The Hitman's Vow

**This is BOOK THREE of The Hitman's Heart series. Book one is currently available to read on Amazon & Kindle Unlimited. Book two will release on Amazon/KU in Summer of 2026**

VALENTINA

“You vile bitch.” Blood-laced saliva sputtered from the man’s mouth as his head lolled to one side, the last of his strength failing him. “Vaffanculo.”

Val crouched in front of her bound prisoner and cocked her head, a sweet smile playing on her lips. “It’s a little late for compliments, don’t you think?”

She’d spent the last three hours acquainting herself with Guido Baldassare, a known drug-runner for the Mazza famiglia and the man responsible for a recent hit on a Romano warehouse. They caught him in the act, though not before a million dollars worth of white powder was destroyed.

“I’ll ask you one more time,” she drawled, twirling a paring knife in one hand. Her gaze purposely snagged on his exposed penis, the one scrap of flesh she’d left untouched throughout their session. “Who is giving orders in the Mazza famiglia?”

Guido had the good sense to look frightened of the blade and the precise cuts it had been inflicting for the better part of the afternoon. The whites of his eyes expanded, and a bead of sweat slid down his temple.

Even so, resilience sparked in Guido’s muddy brown gaze, and he ground his teeth into a snarl. “He’ll kill you, but not before you suffer. You’ll beg for it to end, just wait and see, you dirty slut.”

Val’s smirk faded, and the knife went still in her hands.

“I’m not afraid of death. Nor pain.” She breathed a small, bitter laugh and shook her head. “There’s nothing in this world that can hurt me. Not truly. Not anymore.”

And that was the truth. The part of her that felt died alongside him three months ago. Death, she now realized, would be a sweet relief.

She mourned, of course, when she first regained consciousness. She was locked in her bedroom at home, a monstrous welt on the side of her head where her fiancé struck her with a candlestick. At first, she thought it all might’ve been some terrible dream, but this was a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from.

Ezra McLeod had delivered her back to her father, revealing the news to Leonardo Romano that his most prized hitman had been fucking his daughter. Ezra claimed he took the liberty of killing Matteo Costa for his future father-in-law. When Val’s father sent men to the Costa household to collect Matteo’s body…

He’d been reduced to ash, just like every other item in the house. Ezra burnt it to the ground.

Val swallowed the lump of emotion that threatened to rise every time she foolishly remembered her hitman, twisting her features into a cool mask once more. She couldn’t be distracted. She’d never been so close to uncovering the identity of the new Mazza don, the puppeteer pulling the strings behind three months of war in the Cosa Nostra.

“I’m sorry.” Val sighed and shook her head, rising from her crouched position. “That’s not the answer I’m looking for.”

Her heels clicked on the cement floor as she walked away from the chair and toward the metal cart carrying the devices and weapons she’d come to prefer over the last months.

“Luca,” she called over her shoulder, her voice light as a bell. Her fingers wrapped around a new mechanism in her repertoire, commonly referred to throughout history as a pear of anguish. “Shall we loosen his mouth?”

“Uh, Val—” Luca cleared his throat. “I’m afraid we don’t have time for that.”

She frowned, every muscle in her spine stiffening. “The ceremony doesn’t start until six.”

“It’s four thirty,” he reproached, though his words were careful. “We were supposed to be at the church half an hour ago.”

For one painfully long second, the numbness that Val had come to rely on for survival over the last weeks slipped away, and familiar agony pierced through her chest in its stead. It nearly crippled her. She clutched the edge of the metal cart for support, taking deep, measured inhales that only breathed life into the fiery ache.

She would allow herself to feel the pain for today only.

It was her wedding day, after all.

Val bit the inside of her cheek until the metallic tang of blood spread over her tongue. She hadn’t cried in weeks, not even at the rehearsal dinner last night, when Ezra planted a brutal kiss on her mouth and warned her against trying anything stupid in these final twenty-four hours. She refused to start today.

“Fine,” she muttered, her voice a mere husk. Without another moment’s hesitation, Val grabbed her handgun from the topmost metal rack, turned, and leveled the barrel at Guido’s head.

“Wai—”

She silenced him with a bullet to the forehead. Warm droplets of blood sprayed like freckles across her cheeks, and his body slumped in the chair.

“Fuckin’ hell, Val,” Luca groaned. “You couldn’t have let me do that? What are people going to think if the bride shows up with blood on her face?”

“Maybe Ezra will be so disgusted that he won’t want to marry me.”

It was a stupid, vain hope. Val knew better than anyone else that, behind his suave, polished exterior, the heir to McLeod Pharmaceuticals held a violent streak. He hadn’t hesitated to strike her down with a heavy candlestick. He’d looked like a child on Christmas morning when Matteo fell to his knees, one half of his face bloody and disfigured. Ezra was a monster.

So Val turned herself into a monster, too.

Luca approached her from behind, heavy, familiar footsteps that kept her grounded in reality. His big hand came to rest onto of hers, gently taking the gun from her and setting it aside.

“Come on, honey.” He spoke tenderly, like he knew she might shatter with the slightest breeze. “Let’s go get this over with.”

She didn’t respond, didn’t so much as nod as her friend wrapped his arm around her waist and led her out of the cement cell. She would survive this. She didn’t have any other choice.