Hitman Daddy by Aster Rae
4
Nikolai
"Come in."
Anxiety pounds me as I push open the door to the conference room.
My father waits for me with two of his highest-ranking men.
He's wearing a fifty-thousand-dollar Gucci couture suit with his hair slicked back and his favorite diamond watch on his wrist.
Under his collared Hermes shirts lies a platinum crown necklace symbolizing our family crest.
But it's not until I see the Luger at his side that I know I'm in trouble.
My eyes flit to the two guards behind him.
They're dark and menacing, their strong arms carrying two weapons that could take me out in an instant if I threatened them.
My father found out about my failed hit.
There’s no other explanation.
He'd never waste the time calling me into his office otherwise.
"Sadites." Sit down.
My father gestures to the leather chair in front of me.
Fighting the urge to swing my curled fist across his cheek, I slide into the chair and face him.
"What do you want?" My voice is low.
I don't want to be here. Luca staged another attack on one of my other fronts last night.
Luca's soldiers killed two men and left their wives and children crying at home.
I sent my top soldier Edik after him but he hasn't discovered his whereabouts yet.
The second I find out where he is, I'm sending my brigade in with enough firepower to wipe him off the map.
"You initiated an attack on the Italians last weekend at your queer nightclub. You didn't follow through with your plan."
Rage blinds me.
My father would kill me if he discovered the truth.
He'd put a bullet through my head if he discovered that the reason I didn't blow Luca’s head off was because I was distracted by a boy.
Not just any boy.
An angel.
A perfect fucking angel.
The second our eyes connected across the room, I knew I couldn't blow Luca’s brains out with him in the vicinity.
Something welled up in my chest the second I saw him drinking with his friend across the club.
The boy’s glistening blue eyes were as spotless as a blue sky on a summer afternoon.
Innocent. Far too innocent.
How could I pull the trigger while he was standing behind Luca in line?
I refused to traumatize him. Refused to hurt him.
But the cost for blowing my shot is immense.
I’m known for my competence within my family. My father and brothers trust me to take out evil men and get the job done.
While I do my best to avoid casualties whenever I can, I'm a ruthless killer who stops at nothing to further our family’s dominance of Manhattan, Soho, and the Bronx.
If I leave a family fatherless, so be it. I'm a cold, hard, ruthless bastard. I don't give a shit.
But I couldn't pull the trigger that night.
Not when my heart was beating wildly out of my chest.
Not when I saw the most beautiful angel I've ever laid eyes on looking like he fell out of a cloud.
My father wouldn't understand.
"I have my reasons." My eyes turn to slits.
My father shifts paper and rearranges his pencil holder on the table.
An array of expensive black pens clatter onto mahogany and he grits his teeth as he slides them back into the holder.
"You ruined our reputation." My father's eyes lock on mine.
Fury clogs my throat.
I've done no such thing.
My father knows this.
"I missed one shot. It won't happen again."
"I'm not in the business of giving second chances." My father lets out a growl. "You're either for our mission or you're not. I can't afford to have you making threats if you refuse to follow through."
"The Italians are encroaching on our turf in Manhattan,” my father continues like I don’t already fucking know this. “It won't be long before they overtake the Poles in terms of manpower and funds. We can't risk letting these assholes disrespect us and steal our business. We must take them out. Now. Kill them as fast as we can."
"I intended to kill Luca that night." Steam blows from my ears. "I've never botched a hit in my life. I got distracted."
My father snaps his fingers to get his soldier’s attention.
He whispers something in the soldier's ear and both guards leave the room.
My father pulls something out of his desk.
My heart stops when I see it.
A picture.
"What the hell is this?" I bark.
It's a security camera still from last Friday night.
I'm wearing a luxurious Armani suit and talking to the gorgeous young man with thick blond hair and the most radiant smile I've ever seen in my life.
Christian.
That's his name.
A perfect name.
Lust pummels me.
How the hell did my father get a picture of Christian at the club?
I keep an iron lock on my surveillance footage. There's no way my father would have access to my cameras.
I encrypt the passwords to ensure situations like these do not happen.
Anxiety courses through me as I realize my father cracked my codes.
"How did you get this?" I demand.
"I have my sources." My father picks up his gun. He cocks it and examines the sheen. "But that's not the question I want to ask."
A red film seeps into my vision.
I picture grabbing my father's gun and pistol whip him until he shuts the fuck up.
But I'm also experiencing an emotional reaction.
I can barely control the sensations welling up inside me as I stare at Christian’s beautiful face in the photograph.
The boy is a work of art. A man worthy of Michelangelo’s hands.
He’s not a type I’ve ever gone for – I’ve never dated a man younger than twenty-seven – but something about his smile warms my heart.
He raises questions I’ve never had about myself.
I need to protect him. Now.
Prying my eyes away from the photo, I glare at my father. "Tell me what you want to say."
My father toys with his Luger.
"I'm suggesting you fucked up your hit at Crave because of this boy. This boy distracted you. He’s the reason you sent our family's reputation down the drain."
"This young man came into my club with a fake ID," I spit out. "I was talking to him to see if he was twenty-one."
After the boy ran out with his less-attractive friend, I took his ID straight to the back room and checked his Facebook.
Christian Price. A freshman at the City University of New York next fall.
He lives alone with his roommate in the Bronx and is interested in cats, social media marketing, and dinosaurs, in no particular order.
He's not twenty-one.
He's nineteen.
Barely.
But we didn't have a meaningful conversation and he ran from me.
My father isn't wrong to say the boy distracted me.
But we certainly don’t have a legitimate connection.
Yet.
"Don't fucking lie to me." My father cocks his gun and aims it at my head. "After everything I've done for you, you don’t have the right to lie. If you're seeing this boy, you must come clean. He'll put our entire family at risk.”
“Why?”
"Luca. If he saw you, you and this young man are in grave danger. Luca will sniff out your weaknesses like no one else. We can offer him protection. Bodyguards. Armed surveillance. But only if he's part of the family. If he's not, we must kill him. That's the only way to show Luca you're not weak. Is this man your boyfriend?"
I should let him die.
I should kill him myself to remove my family from danger.
But one look at the picture my father holds up lets me know what I have to say.
Something shifts in my heart.
I’m utterly gobsmacked.
His eyes are the purest, most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.
They pop in the picture but they’re so much more in person.
I could barely breathe when I approached him and pretended to be upset that he was using a fake.
My cock was an iron rod but what really surprised me was the emotion stirring in my heart.
It was like looking into a bastion of truth and warmth.
Something melted in me.
Something I haven't felt in such a long time.
Something I only experienced once before when I was a Daddy to a precious baby boy in college.
And now I realize that I put Christian’s life in danger by talking to him.
It doesn't even matter whether Christian is into me or not.
If Luca saw me speaking to him, Christian will die.
I stare into my father's eyes. "He's my boyfriend."
My father nods. "I expect him to come by the house next month for your cousin Michael's wedding. We’ll meet him and assess if he’s a risk."
I gulp.
Wait. What?
I have to bring Christian to a fucking wedding?
