Chapter 7
Sean
Chapter Seven
Who the fuck is that?
I watch Lina as a man continues to pound on the door. There’s no fear or embarrassment or shame. It’s pure annoyance. As the guy calls out to her again, it’s anger.
“That’s Justin. He won’t go away. He’s more likely to have hotel security called on him. Let me text him and see if that’ll get him to stop.”
She climbs off the bed, which means climbing off my dick. It’s like all the warmth has leeched from my body. The cool air on my wet cock definitely doesn’t feel great and ruins any chance I might have stayed hard if I’d stayed in her. Though with the load I just shot, I doubt there’s anything left.
She grabs her purse from the dresser where she dropped it as we came through the door. She fishes out her phone and comes back to sit beside me. She does nothing to hide the screen or the message she sends.
Lina
Stop yelling. I’m busy. I’ll text you later.
The knocking stops for a moment, then it starts again. He paused long enough to get his phone unlocked.
Justin
Busy fucking an O’Rourke.
That raises my hackles.
Lina
If I were do you think screaming at me is wise? I said I’m busy.
Justin
Getting busy with him. Ewan is going to lose his shit. Send him out before your brother calls.
Lina
You tattled
Justin
Haydon
Lina
Short of locking me in a chastity belt and throwing away the key no one decides who I am or am not with. Go. Away.
“Nikki, open the damn door.”
She must feel me tense because she types even faster.
Lina
You don’t want me to do that. Leave please.
“Are you scared I’ll go all Greco-Roman wrestler on him and fight with my arse to the wind?”
She looks over at me and sees my grin. I’m pissed as fuck to be interrupted, to have someone speak to Lina this way, and to have someone already narc to Ewan. Truth be told, though, I’m surprised it took this long. I didn’t think we’d have this much time alone before someone interfered.
Justin
Butterfly
What?
Lina
No
“We’ve had a code since I was a teenager. If a guy was bothering me, or I just didn’t feel safe, I’d text or say butterfly to let Justin and Ewan know I needed help. He thinks you’re forcing me because I said he shouldn’t want me to open the door. I meant you’ll beat the fuck out of him.”
I would if we were alone. But I wouldn’t unleash that in front of Lina unless her life depended upon it. Justin is a big guy. He wouldn’t go easily, so it would take more than a love tap to take him down.
Justin
This is a mistake. End this before Ewan can do anything. I didn’t tell him but Haydon did. I’m worried. Please Nikki.
Lina
You could have led with that. Thank you for your concern. I’m still not opening the door. I told you I’m busy. I won’t respond.
Justin
Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. This was as much about protecting you as it was keeping him alive. You’re as beautiful as Helen of Troy and you’re about to start a war.
I won’t disagree with him about Lina’s beauty. Her face could launch a thousand ships. I’ll do whatever I must to protect her. But the war started well before she and I met. The war started because Rowan O’Malley stole from us and got involved with a threat to my sister-in-law’s family. He left that mess to Ewan when we saved him from committing patricide. If Ewan can’t remember he’s indebted to us, then we’ll remind him. But he stays the fuck away from Lina.
She doesn’t answer, so we wait to see if another text comes in. It goes quiet. No more knocking. No more yelling. No more texts. She puts the phone on the bedside table and looks at me. The self-assurance she exuded a moment ago is gone. She looks vulnerable. I lift her onto my lap and rock her hips against me as I harden just from touching her.
This is our first true challenge. I need to feel as connected to her as I can while we figure this shit out. We knew it was coming, but I’d hoped for a few more hours. I lift her, and she slides down my cock. She’s still wet from my cum. She’s still tight, but not as much as the first time I entered her. I encircle my left arm around her waist as my right hand presses her head to my shoulder. I move the pillows around and shuffle to lean back. She doesn’t move, and neither do I once I’m comfortable. It’s several minutes of companionable silence and moral support before she speaks.
“Sean, can we stay like this?”
Forever. “Yes, little one. Let me hold you until we sort this out.”
“Could I fall asleep like this tonight?”
“I’d like nothing more. I know we need to deal with this, but we came here for you to have a nap. Do you want to sleep now?” I run my hand up and down her bare back while my other hand cups her arse.
“I do. But we need to sort this out.”
“It won’t go away today. Sleep, little one.”
“I suddenly feel so sleepy, nounours. I’ve never been so comfortable as I am right now. Feeling you inside me like this makes me want to curl up and drift off.”
“You’re safe with me, Lina. At least, I can promise you that in here. You can let your guard down and let me worry about this.”
“No. I don’t want that. I don’t want you to worry about it at all, and definitely not while I sleep and leave you to deal with it.”
“Thinking of different solutions is what will relax me. That and holding you. If staying like this lets you sleep, then I’ll feel better.”
She leans back far enough to see my face. “I could sleep for a week if we stay like this. I don’t want solving this shit to be what relaxes you. I don’t want there to be shit to solve.”
“But there is, and we knew there would be. Please let me take care of you.”
I need that more than anything. My possessiveness and protectiveness are in overdrive. I need to shield her, even if that only means having my arms around her. I need to know I can take care of her if this is going to work. It’s not that I want her needy and dependent on me—though it would be kinda nice because I’m already feeling that way about her—it’s that I need her to trust me. I want her to trust me.
She returns her head to my shoulder, and I start to stroke her back again. She sighs, and I feel the tension ease from her.
“Teddy bear—I like that as much in English as I do in French—if you can sleep too, will you let yourself? We’re safe in here, aren’t we?”
“Yes, little one. I know you saw my gun with my pants. I haven’t tried to hide it. Would you feel better if I had it within reach? I don’t believe I need it.”
“I don’t want you to need to, but I know you probably carry it most places you go. That was before you met me. I’m certain you have a knife, too. There’s inherent danger with you being in a confined space on the fifteenth floor. This adds to it. I don’t think Justin would break in, but someone else might. I’m not a pessimist, but we’re both naked and in an intimate position. It makes us more vulnerable if someone does. I have one in my purse, Sean. There was no way I was coming to New York to spy on your family without one.”
“You believed we’d shoot you?”
“I believe if you’d found me in the wrong place at the wrong time and couldn’t tell I was a woman, someone in your family would shoot first and ask questions second. I met with the head of Tokyo’s most powerful syndicate. If not him or someone with him, then me meeting with him might piss off someone else. A spy isn’t welcome in any syndicate unless they’re on that syndicate’s payroll. I want to be protected in case I run into anyone else who’s pissed my brother sent me.”
I kiss her forehead. Everything she said is true. No one in my family would shoot an unarmed woman. We want to believe we’re returning to the old homeostasis where my family doesn’t target and manipulate women and get them stuck in syndicate business. But my family shattered that golden rule, and I can’t guarantee the other syndicates would play nice if they found her. I definitely don’t think Nishida would feel honor bound to leave her alone if he thought she were a threat.
An armed woman willing to kill us always nullified that golden rule because all of the Four Families—mine, the Kutsenkos, Mancinellis, and Diazes—have faced female mercenaries. They’re fair game when they’re paid to off us. An enemy combatant is an enemy combatant. But Lina should be untouchable. Maybe she is as a mob boss’s granddaughter, another boss’s sister, and now a general’s girlfriend. Any of those could be enough to protect her; any of those could be enough to make her a target.
“Cailín, I’m glad you have a means to protect yourself. I hate you have to know how. This just makes me want to hold you even more while you sleep.”
“I want you to hold me. I’m so comfy, I just need to close my eyes. I’ll be asleep fast.”
I kiss her forehead again before I rest my cheek on the top of her head. I continue to run my hand up and down her back while my other hand has a firm hold on her arse. She twitches twice but doesn’t stir. Then I feel her breathing slow, and her body goes completely lax.
I reach for my phone that I tossed aside before we had sex. I never ordered the condoms. I guess that’s unnecessary now.
Me
I need to go to Boston. Can you come with me? I have to kill Ewan.
The response is immediate.
Shane
Do you need it to look like me?
The only way anyone outside our family can tell us apart is by a freckle on my neck. If we’re wearing turtlenecks on missions or starched collars with a bow tie, it’s impossible to see it. We know our mannerisms are just as identical as our appearance. We run our hands through our hair the same way. We sit with our leg crossed over our knee the same way to a millimeter—we checked as kids. We have the same stride naturally. We wear our shoes out the same way. We know because we’ve swapped enough times, and they always feel the same as our own. We are absolute mirrors of each other except for the freckles on our face, but we both have enough that people can’t use that to tell us apart. It’s the one on the left side of my throat, just a half inch from my Adam’s apple that distinguishes me.
Me
I might. I don’t want it to come to that. It could be a disaster if it does. But it might be unavoidable.
Shane
Why? Who is she?
Me
His sister. She’s mine.
He sends me the eye roll emoji. It bounces on my screen before just sitting there, looking at me.
I haven’t told him her name, and the others suspect I met someone who’s distracted me. But he just knows. He hasn’t pressed me to tell him anything because I don’t have to. He guessed, and it was futile to deny it to Shane. Anyone else I can skirt the issue. If I’ve accepted I want to be with Lina, then we both know thinking otherwise is pointless and would only hurt the other.
Shane
You don’t want it to come to that but could it if he threatens her in any way?
Me
It could if he tells Tremblay.
Shane
Tremblay?
Me
She’s his granddaughter.
Shane
WTF you’ve always been go big or go home. This is likely to get you a big bullet between your eyes. Mine if he thinks I’m you!
Me
Don’t catastrophize until there’s a reason to.
That’ll chap his arse. They say I’m the most patient in the family. It’s really that I’m the most stubborn. I can wait out most people, so it means I don’t lose my shit easily. It also meant that when I was a kid, I would simply sit down if I didn’t want to do something or stand until the other person walked away. Shane isn’t a hot head, but he doesn’t have the patience I do. He prefers to just deal with things and get them out of the way. Between the two of us, he might be the first one in, but I’m last one out. Nobody gets around us.
Shane
I’d like to live to see you standing at the altar. I won’t if he kills us. What’s her name anyway?
Me
Nicolina. Nikki
Shane
But what do you call her?
Dillan calls his wife Greta, but everyone else calls her Mair, which is short for her traditional Gaelic name. Finn calls his wife Thea while everyone else shortens Althea to Ally. I guess I like tradition.
Me
Lina
Shane
When’s the wedding?
Me
Feck off
Shane
So next week. Good thing I took my tux to the dry cleaners right after Finn’s wedding. Can I come to the cake tasting?
I send him the middle finger emoji. He’s not wrong per se… Lina and I should survive at least a second date before we jump into ring shopping. She might be from two mob families and already embroiled in this life, but she isn’t embroiled in mine. Yet. I haven’t allowed any woman to get as close as I have Lina. She’s seen emotions I’ve either never had before or never been willing to share. If I didn’t think we have a genuine future together, I wouldn’t have gotten into a text conversation that’s been going on for nearly a month. We definitely wouldn’t be here with her sitting on my dick. I’m rocking my hips just enough to stay hard, but it won’t last much longer.
Me
If the others ask don’t lie but don’t volunteer it either. I don’t want secrets among us but it’s still early. We need to see if we’re as compatible as I think we are and we have to navigate our families.
Shane
You know ours will accept her. No one picks their relatives. If we did we wouldn’t be O’Rourkes that’s for fecking sure.
Me
I know. But we have shite to resolve with Ewan that won’t be in his favor. We have business to do with Jean-Peter. She’s trapped in the middle figuratively. I don’t want her there literally when this turns violent.
Neither of us will say anything more explicit than that. We all text one another, but it isn’t through the built-in app. It’s not one anyone can get in an app store. I have a software designer connection. What Finn or I can’t do, she can. Her dad’s my dad’s best friend, besides my uncles. They’ve known each other since preschool. Apparently, my dad liked to eat dirt.
Shane
When should we expect Ewan?
Me
Soon. Not in person. At least not yet. But a bodyguard Lina didn’t agree to saw us together. He came banging on her hotel door wanting to talk to her. She refused to even open the door. She called out to him from the bedroom and texted him. He said her brother already knows.
Shane
Are they close?
Me
I don’t think so. At least not by the Four Families’ standard.
One of the Mancinelli wives coined the term, and it’s gotten around. Probably at one of the twenty million weddings we’ve been to in the past four years. Fourteen to be exact.
Shane
Posturing?
Me
Maybe. Probably. I think he must care for real b/c she hasn’t told me otherwise. But I doubt they’re hanging out and watching movies together on Fri nights.
Shane
Maybe not. I need to get a life now that you’ll be watching movies with your fiancée. But he’ll use it as the perfect excuse to make him look like his balls dropped. We might have let him take credit for fixing Rowan’s fuck-up. But he’s not his dad. He might want others to think he has brass balls, but he’s got little more than a micro penis. That means a Napoleon complex. He’ll want us to fear him.
Me
Laughable at best
Shane
Doesn’t mean he won’t try.
Me
And he’ll sit back down in his highchair where he belongs. He’s not even sitting at the kiddie table yet.
Ewan’s been heading up shite for his father for years, but he’s new to being the absolute leader. Rowan assumed he’d be around forever. What he couldn’t do himself, he had his brother, Riley, do. He hadn’t trained Ewan well enough. He’s smarter than most of the lesser syndicate leaders, but he doesn’t have the experience. He doesn’t know all the unwritten rules.
Dillan was groomed for it. So were Maksim, Salvatore, and Enrique. Everyone in the Four Families was conditioned to step into the roles they have now. We all rose through the ranks from messenger boys to foot soldiers to enforcers to now generals. The lesser syndicates, like the Albanians, Polish, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Hondurans, aren’t as rigid. Too much in fighting means they’re more haphazard. Ewan’s somewhere between us and them. He knows shite, but he doesn’t know enough to know he doesn’t know shite. Basically, he’s still on training wheels.
I glance down at Lina. Why the fuck am I coming up with all these children’s metaphors? I never think about kids. At least, not past the most general sense or in passing about the other syndicate couples. Maksim and Laura have twins. Bogdan and Christina have a son and another on the way. Niko and Anastasia have a little girl just like Luca and Olivia. I think Sinead and Gabriele are expecting, and I suspect so are Maria and Matteo. The way my brother and cousin are, they better hope their wives’ birth control is perfect, or they better plan to decorate nurseries.
Shane
What do you need me to do immediately?
Me
Let Dillan know we’re going to Boston. We leave in the morning. Find out where Ewan’s going to be. If he’s working from home I want him away from there. I don’t want any of this shite near Lina when she gets back.
Shane
When does she go?
Me
Tomorrow. I’ll offer to fly her up with us. I don’t know if she’ll say yes. Line up drivers. I’ll talk to Lina and see what she knows.
Shane
You’re gonna tell her you’re going to Boston to probably kill her brother?
Me
Not in so many words. She wanted to tell me what’s going on. She was close to doing it but her conscience got the better of her. She doesn’t want to betray her family. I sense it’s more about her integrity than protecting Ewan.
Shane
Why was she down here?
Me
He sent her on an errand.
An errand. That usually means spying on someone or extorting someone. I’m certain Shane can guess which.
Shane
God save us from nosey women
He sends the sideways laughing emoji, but there’s truth in that. It’s not so much nosey as intelligent and resourceful.
Me
Be sure to tell Mair and Ally that.
Shane
Thankyounothankyou I’ll get everything organized. Are you staying with her tonight or going back to your place? Should we all meet?
Me
We should but I don’t think I can. I don’t want to leave her alone because I don’t trust her bodyguard not to drag her out of here if she’s alone. I don’t trust Ewan not to fly down and freak out at her. But bringing her with me is a level we’re not at.
Shane
Yet
Me
Probably
Shane
Fine keep me posted
Me
Same
I know my brother will make all the arrangements for us to travel tomorrow. He’ll come with me, and so will a few of our guys. I’d like to slide in and out of Boston with no fuss. Ideally, I’d observe Ewan for a day or two and get a read on his reaction. It could be nothing, and I’d go home. The likelihood of things playing out that way is pretty much none. Even flying commercial wouldn’t hide us for long, so I’d rather have the convenience of our jet, so we can leave in a hurry. And most importantly, I could bring Lina.
The confrontation is pretty much inevitable. I want Lina far from it. But I don’t trust Ewan not to put her in the middle. God save me from meddling brothers because I don’t know what I’ll do if Lina sees the man I really am.