Chapter One
“Do you think I’m going to be the only one to find out?”
Nate Evans looked into the eyes of the contract killer he found lurking a few feet from his neighbor’s house. This was what he’d been warned about. To most, keeping an eye on Lemon Bosworth was a shit assignment, but Nate knew what his boss wanted.
“It doesn’t matter. Do you think you’re the first guy here?” He pulled out his knife, and before the bastard could respond, he jammed his knife deep into his throat. He wasn’t lying when he said he was the first man he killed.
His boss was right.
Whoever had leaked the information about his neighbor being the bastard daughter of Alessandro Rocco had all but put a death warrant out for the young woman. This was why Rocco asked him to come here. To move in next door and do whatever it took to keep the woman safe.
He’d been on this assignment for six months, and in all those times, Lemon had never once reminded him of the man who fathered her. She was nothing like his other children either.
Her life shouldn’t touch the Italian mafia, but her mere existence was too much of a temptation for all the people who wanted to take from Rocco. At the kitchen sink, he rinsed off the blood and spent the next hour dealing with the dead body.
This was the first time he’d caught a guy so close to Lemon’s house. It wasn’t good. Pretending to be into security and setting up a personal shop in the local town was starting to wear thin. He had his own office and had paid for a couple of employees, both of whom were associated with Rocco, just to protect his daughter.
He was on the way out to the car to take the body for disposal when he saw Lemon on a ladder outside her house.
Rather than pause to admire her curvy ass that he’d become addicted to, he quickly dumped the package into the back of his trunk and locked it.
The men were waiting for him for the body, but he turned to admire Lemon’s handiwork.
“Hey, Nate, what do you think?” Lemon asked.
They were four weeks away from Christmas, and he knew how excited she was about it. Just as she’d been over Halloween and Thanksgiving.
On Halloween she’d displayed a graveyard outside her house, dressed as a witch, and offered candy to all the local kids. He had no choice but to dress up for the occasion, seeing as he needed to protect her and every potential moment was a threat to her life.
“Looking good.”
Unlike some of the other hitmen who worked for Rocco, he got this assignment for his ability to blend in. He was a pretty boy, had been all his life. His good looks made men trust him, believing his loyalty, and well, women were more than happy to drop to their knees for him. He’d never been lacking of female company, but from the moment he met Lemon, that had all changed, which screwed with his fucking head.
Lemon, bastard child or not, was his boss’s kid.
She was completely off-limits.
But, and this was a big but, he wanted her, badly. He’d never wanted any woman the way he wanted this one. It made no sense. She wasn’t his type, not even a little bit. She wasn’t blonde, greedy, a gold-digger, or a whore.
She had long, brown hair that caressed the top of her butt, which was so fucking curvy and round. All he wanted to do was get his hands on her curves, to grip her tightly and hold her to him so he could drive inside her hard and deep. Brown eyes that were so damn expressive. Even when she tried to hide her feelings, she failed.
Lemon was a beautiful woman, smart, funny, and her father’s dark world hadn’t touched her. It had only glimpsed her.
He’d been given every single little detail of her life in order to protect her. He knew Lemon never spoke to her father, refused to live with him, and had even turned down a fully furnished apartment, complete with a bodyguard and allowance.
Instead, she had used the money her mother had left to her, purchased this house in a small town, close to nothing and nowhere, and took a job at a supermarket, far away from her father. What Lemon didn’t know was that the money she thought her mother left her was from her father.
Alessandro was an evil bastard. One of the deadliest Italian mafia capos of all time. He’d become a legend in a few short years after taking over from his father. However, Alessandro had one weakness in his entire life—Lemon’s mother. Instead of giving her up, he’d kept her. Trying to play happy families.
Nate pulled out of his thoughts as Lemon climbed down the ladder, stepping off with a bounce to her step.