Phantom's Baby: A Mafia Secret Baby Romance (Mob City Book 3) (2 page)

Fingers giddy with half-success, and mind numbed by tension, I reached for the lockbox, closing it too fast. The lid clattered shut, and the sound rattled around the filthy, forlorn room.

I froze.

That was my first mistake. I was wasting time I didn’t have, but my body was paralyzed by fear, the gears in my mind seized up from the adrenalin of abject terror. A part of me watched the scene as if from above. If I was a character from a horror movie, the audience would be screaming at me to move, knowing in their hearts that
they
would be acting differently.

It’s just not that easy.

When your whole life is a prison whose walls are built with bricks of fear and doubt, whose bars are cast with the strength of years of abuse – it’s just not that easy.

My panicked brain dumped every last ounce of adrenaline it had left into my bloodstream. The potent chemical narrowed my vision, and heightened every other sense. I wished it hadn’t. What I’d give for a few more seconds of naïve obliviousness.

A growl echoed down the hallway – louder now in my enhanced state -- as loud as a freight train. The low, throaty rumble evoked a primal fear; the fear of the jungle; the fear of being hunted. I grabbed the bag; slung it over my shoulders. I had to run. I needed all this to have been worth it.

I crept into the hallway where each crack and splinter on the battered wooden floorboards seemed to shimmer and glow in my tunnel vision as I searched for a path where wood wouldn’t creak, and nails wouldn’t squeak.

I was afraid to look up, afraid of what I might see. In my heart of hearts, I still hoped that Rat was just growling at a rodent running by him. He did that sometimes. And it wasn’t like our filthy apartment was rat free – of any kind.

But I knew it was a false hope. The same as I knew, deep down, that nothing good would come of the letter weighing on my shoulder like a stack of bricks, instead of a tired scrap of paper.

I looked up, eyes half-lidded, cowering from what I might see.

Rat stood between me and my salvation: the still half-open front door. His four legs were planted wide, his ears pulled back, his snout still bloody from my failed bribe. As if in tribute to the sight of its spilled brethren that marked his fur, the blood in my ears began to thump like a pack of galloping horses.

So I didn’t hear it when Rat barked.

But I saw the way his body clenched, watched as a fleck of torn meat flew from his mouth to the floor as his throat spewed out hot air.

I knew that I was done.

“Rat!” a sleep-addled voice cried. It was gruff and angered from his broken, drunken rest. “If this isn’t important, you’re going to get a hell of a beating, boy!”

The dog visibly cringed, and as it did, I saw beyond the heartless, vicious beast Russell had molded him into. I saw the puppy he’d once been – sweet, caring and playful. He was every bit as much a victim of the old man as I.

It won’t stop him from tearing you apart.

A thump echoed around the tiny apartment as Russell hurled one of his huge, trunk-like legs off the couch. Another thud soon followed, and he levered himself upright, his old, poisoned limbs responding with none of their former vigor. Still, they were strong, and no strangers to violence.

“Come here, boy.” He ordered.

The dog glared at me balefully, knowing that I had sealed its fate, and was blaming me for it. He slunk towards his master. I squeezed my eyes shut, just for a second. Terrifying as he was, I didn’t want to see this.

I heard the air whoosh out of the poor animal’s lungs as Russell aimed a kick, a pathetic wheezing yowl as it struggled for breath. Then I felt the old man’s gaze fall on me. I shrank back.

“You! Wha’ the fuck are you doin’, creepin’ aroun’ like a thief, you deceitful li’l bitch?” Russell slurred his words, but his beady, untrusting eyes – now that they turned on me, cut deep as a knife. “Wha’s inna bag? Wha’ you takin’ fra’me? You’re wors’ an your mother!”

I pressed my body against the hallway wall. His acid tongue barely penetrated my eardrums. Even his unfounded slurs bounced off me like I was shielded. I’d heard them all before, taught myself not to care. Besides, unknowing and unthinking, he’d provided a distraction. Hitting Rat, he’d opened up a way out. The gap was small, but I was nimble.

I went for it.

“
B
oss
, you sure you should be here?”

I searched for the speaker, glowering. Inside, I was impressed by his foresight, but I couldn’t let it show. Not now, not in front of the men –
my men
. I might praise him later, in secret, away from the half a dozen pairs of inquiring eyes now turned on me. Almost every pair was beady and distrustful, lying in wait for an opening – waiting for me to slip up. I knew I couldn’t allow that to happen. I had to act like I was in complete control, because the second the mask slipped – I was done.

“Dimitri, right?”

The short, stout man nodded. He had a barrel chest, and a face that suggested in a fight with a baseball bat, the bat would come off worse. But unlike the rest of the men who surrounded me,
his
eyes were different – soft, brown and intelligent. I paused, considering how to respond.

“What,” I said arrestingly, slowing my speech for effect. “Makes you think for a second I’d be anywhere else?”

Dimitri looked at me warily, aware that he was walking a fine line. After all, he was one of the very few men I’d allowed to live through my purge of his former employer’s organisation. “Nothing, boss,” he said, keeping his chin proud and high. “It’s just, the boss – the
old
boss – ”

I smiled a tight, thin-lipped smile whose warmth barely reached my cheeks, let alone my eyes. “It is okay, Dimitri; you can say his name. Here, I’ll say it for you. Sergei.”

Dimitri stumbled, but continued manfully. I nodded as I listened to him; hearing his words, but also seeing beyond them; measuring the strength it took to speak at all. Dimitri Petrov, it seemed, would make a fine right hand.

“I’m sorry, boss. Sergei – he didn’t do the dirty work himself,” he said, his voice barely flecked with the lightest of Russian accents. “Said it was bad for business. Said he needed plausible –“

I cut him off again. “Deniability?”

He nodded.

“You’ll find, Dimitri that I intend to be very different than the
late Sergei Popov
.” The last words came out in a hiss as I remembered the indignities that the man had heaped on me, the beatings, the abuse,
the mockery
.

I blinked once, and the feelings were gone, mastered. My face was as implacably still as a Russian doll. “And it didn’t do him much good in the end, did it?”

Dimitri shook his head. Around us, the men looked on in rapt silence. They knew what they were witnessing – if not a struggle for power, then a demonstration of it. I loved the game, revelled in the thrill of asserting my dominance over those whose lives I held in the palm of my hand. An office job wasn’t for me. The nine to five grind, those soulless hollow-eyed men who have no idea what else the world has to offer – the money, the power,
the women
.

“Do you know why we’re here, Dimitri?”

“To kill –”

“No, not to kill,” I said. “Not
just
to kill. We’re here to make a statement: to let my father know that betrayal has consequences; to tell him that his so-called safe houses aren’t
safe
anymore.”

Dimitri’s already pale face whitened still further. A flicker of movement flashed across it, and I suspected I knew what had caused it: the memory of how I’d taken control of Sergei Popov’s once feared criminal organization. The reason why I now bore a title, whispered in hushed tones, even at home. The title they thought I didn’t know.

I did.

It was
Phantom
.

“Yes boss,” Dimitri nodded. “We’re with you, aren’t we boys?”

Around us, five heads nodded in unison. A thrilling burst of adrenaline surged through me. I felt like a young lion, entering my prime, the new King of my pride. And around me, every head was bowed in submission. A fire began to consume me, vibrating through my entire body, every atom quivering with a fierce, unfulfilled desire. It had been too long, for far too long, unsafe.

It had been far too long, subjugated by my desire for revenge. It needed a release –
I
needed a release. My skin was hot to the touch. I ached for a woman.

Down, cowboy
, I thought.
What the hell’s gotten into you?

“Good,” I whispered, drawing an eight inch blade from where I’d strapped it by my left boot. The deadly weapon glittered in what faint light penetrated through filthy windows into the slum hallway.

The air was musty, smelling half-fermented from decaying construction material and grinding poverty. It smelled familiar, reminding me of memories I’d locked away long ago, from a time before I was a killer. I’d been here, in this very building.

I blinked back the memories that were threatening to overwhelm me, without ever betraying their true secrets, and choked an order to my men, damming the flood of unwanted remembrance. “Let’s move.”

We had assembled in the tenement’s stairwell. It stank of urine, and piles of litter stood knee-high in every corner. Every crack and crevice teemed with insect-life, and the ceilings were strewn with cobwebs.

I picked my way around small piles of rodent droppings. At least, I hoped they were from rodents. Dimitri led the way, on point, his weapon cradled between both his enormous hands. I nodded with unseen approval. Whoever trained him had done a good job.

Behind him, the five men who still remained from his once-mighty brigade of killers followed close on his heels. The ones who had pledged their loyalty to me before my knife wedged firmly in their necks. They were
my
men now, the tiny pieces of grit that – once forged together in a crucible – would one day become a diamond. Fresh recruits were already flocking to my banner, drawn by the scent of power like flies to honey.

And they’ll disappear to the next young gun’s banner, unless you bring them what they crave. Power. Success. Respect.

I sniffed the air once again, searching for meaning, for the reason why my body was reacting with such abnormal desire. Normally my flesh was just another string to my bow, controlled, tempered like the long-worked Damascus steel of the blade in my hand. It was sculpted, like my mind, tuned to follow just one desire with single-minded purpose – revenge.

Dimitri halted, held up his hand and made a fist. I detected it too, my body reacting like a well maintained machine – even as focused as my mind . A disturbance – scarcely perceptible except to a hunter’s finely honed senses. It was the barest change in air pressure, but it screamed a clear warning. What caused it? It was hard to tell. Perhaps someone’s movement, or a door opening several stories up.

His men took an extra step, stopped, and held handguns at the ready. All seven of us were packed into a tiny break between two flights of stairs like sardines in a can. I licked my lips, fearing we were an easy target for an ambush.

How would that look? The big bad mob boss getting gunned down on his first real day on the job.

“What is it?” I called in a hushed whisper. I’d chosen five in the afternoon for a reason. Crime happens at night, not in the day, and I wanted to catch my father’s men napping – to show them that nowhere was safe. Besides, I’d had a man watching the building for a week. No movement, he reported, except for a few drunks. The building was almost abandoned. I could see why.

I tossed my weapon from hand to hand as I waited for Dimitri’s reply. When it came, it boiled my blood.

“Someone’s running. I think two, maybe three people?” He hissed, looking at me with a confused – and surprised – expression. I bit down on my lip hard, all thoughts of desire quelled by a sudden intense burst of anger. My best laid plans hung in the balance.

“No guns, understood?” I ordered softly, looking around to ensure my point was heard. “I don’t want a couple of kids getting hurt on my watch.”

Nods greeted my request.

Events began to move more quickly. The men around me were focused, but tense. This was our first operation together, and while they were all good men, I’d not had an opportunity to mold them in my own image. I needed men who wouldn’t panic under pressure, whose first response wasn’t to reach for a gun. I couldn’t blame them. It was all they knew.

I heard it now, footsteps thundering down another stairwell. I cocked my head to one side, and tightened my grip on the knife in my hand. Dimitri was right – someone was coming, but was it two, or three, or more? I couldn’t tell either, and I didn’t like it.

What the hell?

A woman sprinted round the corner, agony written on her face, long, messy red hair streaming out behind her. The sight of her tear-streaked face plunged a dagger into my heart. I knew unconsciously who she was – how could I forget – but as my conscious mind strained for her name, or any sense of who she was, or the reason that the merest sight of her face had such a profound effect on me, it came up short.

Everything was moving too fast.

And then, it wasn’t.

Do something
.

The blood pounded in my ears, but I didn’t hear it. My mind blocked out everything that wasn’t essential. It presented me with choices, on a silver platter, but no easy way to decide. Help this woman – who subconsciously I knew, but didn’t know at all – or abandon her to her fate. The cogs and wheels inside my head whirred at full speed, but the world around me had slowed to a crawl.

The redheaded woman had barely taken a step since emerging from around the filthy concrete pillar, but my mind had already processed every outcome. It watched as Dimitri’s body spun, his gun tracking the woman, his aim still a foot out.

I watched in slow motion as expressions of surprise wrote themselves onto the faces of my men, and then spotted as fingers began to stiffen on triggers, my order disregarded as instinct took over.

The choice was easy.

“No guns!” I shouted, throwing caution to the wind. I hoped the building’s thick concrete walls were still sturdy enough to prevent the sound traveling to my real target. But even as I spoke, another sound entered the equation, a dangerous one – a primal one, an animal snarl.

Whipped into frenzy as the vicious dog burst around the corner, everyone freaked and I almost lost control of them entirely. However, Dimitri and most of my men obeyed my order.

One did not.

I saw the whites of his eyes contract as panic overtook him. His knuckles went pale with effort, too, as his fist clenched around his handgun’s metal grip. I knew what was going to happen before he did, I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it. His finger was already clenching, and tugging back on the trigger, but I saw where his first shot would go – at the girl, not the dog chasing her.

I couldn’t let that happen.

I powered off my right leg, hurling my body forward two feet, and thrust my arm out. I packed my shoulder with every ounce of force my body could muster and batted the man’s gun aside and up. I saw, or perhaps felt, his forearm muscles contract as he pulled back the trigger, and the stairwell exploded in sound.

“Dimitri!” I shouted over the din, ripping my throat with a roar as I struggled to make myself heard over the echoing gunshot and the ringing in my ears. “Go!”

My lieutenant understood what I was ordering implicitly. He didn’t argue about leaving me alone, not now. He sprinted up the stairs, taking most of the men with him, except the one whose weapon clattered to the floor in the struggle – along with my knife – and who now stood by my side clutching his arm – and glowering at me.

What the hell?
The man’s fierce scowl burned hot as a candle – but why, I didn’t know. I filed it away. I didn’t have time to stroke his ego. Not now.

Dimitri’s task was clear – attack the safe house. It was probably already too late, but we had to try.

Mine was too – save the girl.

“Get back,” I shout to the girl, shielding her with my body. She looked at me with wild eyes, and I couldn’t blame her. I couldn’t imagine what was going through her head – she was already being chased by a ferocious, half-rabid dog, and then to burst into a stairwell full of armed men?

I tried to put myself in her shoes, but I couldn’t imagine what I’d do in her place. Trust certainly wouldn’t be high on my list of “things to do.”

The stairwell filled with an ominous growl. Like the rest of us, the dog had been stunned by the gun’s retort. Our reprieve hadn’t lasted long.

I grabbed the girl’s arm and roughly pulled her behind me, shielding her with my body. I stared at the dog – some kind of German Shepherd-like mongrel. It was huge, and could have looked handsome, if not for its wild eyes and matted fur. And worse, if that was possible, it was standing over my knife.

“Shit!” I muttered, grasping the girl harder and taking a cautious step back, manipulating her body alongside mine. We moved in perfect synchronicity, like dancing partners who had spent years learning each other’s moves. It was a curious detail that refused to melt into the background noise in my mind, but which I had no time to explore. Still, it lingered.

The vicious dog snarled, snapping its jaws together. Droplets of spittle flew out and hit the ground, staining the concrete dark where they fell. It stood with all four legs slightly apart, a bulldog’s stance, poised to attack.

My mind ran through a hundred scenarios, but none of them stood out. I knew only one thing – I couldn’t let the girl get hurt. No matter what happened to me, that part was essential.

A thought popped into being. An option presented itself. I groaned. It was a terrible idea, but it was all I had.

I pivoted onto the balls of my feet, like an MMA fighter ready to do battle. “Come on then, Chuckles,” I baited. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

The beast hurled itself forward, and I went to meet it, throwing myself into danger regardless of consequence. It didn’t matter, as long as I saved her. The adrenaline narrowed my vision so that all I saw was the animal’s dripping jaw. I noticed absently that its snout was coated red.

Not blood?
But the thought was gone before I had a chance to explore it.

I collided with the animal, and it snapped at my stomach. I twisted, avoiding the first bite, and threw my full weight on its body, enveloping it like a grappler.