Becoming the Hitman (Zanetti Famiglia Book 5) Read online

  Becoming the Hitman

  A Zanetti Famiglia Novel

  Hayley Faiman

  Hayley Faiman Books, LLC

  Contents

  Also by Hayley Faiman

  Stay Connected

  Italian - American Mafia Structure

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  Becoming his Bride

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Epilogue

  Stay Connected

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Becoming the Hitman

  Copyright © 2020 by Hayley Faiman

  All rights reserved.

  Editor: My Brother’s Editor. Ellie McLove. http://www.mybrotherseditor.net

  Proofreading: My Brother’s Editor. Rosa Sharon. http://www.mybrotherseditor.net

  Cover Designer: Pink Ink Designs. Cassy Roop. https://www.pinkinkdesigns.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Visit my website at http://hayleyfaiman.com

  Created with Vellum

  Also by Hayley Faiman

  Men of Baseball Series—

  Pitching for Amalie

  Catching Maggie

  Forced Play for Libby

  Sweet Spot for Victoria

  Russian Bratva Series —

  Owned by the Badman

  Seducing the Badman

  Dancing for the Badman

  Living for the Badman

  Tempting the Badman

  Protected by the Badman

  Forever my Badman

  Betrothed to the Badman

  Chosen by the Badman

  Bought by the Badman

  Collared by the Badman

  Notorious Devils MC —

  Rough & Rowdy

  Rough & Raw

  Rough & Rugged

  Rough & Ruthless

  Rough & Ready

  Rough & Rich

  Rough & Real

  Cash Bar Series —

  Laced with Fear

  Chased with Strength

  Flamed with Courage

  Blended with Pain

  Twisted with Chaos

  Mixed with trouble

  SAVAGE BEAST MC —

  UnScrew Me

  UnBreak Me

  UnChain Me

  UnLeash Me

  UnTouch Me

  UnHinge Me

  Unfit Hero Series —

  CONVICT

  HERO

  FRAUD

  KILLER

  COWBOY

  Zanetti Famiglia Series —

  Becoming the Boss

  Becoming his Mistress

  Becoming his Possession

  Becoming the Street Boss

  Becoming the Hitman

  Prophecy Sisters Series

  Bride of the Traitor

  Bride of the Sea

  Bride of the Frontier

  Esquire Black Duet Series –

  DISCOVERY

  APPEAL

  Forbidden Love Series —

  Personal Foul

  Kinetic Energy

  Standalone Titles

  Royally Relinquished: A Modern Day Fairy Tale

  Hypocritically Yours

  Stay Connected

  Website: http://hayleyfaiman.com

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorhayleyfaiman

  Facebook Reader Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/433234647091715/

  Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10735805.Hayley_Faiman

  Signup for my Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/b5a_1v

  Italian - American Mafia Structure

  Boss – The head of the family. Usually referred to as Don or “Godfather.”

  Underboss – The second in command usually appointed by the Boss.

  Consigliere – Advisor to the family. Low profile and can be trusted. Used as a mediator for disputes or representatives in meetings with other families. Usually stockbrokers or lawyers.

  Family Messenger – Passes messages between family members and the Boss.

  Street Boss – Buffer position between the Boss and Capos. Head of the Caporegimes. Runs the day-to-day operations.

  Caporegime (Capo) – Sometimes called Captain. In charge of a crew. There are up to nine crews in each family each with around ten soldiers.

  Soldier – Members of the family, can only be of Italian background. They are associates who have proven themselves.

  Associate – Not a member of the mafia, but instead, an errand boy.

  Prologue

  RENZO

  I watch the back of my father’s hand slice through the air and land on my mother’s cheek. She doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t fall to the side. Nothing. She stands there and continues to look him straight in the eye. She is the strongest person I know. Always has been.

  “I will not relent,” she whispers, her tone stern and unwavering.

  “You will do what I want. You are my wife. You obey me. Only me,” my father growls.

  Lorenzo Pagano, Sr. is not a man to mess with. Even at my young age of twelve, I know that. My mother shakes her head.

  “No, Lore. I will not do what you want. I will accept a lot from you, but not this. It is too much and you need to go down to church and confess, but only after you break it off with them both.”

  He snorts, jerking his head, looking over to me with an ugly gnarly smile on his face.

  “You do not want to threaten me. The boy,” he hisses, turning back to my mother.

  “You leave Renzo out of this. This is between you and me, nobody else,” she snaps. “This is about your activities, Lore.”

  I hold my breath, unsure of what my father is thinking when it comes to me. However, I do know what my mother means about his activities. She is talking about that woman he goes to see every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I don’t know her name, but he always gives me money for a gelato at the parlor down the street from her apartment.

>   I’m no fool. I’m twelve, I know about sex and I know that’s what he’s doing with her. She knows he’s married, but she doesn’t know that he sees another woman on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He usually gives me money for a cannoli down at the bakery when he goes to her.

  My mother has just found out about Tuesday and Thursday. She’s tolerated Monday, Wednesday, and Friday because as she says, This is what Made Men do, Renzo. Judging by her anger about Tuesday and Thursday, they apparently don’t do that too.

  “You make it uncomfortable for me and I’ll make your life the same. Do not test me,” my father barks.

  My mother jerks her head at that, as though that hurts more than any slap he could deliver. She would know, he delivers them often.

  “I don’t want this anymore. I don’t care who you are or who you work for. I want out.”

  My father throws his head back in laughter. His entire body shakes, his shoulders too as he attempts to calm himself. Only when he’s wiping the tears from his eyes does he attempt to compose himself and look up at her.

  I watch as he leans forward slightly, his gaze darker than I’ve ever seen it before. “You don’t get a say anymore. You made your choice when you became mine. It is for life.”

  “No,” she rasps. “I will leave. We will leave.”

  “Try to take my boy, see what happens,” he growls.

  I don’t know why he cares so much. My dad slaps me around about as much as he slaps her around. He’s always making me feel like a burden. Always telling me to go away. I played baseball one year, but he never even came to a single game, so I quit. The same thing happened with basketball and again with wrestling.

  My mother narrows her eyes at him, then she licks her lips. “Go to your women and leave us alone.” Her words come out on a whisper as tears fill her eyes.

  My father turns around and starts to walk away. He stops right at the door and looks back over his shoulder at her. “You try to leave and I’ll find you. I’ll kill you and you know it.”

  He slams the door behind him, and I look over to my mother. Her tears stream down her face and she shakes her head as she wipes them away just as quickly as they fall. She inhales a shaky breath, then lets out a sigh.

  “Come on, I’ll make you some dinner.”

  We don’t speak of what’s just happened. She makes me some of her best lasagna and I eat more than I should. I eat so much that I give myself a stomachache. She wraps her arms around me and together we walk over to the couch.

  She lets me pick whatever movie I want to watch, and that’s how we spend our evening. We watch two movies, my choice, then I have to shower and go to bed. She doesn’t speak, not a single word.

  The next morning my mother is dead. She swallowed a bunch of pills and my father found her in her bed, a note on his cold pillowcase. When he was calling a cleanup crew to take care of her, I stole the note.

  I didn’t cry, not a single tear as I read it. I never cried, actually. She confessed her love for him, then said she knew he’d kill her and she wasn’t going to let him have that kind of power over her. She wrote to him that she hoped he’d take me to Italy one day to visit the village where she was born.

  She also asked him if there was a single shred of love for her in his body not to allow me to become a Made Man. She asked him to allow me to choose my bride. To go to college, to get a real job, and to find a nice woman to love and build a life with.

  My mother’s words fell on deaf ears. I started doing jobs for my father the month after we buried her in a small, famiglia owned cemetery. It was also when I lost the gentle touch of a woman who loved me, and I was thrust into the cruel, hard world of men.

  No longer a boy, the moment I turned thirteen my father made sure that I was strong. He put me to the tests of men. When he discovered how good of a shot I was at the gun range, that was when he decided I would be a Button Man.

  From the age of fourteen, my life was shooting, practicing, and the famiglia. Nothing else existed, not until my father allowed it to. Even then, I was controlled down to when I was going to lose my virginity and to what whore, picked out by my father.

  The day I killed him was the first day that I had smiled since before my mother died.

  SIOBAHN

  “When you fall in love and get married, will you let me come and live with you?” Emilyn asks.

  I laugh, rolling to my side to look over to her from across the small room. She’s ten and I’m fifteen. Right now, she wants this, but by the time I’m married, she’ll be looking to get married herself, I’m sure.

  “You won’t want to be with me, Emi. You’ll have your own man, want your own family,” I whisper.

  She laughs, shaking her head. “Never,” she breathes. “I’ll always want to be with my sister. My best friend.”

  Her eyes drift closed slowly and I wonder if that’s true. Will she always want to be with me? The thought should annoy me. It probably annoys most siblings, but Emilyn is different. She’s five years younger than me, but I’m not sure if she realizes that.

  She thinks we’re the same age, she isn’t an immature baby, never was. She’s tall and lean, she’s smart, but mostly she’s kind and sweet. She’s going to be so much prettier than me when she gets older. She’s already less awkward than I am even now.

  Emilyn Doyle is going to be a force to be reckoned with. I for one can’t wait to see her life unfold. When it does, it is going to be pure magic.

  The next day all of those thoughts that I fell asleep to, all those happy and warm fuzzy feelings, they disappear. Because Emilyn never makes it home after school. In fact, she never even made it to school.

  Nobody knew it at the time, nobody was home to answer the robocall of her absence. Nobody knew until she’d already been missing nine hours.

  Not a single bloody person knew my sweet sister had disappeared. Vanished. No ransom calls, not that we had anything to give even if they had.

  No threats.

  Nothing.

  Just Emilyn, gone.

  My entire world crashed around me that day. My mother fell apart and had to be hospitalized over and over and over again throughout the years. My da lost his job, lost his drive. We searched for hours, days, months, and then years for Emilyn and nothing was ever unturned. Not a single shred of evidence, not even a theory of where she could have gone.

  Nothing.

  At sixteen, I was unable to keep up with any kind of schooling, so I went into an apprenticeship to become a hairdresser. I found my passion in that. Probably because I had spent my entire childhood with my own real-life dolly to practice on in Emilyn.

  It was my paid apprenticeship that has kept the roof over me and my da’s head and food in our bellies. It’s his part-time bartending at the pub that pays for his smokes and beer. I don’t hound him about that, I don’t hound anybody about anything. What’s the point?

  I keep my head down. I do my work and I think of Emilyn. I can’t help but imagine the worst when it comes to her. Each month that turns into a year just solidifies the fact that she’s never coming back.

  Not ever.

  Then, one day a client sits in my chair and tells me a tale. She tells me about this man who is sending girls to America as sex workers. She tells me that he’s from right here in Kilfinane. He has taken girls from all over Ireland and sent them to the States.

  I don’t want to believe her, but I can’t help imagining that perhaps this is what has happened to Emilyn. My client’s words, her rumors, they open up a whole new road to search for Emi. I start to scrimp and save, to skimp on things that I can do without, all so that I can hire a private detective to attempt to search this new avenue.

  Maybe I am just being a hopeful fool. Perhaps absolutely nothing will come of it.

  I have nothing else to live for, but this hope that has bloomed inside of me.

  I need Emilyn.

  I need to find her.

  I refuse to believe that she is dead.

  Chapter Oner />
  SIOBAHN

  Detective Connor watches me from across the hot coffee that he’s brought to his lips. I take a sip of my own, uncaring that it’s bitter. Everything in life is bitter. I’m twenty-five years old and I’ve been looking for my missing sister for a decade. She’s not been found, not a single trace of her in ten years.

  No leads, nothing to go off of, just vanished. My father drinks himself to an early grave every day and my mother finally succumbed to her demons about five years ago.

  “What do you have for me?” I almost demand when he doesn’t say anything.

  He watches me for a moment longer over his coffee. I’m ready to scream in his face, to demand answers. I’ve saved for five years for this man to work on my sister’s case. Five years of scrimping and working after hours, of eating just enough to survive, of nothing extra, not even on my birthday.