Taken By The Hitman IV by Amber Adams

Chapter 7: Bianca

 

I’m so aggravated with Jason I can barely press my brother’s number into the small burner phone.

One moment he’s declaring that we are a great team, and the next, he wants to tuck me away with Emil so that he can go rogue as a one-man army in an attempt to end the contracts out on our heads.

I have this horrible sinking feeling that he’s going to go after Saccone himself. Surely, that will only get him killed, fast. Idiot.

We are in this together. I just found him. I can’t lose him.

My heart clenches in my chest at the thought and I hold the phone up to my ear, shooting Jason a glare. How dare he think that I am going to just meekly go along with his reckless and stupid plan.

I know he’s used to working alone, but he’s got me now. I’ve got his back just as much as he has mine.

“Hello?”

I frown as I don’t hear my brother’s voice on the other end of the line, but his second-in-command, Lucas, instead. Emil never lets anyone answer his personal phone like this.

“Where’s my brother?” I ask urgently.

“Bianca?”

“Who else would it be?” I shoot back.

“Let me talk to Emil now. It’s important.”

Maybe Emil is in a meeting, so he just handed his phone over to Lucas. He’s never done it before, but again, I’m not calling from my number.

“I can’t do that,” Lucas says, his voice heavy. “I tried to call you, Bianca, many times.”

Something cold slides through my veins at the way Lucas is talking.

“What’s wrong?” I ask softly, watching as Jason’s eyes snap to mine.

“Where is my brother?”

“He is alive,” Lucas rushes out, probably realizing I am picturing the worst imaginable happening.

“There was an ambush, and Emil, he got injured.”

I almost drop the phone. “Tell me that he’s okay.”

“I… they are doing the best they can Bianca,” he responds wearily, as if he has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and I know right then that it’s bad.

“I’m coming,” I tell him, my throat clogging with emotion.

“Please, tell him that.”

“I will,” Lucas says before I end the call.

For a moment, I stand there, looking at the phone and wondering if that conversation really did happen.

“What is it?” Jason asks in a low voice.

Was it really just a few seconds ago that we were fighting? Tears spill over onto my cheeks, and I hear him swear before his arms are around me and I’m sobbing into his chest.

“Emil,” I cry. “He’s been injured.”

Emil has always been the superman, the invincible one, and to know that he’s hurt guts me.

“Fuck,” Jason swears as I clutch his shirt into my hands.

“We will go, Bianca. I swear it. You tell me where and I will make it happen.”

My heart swells and I pull away, wrapping my arms around my waist. “I can be ready in ten minutes.”

Jason’s expression shows he’s conflicted, but he doesn’t fight me on it, just giving me a sharp nod in the end.

“Ten minutes. No more. Grab only what you need.”

I watch him walk back to the monitors before I rush into the bedroom, my mind on my brother. An ambush. Saccone has gone after my brother.

What if he has succeeded with Emil? What if by the time I get there, he’s gone?

My knees give out and I sit on the bed, so I don’t fall to the floor. I can’t lose my brother. He’s all the family I have left, well, besides Deja, who I consider a sister.

Setting my jaw, I force myself not to think that way. Emil is strong, like our Papi was. He’s not going to just give up, but fight like hell to stay here, with me. I will be right by his side the entire time.

Ten minutes later, I walk out of the bedroom, having packed a small duffel bag that I found in the closet with clothing for both me and Jason. Jason also has a duffel bag slung over one shoulder, one that I’m sure is full of weapons.

“Ready?” he asks lightly, a gun in hand.

“I want a gun,” I tell him.

His lips lift in a smirk before he reaches into the duffel bag and draws out a sleek gun.

“It’s loaded,” he says as he hands it over.

I take the gun, holding it at my thigh. Having the steel pressed into my hand calms me somewhat, knowing that I can protect us just as he can.

“Ok, I’m ready.”

Jason looks as if he wants to say more, but in the end, he leads me to the back of the house and to a barn I haven’t paid that much attention to.

Pulling open the door, Jason walks inside and I follow, finding a covered car hiding there.

“This one will have to do for now,” Jason replies as he yanks on the cover, revealing a small, four-door job.

There’s nothing flashy about it, much like the truck, and I can’t help but wonder how many of these he has just stored all over the place. The man is ready for anything.

We throw our things in the back, and I climb in the passenger side as Jason starts the engine.

He doesn’t pull forward, and when I glance over at him, I find him looking at me intently instead.

“If I tell you to get down, you get down, all right? I… hell, Bianca, I don’t know what’s waiting out there for us.”

“All right,” I say instead, surprised by the steadiness of my voice.

“Don’t worry.”

If his jaw clenches any tighter, he’s going to be looking at some broken teeth.

“The compound isn’t far from the city,” I say instead. “If you get back on the highway, I can get us there.”

“You understand,” he says after a moment, “that I’m going to do all that I can to stop this now. It’s gone too far.

I know what he’s trying to do. Jason is trying to get me to agree that it’s okay for him to go after Saccone himself, and I’m not going to agree to it at all.

“We will decide what is too far, together,” I tell him softly, hoping that he can see through the words, that I care for him far too much to let him sacrifice himself needlessly. Jason, well, I hope that he might be part of my future.

A ghost of a grin crosses his face, but he doesn’t respond, instead pulling the car out of the barn and down a dirt road away from the cabin.

It’s not the entrance we came through, but the trees break after a while and we are on a back road in the middle of nowhere, with trees all around us. This is not the way I know but, I don’t care how he gets me there, just as long as he does.

A tear escapes down my cheek as I stare out the window, thinking about the panic in Lucas’s voice and the way that Jason had reacted to me not wanting to give him up so easily. Emil and me, we really love each other. The mafia, the money—none of it matters if we lose each other.

And now there is Jason too. I don’t want to lose him either.

But what kind of future could we have together? Is he willing to give up this dangerous life he lives? I hide from my family name for a reason. While I love my family and my parents, I grew up knowing that I didn’t want the mafia life for myself. I wanted something… normal.

While Jason isn’t part of any mafia family, it’s splitting hairs to say that, as a hit man, he isn’t in the life anyway.

I’ve tried so hard to create my own path away from this world, and yet, here I am in the center of it all anyway. And this time I’ve been thrust right into the middle of the violence and back into the reality of every tomorrow being an uncertain future.

Jason has awakened something inside me that has made me start dreaming about a real future. Something that I have admittedly shied away from until now. But while I crave him, to have that future with Jason, will it be this?

I’m not sure I want this.

But I love my brother and I’m falling hard for Jason.

Maybe it’s fate that my happiness can only be found here in this world.

“Oh please, Emil,” I pray in a whisper.

“Please hang on. I’m on my way.”