Chapter 2
KILLIAN
My father should know this can’t go on forever. No kidnapping can. The longer this stretches, the easier it will be for the cops to find us. To find me, living in an apartment that’s not under my name, with a girl half my age locked in the bedroom.
Fuck this. I told Father I would not do his dirty work any longer.
I’m fucking forty, too old for this shit.
And yet, I keep coming back every time he tells me he has a job only I can do.
I know he’s just saying what I want to hear, but any kind of praise moves me when it comes from him.
He was never a good dad, and while my classmates were spending the weekend playing baseball, a tutor was teaching me how to fire the gun I got for my seventh birthday.
This is the shitty life of growing up in the mob. My father has been in it for too long. He could have left. He could have bought us new identities and run away from the country. Instead, he wants more. Father always wants more.
And I’m the fool who falls for his promises over and over. This is the last time, he said. Then you can abandon this life and live the rest of your days however you want.
I tell myself this time it’s going to be different. That’s the only thing keeping me together.
A hand slams into the bedroom door from the inside. “Let me out, you creepy fucker!” the feminine voice screams from the inside.
When I saw Fiona Byrne at the bar that day, I thought many things.
That I was sorry about what I had to do to her.
That she looked so pretty it hurt. That she had to be out of her mind to be smiling at me.
I didn’t think she would be this feisty, though.
She’s in my bedroom, a place I prepared for this occasion.
The window gives into another building and an alley no one ever passes.
I installed soundproofing foam on the walls and ceilings.
The door is thick enough she wouldn’t be able to put it down, no matter how hard she tried.
And she tried.
Four days and the woman has been banging at the door and the bulletproof window, screaming like a banshee into the walls.
She stops, and when I think she has given up, she catches her breath and starts it all over again.
I admire her persistence, but she’s just one woman, and I’ve been in this life for too long.
I keep going with dinner—honestly, just PB she looks more wretched than a moment ago. “What’s wrong?” I ask her, even though I fucking shouldn’t. She’s just a job. Duty. I should not care what’s wrong with her.
She peeks up at me, and some of that prior flame burns in her eyes again. “My hair is so oily.” Another grunt of frustration. “I mean, I haven’t showered in four days, so that’s expected.”
I cross my arms over my chest. Don’t offer, Killian. Don’t offer. Her comfort is not your problem. This is not—“Have a shower, then,” I hear myself saying. Fuck. “There’s a clean towel under the sink.”
Her eyes flare up. My stomach drops inside me. Fiona smiles, then whirls around and enters the bathroom again. She tries to close the door once more, but it hits my foot. The red-headed glares up at me, but there’s much less intensity. “Come on!” she complains.
“Door open,” I repeat. “I won’t look.”
She twists her mouth, then darts her gaze away. There’s something like disappointment on her face. Did she want me to look? No, there’s no way. I’m imagining things. There’s no way a girl like her would pay a man like me any mind. I’m too big, too rough. And her captor.
She definitely wouldn’t lust after her kidnapper. No sane woman would.
I hear the shower running, then the shifting of feet as she undresses.
Shit. She’s undressing. In my apartment.
The place I live. The thought shoots lust straight to my cock, tightening my pants.
I curl my hands into fists and try to focus on something else, anything else…
But I imagine drops of water running down her perfect tits, hitting her hard nipples, kissing a trail down her stomach to her cunt...
My cock twitches again. I reach out and fist it, hard. Fuck, this has to stop.
“Where’s your shampoo?” she calls out from the water.
“No shampoo,” I reply.
“You wash your hair with soap?” She laughs. “You men are so lucky. I spend so much on shampoo and treatments and conditioners and my hair is never this good.”
A smile curls up the corner of my mouth, and it takes everything in me to smother it.
A part of me wants to leave the house to buy her shampoo and nice food, something better than two days straight of PB&J...
But this isn’t a date. She’s not spending time with me.
I kidnapped her. It’s a job. It’s a job, and I repeat that to myself like a mantra.
Once Fiona’s done, she opens the door, the towel wrapped tight around her body. Her smooth shoulders are flushed from the hot water, her wet hair dripping into the tiles. The sight of her flushed face and those bright eyes makes my heart skip another beat.
“Do you have something I could wear? My clothes are stinking.”
I nod, digging my hands into my pockets. “Check the dresser in the bedroom.”
She leaves with a small smile and the second she enters the bedroom, I lock the door.
I can’t bear the sight of her for another second.
It might blow me up. After throwing her clothes into the washer, I stride to the living room corner I use to exercise.
Dropping into a series of push-ups, I lower and raise myself as fast as I can, hoping this desire growing inside me will wash off with the sweat running down my body.