Hard Up: A Military Mafia Romance Read online

  Working at Snake’s meant she didn’t pay rent or utilities, but sometimes the tips were crappy. Not that Vi was a big spender these days, but every dollar she added to her rainy day fund made her feel a little more secure and comfortable.

  “Saint-Tropez,” she sighed to herself. “Maldives. Belize. Bora Bora. Queensland…”

  Her mantra, the list of future beaches she wanted to visit. Someday.

  Her eyes closed as she pictured herself on the beach at sunset. Her skin warm from the last rays, the sound of the ocean lulling her to sleep. Her body tanned and toned from spending all her time in the sand.

  “I should learn to surf,” she said to herself.

  “You’re not too far from the beach.”

  Vi’s eyes snapped open. Callum leaned against the doorway, wearing a leather jacket and a tight white t-shirt in a way that Vi found criminally sexy.

  “Oh… uh… you heard that, huh?” she managed, going red all over.

  “Yep.”

  “You want my jacket?” he asked.

  Her brows flew up as he started to slip out of his black leather jacket, but she held up a hand.

  “I’m good.”

  Callum stopped, then slid his jacket back on his shoulders. He just stood there, looking at her.

  “What are you doing out here?” she asked.

  “Just came to say that Old Tom wandered off,” he said. Callum stepped out of the doorway and began moving toward her.

  “Crap,” she muttered, pushing off the wall and standing up.

  “Dec’s watching the bar for you. You got a few minutes.”

  Vi bit her lip and glanced away.

  “You want me to go?” he asked.

  She looked at him, at the breadth of his shoulders, at the rugged line of his jaw.

  “No,” she said.

  At that, his lips lifted.

  “Maybe…” he started, but then he stilled.

  “Callum?” she asked, but he was looking over her shoulder.

  She craned her neck to see what put Callum on high alert, but no luck. The alleyway was empty, the taillights of a car receding from sight at the far end.

  “Later,” he said, shaking his head. “Gotta go back in.”

  “Okay,” she said. Vi somehow felt as though she’d failed some kind of test.

  He started to turn, then stopped. “Come inside.”

  “Um, okay,” she said, cringing at how uncertain she sounded. What was it about Callum that made her talk like a coltish teenage girl?

  Callum held the door open for her, watching the alley the whole while. As she moved past him he ushered her through the door, his hand briefly resting against her lower back.

  Just that simple touch made goosebumps break out on Vi’s arms. She shivered, and Callum gave her a look. An arched brow, a quirk of his lips. Like maybe he was thinking, oh yeah?

  Or, more likely, seriously?

  This crush was getting less and less amusing by the day. Vi needed to get the hell over it, whatever her fascination with Callum might be.

  Because there was no question about it: Callum had DANGEROUS written all over him.

  Sexy as he might be, he was the opposite of what Vi needed in her life right now.

  If only she could get that through her head…

  Sighing, she headed down the hall.

  3

  She pondered her crush all the way inside. Callum wasn’t even her type, all big and menacing. In college, she had always preferred quiet nerds — men who didn’t push her buttons, or order her around.

  Not that Callum talked to her enough to order her around, but… he seemed like the type.

  Maybe it was the mystery. She didn’t even know his last name.

  When they made it to the bar, Callum went to retake his bar stool.

  “You can sit if you want,” he said, nodding to the empty spot next to him.

  “Thanks for your permission,” Vi said, amused. “My break’s over now though.”

  He shrugged, as if to say, suit yourself. Vi realized that she had a bad habit of putting words to Callum's expressions and gestures, no matter how insignificant.

  “Can I get a drink over here?” called a newcomer from the end of the bar.

  Vi pursed her lips, picked up her bar towel, and moved away from the Black Saints.

  “What can I get you?” she asked. She looked at the newcomer curiously, noticing the shaggy raven hair peeping out of his black hoodie.

  “Got anything nice?” he asked, eyeing the liquor bottles behind Vi.

  “Got some Colonel Taylor and Maker’s under the bar here,” she said.

  Something about this guy gave her a bad feeling. He was jittery. Either he was nervous about something, or maybe just coked up. Every few seconds, he started to look down the bar at the Black Saints, then seemed to stop himself.

  Avoiding a confrontation, or trying not to draw attention to himself?

  “Maker’s,” he said. “And a splash of Coke.”

  His accent was distinctly northern, not Boston or New York, but maybe somewhere between.

  “Got it,” she said, moving away to make his drink.

  The process of making drinks, something that was unknown to her only eight months ago, was now mechanical. She didn’t even think about it as she filled a rocks glass with ice, poured in two fingers of Maker’s Mark whisky, and then topped it with a tiny bit of cola.

  “Maker’s and Coke,” she said, setting it on the bar before him.

  Remembering the coaster, she tossed one on the bar, then moved his glass.

  “Hey,” he said, his icy fingers closing around her hand. “Listen…”

  “Ooookay,” she said, smoothly pulling her hand back. “That’ll be six bucks.”

  He blinked and pulled out his wallet, then slapped a hundred-dollar bill on the bar. Word from bartenders in downtown Savannah was there’d been a string of fake hundreds passed in the neighborhood recently. Seeing a hundred at Snake’s made Vi suspicious in a heartbeat.

  Her customers rarely came in flashing any kind of cash. This was the spot where you drank your problems away, not the place you celebrated being flush.

  Vi barely even looked at the bill. “I can’t break that.”

  “Not askin’ you to,” he said. “You can keep it.”

  “Um, we don’t take bills that big,” she lied, capping the whisky bottle and putting it away.

  He smirked. “It’s real.”

  “Sure,” she said with a noncommittal shrug.

  “Listen,” he said, dropping his voice. “I just need a little info.”

  “I don’t know anything,” was her instant response.

  “Just tell me what name’s on the card when the guys to my right pay,” the guy insisted.

  “Don’t know.”

  His expression hardened. “You don’t want to lie to me.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not a lie. We don’t take cards here.”

  “They come in here in a lot, I bet.”

  “What’s a lot? Some of my customers are here open to close, four or five days a week,” she said, restocking the coasters and cocktail napkins.

  “I’m saying, you hear things. You know who they are, their names,” he pushed on.

  “I’m not a rat, if that’s what you’re asking,” she snapped, the words out of her mouth before she could clamp her lips closed.

  Instead of getting angry, though, he just gave her a knowing look.

  “A rat, huh? You connected, sweetheart?”

  “No. Nope,” she said. “I have to get back to work.”

  “I think you might be somebody’s goomah,” he said. The way he pronounced it, goo-mar, made Vi’s blood run cold. “If not, maybe you should be. It’s a dangerous world out there, sweetheart.”

  This guy was Italian, no doubt about it.

  “I don’t know anything or anyone,” she said.

  “You want to?”

  “No.”

  When she dropped
a stack of napkins next to him and started to move away, he grabbed her left wrist.

  Vi turned to him with wide eyes. “Let go of me.”

  “Tell me what I want to know, maybe I let you walk right out of here,” he said, his voice dropping to a menacing whisper.

  “I can’t help you,” she said, struggling to pull away.

  “Sure you can. I’m looking for a bunch of fucking bogtrotters sent down here by the Irish, and I think I’ve found them. Have I found them, sweetheart?”

  He twisted her wrist just so, and she cried out.

  “You’re hurting me!” she said, her heart thumping.

  “Shut the fuck up,” he said, releasing her. “Lucky thing you’re a nice piece of ass, because you’re a waste of fucking air.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Dec and Callum were on their feet, moving closer.

  “Everything okay over here?” Dec asked.

  The two Black Saints flanked the stranger, not confronting him, just focusing on Vi.

  “Yep. Bar’s closed!” she blurted out, rubbing her wrist.

  “I haven’t had my drink yet,” the newcomer groused.

  “Yeah, well, you haven’t paid either,” she said, grabbing a plastic cup and setting it on the bar. “Now it’s to go.”

  He scowled, but with Callum and Dec towering over him, he didn’t make a scene.

  “Fine. You better hope I don’t see you again,” he spat.

  “I think you’re done here,” Dec said, looking straight down at the stranger.

  Dec put his hands on the bar, and Vi saw the newcomer’s eyes light up with recognition as he took in Dec’s hand tatts.

  “Got what I needed anyway,” the guy said.

  He gave Vi one last sneer before snatching up the cash and making himself scarce.

  “Hey…” Callum started, but Vi wasn’t paying attention.

  She was already moving to get out from behind the bar. “We’re closing early! Everyone out!”

  After a few minutes of grumbled insults, the last customer left. Vi turned to find the Black Saints standing by the bar. Arms crossed, expressions hard, they watched her return to the bar.

  “You guys need to get out of here,” she said.

  “Nice gratitude there,” Cor said, his tone like ice.

  “That guy was looking for the three of you. I didn’t say anything. If you’d just stayed put and let me handle my own business, it would’ve been fine.”

  “He grabbed you. Hurt you,” Callum said as she skirted them and went around the bar.

  “I’m okay,” she said, opening the cash register. “He saw your tatts though, he’s probably coming back.”

  Silence for a moment. She looked up at the mirror behind the bar. All three men were exchanging glances.

  “I’ll get the car started,” Cor said, making a quick exit.

  Vi’s hands were shaking too much to count the register down the way she should. Vi stuck everything in the drop bag, then stuck it in the safe. She could do the math later, when she’d calmed down.

  “Give us a second,” she heard Callum say.

  When she turned to grab her tips from the bucket on the bar, Dec was on his way out.

  Callum stood before her, his expression stormy.

  “You need to leave,” Vi said.

  “So do you. You can’t stay here,” he said.

  “Jesus, give me a break. I live here,” she said, jogging the bills to make a neat, but flimsy stack of ones.

  Fishing in the bucket, she made sure to get all the quarters from the bottom. Every cent counted, got her closer to getting out of this hellhole.

  “Vi—” he started.

  “You don’t know me,” she said, glancing up at him. “One night of sex doesn’t make you responsible for me, Callum.”

  His lips thinned, but she didn’t give him time to respond.

  “Not even a whole night, because I’m pretty sure you dipped as soon as I closed my eyes. So… you know. Just go.”

  “I can’t leave you here,” he said.

  “Seriously? I’ll be fi—”

  Her words were cut off by gunshots. A dozen of them, rapid-fire. Vi dropped like a rock, crouching behind the bar.

  “Oh, fuck,” Callum said, scrambling to come around the bar and kneel beside her. “Get upstairs, in the bathtub.”

  “Callum… you don’t have to go out there,” she said, already knowing it was futile.

  Mob soldiers lived for this kind of shit, it was in their nature.

  “Can’t.”

  “Wait!” she said when he rose and started toward the door. “He’s got a semi-automatic. You’ll be killed.”

  His green eyes flashed, but he just shook his head and shouldered the side door open, slamming it behind him.

  For a second, Vi wondered if she should try to lock the doors, but another burst of gunfire froze her in place.

  There was an honest-to-god battle going on outside, and nowhere for her to run.

  Vi was trapped, terrified, and helpless.

  The gunshots were frightening, but the silence that fell afterward was more chilling. It stretched for one full minute, then another…

  She looked up, a metallic glint catching her eye. It was the revolver her bosses kept under the cash register. For emergencies, supposedly.

  Reaching up, she pulled it free. She was surprised to find it fully loaded, but even more surprised when she found the weight of it… comforting.

  Glancing at the door, she slowly stood up.

  Before she knew it, she was crossing the bar toward the front door…

  4

  Twenty Minutes Later

  “Vi, snap out of it,” Callum said, his voice gone to gravel. “This is serious. You don’t know what you’ve done.”

  The look on her face when she heard his words…

  Callum still couldn’t believe that the last few minutes had happened. Just as he’d lain there, waiting for the hitter to fire the final shot, waiting for it all to fade to black…

  There was the hot little blonde from the bar, rain-soaked and looking scared as hell. Right before she’d fired a bullet straight into the gunman’s back.

  In that moment, watching the mixture of terror and determination on her face, he realized that he didn’t know a damn thing about her.

  They were strangers, barely knew each other outside of a one-night stand.

  And yet… she’d killed for him.

  Vi turned to Callum, swiping at the tears staining her cheeks.

  “I… I didn’t mean… the gun went off,” she said, gesturing at the body on the ground.

  “You saved my life, Viola.”

  She dropped her gaze to the ground for a moment, looking conflicted.

  “What now?” she asked. “Where are your friends?”

  “Not here,” he said. The pain was beginning to overcome the adrenaline. If he didn’t move soon, he wouldn’t be able to.

  Callum felt the blood drain from his face as he tried to stand. A bloom of crimson bubbled up from a wound above his left hip, another at the top of his right shoulder.

  “Let me help,” Vi said, moving to brace him as he stood.

  She staggered a little under his weight; Callum was a good foot taller than Vi, making her seem tiny and fragile against his muscular frame.

  That same determination flashed on her face again as they lurched forward a few haphazard steps.

  “Fuck,” Callum said, unsure how they were going to make it anywhere. “Come on, close to the car at least.”

  They moved to lean against the bullet hole-riddled Mercedes, blocking them from any would-be shooters on the street.

  “You need a hospital,” Vi said softly, gripping his arm and looking up at him.

  “No. I need to get to my car,” he said.

  “You can’t drive.”

  “You can, though.”

  “No, I can’t. I’m shaking like a leaf,” she said. “When I crash, which I will, it’s g
oing to be pretty bad.”

  Callum grimaced, then sighed. “We have to get off the street. We’re sitting ducks out here.”

  “Fine. Let’s go upstairs.”

  He shook his head, but pulled his arm from her shoulders and started moving toward Snake’s. “I don’t like it, but we don’t have a lot of options.”

  “Go ahead,” she said once they made it in the doors. When she shrugged out of his hold, she turned away and stiffened.

  “What?” he asked, distracted by the effort of keeping himself upright.

  “Oh… nothing. I’m right behind you, I’m just going to lock up.”

  He staggered inside, listening as she slammed and bolted the heavy door behind them. She went to the bar, then opened the till.

  Apparently, she was going to count the register while he dragged his own sorry ass up her staircase.

  Callum made a low sound, something between pain and annoyance. He headed upstairs.

  “Don’t bleed on anything!” she called.

  Callum ignored her, more concerned with getting himself up the stairs. He’d been shot before, wounded two different times during SEALs operations.

  The pain could be managed for a short time. He just needed to get himself somewhere safe and stop the bleeding.

  Gritting his teeth, he braced himself against the wall and half-dragged himself upstairs. Funny, he’d been upstairs in Viola’s little studio apartment before, but he remembered precisely nothing about the kitchen.

  Probably because he’d been extremely drunk, and oh so close to closing the deal with the hot bartender he’d been lusting after for months.

  When she stepped into her tiny kitchen, Callum was perched on her flimsy kitchen counter, eyes half closed.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Not bleeding on anything,” he grunted.

  “Right. Let me get my first aid kit,” she said.

  When he didn’t say anything, eyes still closed, she called back to him. “Don’t faint, either.”

  “Lot of rules here,” he muttered.

  Vi wrinkled her nose and vanished for a moment, returning with a heavy black plastic case. Callum cracked an eye and watched as she opened the case to reveal a wide array of medical supplies.

  “You come prepared,” he said.