and hot and gorgeous. From what she'd seen, exactly the kind of man she wanted to slam between her thighs. She wanted to whimper. To cry out and have someone's hand clamped over her mouth so she could scream as much as she wanted to.

  But Vincent was part of her father's life. The blood and the violence and the terror. She'd spent the past eight years building a life away from all that. Would fucking him like she wanted to just be another way of pulling herself back into that world?

  Okay, but it would also feel really goddamn good, and after the shitty parts of tonight, she was all about really goddamn good.

  Vincent came back to the car with a gorgeous, steaming cup of coffee. This did not reduce her desire to kiss him at all. He had one for her as well, and she held out her paper cup until he laughed and "clinked" it with his.

  "To road trips," she said.

  He cocked his head just a little to the side. "To your father's continued health."

  It wasn't exactly a rebuke, but it stung all the same. Alina took a moment to recollect herself. Her father – it was difficult to think of him having been shot. Her father wasn't much taller than her; he was heavy set, with laughing bright blue eyes, and a smile that loved everyone. It was hard to think of him, shot and bleeding, or on an operating table, or, God forbid, in a morgue—

  She cut the line of thought off hard. "So where are we going, Vincent?"

  He winced; maybe he understood now how hard she was working to keep her mind on simpler things. She'd never actually been good at hiding her emotions, after all.

  "There's a nice hotel up the street. I figured we'd spend the night there, get cleaned up, and then see what happens in the morning. How's that sound?"

  She looked down at her outfit and winced. She'd looked amazing at the party, but she was a little out of place now, and she was going to look like a ten-dollar hooker in the lobby of even a moderately respectable hotel. She didn't have to pull down the mirror in the visor to know that her eyeliner had run. She looked – well, like she'd had exactly the kind of night she'd had.

  He looked her up and down, clearly seeing what she'd seen. He glanced at the time on the clock. "It's nine now, and the mall opens at—" He tapped things on his phone. "At ten. I can go in and get you some jeans and a T-shirt, and then we can go in and do some more dedicated shopping. Does that sound okay?"

  No – because she had a room full of clothes back at school, and if he'd given her an hour to pack before he dragged her off into the middle of nowhere, then she could have had what she needed. But then, if she hadn't been unreasonably drunk when he showed up, it might have been less of an issue anyway.

  Dammit.

  "Sure, yeah. That'll work." She hadn't bothered going shopping for spring things yet anyway. This could be a fun shopping trip.

  For the first time, Alina really looked around herself. This was absolutely suburbia. They probably didn't have a department store here, certainly not anything that sold real brands. Oh God. She was going to end up wearing something from The Gap.

  It could be worse. It could be so much worse. She just had to keep remembering that as she picked through cheap, flimsy sundresses. It could be a lot worse. If she kept repeating it, it would be true.

  ***

  Alina decided to start at the local drugstore. She went in and bought a toothbrush, toothpaste, and some hair elastics. With her mouth clean and her hair up in a messy bun, out of her face, she already felt less like a party girl. She totally looked like someone doing the poorly named walk of shame, but she could handle that. God knew she'd done that before, and never found it particularly shameful.

  From there, it was a lot easier to be confident as she went shopping. Vincent tried to say he would wait in the car, but she gave him her very best innocent look.

  "But who will protect me then?" she asked, batting her eyelashes.

  He was clearly annoyed, but he got out of the car anyway.

  Alina breezed through the store, collecting different things that looked tempting to try on. When she had an armful of dresses, she went to try them on. Vincent tagged after her like a slightly frustrated German Shepherd, and she had to try not to laugh.

  She wasn't really nervous. Not exactly. Daddy had been through much worse and come out okay, and she had great people around him who would figure out who was behind this and stop it. He would be alright. He would be fine.

  But also, what if he wasn't? And, selfishly, what if whoever had been gunning for him decided to go after her? That had been the reason for the kidnapping attempt when she was a kid, after all; to get leverage against her father. It had been a rival family behind it, she'd eventually figured out. They were looking to increase their standing in the city by forcing her father out of the role he played in the region. With his endorsement, the rivals would have been able to easily step in and take his place.

  Alina had no illusions about who Frank Costa was, or what it meant to be the daughter of the Costa family. She knew the family business was bloody, and she knew that her father was – well, she believed he was as good a man as he could be when he oversaw money laundering, prostitution, drug sales, protection businesses.

  He tried not to actively hurt people who didn't deserve it, and he didn't, like, send people to bust windows and then say it wouldn't happen again if someone paid a fee for protection. He didn't sell children into sex trafficking rings. He didn't use drugs to control women. But Alina had a feeling that the backup to a lot of those statements was "any more." Someone didn't climb as far as her father had by running completely clean operations.

  She loved her father, and to be entirely honest, she loved the lifestyle that came from her father's money. But she didn't want to ever be a part of it. She knew that he expected her to eventually marry someone who could take over the family for him; that was how it worked for every girl she'd grown up with. And she couldn't imagine anything more boring.

  Maybe if she could have taken the family over on her own, then perhaps she could have mustered some enthusiasm for the possibility. But the patriarchal nonsense of needing to be beholden to some guy who probably couldn't run the business half as well as she could seemed... ridiculous. It was the Year of our Lord two thousand and eighteen, how could she not be allowed to run the business that her father had built?

  But Alina couldn't, and that was the end of it. She knew damn well that the capos would never follow her, just because of her vagina. And she wasn't going to settle for being some pretty housewife in a gilded cage. She'd seen what her own mother's life had been like, the lives of the other women she'd known growing up. They had few friends outside of their own family, they were constantly on guard against ways they might be used against their men, an
d they didn't work outside of the family. The women who were really savvy, and who were married to men who weren't too caught up in the intensely male-focused world, were allowed to do the kind of work that built alliances, created negotiations, and made the entire family run more smoothly.

  But for too many of them, it was nothing but shopping and decorating and waiting for their men to come home bloody. That was not a life Alina wanted. Maybe if she'd grown up inside her father's house, spent her teenage years seeing the ways that it could be a happy and fulfilling life, she could have stomached it.

  The way things had gone down? No way.

  That little kiss on the cheek... had reawakened the crush she'd had for years and years. That was on her. The way her pussy was aching, hungry to be filled and fucked… that was on her. She wasn't going to do a damn thing about it, though, because she didn't want to be pulled back into that world. And Vincent would pull her back in, whether he meant to or not. She couldn't get attached to anything her father offered.