Chapter 3 – Liam
There she is….
I knew that if I waited long enough, I would see her again.
It was hard to say where she’d come from, but the uniform meant she was one of the hard-working, blue-collared individuals who made this city great.
Boston wasn’t the town of the rich and famous.
The wealthy might keep stately brownstones in idyllic locations, but they preferred to live in the suburbs—where it was safer.
The real Boston crawled with people who worked their asses off to get by.
I should know. I was one of them.
While my profession was far from the shining sanctuary of the law, it didn’t mean my hands were any less calloused. Or stained.
Tonight, they would be tinged with another coat of red.
The knife danced through my fingers. Her death would be quick. She wouldn’t feel a thing. That was the smallest mercy I could grant her.
Crouching next to the building, I narrowed my gaze as she passed the chain link fence. She didn’t stop near the hole. Didn’t look into the abandoned lot.
Funny.
Most humans would reminisce about the brutality they’d witnessed.
Still, even though she’d agreed to keep her mouth shut, I didn’t trust her. This woman was a loose end, one that had preyed upon my mind the whole day until I decided to take care of it.
She was ten paces away. I gripped the knife tight in my bare hand. Flexed the muscles of the other. The tight, itchy skin protested the motion. Luckily for me, the damage was contained to the less dominate half of my body.
At five paces, I was ready to spring. The glove would protect me from her bite as I stifled her cry.
The blade flashed in readiness to slice her throat.
It was a much faster death than sliding the length between her ribs.
Bleeding out from a stab wound to the heart could take anywhere from two to five minutes.
That kind of agony wasn’t something she needed to endure.
She stepped in front of my hiding place, and I inhaled.
Peaches. Summer.
A scent so lush and calming that it penetrated the violence coursing through me. The picture of her face sprang into my mind. The way those brown eyes had glared at me, defying me instead of fearing.
My heart thumped hard.
Whatever aura surrounded this woman had the power to make me pause. It stopped the initial spring of my legs. With a curse, I rose. She was already three steps away. Any further, and it would be hard to drag her back into the shadows. I hurried on silent feet, ready to reach out.
In that precious second, my gaze caught something in the muted light from across the street. Something I hadn’t noticed last night. Something…important.
The emblem took up the whole space on the back of her jacket. Last night, she hadn’t been wearing it. I would have recognized the embroidered logo.
Bleeding hell! I sank back into the shadows, crouching near the ground.
She stopped short. Her spine stiffened.
Whipping around, she peered into the night. She felt the danger.
My molars ground together. Frustration seeped into my bones. This woman worked at Mama Ana’s Bar & Grill.
She wrapped her arms around her middle, rubbing them as though she needed warmth.
It wasn’t like the summer night was chilly.
The skin under my plastic mask was sticky and irritated from the sweltering heat.
Why she wore the jacket in the first place was a logical question, but one that probably just saved her life.
Shaking her head, she turned and resumed her hurried walk.
Each step took her farther out of my reach.
Indecision made me pause. She’d probably seen my face last night, even though I’d kept it hidden in the shadows when I forced her into the lamplight.
If she breathed a word about what I’d done, not only would the alliance be dissolved, but Don Morelli would send one of his killers after me.
I would hate to put a bullet in Vincenzo’s head. He’d been the one to drag me from the flames, after all. Any other Italian thug I wouldn’t think twice about killing to save my skin, burned and scarred though it was. But killing Italians would bring about a war.
And we’d only just ended one with another organization—which was why we owed the Italian in the first place.
I gave myself a hard shake. What to do about this girl?
Well, for starters, I needed to know who she was and where she lived. But, if I visited her, threatened her again, that would only spur her into taking action. Dammit. There was no good option!
I needed to know who she was.
When she was far enough away, I shot to my feet and slipped from my hiding spot.
I trailed her through the night, keeping my steps feather-light.
Clearly, she was a creature of habit if she walked these streets alone.
Maybe she lived alone. In which case, it wouldn’t be hard to smother her in her sleep.
That couldn’t be traced to me.
The thought tasted icky on my tongue. Suffocation wasn’t fast enough.
Still, it might be the only way.
I let her take a turn, waited until I was sure she hadn’t stopped. There was no doubt that she sensed me, which meant she might be hiding to see if there was danger. I counted the seconds in my mind.
I couldn’t encounter her in the open.
She was one of Morelli’s people. Even if she was oblivious to what manner of creature her employer was, she still existed under the wing of his protection.
One death on his turf was an unfortunate mystery.
Killing another would cause inquiry. With the newly forged alliance, I didn’t dare risk taking out another one of his.
It didn’t matter if this alliance had been forced on us, that it benefitted the Morellis more than us.
Whatever we decided to do with this Italian mob had to be given extra thought and attention.
By the time I rushed forward, took the same turn, she was nowhere to be seen. The street was empty. The old train depot stood to the left. There wasn’t anywhere to hide there. And as I jogged down the street, I didn’t see any small shapes hunkered in the alleys.
The street rounded into a residential area with old, well-worn houses.
Fuck. She could be anywhere.
I sagged against a tree. Maybe it was for the best that I hadn’t ended her. Those keen brown eyes had the power to haunt me, even though I’d only seen them once. I raked a hand through my hair, tearing the strings of the mask in frustration. Fresh air washed over my hideous face.
Tonight, the maiden escaped the fiend. What a lucky girl.
Fly away, little bird. Fly away, and thank whatever god you pray to that you escaped me.
The dumbbell crashed against the rubber mat with a sickening thud.
I cursed, pausing at the back door of the gym.
I hadn’t worked out with any of the lads since the explosion.
Hell, I wasn’t technically cleared for strenuous physical activity.
That didn’t stop me from fighting in the streets, running the operations our businesses demanded, and it certainly wasn’t going to stop me from keeping my muscles toned and hard.
I peered into the gym, noticing a buzzed shock of sandy blond hair. The monster pumping irons to make his traps pop was an enforcer of sorts, the guy we called whenever things needed fixing, and also the one I kept closest. A friend, if such a thing existed in the underworld.
Come on, you can face him.
Connor was the brother my mother never gave me.
And yet the thought of him seeing me struggle made my legs shake.
I was a grown ass man! A cold-blooded killer. My legs weren’t supposed to vibrate like leaves in a gale. Yet…they were.
Connor’s the best of us.
He’d visited me in the hospital, the only other soul besides my father when the bomb our rivals planted nearly sent me on a one-way trip to the pearly gates.
Still, Connor seeing me laid up in a hospital bed was bad enough. I didn’t want him to see me fight over the simplest movements to regain my strength.
“You going to quit skulking and join me?” Connor smirked, tossing me a wink in the mirror as he hefted the forty-fives in the air.
“The gym’s closed,” I barked. “I gave strict instructions to McLure to lock it up from midnight to two.”
Connor whistled and dropped the weights. “Which was exactly why I popped over.”
Scowling, I stalked into the gym. I went to the open area, away from his direct line of sight, and plucked a jump rope from the ground.
The fucking mask was in my bag. There was no hiding the ugly, gnarled red side of my face.
At least my body was covered. I wore a tightly fitted rash guard that hugged my body like a second skin.
Before the attack, I only wore these things when I put on a jiu jitsu gi.
Now they’d become my standard athletic wear.
Itchy. Hot. Tight. The clothing irritated the hell out of my healing skin.
Connor gave me space, let me warm my muscles. When my legs screamed at me to stop, I made the rope whip through the air at a quicker pace. Only then did he saunter over.
“Congratulations are in order, I hear,” he drawled and stopped to throw a few half-hearted jabs at the speed bag.
I grunted.
My impending marriage was not up for discussion.
If I had my way, we wouldn’t be bothering with the Italians at all.
But the slippery little fuckers manipulated recent events so that we owed them.
Big time. The Morelli organization was a small outfit.
Their don didn’t have aspirations to grow large.
He contented himself with profitable black-market transactions.
He ran some small scams with the government officials down at the ports and kept some docks available for other organizations to rent at a hefty cost.
It was laughable how small they were to us.
We could have crushed them if they were worth the time. They never had been, and now we couldn’t.
I dropped the rope and marched to the heavy bag. Flexing my fingers, I took a swing at the sack dangling from a chain in the ceiling.
“Whoa-hoe! Is that a good idea?” Connor stepped beside me and caught the bag. “Your knuckles are going to split open.”
“Not if I practice technic over power,” I gritted out.
Connor leveled me with a look. “And that wasn’t power?”
I swung at the bag again, but Connor pushed it away at the last second. I pitched forward, nearly eating a mouthful of floor.
“If it’s power you’re after, let’s go hit some weights,” he suggested. “Lift them. Stupid American idioms.”
I didn’t want to tell him pumping the irons was out of the realm of possibilities for now. “Let’s go for a jog. We need to chat.”
Connor groaned, but cardio was one thing I could still outmatch him in. Thankfully. I turned the speed on a treadmill up to a grueling pace and leapt on the flying track.
“What’s the craic?” Connor demanded, matching me stride for stride. “Something’s on your mind.”
“I killed one of Morelli’s guys.”
Connor tripped and went flying off the tread. I snorted, bumping the speed up several notches.
“You’re just telling me now?!” he boomed, accent thick and clipped.
We’d both spent a good portion of our childhood on the Emerald Isle. The connection to our mother land gave us mild brogues that came out when we were agitated. In moments like this, we sounded more Irish than American.
I added salt to the wound. “It happened last night.”
“Why, Liam?” Connor banged his forehead against the arm of the treadmill. “Why on Mary’s bleeding earth would you do such a heinous thing?!”
“Knifed the fecker so he didn’t shoot me.”
Connor let out a long breath. “Well, I suppose that justifies it.”
“Suppose it does.” Sweat broke over my brow. It made the right half of my face burn, but I knew better than to itch the fresh pink scars. “You know what he said?”
“Hmm?” Connor leaned against the mirrored wall and stared at me.
“He was one of Deluca’s boys—”
“Your bonny bride’s da?”
“Yeah, and he said that Deluca was looking for an out. Said there was good reason for the bastard not to go through with it.” I stabbed the emergency stop button with my finger and slowed to a stop. “It’s odd.”
“Agreed,” Connor mused, a twinkle in his eye. “You think there’s a split in the ranks?”
“Possibly.” I shrugged. “Vincenzo was the son of the other captain.”
“Capo?”
“Fuck the Italians,” I spat. “Capo-captain, who cares. But it’s because of the one that we’re in this mess and the other wouldn’t have cared if his lad killed me.”
“We need to watch our backs with this shite.” Connor looked at me, really looked. “At least the wee cailín won’t want to get close enough to you to stab you in your sleep.”
He meant it as a joke.
But it gutted me. A fucking knife to the stomach. Those words hurt more than I let on.
“My ma told us a story, back when we were kids, about a lion and a mouse,” I mused, ignoring his jab. “Do you remember it?”
Connor gave me a perplexed look, eyes crossing and mouth twisted in high confusion. “What story?”
Eejit.
So much for stories instilling life lessons into children.
“Forget the story. What if the Morellis helped us, but only to lull our suspicions before taking us out?” I braced and arm on the workout machine.
“I’m confused. The Morellis are mice?”
“It’s a metaphor,” I snapped. “Bigger picture, arsehat.”
“Lets feed ‘em those green-colored nuggets and have done with it,” Connor insisted.
I shook my head. “Not if it kills them all. I want you to spy on my father-in-law.”
Connor let out a nod.
“And when I get married, my wife.”
The joke was on the mice. We were more powerful than the Morelli.
But after they ended our rivals, they wanted an alliance, and I was the sacrifice to bind our ranks.
They thought they would have power and wealth and the protection of a large, thriving organization?
They would pay dearly for that mistake with one of their daughters bound eternally to a monster.