Chapter 1
Isat on the floor and leaned against the wall, trying to catch my breath as blood trickled down my arm. I was in a small cabin in the woods, west of Washington, DC, where a small group of militias was running an illegal puppy mill.
It was summer, and I was sweating like a motherfucker. The steamy woods made the air thick and hard to breathe, and the cabin didn’t have any A/C.
There was fucking blood everywhere. I had to take out several armed men, and one of them shot me in the shoulder before he got one of my bullets in his head.
With shaking a hand, I pulled out my smokes and lit up a cigarette. I was supposed to have quit, but this job was fucking stressful. Luca pushed me to stop, leaving little treats, rewards, and notes around whenever I had a day without a smoke. I smiled at that. He was the only one I got soft for.
Then my smile dropped into a sneer. Jobs like this made blood boil, so quitting smoking was nearly impossible.
I was even more pissed because I couldn’t save the dogs.
They killed them before I could take out all the men.
I was too damn late. I put an extra four bullets into the asshole who gave the order.
On paper, the job was successful. To me, it was a failure.
God, Luca was going to kill me. Yeah, my job as an assassin runs the perpetual risk of dying, but whenever I came home injured, I’d get an earful from him.
Luca Davenport.
We’d been together for over five years now.
And what a wild ride it’d been. I found him during a job where I had to infiltrate a criminal syndicate.
There he was, at nineteen, barely wearing any clothes, and hugging a stuffed rabbit.
He’d been trafficked when he was eight years old and had been a slave to the man I’d been paid to take out.
Instead of killing Luca, I took him home with me and showed him how to be self-sufficient and independent.
It didn’t take him long to grow attached to me.
I’d been more resistant since he’d been so young and abused.
And that damn rabbit. He clung to it as if his life depended on it.
Turned out it was stuffed with stolen diamonds, which he used to hire me to take out his enemies.
And there were a lot of enemies. Luca, my sunshine, shattered to pieces when it turned out it was his father who’d sold him to the Bratva.
He still clung to his rabbit from time to time, though not as much as he’d grown more confident over the years, but there were times when he regressed.
He could’ve used therapy, but both of us killed too many people.
All I could do was love him. To him, that was enough.
To me, it was the bare minimum. Luca deserved the world.
I took another drag of my smoke and looked around at the bodies. There needed to be a cleanup. I couldn’t leave the place like this. I’d fucking burn it down to the ground if I didn’t worry about setting an entire forest on fire.
I finally pulled out my burner phone and called Dalton Reed, who ran our operations at The District.
He was a former FBI agent and had been brought in by Sid Virgil, one of the founders of our organization.
It was Dalton who turned us away from taking any job for money and working for good causes instead.
“Is it done?” Dalton asked when he answered his phone.
“Yeah.”
“What about the dogs?”
“Fucking killed them, man. Rather than…” I winced as I shifted on the floor. “Rather than let them free, they chose to kill them. I’m…” I sigh and take another drag of my smoke.
“Jesus. Okay. I’ll send a crew to clean up the place. Get out of there and get yourself treated. By the sound of your voice, you’ve been injured.”
“It’s a scratch. The bullet grazed me, but it’s deep.”
“Dante…”
“Really, I’m fine. I’ve had worse. I just need to get to my car, where I’ve got a first aid kit.”
“Okay, well, call me, and if you need the physician, I’ll send him over to your place.”
“Thanks, Dalt.”
I hung up, stubbed out my cigarette on the floor, and forced myself to stand. I’d better get home to Luca.
Careful not to step on the bodies, I made my way out of the cabin and headed over to the building that used to house the dogs.
The rage inside me that they killed those innocent creatures turned my vision red.
Still, I headed over there to make sure there weren’t any surviving dogs. A few may have survived the bullets.
I wasn’t immune to death. I’d done some horrific things in my time, but I’d never fucking hurt an animal or innocent trafficked young men.
My arm hung limply at my side, and it burned like hell, so I had to use my non-dominant arm to open the large door. Inside was a massacre of animals and asshole men.
I weaved my way through the bodies, the stench of blood assaulting my nose. Then I abruptly stopped at an unexpected sound. My ears perked up, listening. Then I heard it again. A muffled whimper. Was there a dog still alive?
My cold, dead heart suddenly pumped blood as I went in search of the animal.
The closer I got, the louder the whimpering was. The building was huge and stank with more than blood. I covered my face with my arm and made my way toward a door that was closed. I twisted the knob and pushed the door open. Inside were several crates with dogs, unmoving.
“Motherfuckingdammit.”
I wasn’t a person who was easily moved. Years of abuse, and then as a hired killer, would deaden your soul. But seeing these poor dogs… Jesus. It tore at me.
The whimper happened again, then I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I rushed over to a large crate to find a puppy trapped underneath a larger dog; perhaps it was its mother.
I opened the crate door, moved the larger dog off the puppy, and lifted the small creature into my arms. I winced from the pain, but I didn’t let it go.
“You’re safe now, little one.”
As I held the dog, I searched the other crates to make sure no others were left alive. They weren’t.
I lifted the pup by the scruff of the neck once I got outside and took a good look at it. That was when I realized I’d found a Cane Corso. As traumatic as the scene had been, I laughed. “Cleo’s gonna love you. Or she’ll kill you, but I don’t think so. She’s a Cane Corso herself.
It was a female with black fur, ears that weren’t clipped, and a white-spotted chest. The paws were huge, and I knew how big she would get.
She looked to be about two months old. At least I didn’t have to worry about weaning her, or hopefully wouldn’t.
Who knew how these monsters had treated her? Still, she looked relatively healthy.
“I’ll call you Hatshepsut, the best queen in all of Egypt. You’ll go perfectly with my Cleopatra. Your nickname can be Hattie.”
When I brought the pup to my chest, she licked my face, making me smile. “Luca’s going to fucking love you. You’ll belong to him, I’m sure of it. He’s already stolen my dog, the little traitor.”
After I brought Luca home, Cleo instantly went into protective mode over him.
When he had anxiety attacks from his trauma, she was right there by his side to calm him down.
I’d never trained her to be an emotional support dog.
She was a killer, like me, but she took on the role instinctively as soon as she met Luca. They’d been best friends ever since.
“It seems I like collecting strays.”
I walked through the woods, following the trail until I reached my car about a mile away. As soon as I put the puppy in my car and shut the door, it started whining again, but there wasn’t anything I could do until I treated my arm, which was still bleeding.
I yanked off my long-sleeved black T-shirt and tossed it into the open trunk of my car, then I pulled out my first-aid kit and grabbed the coagulant powder.
After sprinkling some into my hand, I pressed it to my wound.
It burned, but I’d live. Once it had soaked up the blood and stopped the bleeding, I opened a large bandage and applied it to the wound.
I put on a fresh T-shirt from a bag of clothes I kept on me at all times and climbed into the driver’s seat. The puppy was quick to rush over to me and curl up on my lap.
“Uhm, I gotta drive, little one.”
I picked her up and dropped her onto the passenger seat, but she was having none of it and was right back in my lap.
“Have it your way, queen bee.”
I petted her soft head as she got settled in before starting the car.
“Someone up there kept you alive. No more pain for you, little girl. Be prepared to be spoiled,” I said as I drove home.
“But don’t get used to it. You will be thoroughly trained to be a protector, not just a lapdog.
Eventually, you’ll be responsible for protecting Luca. ”
Once I got onto the main road, it was another hour’s drive home to McLean, VA, and back home to my Luca.