Chapter 3 #4
“Keep our dating history very easy, very casual. Dinners a few times a week, coffee dates. You’ve never been to my restaurant so don’t say you have. If they ask why you don’t know much about my family, just tell them, I wanted you to myself.”
She smiled a little. “Alessia actually said something similar to that earlier.”
“See? It won’t be too hard. If you need more info, you have my cell phone. Call or text Jared. He can tell you anything you need to know about me until I get out of here.”
“Right, Jared. Okay. I think I can handle this. I hope I can.”
“You’ll be fine.” Angelo squeezed her hand and then drew it gently toward him so he could press his lips to the back of her palm. Then he watched her go.
What are you running from, Kara Gallagher?
She was a puzzle, that was for sure. But a puzzle he was going to enjoy solving.
He wanted to learn everything about her, and the wonderful places that knowledge might lead.
He would understand the sorrow in her eyes and perhaps, he would heal whatever had wounded her.
A small selfish part of him knew he wanted to do this because she fascinated him.
He wanted to know her taste, to know the feel of her in his arms, the way she might gasp his name as he brought her exquisite pleasure.
Only time would tell if that was a future that would come to pass.
Cormac Callahan leaned back in his chair as he studied the mountain of paperwork his predecessor had left behind. The books were a fucking mess, but he would get them sorted out.
He’d finally taken over the gun and drug trade in New York and Dublin from Sean O’Brien.
Cormac had started working for O’Brien when was nineteen and had been chomping at the bit for his chance to run things.
He had bided his time for nearly twenty years, waiting for Sean O’Brien to die so he could take over—because Lord knew he was never going to retire.
The money and power that came with taking over was what Cormac had expected, but in the months leading up to O’Brien’s cancer diagnosis, he’d been offered an unexpected bonus from his old boss.
O’Brien had come into the office one night, his breath stinking of Guinness. Cormac was going over the latest gun inventory that had been delivered to one of their many warehouses, and O’Brien had slapped him on the shoulder, taking a seat beside him.
Then he’d told him a story. A wild story of how twenty-five years ago, he’d seduced a woman with the most beautiful red hair and how the woman, when she’d found out who he was had fled Ireland taking his unborn child with her.
Obsessed with the idea of a child taking over his empire someday, he’d done everything to track down the woman and her baby and learned she’d crossed the ocean to New York.
“Can ye believe it? Me? A father!” O’Brien had crowed.
Everyone in Dublin knew that Sean was unable to have kids after injuries from a gunshot wound which had resulted in a surgery that had made it impossible to father a child.
“How the devil did ye manage that?” Cormac had demanded. “Ye shoot blanks.”
O’Brien’s expression softened. “I met a bonnie lass a few weeks before that night I was shot at the docks. I found out a few months after she left that she was with child. But I’ve kept it to myself all these years.”
“Why?” Cormac demanded.
“Because I couldn’t find Fiona or her child. What was the point in telling anyone about it, if I could never get them both back.”
Cormac had a glimmer of an understanding them. “You loved her, didn’t you?”
His boss had chuckled darkly. “As much as I can love anyone, I suppose. But the child is mine. I want my business taken over by someone with my blood in their veins.”
“So you have a son?” Cormac had guessed.
O’Brien had laughed, but then that mean look had come into his eyes, one Cormac knew all well. “She had a girl, a bleedin’ girl, Cormac. What’s a man to do with a girl, I ask ye?”
Cormac had laughed. There was only one use for women, and O’Brien knew it just as well as Cormac did.
“Well, ye could give her to any of yer men,” Cormac said.
O’Brien had looked him dead in the eye, suddenly seeming very sober.
“Cormac, if ye want my business, you’ll take the girl. Marry her. Or else I’ll give my business to another lad. I want my flesh and blood involved in my business even if she’s a girl. My men will honor that if ye marry her. Ye’ll have it all.”
Cormac had shrugged, uninterested in the girl. He could take the business back from whatever idiot O’Brien chose over him if his boss decided to give the keys to his kingdom to someone else.
“Ye should see her, Cormac… we almost caught her once… my man snapped a picture of her.” O’Brien pulled out his phone and pulled up an image.
It was of a girl in her late teens, with long, wild red hair tumbling down her shoulders.
She stood on a street corner, waiting at a bus stop.
Cormac nearly choked on his own drink. The girl was beautiful.
He had to have her, had to own this creature.
He could marry her and do what O’Brien wished, it wouldn’t be a hardship having that woman in his bed every night.
“Fine. I’ll marry her.” He could still take mistresses if he ever got bored, but at least he’d own her. “Where is she? I’ll marry her now.”
O’Brien’s gaze grew distant. “Kara’s in the wind, lad. Her mother has kept her hidden from me. This picture was taken a few years ago. Almost had them both, then we lost her and her mother right afterward. She’s got to be twenty-five now…a real beauty like her mother, no doubt.”
“Then keep looking,” Cormac said.
Kara…her name haunted him. God, how he wanted her now that he’d seen what could be his.
“Oh, don’t ye worry. She can’t run forever.” O’Brien’s smile was grim. Then he’d left Cormac to finish his inventory.
O’Brien had died six months ago, and Cormac had set up his command of the business in Dublin.
Then he’d flown to New York to settle his running with the Westies, the local Irish gang that answered to Sean O’Brien.
It hadn’t been as easy as he’d expected.
One of the leaders had challenged him, and he’d killed the man. That hadn’t fixed his loyalty problem.
The Westies knew about the search for Kara, and when Cormac told them he intended to find her that had quelled some of the rebellious looks.
They’d told him they’d accept his leadership if he married O’Brien’s daughter.
It seemed O’Brien had created a fair amount of loyalty with the New York gang after all these years.
After the meeting with the Westies had ended, Cormac put his men on tracking down Kara O’Brien.
She was the only way he could secure the control of the Westies, and he had to have that control, or his transatlantic business interests would fail.
After he’d returned to Ireland he used the Westies’ resources to scour the American cities, but had no real hope of finding her. The girl was a tiny needle in a very large haystack. Still, he wasn’t about to stop.
A man appeared in the doorway. “Callahan?” It was Jim Leary, his appointed second in command.
He shoved the side the paperwork. “Yeah?”
“We might have found her.”
He straightened. “Where?”
“Chicago. One of our men thought he saw her working at a soup kitchen the past couple of weeks. He had tailed her from Virginia and been watching her to see when he could snatch her. He tried to grab her but some asshole got in the way so he had to make it look like a mugging. He got a good look at the girl, though, and he’s convinced it was her. ” Jim waited for orders.
Cormac studied Jim. “You think this man is reliable? That he knows what he saw? I don’t want to leave New York to go chasing a false trail.” It wouldn’t be the first time, and each time, Cormac grew more furious as his hope of finding Kara dwindled.
“He’s good,” Jim said. “I trust him. He has a way of getting into places that he shouldn’t and finding what he’s looking for.”
“Tell him to expect men in Chicago. I want to see where the girl’s been living and anything else you can find.
But tell him, no more stupid attempts to grab her, not until I’m satisfied it’s her.
We can’t have her going to the police even with our inside man there.
She could still get a protective detail.
The last thing I need are Chicago cops looking for our men.
The Cabrini’s rule that town and I can’t afford to make enemies of them, not yet. ”
“Yes, sir.”
After Jim left, Cormac leaned back in his chair, thinking…
planning. This woman had been running for years.
She’d be independent. Willful. She wouldn’t simply accept herself as his.
That wasn’t so much of a problem as an annoyance.
Sometimes women got their heads full of ideas and forgot their place.
So he would remind them. Eventually, Kara would accept the role given to her, she would be his property, Sean O’Brien’s pretty daughter… all his.
He couldn’t deny he was eager to get his hands on Kara. She had starred in so many of his fantasies of late. Now he was finally going to get what he wanted. No one would be able to challenge his claim to O’Brien’s enterprises if O’Brien’s daughter belonged to him.