Hitman's Holiday Read online

  Hitman’s Holiday

  by Alexa Land

  A Firsts and Forever Series Short Story

  Copyright 2015 by Alexa Land.

  All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission in whole or in part of this publication is permitted without express written consent from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either used fictitiously or are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, business establishments or locales is purely coincidental.

  Contains adult language and sexually explicit material and is only intended for adult readers.

  Books by Alexa Land Include:

  Feral (prequel to Tinder)

  The Tinder Chronicles (Tinder, Hunted and Destined)

  And the Firsts and Forever Series:

  Way Off Plan

  All In

  In Pieces

  Gathering Storm

  Salvation

  Skye Blue

  Against the Wall

  Belonging

  Coming Home

  All I Believe

  Dedicated to:

  Janice

  with love and thanks!

  Special Thanks to:

  River M., who inspired the title,

  and friends and readers

  Emma S., Denise D. and Kristin L.

  Also Thanks to my Friends at

  Team NaNoWriMo 2015

  for your company, the endless sprints, all those words of encouragement, and for inspiring me with your determination! I raise a cuppa to you all! 

  Congratulations to:

  The winners of Nana’s Cocktail Contest:

  Lorraine, May, Carlamia and Sheila

  Recipes are at the end of this story!

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: Happy Holidaze

  Chapter Two: Honor among Thieves

  Chapter Three: Santa’s Little Helper

  Chapter Four: Tricks and Treats

  Chapter Five: Irish Spring

  Chapter Six: All I Want for Christmas

  Bonus: Nana’s Party Cocktails

  Chapter One: Happy Holidaze

  Christmas Eve, Present Day

  San Francisco, California

  I fumbled in the pocket of my overcoat for a pair of sunglasses, and when I found them, I shoved them into place. It didn’t matter that it was nine o’clock at night. They were the only way I could take in the spectacle before me.

  I stood out on the sidewalk in one of San Francisco’s most posh neighborhoods. It might have been called Nob Hill (which made me grin a little), though I was new to town and still a bit hazy on the neighborhood delineations. Whatever it was called, the houses were imposing and ungodly expensive. They were also quite dignified, except for the one that was my destination.

  The huge Queen Anne Victorian belonged to a little old lady named Stana Dombruso, and it was clearly elegant beneath its holiday trappings. But at the moment, it looked like it had been hijacked by a team of crazed, drunken, and most definitely gay elves. Every bit of it was draped, outlined, wrapped or otherwise festooned in holiday lights. They weren’t a nice calm white, either. Instead, the house was lit up in bright colors, especially pink, green and purple, though the entire rainbow was well-represented, quite literally. The house’s façade was painted top to bottom with a rainbow, and in case that was entirely too subtle, a twenty-foot metal rainbow lined with lights graced the top of the structure, illuminating the night.

  But it didn’t stop there. Oh no. The yard was stuffed full of all manner of light-up wonders, including gay wire-frame reindeer. I knew they were gay because they were all bucks with big antlers, and they were all in positions that would have done the porn industry proud. I tore my eyes away from a reindeer three-way and took a look at a big, inflatable Santa, whose hands were planted firmly on the inflatable butt cheeks of a pair of male sex dolls dressed in red Speedo-style swimsuits and elf hats. No wonder Santa had a huge smile on his face.

  Yet somehow, all of that wasn’t even the most eye-catching part of the frenzied holiday light display. The piece de resistance were actually the trios of short, fat, palm trees on either side of the house. It was news to me that if you wrapped a palm tree in pink lights, then lined the fronds with strings of white lights, it would look exactly like an erupting penis. I stepped inside the open wrought iron gate and wandered into the yard, staring up at the trees. It was just dead-on. They even flared out at the top of the trunk, like the head of a cock.

  But that had to be on accident. Didn’t it? No one would intentionally decorate their yard with giant, cum-shooting cocks, would they?

  Maybe it was just me. Maybe they were perfectly innocent, and my dirty mind was filling in something that wasn’t actually there. Maybe…no, those were big, giant penises.

  I sank onto a garden bench and contemplated a pair of bucks before me. I’d seen those types of wire-framed, white-bulb-lit deer many times before, but I’d never seen one with his face completely buried in the hind-quarters of another. The one, um, bringing up the rear was a Rudolph, too, just to make sure nothing was lost to subtlety, and his glowing red nose was embedded deep in the wire-frame buttocks of his companion.

  I felt like I was on a super gay acid trip, and pulled my phone out and snapped a picture, just so I could verify later that I wasn’t hallucinating. I took a photo of the palm tree cocks, too. Same reason.

  Then I just sat there for a while. I knew I was stalling by that point, and intended to keep doing so as long as humanly possible. Why had I agreed to come to this Christmas party? I didn’t know these people at all, except by reputation. I’d only been invited because my brother Luca was dating one of them, and I’d thought it would be nice to see my brother on Christmas Eve.

  “Bullshit,” I whispered.

  Okay, yes, I did want to see Luca. I loved my brother and spent precious little time with him as it was. But even for him, I probably wouldn’t have braved a Dombruso holiday party, especially because I already had plans to see him on Christmas Day.

  There was another reason I was here. That reason was about six-foot-two with dark hair and eyes I could drown in. There was no reason I should look forward to seeing Constantino Dombruso. In fact, the nine-millimeter Glock tucked in my waistband reminded me that if he actually showed up tonight, things could easily go terribly wrong.

  The last time I’d seen Connie had been about four months ago. He’d been hired to kill my brother, and had tracked down Luca and his boyfriend in Tahiti. Fortunately, I’d been there and had been able to talk him out of it.

  Well, okay, I didn’t exactly talk him out of it. Instead, I’d impulsively grabbed him and planted one on him, even though I’d been divided as to whether I should kiss him or punch him in the face. Given the fact that he’d traveled halfway around the world to shoot my brother, he’d had a punch coming, followed by a bullet somewhere really painful.

  But no. Instead, I kissed him. I’d been right in guessing that would completely derail him from carrying out the hit.

  I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he wouldn’t have gone through with the contract anyway. Constantino’s brother Nico was in love with Luca. Surely Connie wouldn’t have done that to his own brother. I was fairly certain about that, since it took so little convincing for him to walk away.

  I’d been the other intended target of that hit along with Luca, because of a long-standing feud between our families and one Dombruso who wasn’t content to let the past stay buried. That person, a man named Jerry, had since been removed as the head of his family organization, and the rest of them seemed to be welcoming my brother with open arms. We’d been told the contract had
been canceled soon after that day in Tahiti, and given the fact that my brother and I were both still alive, that was probably true. But I hadn’t even considered coming to this party unarmed, just to be on the safe side.

  I sighed as I took off my sunglasses and put the package I was carrying next to me on the bench. Then I closed my eyes and tilted my face into the cool breeze. The kiss hadn’t just been random. Constantino and I had a history spanning more than a decade. We both knew I’d been taking advantage of that history to keep my brother safe. Maybe that had been manipulative of me, but fuck it. Connie had been pointing a gun at my brother, and I’d needed to defuse the situation by any means necessary. All’s fair in love and war, as the old saying went, and with Connie, love and war were sometimes nearly indistinguishable.

  Chapter Two: Honor among Thieves

  Cambridge, England

  November 5, 2005

  I pulled up the collar of my trench coat against the light mid-morning drizzle and hurried across the Cambridge campus, headed toward the library. I knew my kid brother would be there. He was always there.

  I spotted Luca at a small table near one of the windows and thought, not for the first time that visit, that he looked far too thin. At nineteen, he’d finally stopped growing, topping out at about six-foot-four, but his gangly frame had yet to fill in. Bony wrists stuck out of the cuffs of an old sweatshirt my brother had been wearing since high school. At least he’d finally bought himself some new jeans, so he was no longer sporting high-waters.

  He was intently studying a thick, dusty tome on what appeared to be art of the Renaissance, judging by the color reproduction of a painting on the pages before him. Luca was an art history major, and could lose himself for hours in volumes like that. But not today. I closed the book and said, “Give it a rest. It’s a Saturday, and it’s Guy Fawkes Day. You need to come with me to London for the weekend and have some fun.”

  Luca knit his dark brows at me. “You’re going to London for work, Andreo. What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

  “What I’m doing will take about two hours, tops. You can hang out in the hotel and run up a massive room service tab while I’m gone. I’ll be done by early afternoon, and then we can go out and get incredibly drunk and enjoy the festivities.”

  “I don’t understand this holiday, everyone gleefully burning effigies of some guy who was already punished for his crimes back in 1605. Well, 1606. He was actually put to death in January of the following year. Doesn’t it strike you as a bit morbid?”

  “You’re overthinking it. Just come with me, watch some fireworks, get drunk, and hit on cute boys. I refuse to let you spend the next forty-eight hours with your nose in a textbook.”

  He colored slightly and looked away. Luca had come out to me when he was in high school, but he most definitely wasn’t comfortable talking about his love life. Even though I was gay too, I’d never actually returned the favor and come out to him, since I was even less comfortable talking about my sex life than he was. “I really should be studying,” he murmured.

  “No you shouldn’t. Knowing you, I bet you’re way ahead on all your classes. What you need is the chance to relax a bit. Have fun! Act your age.”

  “So, you’re actually advising going out and getting drunk, rather than studying. This contradicts your usual message of ‘study hard and do well in school.’ You know that, right?”

  “I haven’t had to tell you that since you were a kid. Now come on. Please? I’m flying back to Rome Monday and this visit has gone far too quickly.” I sounded pathetic, begging my kid brother to hang out with me, and I knit my brows in frustration.

  “If whatever you’re doing for work is only going to take a couple hours, just hop on the train afterwards and come back here.”

  “Did you hear the part about it being Guy Fawkes Day? I’ve never been in England while that’s going on, and I’d like to see how London celebrates it.”

  “Just so you know, the locals usually just call it Bonfire Night, and Cambridge will be celebrating, too.”

  “I know. I’d prefer to be in London.” While I was thrilled that Luca was getting a great education, I was far from comfortable whenever I visited him at the university. I’d barely completed high school and felt woefully out of place among the very smart, very British student body. My brilliant brother, on the other hand, had spent a few years in boarding school in the UK before Cambridge and blended in perfectly.

  Luca studied me for a few moments, then pushed back from the table and picked up the book. “Alright. I don’t actually have anything pressing this weekend, so we might as well go have fun.”

  “Your enthusiasm is underwhelming.”

  He offered me a little smile, revealing the chip in his front tooth from the time he bit down on a very big lollipop when he was seven. It always made me think of him at that age, which in turn made me feel protective of Luca. I was only five years older, but I’d always had this idea that I was supposed to be a sort of father figure to him. Maybe that was because our father had never really been in the picture (which was actually a good thing, since he was a terrible person).

  My brother said, “Okay, let’s do this. It’ll be fun.” He didn’t sound like he really believed that.

  I suppressed a sigh as I followed him out of the library. I’d always wished we were closer, but I knew hanging out with me was a bit of a chore for him. He’d never say that, but it was pretty obvious.

  *****

  The train to London took about an hour and a half. After I checked us in to a fairly decent hotel in Notting Hill, I handed Luca the room service menu and went to conduct my business. He cracked open a thick textbook before I even made it to the door.

  I took a cab to a neighborhood along the Thames, got out on the corner, and walked south, noting the numbers on the brick warehouses I passed. They’d been converted to expensive apartments over the last couple decades, but purposely retained their rough exteriors in an attempt at some type of urban-chic design aesthetic. It was annoying, for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate.

  As the numbers got closer to the one I was looking for, my heartbeat sped up a bit. I put on a pair of sunglasses and turned up my coat collar, then decided I looked a bit too ‘I Spy’ and folded it down again. My palms were getting damp, and I wiped them on my black dress pants. “Keep it together, Dreo,” I whispered to myself. All of this was contingent on me looking perfectly at ease, and sweating profusely was really not going to do me any favors.

  When I finally reached the building, I walked up to the front door and rang the buzzer for apartment sixteen. No one answered, so I rang it again. And again. When I was satisfied that no one was home, I removed a key card from my pocket, swiped it in the reader beside the front door, and let myself into the small lobby, which I crossed quickly.

  I rode the elevator to the top floor and stepped out into a hallway lit with skylights. My destination was at the end of the hall. When I reached the apartment, I knocked on the door and waited. My heartbeat thrummed in my ears, and I let my breath out slowly. No one answered, so I pulled a couple slender tools from my pocket and went to work on the lock. I’d practiced picking locks a hundred times, but my hands were shaking, so it took me twice as long as it should have.

  Finally, the lock clicked. I let myself into the apartment and closed the door behind me. The panel for the security system was right beside the door, and I typed in the code my employer had given me and held my breath. When it powered down, my shoulders sagged with relief.

  I wasted no time, barely glancing at the sprawling river views as I cut through the posh living room. My client had told me exactly where the safe was, and I pulled a slip of paper from my pocket and looked at the combination written on it. I’d memorized it, but I was so nervous that it was hard to think straight. I removed the painting that covered the wall safe and held my breath as I tried the combination. I almost jumped for joy when it swung open.

  My employer’s stolen jewelry was right
where she’d assumed it would be. She knew her ex-boyfriend well. I picked up a wide, gold bangle and carefully pried the gold medallion from its mount in the center of the bracelet, then fished in my pocket for the replacement I’d brought and popped it into place. The bracelet was worth several hundred dollars. The coin it housed was worth close to a quarter million.

  Working quickly, I pocketed the coin, returned the bangle to its spot, closed the safe, and hung the painting, ensuring it was perfectly straight. I then wasted no time in leaving the apartment, locking the door behind me. I pulled my phone from my pocket as I waited for the elevator and drummed my fingers on it. I wanted to call my employer and tell her I’d gotten what she’d sent me for, but not until I was clear of the building.

  When the elevator doors slid open, I thought my heart was going to explode. Jimmy Carrera, the man I’d been robbing, and a very large associate stared at me for a long moment. I forced myself to keep my expression neutral, and I was glad I still had my sunglasses on, so they couldn’t see the fear in my eyes. There were four apartments on the top floor, for all they knew I was coming from one of the others.

  They kept staring at me as we changed places. I hit the button for the ground floor and tried not to swallow hard, even though I had a huge lump of anxiety in my throat. I was sure they were a moment away from blocking the elevator door and detaining me, because I was completely doing my version of The Telltale Heart. It was deafening in my ears. Surely they must hear it, too.

  But somehow, even though I had to be acting suspiciously, they let the doors close. When the elevator started moving, I fell against the wall and let out the breath I’d been holding. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of my face. Thank God that hadn’t happened a few moments earlier. Nothing screamed ‘suspicious’ like sweating copiously on a cold November day.