Chapter 16 Rook
ROOK
With Asha fast asleep, I dialed my cousin’s number.
“Yeah?” Aidan answered.
“Remember that job I told you needed taking care of tomorrow?”
“Aye.”
“Make it happen in the next hour.”
“You got it.”
Aside from Torin, Aidan was the only person I could one hundred percent trust to get shite done, but I wasn’t about to wake the boss at this hour and ask him to commit a kidnapping.
I showered, dressed in a crisp charcoal shirt and freshly dry-cleaned suit, then paced the apartment like a caged lion while checking on Asha every five minutes.
The sedative I’d mixed into her water should knock her out for at least six hours, but those drugs affected everyone differently, so I needed to be sure she didn’t wake before our guests arrived.
Twenty minutes later, the elevator doors opened, and Aidan dragged a confused Father Sheehan into my living room. The priest didn’t know us, but I’d done a little research and knew all about him.
“Take your hands off me! What is this?” He struggled to free himself from Aidan’s hold.
My cousin thrust him toward me. “Here you go. Fair warning. This gobshite complains more than a drunk without a pint.”
Fantastic.
I shoved my hands into my pockets and stared the priest down. Coffee stain on his plaid dressing gown, crumbs in his beard, and one slipper missing. Aidan must’ve plucked him straight from the breakfast table.
“Hello, Father Sheehan,” I said. “I’ll keep this brief. You’re here today to solemnize a marriage.”
Aidan spun to face me. “He is?”
I cast him a look that warned him to keep his mouth shut.
“Absolutely not.” Father Sheehan’s jowls shook as his head swung back and forth. “You can’t kidnap a member of the clergy and make demands of them. This is preposterous!”
I advanced on him slowly. “Look around you, Father. Now look at my cousin and me and ask yourself if we’re the kind of men you should say no to.”
His nostrils flared. “I don’t care what kind of men you are.”
My already frayed patience was waning. “Since this is my wedding day and I’m in a charitable mood, this is how things are gonna go.
You’ll perform the marriage in the next ten minutes, and maybe I won’t email your entire congregation this video of you in an adult diaper, crawling around a room on a leash while getting whipped by… what was the name of the dominatrix?”
“Madame Havoc,” Aidan said.
“Ah, yes. Madame Havoc.” I held my phone up toward Father Sheehan while the damning footage played. “She has quite the collection of uncomfortable-looking anal toys. Which you know, of course, since you’re intimately familiar with so many of them.”
The priest blinked, opened his mouth for a second, then slammed it shut again. In a far more pleasant tone, he said, “Where would you like the wedding to happen?”
“Wait here.” I went to collect Asha, and Aidan followed.
“Rook, what the hell is going on?” His footsteps thudded on the marble tiles close behind me.
“Even you’re smart enough to figure that out for yourself.”
“You’re getting married? Why?”
We rounded the corner and entered my room.
“It’s a means to an end.”
“You’re talking in riddles.” He froze when he spotted a lightly snoring Asha with the covers pulled up to her waist and a pillow held tight to her chest. “Jesus, fuck.” He dragged his hands through his hair and sucked on his lip ring. “Who’s that?”
“The woman who’s going to help us find the Soul Collector.”
She was soft in sleep, trusting. Fuck. I didn’t deserve that trust, but I needed her. Just one more thing I’d take and twist in the name of vengeance.
“Wait.” Aidan scratched his jaw. “Isn’t that your mystery woman?”
I shot a glance over my shoulder. “My what?”
“The lass you’ve been following around the city while telling us all you’re”—he made air quotations with his fingers—“attending meetings.”
I frowned. “You know about that?”
He looked at me as though I was a dumb shite.
“I have eyes everywhere, cuz. And you might not realize, but you’re a six-foot-three Irishman who looks like he uses the sharpened bones of his enemies as toothpicks.
You don’t always blend in.” Aidan’s eyes flicked to Asha before returning to me.
“So why do you do it? Stalk her, I mean.”
I exhaled deeply, unsure if any justification I gave Aidan would accurately describe my reasons. How did I explain that I was sure Niall had sent Asha to me? That watching her had become an obsession and the reason I got up every morning?
I cleared my throat. “I don’t know. I found her, she intrigued me, and now I can’t fucking stop.”
When I’d started following Asha, I’d quickly realized there was something about her that reminded me of…me. Like she was putting on a brave face while suffering on the inside. Like she carried an unbearable burden that darkened her soul.
Maybe I’d been projecting. Maybe Asha was fine and didn’t want anyone looking out for her.
It didn’t stop me from doing background checks on her neighbors and friends and installing security cameras at her apartment. And I had no good reason for hacking her phone and computer, knowing her coffee order, or topping up the podcast’s Ko-fi account when she started eating ramen for meals.
I’d convinced myself that Asha needed me as much as I needed her.
After everything that’d happened with Niall, Asha was the one bright light in my pitch-black world. The only person who made me smile and made me wonder if my cold heart wasn’t completely frozen.
I wouldn’t let her go. Not even if Torin told me to.
Aidan gestured toward Asha. “And now you’re…what? Forcing her to marry you?”
“Seriously? Are you of all people going to lecture me about being a respectable citizen?”
When I needed help delivering a painful message or burying a body, Aidan was my guy. And when he had a problem that needed to disappear and didn’t want to get involved, he called me. Both of us had blood on our hands. Bucketloads of it.
Aidan’s nose twitched. “It reeks of sex in here.”
“There’s a good reason for that.”
My cousin’s lips thinned with his disapproval.
“Don’t give me that look. I didn’t do anything she didn’t beg for.”
Aside from the sedative, but that was an unfortunate necessity. I couldn’t have Asha screaming bloody murder during our wedding.
“So you’re saying she wants to marry you?”
I scoffed. “Of course not. What woman in her right mind would bind herself to me?”
“Why do you want to wed her, then?”
“Call me a pussy, but I need to motivate the lass to do as she’s told and don’t feel like threatening to break her kneecaps. The last thing she’ll want is to be stuck with a gangster, so once she finds the Soul Collector, I’ll set her free. Annulment granted.”
“That’s some fucked-up logic.”
“Aye, but it’ll be effective. And I have a few other surprises to keep her focused on the job.”
Asha could try to fight me on this, but it wouldn’t do her any good.
“Fuck me.” Aidan braced his hands on his hips. “Does Torin know about this?”
“Figured it was better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.” The boss would get over it when Asha came through with finding the son of a bitch whose head we all wanted on a spike.
“This is going to end badly.”
“I don’t remember asking for your opinion or your blessing.”
I stood beside Asha, gently removed the pillow from her arms, and pulled down the covers. Christ. No panties. And my shirt had bunched around her waist, revealing the pussy I’d spent the night plundering.
Keeping myself positioned between Asha and Aidan so I didn’t have to gouge my cousin’s eyes out, I asked, “Do me a favor and check on Father Sheehan, would you?”
“Aye,” Aidan grumbled.
As soon as he left the room, I collected a pair of sweats from my wardrobe. Then I tugged them up Asha’s smooth legs as efficiently as possible, because I might be a murderer, career criminal, and class A bastard, but I wasn’t a fucking creep.
Without opening her eyes, Asha stirred, grabbed my arm, and clutched it against her tits the same way she’d been holding the pillow. She mumbled something before smacking her lips and drifting back to sleep.
And I was stuck.
She looked so peaceful sleeping in my bed that I wasn’t eager to move her. Truth be told, all I wanted was to crawl under the covers, tuck Asha against my chest, and slumber with her.
But I needed her docile for the nuptials, and if she was kicking and screaming while I slipped the ring over her finger, it would only make things harder.
After carefully extracting my arm, I scooped Asha up and carried her like a floppy sack of rice to the sofa in my living room.
Father Sheehan, Aidan, and I stood around her unconscious form.
“This is your fiancée?” asked the priest, pointing at Asha as though I’d asked him to wed me to a chimpanzee.
“She’s who I’m marrying.” Technically, fiancée meant I’d proposed and she’d accepted.
“Is she alive?” Father Sheehan lifted Asha’s limp wrist and dropped it back to the sofa.
“Aye, she’s alive,” I snapped. “Touch her again and I’ll throw you from the fucking balcony.”
He swallowed deeply and glanced toward the view from the twenty-ninth floor, then back to me. “Marriage license?”
From my back pocket, I took out a piece of paper, unfolded it, and passed it to Father Sheehan.
He skimmed it, then aimed a raised brow at me. “Is this real?”
It looked real enough. I’d had my tech guy create it and enter the details into the registry office’s database.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Aidan asked.
“Never been surer of anything in my life.” I nodded to Father Sheehan. “Get on with it.”
“We can skip the formalities if you like. There’s no need for vows, is there?”
Like fuck there wasn’t.
I growled and delivered a death stare to the priest. “Say the words.”
“All right, all right.” He tightened the sash on his dressing gown and glanced at the names on the marriage license.
“Do you, Ryan Oisín O’Connell, take Asha Anne Sparks, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do you part? ”
My gaze raked over Asha. Some foolish part of me wished she could hear my response. “I do.”
Father Sheehan’s eyes darted with uncertainty between Asha and me.
“And do you, Asha Anne Sparks, take Ryan Oisín O’Connell, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do you part?
” He cleared his throat. “I’d feel much better about this if she gave a verbal response. ”
Strangely, so would I.
I knelt beside Asha, cradled her face in my palms, and gently stroked her cheek with my thumbs. “Come on, pet. Wake up a little.”
One eye opened, then the other, but only halfway. “Hey, handsome.” Her lazy smile just about floored me before she closed her eyes again.
“Asha.” I tapped her face lightly, and she came to once more. “I need you to do something for me now, and it’s important. Just say I do.”
“Huh?” she answered groggily. “I do? I do what?”
“Never mind, love. That’s perfect.” But before I could finish the sentence, her lids had lowered. Out to it once more.
“There, you heard it.” I stood and gestured to Asha. “She said I do.”
Behind me, Aidan snorted. Eejit.
“Rings?” Father Sheehan asked.
I dug the two gold rings from my pocket, placed the thick band on my ring finger, and slipped the smaller one over Asha’s.
The flawless eight-carat emerald, surrounded by tiny glistening diamonds and held up by two red hands, was essential because no wife of mine—fake or otherwise—would be seen without the best.
That wasn’t the only reason for the flashy ring.
Those bloodred hands told every bastard in the Philly underworld that the wearer belonged to the Beasts.
If a woman wore it and she wasn’t your wife or your kin, you walked away.
You certainly didn’t fucking touch her. Not unless you wanted to die a slow, painful death.
I went into my pocket again to remove a small pin-like tool that looked a lot like a miniature antique key.
I inserted it in a port camouflaged within the gold band’s intricate Celtic pattern and twisted the tool to tighten the ring.
A master jeweler had designed the bespoke piece for me so it couldn’t be removed without the key.
If Asha wanted it off, she’d have to arrange for it to be carefully cut. I wouldn’t let that happen.
“I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may…er…kiss the bride?”
I leaned down and kissed Asha’s forehead. Another small smile graced her full lips. Christ, she was beautiful.
There was that fucking twinge in my chest again.
This was messed up. I knew it. Aidan knew it. If Niall were alive, he’d tell me I’d lost my mind. But I couldn’t think of a less harmful way to get Asha to do what I needed. Marrying her kept her protected, and it kept her committed to finding the Soul Collector.
The only downside? As soon as she woke, she’d hate me with the intensity of…well…a wildfire. There was a reason I called her that. When Asha set her mind to something, nothing could stop her.
And if wrath fueled her to find the Soul Collector, so be it.
But this might be the last time she smiled at me. The last time she was soft and welcoming of my touch.
“Fuck it,” I said, and pressed my mouth firmly to hers, knowing I’d never get another chance to kiss my wife.
So I claimed this one like a man with nothing left to lose.