Page 5 of Intent to Kill
He returned with two more keys and placed them on the counter for Adam to take.
Even the manager’s key.
The point of coming to the Tropics Hotel was that it was on the bad side of town, one of the only hotels that wasn’t owned by Dorian Blake and his empire. Blake Family associates wouldn’t be caught dead on this side of the city. Which gave Adam the greatest chance of not being seen or found until it was absolutely in his best interests to be.
“What’s your affiliation?” Adam asked as he shoved the extra keys in his pocket. He carried only one suitcase and a heavy duffle bag that he flung over his shoulder, making it look like it weighed nothing more than a child’s backpack.
“We’re not run by the gang bangers if that’s what you’re asking,” the clerk replied. “Used to be Cortez Cartel, but now we’re independently owned.”
Adam nodded and repositioned the duffle on his shoulder. Now the idiot behind the counter was openly staring at the tattoos up and down Adam’s right arm, a colorful array of bright hues, saturated against his olive skin.
“Nice tats,” the clerk said.
Adam ignored the dick with the death wish and signed a false name on the guest registry. He handed over the check-in slip to the clerk, who looked down at the paper with raised brows and finally—fucking finally—started to look a little bit afraid.
“You never saw me,” Adam said.
“I never saw you,” the clerk stuttered, pocketing the bribe.
Nobody saw him, nobody knew him. And that was exactly the way he needed it to be if he was going to make sure that everyone still believed he had died five years ago.
On the second floor, he opened the door and stepped inside his room. Directly in front of him was a small kitchenette and dining table with giant plantation windows running along the back wall. To the left, a studio bed sat upon a stacked wooden platform, and down a corridor to the right was an open living area, laundry, and bathroom.
Looking at his room, his heart thundered again—it could’ve won the fucking Olympic gold in gymnastics for all the flips it was doing—and the wave of fear that he now always had bubbling below the surface threatened to worm its way up.
It hadn’t been there five years ago…this was a fear that had taken his mind and body hostage ever since he faced death. Ever since he was callously murdered (almost) by Dorian Blake. It was paralyzing and gripped him as if it, too, were holding on for dear life, taking everything he had to wrestle from its sharp bleeding claws.
Adam slammed the door and ripped through his suitcase pulling out file after file, furiously pinning notes to the walls. The ramblings of a mad man, and he certainly fit the bill.
Truthfully, he wasn’t ready to come back. Emotionally, nor otherwise. His plan was half-gunned, under baked, and probably life-risking. Five years might have seemed generous enough for plotting revenge. But when it was Dorian Blake he’d be up against, it was barely enough. But he no longer had a choice. He had to stop Blake now, and he had to stop himright now, or he would never get the chance again.
He pulled the last note from his suitcase, a newspaper, the most important piece of evidence collected. It was page four, a picture of the soon-to-be Ridge City Mayor and his bride. The caption read: “Mayoral Candidate Dorian Blake tips ahead in the polls after announcing engagement to marry long-term girlfriend Mercedes Preston.”
* * *
Mercedes sat on the edge of her bed, crossing her legs at the ankles and clutching the newspaper in her manicured fingers. With a wrinkled frown she stared at page four, the announcement of her engagement, and wiggled her finger to sparkle the diamond on her ring underneath the light from the chandelier.
She was going to marry Dorian Blake.Willinglymarry Dorian Blake.
There was a time when she had wanted to stop him. End his reign of terror. Now, though, Dorian was about to become the Mayor of Ridge City, and once he did, he would be too powerful to ever take down. Not only was she not planning to do a thing about it, she was riding all the way to the top alongside him, however ill-advised she knew that would be.
She lived alongside her husband-to-be in his ridiculously large and ostentatious riverside mansion. A far cry from her trailer home roots. Even the bedroom they shared was at least three times the size of the home she had grown up in. It had a four-post canopy bed, a full-suite sofa, and two large, old mahogany wooden doors for the entry.
When she found her betrothed standing over her, she smiled full and bright, her heart fluttering like it was a bird trapped in her ribcage. Some would’ve confused the feeling. But she knew what her heart was begging of her.
“Do you like the picture, darling?” Dorian asked.
“It’s perfect.” She rose, and Dorian pressed a gentle kiss to her cheek. “Very mayoral.”
“I think so too.” He snatched the newspaper and marched over to the large bay windows to hold it up to the sunlight. “It’s a great shot of me, isn’t it?”
Her delicate white sundress glided with each light step she took toward him in her strappy heels. “You always look handsome,” she replied as she rested her hand in the crook of his upheld arm.
Somewhere in the background, a single gunshot rang in the breeze. Gunfire, ambushes, and explosions were no stranger to the mansion. It was, after all, Dorian’s favorite place to torture people. When she looked up at her fiancé, she found him less concerned and more irritated by the unexpected sound, as if he hadn’t planned to schedule murder into his day. Not today, anyway.
Like a curious child, Dorian shrank away and casually strode toward the sound. Following after his lazy, unhurried steps, Mercedes passed through the mahogany double doors and into the crimson and gold painted halls, for once ignoring the exquisite ornaments nailed there that fascinated her.
Exiting onto the second-floor rear balcony, Mercedes found Dorian with his hands rested against the white stone railing, scowling down into the gardens below.
