Last Kiss

  “Jessica Clare and Jen Frederick are a force to be reckoned with!”*

  Praise for

  LAST BREATH

  “Clare and Frederick have penned a sexy, thrilling romantic suspense with a strong heroine and a to-die-for hero. Romance readers won’t want to miss their latest.”

  —Smexy Books

  “Dark, gritty, but filled with hope . . . Last Breath is an action-packed, emotionally driven story that will have you reading the pages quicker than you can turn them. The second book in the Hitman [series] has dialed up the action to an almost breakneck speed.”

  —*A Love Affair with Books

  “Both Daniel and Regan were interesting and wonderful characters, and I loved getting to see them work through their issues and find a way to fall for each other. I’m happy to report that Clare and Frederick knocked this one out of the park for me.”

  —The Book Pushers

  “Last Breath far exceeded my expectations. It appears as if there is nothing these ladies can’t write about, and I anxiously await to see what they will do with the third book in the Hitman series.”

  —The Muses’ Circle

  “I’m seriously at a loss for words to describe to you how good this book is. It has everything you could ask for. There’s tons of action and suspense. But somehow there are tons of sweet and sexy moments in this and it just all works together so well. If I ever have to be rescued by a man—I hope it’s someone as dreamy as Daniel. . . . I cannot stress enough how much I think you should read this series and particularly this book. It’s one of a kind and you won’t regret it.”

  —All Romance Reviews

  Praise for the novels of New York Times bestselling author Jessica Clare

  “Blazing hot.”

  —USA Today

  “Sexy.”

  —Smexy Books

  “Sizzling! Jessica Clare gets everything right in this erotic and sexy romance . . . You need to read this book!”

  —Romance Junkies

  Praise for the novels of USA Today bestselling author Jen Frederick

  “Sexy and sinful.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Katy Evans

  “I love these strong characters.”

  —Sizzling Pages Romance Reviews

  “Wonderful . . . I wholly recommend you read it.”

  —Nocturnal Book Reviews

  TITLES BY JESSICA CLARE AND JEN FREDERICK

  THE HITMAN SERIES

  Last Hit

  Last Breath

  Last Kiss

  Last Hit: Reloaded (Intermix)

  OTHER TITLES BY JESSICA CLARE

  THE BILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB

  Stranded with a Billionaire

  Beauty and the Billionaire

  The Wrong Billionaire’s Bed

  Once Upon a Billionaire

  Romancing the Billionaire

  One Night with the Billionaire

  BILLIONAIRES AND BRIDESMAIDS

  The Billionaire and the Virgin

  THE BLUEBONNET NOVELS

  The Girl’s Guide to (Man) Hunting

  The Care and Feeding of an Alpha Male

  The Expert’s Guide to Driving a Man Wild

  The Virgin’s Guide to Misbehaving

  OTHER TITLES BY JEN FREDERICK

  WOODLANDS SERIES

  Undeclared

  Undressed in the anthology Snow Kissed

  Unspoken

  Unraveled

  JACKSON BOYS

  The Charlotte Chronicles

  KERR CHRONICLES

  Losing Control

  Taking Control

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  Copyright © 2015 by Jessica Clare and Jen Frederick.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-19681-0

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Clare, Jessica.

  Last kiss / Jessica Clare, Jen Frederick.

  p. cm.—(A hitman novel ; 3)

  ISBN 978-0-425-28152-9 (paperback)

  I. Frederick, Jen. II. Title.

  PS3603.L353L38 2015

  813'.6—dc23

  2014048285

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition / May 2015

  Cover photo by Claudio Marinesco.

  Cover design by Meljean Brook.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Version_1

  To Cindy

  Thank you for taking a chance on us.

  We hope you never regret it.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To our editor, Cindy Hwang, who believed in this crazy series enough to send us into bookstores and libraries around the country.

  To Meljean, who has to endure our constant inquiries and requests for changes and general author craziness and who allows us to be her friend when in fact she’s the superior author.

  To Caroline, for thinking up the perfect name for Last Hit: Reloaded. We forgot to thank you before. Please accept this belated, but profuse, expression of gratitude.

  To our assistants and publicists, Nicole, Morgan, and Jessie. Would anyone hear of the books without you? We don’t think so.

  To our blogger friends: Michelle, I don’t know why you still open emails from Jen. She bugs you constantly. Lisa, do you ever get tired of those IMs? And to Mel, Lea, and Eagle at SMS Book Obsessions: You crack us up every day. Never stop.

  To all of the other bloggers and readers too numerous to name, thank you so much for every word that you’ve written about this series. You’ve made it happen and your love and will power us forward.

  CONTENTS

  Praise for Jessica Clare and Jen Frederick

  Also by Jessica Clare and Jen Frederick

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

&nb
sp; CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  One Month Ago

  VASILY

  “You think to lead the Petrovich Bratva?” Georgi Petrovich cries from far down the table. He is so far removed from the main branch of the Petrovich family tree he barely warrants a place here. “You aren’t even blood Petrovich!”

  “Am I not?” I ask. There’s no need to raise my voice. Any emotion indicates weakness. I am not a weak man. “What makes a Petrovich?” I stand then and begin to walk around the table. “Is it blood? Then half of you should be executed on the table for failing to have the requisite DNA. Who shall go first?”

  I point to Thomas Gregovorich, a loyal member of the Bratva for at least two generations. His father served in the KGB during the Cold War.

  He gives a small nod in deference acknowledging that the Bratva was a true brotherhood made up of allegiances rather than blood.

  “Or you, Kilment, when we took you and your brother in when you were left orphaned on the street, did you believe you became a true Petrovich when you made your first kill? Conducted your first job? When we speak of the Bratva, we speak as one voice. What is done to one, it is done to all. Or does that maxim no longer hold true, Georgi?”

  There are low murmurs of approval and Georgi sits back, folds his arms, and looks petulantly at the table. We are meeting today to discuss the future of the Bratva after the death of Sergei Petrovich. A death I helped orchestrate, and many suspect it, which makes it difficult for me to enact my next step—to kill Elena Petrovich. Two Petrovichs dead so close together smells of a coup. We are an unstable lot, and lopping off the head of this snake would result in chaos. In order to achieve my ends, the Bratva must be stabilized.

  However, in this den of iniquity, it is not love that holds the loyalty of each man. It is fear. The Petrovichs have held power over us all by setting us one against the other. To rise above, I have eliminated all weaknesses.

  What sets me apart is all that I am willing to do. Each of these men at the table has had limits. I have none.

  The men that sit at this table are divided. Some view me with awe and respect, and others with disgust. The latter are the ones I respect, because a man who would kill his own sister, a man such as I, deserves to be in a dungeon, locked away from all of humanity.

  Instead I stand here as the potential leader of this room of villains and thieves. And it is a position I seek, not because I lust after power, but because if I control the Bratva, then nothing is out of my reach. I have one goal now.

  “Will you kill your mother to save the Bratva, Thomas? And you, Pietr, when your sister whispers to her lover Pavlil Ionov, do you worry that she’s telling secrets? Or Stefan, your son, I saw him the other day holding hands with . . .” I stop behind Stefan’s chair and rest both hands on the back. I can almost feel him inhale the fear. “. . . a smart young thing. They looked to be enjoying themselves.”

  Pietr coughs. “So you are willing to kill us all to maintain hold of the Bratva? That is not a good reason to follow you.”

  “No, but you all know that I will sacrifice everything and everyone to protect the brotherhood.”

  They are all silent because unlike the others, my sister, Katya, is gone. Disposed of by my own hand at the order of Elena Petrovich.

  I end my stroll around the room behind my chair. “I am the one who led us away from munitions and dirt to telecom interests. In less than a decade, the Bratva’s primary businesses will be legitimate, which means that you no longer have to hide behind your armored vehicles. You no longer have to rely on bodyguards that could be bought off. You need not fear the KGB or the militsiya. You can invest in your futbol teams and mansions in Londongrad without fear of reprisal.”

  Leadership means effective utilization of the carrot and the stick. I lead with the stick. Always. The Petrovichs believe in only the stick. For them the carrot does not exist or is viewed with suspicion.

  The boyeviks—the young muscle our old warlord Alexsandr groomed from urchins on the street to protect the brotherhood—grow tired of the constant threat to their homes and family. They sleep with one eye open, their hand over their heart, wondering if the brother next to them will be killing their mother or raping their sister in retribution for some Bratva infraction.

  The older generation such as Thomas and Kilment and those who sit on the Petrovich Bratva council are loath to hand over the power of this organization to me, a mere foot soldier sold by his father to repay debts. With Sergei dead and the vicious Elena the only real Petrovich remaining, I am left with a choice. Attempt to wrest control of the brotherhood from the old guard or walk away.

  And I would walk away. I have some money stored but I’ve been a Petrovich for a long time and there are many enemies that would crow over my death. No, in order to survive, the Petrovich Bratva must remain strong.

  If I have learned anything, it is that people with nothing are victims. It is those with power and money and might who have the ability to protect others.

  Thomas rubs a hand across his jaw. “There is one thing you could do.”

  “That is a legend, Thomas,” Kilment groans.

  “I will do it.” Legends persist because people believe, and if belief means I can bring down Elena Petrovich and secure a peaceful future, then I will pursue this foolishness until the painting is mine. Their desire to recapture the past is absurd and yet another reason the old guard should be replaced. “You wish me to procure the Caravaggio.”

  Cries of wonder and confusion fill the room.

  “So you know,” Kilment says flatly.

  I pretend no ignorance, for it is a story that Alexsandr shared with me long ago. “I know that a famous triptych painted by Caravaggio once hung in the palaces of the Medicis in Florence, perhaps the Careggi Villa. It was commissioned as an altarpiece but considered to be too profane, as many of his pieces were judged. It was gifted by the Medicis to Feodor the First, who then lost it, and Russia entered the Time of Troubles. When the Boyars rose to power in the seventeen hundreds, it is rumored the painting was recovered by Peter the Great. Citizen Petrovich’s grandfather was gifted this set of three paintings and it hung in the great hall of the Petrovichs until it was lost, sold, stolen during Sergei’s time. Many say that he who holds it, holds the world.”

  Thomas nods at this recitation, but Kilment looks unconvinced.

  “It is known as the Madonna and the Volk,” I conclude. The Petrovichs loved the painting because the woman who sat for Caravaggio was purportedly a true Mary Magdalene—a whore. And the Volk? It is a man-wolf who is eating Mary, and despite the gruesomeness of the depiction, there is an expression of ecstasy on her face. Volk, too, was seen as a play on the old Russian criminal rank of vory. Thieves, wolves at the door. We were the predators. Everyone else is prey. I saw it only once, when I was given to Elena Petrovich like some birthday treat. It seemed fitting that Sergei sold it to fund some sordid perversion of his own. “But why is it that it is of any importance? It is a mere painting.”

  Thomas stares at me. “It is a symbol of our wealth and power, and we have lost it. And no Caravaggio, one of the greatest painters of all time, can be dubbed a mere painting. It belonged to Peter the Great. It is priceless, one of a kind. Why would we not want it? That it is in the hands of someone else is shameful, a blot against the Petrovich name. Now more than ever, we must show our enemies we are strong.”

  “So you want it, but why is th
is your loyalty test? Have I not proven myself again and again? Have I not shed the blood of my own family for the brotherhood?” I spread my scarred hands out as if they hold the proof of my allegiance.

  “The Caravaggio has been lost to us for years. Many of us have tried to find it but have failed,” Thomas admits. “If you find it, you will show yourself to be a man of resource and cunning, a man who is unafraid. You will restore the pride to the brotherhood and prove your worth as a leader.”

  I hold back a lip curl of disgust at this. Leadership is not running around the world seeking one painting. Leadership is moving our assets out of dangerous and risky ventures and into more stable enterprises. Leadership is generating loyalty by providing a way for the members to feed their families and protect their loved ones.

  This is a snipe hunt, an impossible task designed to make me fail and appear weak amongst those who would support me. Or worse, in my absence they will eliminate those they deem a threat. To kill me here would generate a revolt.

  No, this is not about a painting. This is punishment, revenge, retribution. But I am one step ahead of them. I guessed that this is the task they would set before me. They think I will be gone long, chasing my tail for months. I will be happy to prove how wrong they are.

  Thomas sits back and looks around the table. He has been a member of the Bratva for a long time. They respect his voice. “Bring us the Madonna, and the Bratva will be yours.”

  I smile and raise my palms in a gesture that says fait accompli. “Then it is done.”

  —

  I am not so sanguine two hours later as I sit across the table from Ivan the Terrible. Ivan Dostonev is the leader of the Dostonev Bratva, an organization whose base is in St. Petersburg. The Dostonevs posture that they are descendants of confidantes of the tsars. Perhaps they are, but we are all criminals. We bathe in the blood of our enemies and eat our own young.

  “I hear the Petrovich Bratva is troubled, my friend,” he says with studied casualness. Ivan has held power not because he is particularly clever but because he is a man of his word—a rarity in these parts. People trust him—and fear him. He trades in favors and you do not know when your favor will be called in, only that when the time comes you must heed his call or reap terrible consequences.