Hitman's Secret Baby: A Bad Boy Romance by McKenzie Lewis Read Free Book Online Page B

happened? How did Ethan end up wanted by the fucking mob?
    “Apparently, Ethan’s father raped and murdered Carl Monroe’s daughter,” Mason explained roughly, staring beyond me—a place I couldn’t reach, a past that still haunted him. I didn’t blame him; I couldn’t believe what I was hearing either. “She probably dared to say no to him like my mother did,” he spat, a sneer on his face.
    That monster. I stood, ready to comfort Mason, his name soft on my lips.
    But he whirled around before I could get close, his fist connecting with my drywall with an awful, resounding crack. “That piece of fucking shit!”
    “Jesus!” I darted forwards, gripping his shoulders and hauling him back. “Mason, goddammit, look at me.”
    He was breathing hard, his muscles stood out tense against my hands, but he did, he looked at me, an unquenchable fire in his stare that I’d never seen before. It spoke of violence, of blood, of deeds I had no understanding of.
    “His death was too quick,” he muttered feverishly. “I should’ve made him scream.”
    “Mason!” I yelled, digging my fingernails into his skin—anything to bring him back to me. “He’s gone. You rid the world of that evil man and that’s all that matters.”
    I understood perfectly, now, why he did what he did. Mason’s eyes were a door to the past, all the pain William Foster had spread in this world right there for me to see. That man deserved to pay for his crimes, and yesterday the police had laughed me out of the station over this whole mess. It didn’t take a genius to see that Mason had had few choices.
    Did I wish he’d told me a decade ago? Yes , I thought genuinely. I’d have carried that weight for him. Better than losing him like I did, carrying a child for nine months whose father was little more than a ghost.
    I couldn’t change the past, though; neither of us could. We could only deal with what was in front of us.
    “It was justice,” I told him firmly, and he blinked, finally seeing me properly. “What you did was justice.”
    “And revenge,” he breathed. “Murder.”
    “He deserved it,” I said intently. “But you didn’t. You didn’t deserve to be the person that had to do that.”
    Mason laughed humorlessly. “I did more. Worse.”
    “Is that it, then?” I snapped. “This is your lot in life and you’re just gonna accept it? Keep killing forever? Live a life in the dark, full of death and loneliness?”
    “I don’t know.”
    He didn’t—I took a deep, steadying breath and tried not to get angry again. It wasn’t going to help either of us if we devolved into another shouting match.
    “How can you say that?” I asked calmly, clinging to my temper.
    “Killing is all I’m good for, Taryn.”
    “That cannot possibly be true.”
    “Men like William Foster leave a legacy,” Mason said flatly. “Me, Monroe, Ethan. It goes around and around and it never ends, we never get to break out of it.”
    I raised my voice. “Ethan can’t die.”
    Mason looked at me, startled. He blinked, the glassy look in his eyes fading. He was coming back to me in pieces but I realized I might never see a whole man here again.
    I was already preparing myself to lose him again.
    I pulled away, slumping back down into the sofa cushions, needing some space. “What a mess we’re in.”
    “We?”
    “I’m in this, Mason,” I said fiercely. “For Ethan, and for you. I’m mad as hell at you but I get it now, the terrible thing you did.”
    Mason stared at me, his vulnerabilities tucked safely away now and his gaze inscrutable. I was glad; I’d had enough emotional ups and downs for one day.
    “Okay,” he simply said. “Anything I find out, you’ll know too.”
    “Thank you.” I nodded. “You know what, though? I’m actually kinda glad.” I looked up at the photograph on my mantle: Anna, Ethan, Daisy, and me at the beach last summer. I saw Mason frowning at me in my peripheral vision. “It means that at least Anna