9. Delancy
Delancy
F uck fuck fuck.
Noah just walked onto the dance floor, dragging my mark along with her.
Why the hell is she holding hands and flirting with Cillian O’Connor?
I should warn her. Tell her the asshole is a rapist who covers up his crimes with money and blackmailing.
I should tell her that the last woman he fucked got pregnant and was found dead at the bottom of the stairs to her apartment building.
Cillian is the son of Finn O’Connor, boss of the Lords of Staten Island. I’ve been wanting to kill him for years. He’s had a hit on his head for as long as I can remember but no one has dared take the job.
Contract killers don’t like getting involved with the mob, and New York City currently has three powerful ones.
But I’m not your typical contract killer. I’m a mafia hitman who doesn’t give two fucks about the retaliation that will follow by killing Cillian. He’s fucked around with the wrong people. He’s killed, or ordered to be killed, too many people with ties to rival mobs, including the QBM.
The woman he murdered after getting her pregnant was my cousin.
I stand in the shadows of the balcony on the second level, watching my beautiful rainbow bright below. She looks sexier than ever. That black dress clinging to her voluptuous body. Her tits round and pushed up. Her long legs in those fuck me heels.
She dyed her hair dark red to match her plush burgundy lips.
She’s no longer a bright kaleidoscope of colors but a fiery fox… a vixen luring unsuspecting lovers.
No wonder my target is on the dance floor with her, grinding his dick into her plump ass. Cillian loves shiny, pretty things, and Noah McAllister is certainly his next conquest.
Jealousy ricochets throughout my body. The urge to protect her, to claim her as mine and keep her safe, overwhelms me.
It’s a sensation I’ve never experienced before.
Cillian’s hands roam over my vixen’s wide hips, his fingers splayed on her soft stomach as he kisses her neck. Noah laughs and reaches her arm up to fist his hair.
I want to kill him more than ever.
I scan the crowd for the two goons who accompanied Noah at the shooting range, but they’re nowhere to be found. I’ve seen them lurking around our apartment building a lot more lately. She’s definitely being protected but why and from whom?
And why aren’t they here stopping this dickwad from fondling her?
It takes everything within my body not to go down there and rip him off her, throw him to the ground and bash his head on the concrete dance floor until his skull cracks, splattering brain matter everywhere.
It’s been ages since I’ve wanted to violently murder someone. I don’t like my kills to be bloody unless the job specifically states to do so.
I would make an exception for him.
But I can’t go down there. I can’t take Noah in my arms and kiss her to claim her as mine. I can’t blow my cover.
Instead, I’m forced to watch her kiss him.
They make out for what has to be five minutes before coming up for air. She glances up into the balcony where I stand, and my heart forgets to beat. I step further into the shadows.
Did she see me? Recognize me? Certainly not.
She smirks in my direction—there’s no way she saw me. Right? RIGHT?—then whispers in Cillian’s ear. He nods excitedly and takes hold of her hand, leading her through the crowd and off the dance floor.
They stop next to a thick blonde woman, and Noah speaks with her briefly before leading Cillian to the exit.
Fuck. They’re leaving.
My stomach sours, and my chest aches with how fast my heart is beating.
I’m… panicking.
I’m… worried about her.
I can’t think about these strange emotions.
How human they make me feel. I’m rushing down the long balcony walkway and descend the stairs.
When I get to the lobby, I stay hidden behind a corner wall, waiting for them to get their coats.
Every time I peek around, his hands are somewhere new: her ass, her lower back, in her dark red hair so he can pull back her head and kiss her neck.
I hate PDA. It’s too sweet... too happy and loving.
Yet if Noah were mine, I’d make sure everyone knew. I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands and lips off her in public either.
After an excruciating two minutes, they have their coats and the horny couple leaves. I rush up to the window and toss the worker a hundred-dollar bill and my ticket.
“I’m in a hurry,” I seethe.
The pixie girl’s eyes widen before she disappears to search for my leather jacket. She returns in record time, and I rush outside to my bike.
My hands shake as I unlock the helmet case, my fingers fumbling with my keys while trying to insert them into the ignition.
Get it together, Delancy.
Noah and Cillian are long gone, but I know where he’s taking her. It’s where he always takes all the women he picks up at clubs.
The high-rise in the Financial District disappears into the cloudy night. The streets are busy except for the side road where I need to enter to get to my vixen. He takes women down this dead end because it’s dark and there are no cameras around.
I park my bike at the end of the street and walk a block to the building. There’s a code to get in, one I know from my surveillance of Cillian over the last few months. The green light flashes and a beep sounds after I enter the four digits.
I slip inside, passing through a long hallway. This part of the building is lacking in security. Cillian has made sure of it. He doesn’t want any trace of who he brings to his secret penthouse. A place where he feels he can do anything he wants without the consequences.
Down at the end of the hallway on the left is a pair of double doors, which I assume are for laundry service.
What I need is on the right. I press the up button for the freight elevator and wait.
It takes a few minutes for it to arrive, and my anxiety rises with each ticking second.
While Cillian has made sure not to have security in this area, there’s still a chance I’ll run into someone.
When the doors finally open, I slip in and push the button to the Penthouse. It requires a keycard to ascend, so I pull out the one I stole from a grounds worker this morning, hoping it hasn’t been deactivated yet. The elevator begins moving, and I exhale a long breath of relief.
I scan the corners of the box and find no cameras, unless there are some hidden in the panel, which I doubt Cillian would allow. Not to mention, if security was watching, they’d stop the elevator on the next floor and detain me.
After less than a minute, the elevator slows and comes to a stop on the top floor.
The doors open to a foyer of white swirled marble, walls decorated with expensive artwork, and two large abstract sculptures.
There's another door that leads into the actual penthouse. I turn the knob and it unlatches.
Idiot didn’t lock this door.
My footsteps are silent as I walk across the sitting room’s floor.
The cream furniture matches the cream walls, which are decorated with more expensive paintings by artists I couldn’t begin to name.
I pass a bathroom, the kitchen, and the dining room before the soft notes of music playing from a room deep within the penthouse hits my ears.
Damn, they’re already in the bedroom?
That was fast.
Beyond the living area—which should have a fantastic view of downtown New York City if it weren’t for the cloudy night—is a hallway.
Framed photos hang on the walls and there’s a long and thin table with a vase of flowers and a stack of books on top.
The dull music gets louder the longer I walk, passing closed doors left and right.
I know the bedroom at the very back is Cillian’s room.
I broke in a month ago and planted surveillance cameras in there and a few others throughout the penthouse to watch and record his crimes.
He’s brought women here to violently fuck—some who were into it, many who weren’t.
He shot a man in the head in the living room after he refused to pay up for who the hell knows what.
And he’s sat at his kitchen island conspiring with men—who I recognize as Lords members—to kill a whole list of people; names I didn’t get because they never said them out loud, but I’m guessing they’re victims of his father’s strict loan shark operations or maybe even rival mob members.
Now my rainbow bright is in there with him. My vixen . The woman who somehow managed to warm the frozen organ that sits in my chest.
What's his plan for her?
She seemed into him at the club. Could this just be a hookup? What if I’m overreacting?
I need to be sure she’s in danger before barging into this room to save her.
The music is loud so if they’re talking or fucking, I can’t tell.
Wait...
Was that a whimper?
Fury ignites within my chest. Images of Noah, spread out before Cillian while he fucks her, dance across my vision. My hand reaches for the knob of the door and I'm seconds from bursting into the room.
Then I hear a humph and a thud.
The song ends.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for weeks, Cilly Boy,” Noah says.
What the hell?
There’s a groan and another whimper. Then a sound I’m all too familiar with; a knife plunging into flesh.
I twist the doorknob and enter the room.
Noah is straddling Cillian on the ground, the knife protruding from his chest. She's nearly naked except for a red bra and panties—a fantastic see through lace set. Blood is splattered across her frontside, and her chest rises and falls with heavy breaths.
Haven’t I fantasized about this very thing?
No. This can’t be right. My rainbow bright’s no killer.
Unless… is she?
“Noah?”
The sound of my voice startles her, and she jumps up to stand.
“Delancy? What the hell? Did you follow me? I thought that was you at the club.” She looks down at her bloody frontside, to Cillian’s lifeless body, to her open, soiled hands. “I can explain.”
“No need to explain, Vixen. I came here to do just that.”