Page 3 of Breaking Rosalind
Seeing him is a punch to the gut. Shock seizes my chest in a clawed grip, stealing my air. My blood chills, and goosebumps spread across my skin. I timed this attack to avoid my stepfather. He was supposed to be away on business.
Bitter memories flood my mind, threatening to drown me in a whirlpool of betrayal and pain. I struggle for breath, my pulse quickening, my feet rooting to the tarmac.
“What are you doing?” Britt yells from the front seat. “Get rid of them.”
My best friend’s voice jolts me back to reality. I snap on the helmet, reach for the grenade launcher beneath the front passenger seat, and throw open the door. “Watch Miri.”
Stepping out, I sling the weapon on my shoulder. One of the men flanking Matteo fires a shot that hits me square on the chest. My armor absorbs the impact of the shot, pain exploding through my rib cage. I rock backward and manage to catch myself before I fall.
“Don’t shoot,” Matteo yells. “They’ve got my daughter.”
My lip curls, and prickly heat flares across my chest. That’s the first time my stepfather has admitted to being Miranda’s father. He raises his palms in a gesture to surrender, but nothing this bastard could say or do will stop me from taking my baby.
Aiming at Matteo and his goons, I pull the trigger. A grenade flies out and explodes with a deafening roar, sending out an explosion of shrapnel and fire. A rain of bullets hit me in the back as I dive into the back seat.
Britt accelerates, and the car lurches through the wreckage. Triumph fills my chest as we speed away toward the airport. This unauthorized side quest will get us into trouble when we return to HQ, but this was the whole reason why I trained for four years to become an assassin.
My recruiter at the Moirai said I would become strong enough to take out any target… And he was right. Because of him, I’m able to take back my daughter.
I turn to where Miranda crouches and pull her onto my lap and check her for injuries. “Are you okay, baby girl?”
“What was that?” she asks through hiccupping sobs.
I bury my face in her ringlets and sigh. “You’re finally coming home.”
ONE
TEN YEARS LATER
ROSALIND
People think an assassin’s life is glamorous, but it’s full of indignities. Nobody talks about the grueling torture training, tedious escape techniques, or the stomach-churning process of building a resistance to alcohol, drugs, and poisons.
I’ve crawled through alligator-infested sewers, rifled through rotting guts to find a microchip, and once, I fucked a decrepit old billionaire into a sex-induced heart attack.
Of all the demeaning shit I’ve endured for the job, none has been worse than being rejected by a man I never wanted.
Leroi slams me against his living room wall. It smells freshly painted, and the sofas look brand new. I make a note that something messy must have happened since my last visit. When he presses the barrel of a gun into my temple, I’m forced to stop spying and look up into eyes that burn with hatred.
I despise older men, even if our age difference is only six years, yet I play the part of a woman desperately in love. Arching my back, I push my breasts into his broad chest and wrap a leg around his ass, trying to get him aroused.
My horny act worked fine enough with Leroi until now. It’s never failed on a red-blooded man, except that Leroi acts like his heart pumps cryogenic fluid. His personality is equally frigid. I’ve never once seen this bastard crack a smile.
He flashes his teeth. “First, I told you never to come here uninvited.”
The sneer in his voice makes me want to stab him with my emergency syringe, but I need to keep up the act. Leroi is the key to gaining access to the real targets—his cousins, Benito and Cesare Montesano, mafia princes with million-dollar bounties on their heads, protected by an army of loyal henchmen.
Roman, their older brother and leader, is on death row. The client wants to leave his demise to the electric chair.
“Leroi,” I whine. “Please.”
He slides the gun’s barrel down the side of my face in a mockery of a caress. “Then I told you never to return.”
“But I need you,” I whisper.
His gun slides over my bottom lip, smearing my red lipstick. “Now I’m thinking the only way to make you listen is with a bullet.”
Anyone acting so thirsty for a man deserves to be shot. Leroi has told me to fuck off in a dozen humiliating ways, but I have a mission.