The Forbidden Secret (Forbidden #2)

Chapter Four

Zeke Coleman

I double-checked the corners of the safe house, ensuring everything we brought was packed into the two backpacks we were to carry. My belongings were secured inside the pack, knowing that we could have to leave at any sign of a threat. I had informed Evelina to do the same, but rather than listening, she had barricaded herself in the room for another two days.

“Time to go,” I said, rapping on her door.

I heard shuffling from behind the door before it peeled open a crack. “What do you mean? Is it finally safe for me to go?”

“Not even close,” I replied. “Five days is the max for a safe house—less if we’re out and moving about the city.”

“What do you mean the max?”

I ground my teeth. “Does everything have to be a fight with you?”

“Am I not allowed to ask questions?” she asked innocently.

As I looked at her still-damp hair from the shower she had taken an hour ago, I couldn’t help but reminisce on the moment she had walked out of the bathroom and barreled into me. The softness of her skin. The gentle curves that she did an immaculate job of hiding beneath bulky clothing.

I licked my bottom lip, tugging the metal hoop between my teeth.

She huffed an exhale and slammed the door in my face. I hardly noticed as my memory ran wild with thoughts of that hot body. A year should have been enough time to get over her, but fuck. Seeing her naked brought my lust to life. I couldn’t do commitment. Not even with her. Especially not with her.

I wouldn’t let my life and sins break a gentle artist’s heart more than I already have.

Evelina opened the door a moment later, her pack on her back. “Ready.”

It broke me from my thoughts as she approached the door. “Not that way.”

She paused. “There’s only one door.”

My head shook on its own accord as I approached the utility room and pointed at the small opening beside the laundry machine.

“A laundry chute?” she asked skeptically. “I’m not going down there when there’s a door.”

“It’s a small laundry lift. It’s like a small elevator. It’s why we chose this place as a safe house. We can only choose locations with a discrete exit strategy.”

“Nobody knows where we are,” she countered.

“And how do you know that?” I pushed. “Did you spend a lot of time outside surveying the area for threats? Did you check all the buildings surrounding us for snipers? We don’t have enough manpower to check every possible threat, so you need to follow my orders and do so quickly. My only goal here is to keep you safe. It’s what I’m contracted to do, and I don’t fail my jobs.”

That was a lie. I had failed one job, and it was the only other job that involved her. Though it wasn’t from a lack of skill or ability.

When I had planned to kill her, it had felt too much like I was becoming my father.

There was a line somewhere between what I did for a living and what he had done for his own cruel satisfaction, and though I couldn’t quite pinpoint where that line rested, I knew that killing Evelina and her sisters would have certainly crossed it.

Even if they were the daughters of a brutal, notorious leader of a crime syndicate.

“Fine,” she said with crossed arms. “But I’m not going first.”

“Fine,” I repeated.

I slid into the small laundry lift and pressed the button from the outside. There was enough room for me to crouch inside the small box as it closed and delivered me to the basement of the building. The moment it stopped, I pulled open the doors and sent it back for Evelina.

It took her longer than expected, but she followed soon after, stepping out of it as if it had caught fire.

“Don’t ever make me do something like that again,” she hissed, pointing a slim finger in my face. “Like, ever.”

I only huffed a laugh. “Whatever makes you most comfortable, Princess.”

“And stop calling me that.”

“No can do.”

I turned and began walking toward the service door of the apartment complex, where we would take the back route a few blocks and meet our driver. She hurried behind me wordlessly, following me through the service door.

“Why?”

“You act like a fucking princess,” I told her, turning to face her. I took a step forward, and her eyes went wide as she parried my step. Back and straight into a brick wall. I knew what I needed to say, but I didn’t want to say it. Being dishonest with her was the last thing I wanted, but if it would end this hot and cold act, I would take it. “You’re pissed about a one-night stand that you chose to have. I didn’t sign up for commitments, and neither did you. I’ll stop calling you a princess when you stop acting like one. I’m here because I’m being paid to keep you safe, nothing more. Stop treating me like a fucking criminal because we had sex, and I didn’t want more.”

I couldn’t place a single of the emotions that ran through her eyes before she shut them down. All of them. Her eyes went blank and glassy with an intentional lack of feeling, and it was like a fist to my gut.

“You’re right,” she replied.

I bit down on my tongue to keep from telling her what I really wanted to say.

I wanted her. I wanted to take her against this wall right now. I wanted to drag her back into the bathroom and fuck her two days ago.

If she were even half as fucked up as me and my history, I may have told her those things. But I couldn’t stop considering what had happened between my sadistic father and kind-hearted mother. He had happily allowed her to fall in love with him, and then he had destroyed every spark of joy within her.

He had destroyed everything, and I wouldn’t let myself become that.

“Then let’s go.”

I took a step back, and she took a moment before pushing away from the wall. “If we’re going to be spending time together, and you want me to forget about the one-night stand, tell me something about yourself.”

I glanced back at her and slowed until she walked in stride with me. “I’m a high school dropout,” I told her, relaying the first thing that came to mind.

“Why are you interested in art?”

I paused. “I’m not.”

We rounded a building, and I looked both ways carefully, monitoring the small crowd of people walking on each side of the street. When I spotted no threats, we continued.

“Why did you buy my entire collection?”

I had done that. I ran my tongue over my hoop, shifting it as I thought about the best way to answer her question. I didn’t particularly care about paintings, but hers had spoken to me in a way that I could not explain. The darkness, the hopelessness, the sadness…

So I bought them all.

I had told myself it would be a trap—have her deliver them to a house that wasn’t mine and finish the job I had been hired to do. Take her out, and then go for her sisters next.

Clearly, it hadn’t happened that way.

“I had my reasons.”

“Okay…” she drawled. “You’re not interested in art, so why were you at the gallery that night?”

I shook my head and tucked my hands in my pockets. “I had my reasons.” I narrowed my eyes. “You want to know about me, but you’re only asking questions related to the one-night stand. You’re not doing a good job of getting over it.”

She rolled her eyes. “What do you do for work? Hitman. Mercenary. Whatever you want to call it. Do people just contact you to kill their enemies?”

“I don’t want to talk about my job, Evelina.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not exactly a pleasant conversation.”

“And?”

I glanced over at her and found that she looked entirely unfazed by the conversation. “You want to talk about the way I get paid to kill people?”

A man passing on the sidewalk did a double-take before lowering his head and rushing by us. I didn’t bother looking at him for too long.

“I would like to know about the person I’m spending all my time with, and you’re not exactly forthcoming. If there is another conversation you would rather have, I’m all ears.”

“I don’t just kill people,” I told her, scanning our surroundings. “I do protection details and occasional deep cover work. I do whatever I am hired to do, but I have become a reliable killer. My name is out there, and it’s what most people reference.”

“You just kill anybody? Indiscriminately?”

“What kind of monster do you think I am, Evelina?”

She looked over at me, her left brow raised. “Did I insinuate you were one?”

No, she had not. She had only asked the questions, and I had been answering them. I saw the monster in myself. The killer. My father. It was hard to believe she didn’t see the same person. She thought I was an asshole, sure. She had never looked at me like I was evil. To her, I was the man who slept with her and left her.

Now, I was the person who protected her.

She had no idea that I had been hired to kill her a year ago.

“I’m hired to take out criminals. People who do really, really bad things. I don’t kill innocent people, and if I were contracted to do so, I wouldn’t take the job.”

“A hitman with morals,” she teased.

The first thing I noticed was the sinking in my stomach. The sensation that something was either wrong or out of place. We were a mere block from the driver, but…

I didn’t allow my steps to falter as I placed a hand on Evelina’s back and moved a bit closer. “Something’s wrong,” I told her. “Follow my lead.”

I wrapped my arm the rest of the way around her and pulled her closer, almost as if we were lovers. I looked down at her with a smile, taking the opportunity to glance over her shoulder.

The same man who had been walking in the opposite direction—the man who had given me the double take—was casually strolling behind us, glancing down at his phone inconspicuously. But I recognized him. I didn’t forget faces.

I veered to the left, tugging Evelina into my side as I whispered. “Go behind the dumpster.”

For once, she listened and did so quickly. The second the man walked into the alleyway, his eyes scanning it as if looking for us, I took in his lean profile. A gun was tucked into the waist of his pants. The second he met my eyes, his expression hardened, and he reached for it.

I didn’t let him.

I charged forward and slammed him into the wall hard enough to disorient him before dragging him back and away from the opening of the alleyway—out of sight from passersby. He swung a fist around, but I easily avoided it as I pressed him into the wall behind the dumpster, using my body to secure him in place as I twisted both arms behind his back, pressing one upward hard enough that he released a hiss of pain.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Nobody! I—”

I put more pressure on his arm, and he shouted a curse as his shoulder popped out of the socket.

“Who are you?” I repeated calmly.

“Franklin,” he shouted, trying to pull away from me.

“Okay, Franklin. Why are you following us?”

“I—I work for a man who sent out photos of the girl you’re with. We’re supposed to report back if we see her. A missing person or something, I think.”

I slammed his head into the dumpster, and he shouted again.

“Man, you said something about killing people. Did you kidnap her?”

“How many people does he have looking for her?”

He shook his head frantically. “I don’t know. My office does analytics for Mr. Newton. There are about thirty on that team, but he said he put out the call to all of his employees. I—I just do analytics for the man, dude. I’m just doing what I was paid to do.”

I held him through his trembling and begging, wondering if his story was to be believed.

Then, my eyes drifted down to the gun at his waist.

I wasn’t going to kill an innocent man if he truly was as innocent as he claimed.

“Get the fuck out of here,” I snarled at him, pushing him away. He took two steps before he looked over his shoulder and reached for…

I moved before he even had a second to lift his weapon, throwing the knife I had in my hand. He tried to step out of its path, but it lodged in the side of his chest. It gave me just enough time to grab his hand and slam it against my knee. The gun clattered to the ground as I whipped him around in my grasp and wrapped an arm around his neck.

He struggled.

He clawed at my arm.

I ignored the tinge of pain as I rapidly shifted my body to one side and heard the pop of his neck before he went limp.

I dropped him, bouncing on my toes as I eyed the body at my feet.

“I guess that’s proof enough that you’re not lying about being an assassin or whatever.”

“Mercenary,” I corrected absentmindedly.

“Lingering next to a dead person probably isn’t the smartest move, so let’s be on our way,” she replied, grabbing my hand in her smooth, small grip and pulling me toward the entrance of the alleyway.

She didn’t show a hint of fear or disgust as we made it to our vehicle and climbed inside without another word. I knew it shouldn’t have surprised me, but everything about Evelina and her reactions to situations had always intrigued me.

I was fucked.