Tony Giodone is an assassin, and pretty good at what he does. But he hasn't been quite the same since a woman he was attempting to assassinate turned on him and bit him. Every full moon since then, he's become a wolf for the day before, the day of and the day after the full moon. But to hide, he locks himself into a suite of rooms at a hotel whose owner he knows and waits out the change.
Now, he's meeting a new client at Bob's bar. The woman who comes in is obviously in disguise, but Tony is surprised to no end by her request. Because the person she wants to assassinate, is herself! Sue Quentin has been taken advantage of all her life by her family, and now that she won hundreds of millions of dollars in the Lotto, her family has made even more demands on her time and money. Her mother has moved in and taken over her house, and tries to guilt trip her into never leaving her mother alone. She's just tired and she knows she wouldn't be able to commit suicide, so she's hoping Tony will kill her in a painless fashion so she can simply escape.
Tony can't believe what he's hearing, but he doesn't want to hear her story. He's a hitman, not a psychologist. But when she offers him money to hear her out, he reluctantly agrees, while realizing he's finding himself attracted to her, He invites her back to the hotel he usually rents the suite at to talk, and they drive there in her car. But in the Lobby of the Hotel, she is accosted by her sister, who wants to know why she is there and won't take no for an answer.
Tony rescues her from her sister, while insisting that Sue is someone else, and they continue talking up in his room. Here, he is even more attracted to her, but realizes that he has lost track of the day since his last job put him on the run. He insists she get out of the room as he begins his change...
When he wakes up in the morning, she is still there, taking a bath in the bathtub. He realizes she has seen him, but she doesn't appear to be freaked out about it. That's when she confesses that, as a child, she got lost in the woods, and she was protected during the night by a gorgeous black and white dog with blue eyes. When her parents came looking for her the next day, she came back to thank the sleeping dog, and she saw it turn into a man.
He is still attracted to her, and decides to act on it. She reveals she is also attracted to him, and they end up making love for most of the day. By the time his three days of change are over, she no longer really wants to die, but she still finds it hard dealing with her family. He decides to take her away from them a little longer and suggests a trip to Vegas. She agrees, and they take off. But while she thinks it is just a relaxing trip, he's there to launder money from one of his jobs. Unfortunately, he is betrayed by the man he barely trusts to launder his money, and almost doesn't get away. Sue, too, is menaced by the man, but escapes intact.
During this time, their bond intensifies, and Tony realizes he can occasionally feel what Sue is feeling. He has also started thinking of her as his mate, although he has no idea why. He manages to rescue his case, but it's no longer full of money, but plans and purported payments to bump off Tony's Boss, Carmine. Tony figures that his "friend" in Vegas was going to set him up, and during a planned poker game with Carmine and some other guys, tips him off about it and hands over the papers.
He also gets to meet Sue's family, and finds them just as bad, if not worse, than Sue said they were. Tony takes Sue to a psychiatrist to help her deal with the stress and agrees to move in and help her with the security for her home. Her mother doesn't like the idea and is pretending to have broken her hip again to guilt-trip Sue into doing as she wants. But Sue and Tony stick to their plan, and the mother goes off to plot, while her hired nurse reveals the woman is a drunk who pops Percocet like Candy and is mean to boot. All this is news to Sue, but thankfully she has her relationship with Tony to take the edge off the pain and humiliation of dealing with her relatives.
But Leo, the man from Vegas, won't let Tony get off so easy, and while Tony is on his guard for himself, he also has to deal with the other guys in the Mafia, and Sue's family, who wants to run over him as well. When Sue's mother tries to frame him for stealing an expensive brooch of hers and calls the Police, a policeman who has it in for Tony responds, only to find out that Sue's mother planted the brooch in his room, and the cop chews her out for it.
But when Leo strikes out at Tony through Sue, will Tony be able to track her down and take out Leo and his men without getting Sue killed? And when he realizes other shapeshifters exist and that Leo is one of them, will he be able to defeat him without his actions being taped live on the news?
This book is a novel of the Sazi, or shapeshifters, but that hardly gets mentioned until almost the end of the book. Tony might be a werewolf, but his maker didn't intend to make him, and didn't let him know what he was or Sazi laws, so its mostly the story of a werewolf not knowing he has any kind of safety net to fall back on, or the laws he is supposed to live by. Until the last few chapters, the Sazi aren't named or appear (except that Tony hears Leo call him a Sazee, but doesn't know what it means- he thinks it's a curse or something bad). Only the end marks the book as a Sazi novel.
That said, this is a great story. Watching a stressed woman and a smart, savvy hitman fall in love is great. They are such opposites, Sue the good girl done well but used as a doormat by her family, and Tony the son of the hooker and a mafia guy who is smart and cool, but finds himself drawn to her as she is drawn to him. I could read this story over and over again. But even though Tony is a hitman, we only see him do one "hit" and it's to kill someone who is hunting both him and his Boss, Carmine, so he doesn't seem like such a bad guy. The fact that he kills people for a living is off-putting, but not so much as the other assassins we meet, like the teen killer who killed his first target at the age of six.
In the end, though, Tony gives up his profession for the love of his mate, Sue, and she stays with him. They also manage to give her family the shaft when after Sue disappears, all they can do is bitch about the money they can't claim for seven years. The book isn't a typical paranormal romance, but leaves a warm glow behind nonetheless. If you haven't been clued into this series, now is definitely the time to start.
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