Taming Seraphine

LEROI

Thank fuck I have a qualified doctor on staff. Admittedly, Dr. Sal had his license revoked by the state medical board for malpractice. Now he works in our clean-up crew—there isn’t much call for healers in this line of work.

Removing the chip is more complicated than cutting out a square of plastic. Sal sedates the girl to extricate tendrils of metal from her flesh. Over time, her body must have healed around the foreign object, making it impossible to extract without expert help.

After Sal cleanses the wound and pieces her back together with medical glue, I lift her off the table and move her out of the armory and into my spare bedroom. I lay her atop the mattress and watch her sleep. Her thin chest rises and falls beneath an oversized sweatshirt, making her appear even smaller and younger. More vulnerable.

She can’t be much more than eighteen. It’s hard to tell when she’s so frail.

Shit. Only the sickest of bastards could keep their own daughter in a basement. If I could, I would bring him back to life again just to give him the slow, tortuous death he deserves. Him and everyone else involved in her imprisonment.

I back away from her and press down on the bridge of my nose. My mission was to wipe out everyone connected to Capello, whether through birth or marriage. Not just so that Roman could get out of jail, but to wrestle back control of an empire the sick bastard stole after the death of my cousins’ father.

That mission should include killing Seraphine and her brother, but something in her innocence tugs at the frayed remnants of my conscience.

She’s suffered enough.

Besides, no one but her knows she’s Capello’s daughter, and it’s going to stay that way.

With one shake of my head, I step out of the room.

Miko waits for me in the hallway with his hands clasped. “Are you going to tell me what the deal is with her?”

“You don’t want to know,” I mutter.

Miko is the side-kick and little brother I didn’t know I needed. I stumbled across Miko on a job to kill his asshole stepfather. He was fourteen, bruised and neglected, and had walked in on me while I was strangling the bastard with a garrote.

He’d looked me straight in the eye and nodded, urging me to continue snuffing out the bastard’s life. Afterward, he’d begged me not to leave him alone with his drug addict mother. Anton had retired and left me to run the firm, so I took him with me. From then on, he became my shadow.

He’s a hacker, researcher, and a getaway driver, wrapped up in a nineteen-year-old package.

“What are you going to do with her?” Miko nods toward the girl.

“Keep her safe,” I reply. “At least until Roman’s hold on the Capello empire is secure. After that, he and his brothers won’t give a shit if she exists.”

Miko gives me a slow nod, his gaze assessing. I’m certain he’s thinking about how I took him under my wing all those years ago, but I haven’t even thought as far as what will happen when Seraphine awakes.

I doubt that Seraphine could become my next protégé. She’s too fragile and has seen more darkness than a girl her age should ever have to endure. After she recovers, she can work with Miko to track down her surviving relatives. If they were the ones who sold her into sexual slavery, then I’ll follow her lead on how she wants retribution.

“You did well tonight,” I mutter. “Take tomorrow off.”

Miko gives me a tired smile. “Good night, boss.”

I spent the rest of the night lying awake in bed, wondering how the hell any man could keep his daughter chained up in a basement. The thoughts twist and turn into the recesses of my mind until they fade to blackness.

It’s past noon by the time I wake up, and I bring Seraphine a selection of items lying about in the kitchen. It’s mostly potato chips, fruit, crackers, oatmeal, bottled water, and juice. Sal will order any supplements she might need, but until the next food delivery arrives, she has to manage with what’s available.

She lies on her side, still sleeping. Sunlight streams in through the window, brightening the ends of her blonde hair into strands of gold. The unbruised side of her face looks so peaceful, it’s almost angelic, and I’m transfixed.

Could she really be a Capello? Everyone related to the old man was brown-eyed and dark-haired. She could be a stepdaughter. It wouldn’t surprise me if she wasn’t trafficked to fulfill some sick daddy-daughter role play. I clench my jaw at the thought and tear my eyes away from the sight of her frail form. As long as I’m still breathing, no one will hurt this innocent girl.

The phone rings in the kitchen. I set down the tray and walk back to the device. Anton’s number appears on the display, and my jaw ticks.

He’s my mentor, a distant cousin of my mother’s who brought me into the business. The man who taught me that mixing emotions with murder was the fastest way to get a hitman killed.

“Anton,” I say, my voice tense.

“Did you hear about the disaster that took place early this morning at the Capello mansion?” he asks.

My mind races. Anton is strangely well-informed for a man who’s been retired for over five years.

“What happened?” I ask.

“A lone gunman entered the building and killed the entire family, along with several cousins.”

“A tragedy,” I mutter. “The Capellos were excellent customers.”

Anton falls silent, waiting for me to give further commentary, or maybe a confession. I trust this man with my life. He’s the one who taught me everything I know about surviving this business and has saved my ass more times than I can count.

Admitting I was the lone gunman might lead to explaining what I found in the basement. I can’t bring myself to tell him about Seraphine. Not yet.

“Are there any leads?” I ask.

“Nothing,” Anton says. “Whoever did this was careful not to leave any traces. Their security cameras fed old footage to the cloud, and the gunman reduced one wing of the mansion to a pile of flaming rubble.”

The corner of my lips lifts into a smirk. Thank fuck Miko is also a genius with explosives.

“I’ll ask around,” I say. “See if anyone heard anything.”

He grunts. “Don’t you usually have the boys around on Thursday nights for poker?”

Shit. By the boys, Anton means a selection of men with loose tongues and extensive connections. With enough booze and weed, they’ll give you the information you need or tell you where to start looking.

Every instinct says I should cancel this game, but doing so might arouse suspicion. Capello wasn’t the most respected leader, but I don’t want to risk anyone thinking I might be linked to the massacre.

“I’ll see what they say,” I mutter.

“The lone gunman also stole something that belonged to Capello.”

I hesitate. “What?”

“A Lolita assassin.”

A… I don’t even want to think of the implications. That has to be some bullshit rumor. My eyes squeeze shut, and my mind speeds from fifty miles an hour to a hundred. Anton carried out a few jobs for Capello before he retired, but I didn’t think they’d been well acquainted enough to share such sensitive intel.

“There’s no such thing as a Lolita assassin,” I say.

“Trained her myself,” he replies with a touch of pride. “Face like an angel with the instincts of a killer.”

Fuck.

Disgust coils in my gut, and a sour taste spreads across my tongue. I draw back and exhale a shocked breath. He can’t be talking about Seraphine, but she’s the only person I found in the mansion that even vaguely fits the description.

“What did he use her for?” I ask.

“I didn’t ask questions. The less I know, the better.” He clears his throat. “Sniff about. I don’t want her falling into the wrong hands.”

A dozen more questions rise to the surface, such as why the hell Anton trained someone so innocent and young to be a killer, but I bite them back. No one is supposed to know I have Seraphine. That would lead to questions about who killed the Capellos.

“I’ll drop a few hints at poker,” I say, my voice even. “Maybe one of the boys knows something.”

“Doubtful. Are you still in contact with your cousins?”

My eyes narrow. Anton is getting too close to the truth. “I sometimes see Benito and Cesare at the Phoenix. Why?”

“Last night’s slaughter could be revenge for Enzo Montesano.”

“Didn’t he die of a heart attack?” I ask, my brows pulling into a frown.

Anton hesitates. “Capello moved in on Montesano’s empire after he died. Around the same time, his eldest was taken out of the picture with a well-timed death sentence. Then Capello shut out the other two of his sons. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that Montesano didn’t die of natural causes.”

“True.” I nod. That much is obvious, but my cousins never voiced their theories on how Capello could have caused Montesano’s heart to fail. “But I doubt Benito and Cesare would admit to anything so incendiary, even to a distant cousin.”

“Keep your eyes open. Upheaval in the underworld is good for business. The fall of such a huge family leads to a power vacuum, and everyone’s going to be scrambling for control.”

He hangs up, leaving me rubbing the spot between my brows. Anton is correct about the Montesano brothers being behind the Capello massacre. The information in those hard drives I took will be enough to get Roman out of jail, but Anton would have said something more if he suspected I was the hired killer.

I set down the phone and walk over to the coffee machine, my mind racing. Seraphine needs to stay somewhere else tonight. It’s the only way to host poker night and keep her safe.