CHAPTER EIGHT
Balor
S everal blaring alarms rouse me from sleep. Since the flight from Sydney, my sleeping has been so fucked up again and I feel like a truck hit me in the middle of the night. I’ve needed two alarm clocks and both phones, regular and burner, to wake my ass up every morning.
I’m tempted to just send them all against a wall to shut the hell up, but then I realize it’s Thursday.
Fuck.
Moments later, my regular cell phone rings, and I grouse at the caller.
“Aye, Trace,” I answer. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
Although after I shower, masturbate, and figure out what to wear, it will be closer to forty minutes.
But Trace works for me and doesn’t give a shit how late we are.
Forty minutes later on the dot, Trace Quinlan arrives at my townhouse in Downtown Astoria to drive me in my new Rivian, a state-of-the-art and expensive-as-fuck electric SUV, to the weekly meeting with my brothers.
Now that I’m awake, I’m teeming with energy over the devious plan I nailed, but I have to keep it to myself right now. Kieran, my oldest brother and the head of our family, will have me committed.
I hired Corvin Snow—aka Iceman—the cyber-terrorist responsible for the biggest global hack in decades, the one that shut the world down a few days before Christmas.
When our credit cards stopped working and we briefly lost access to funds right before Christmas, I mentioned Iceman in a fit of fury. I don’t think my brothers will connect the name Snow to Iceman. They’ll just think Snow’s another Russian hacker I found behind the old Iron Curtain .
As the Chief Technology Officer for World Trade Bank, Snow showed up to the cyber conference in Sydney last week. The exclusive event brought the best tech talent from all over the globe to deal with his massive ransomware outage.
He waltzed around like a rockstar. All while hiding his true identity.
I’m keeping Snow a secret from my brothers until I find a way to hack his private databases and grab the ransomware virus code for myself.
That’s too sweet of a weapon to pass up. Not that I would use it to hurt innocent people the way Snow did. But something that powerful will come in handy one day, considering I work for the mob.
I admire Snow’s talent and his balls. Iceman is good, but I’m better. I just don’t have a death wish to blow up the world.
I could not believe Corvin Snow’s gall to walk so casually among people he fucked over. My team unmasked him before I got to Australia. I never would have gone to that conference, but I knew Snow released the ransomware and that he’d be there.
Other companies at the conference went on a recruiting frenzy that week given how they were hit. But I walked away with the brass ring. Corvin Snow is now the Lead Project Developer for O’Rourke Technologies, a startup LLC my brother Eoghan, our consigliere, created for my new business venture.
Weapons.
“Damn, it,” I grumble, remembering I have to get one of Eoghan’s HR paralegals to send Snow all the paperwork he needs to fill out in order to work for us.
No one tried to recruit me at the conference. I’m locked into this life with my brothers and no amount of money, perks, or vacation time, of which I get very little, will lure me away.
I’m pretty sure Lachlan, our psycho enforcer, would kill me if I tried to work for someone else. Even if I am his brother.
Divona, my childhood home, comes into view, and for the first time in years, I get a prickly feeling as a raw memory of my da hits me out of nowhere. Where the hell did that come from?
It’s like my walls have crumpled, but why?
The iron gates open when the guards see Trace and we climb the long driveway with pink trees and wavy beds of pink and white Chrysanthemums on both sides.
The Rivian stops and I hop out, confidently pushing the kitchen door open even though I don’t live here anymore. Kieran used to take meetings out of his high-rise office, but after marrying Isabella, the Italian princess who gave him two sons, he does our weekly family meetings from Da’s old office.
I greet Patricia, Kieran’s house manager, and sit my ass in his office where I wait another fifteen minutes alone. I have sleeping problems, and yet I’m the first one here.
“Fucking autocorrect keeps changing pussy to puppy.” Lachlan wanders into the office, typing on his phone and bumping into shit.
Lach is six-six, and I’d bet on a bull in a china shop to make less of a mess than he is right now.
“What are you texting?” I ask him, kicking chairs out of his way.
Shaking his head, he shows me his phone.
I want to kick your puppy.
“Whose pussy do you want to kick?” I ask, afraid of the answer.
“What?” He snaps up, then looks back at his phone, grumbling. Steam coming out of his ears, really. “I meant kiss. ”
“Please tell me that’s Katya.” I rub my temples, but I really don’t care to think about any of my brothers’ poor wives getting railed.
“Who the fuck else’s puppy would I want to kick?” he laughs, typing into his phone again.
His wife Katya is pregnant, and Lach is the worst expectant father I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen some doozies since Kieran and Riordan both have wee-ones now. They turned feral protecting their wives the further they were into their pregnancies.
Kieran and Riordan finally stroll into the office, tension humming from them.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“It’s official. Griffin, Connor, and Shane are leaving us,” Riordan announces, his tone tight. “We just got off the phone with Ewan.”
It’s the end of an era. For the first time in almost fifteen years, a Quinlan won’t be working for an O’Rourke. Their oldest brother, Ewan, was one of our da’s hitmen back in the day.
I should feign surprise, but they’d kick my ass if I didn’t know that the Quinlans will soon be working for the Greek mafia in Manhattan.
“Shane will be missed,” I say. “He helped us out of several jams the last couple of months.”
“Their cousins, Trace and Rhys will be working for them, too,” Kieran adds with a hint of sadness in his voice.
Trace Quinlan has been my bodyguard/driver for the last few months, but I’ve sent him to work a few events for my sister Shea in East Hampton. I can find another driver, and although Trace came in handy a couple of weeks ago, I don’t want a full-time bodyguard anymore.
My brothers fall into a conversation about the Quinlans, and our history with them, while I tune them out and think of that escort I fucked in Los Angeles. The leggy redhead I had to taste won’t leave my thoughts.
What are the odds that a high-priced escort would be in the first-class airline seat next to mine?
I used to be ashamed of only using sex workers. But I have no interest in relationships and work ungodly hours. Even if I casually dated, someone would end up hurt when they wanted more and I came up empty.
My work schedule leads me to mull over one of Corvin’s hiring conditions. A last-minute request. One that didn’t sit well with me, but having Snow under my watchful eye had me saying yes.
Hire his daughter as my assistant.
I never had an assistant in the traditional sense. That’s two hiring packages I have to send Eoghan, who manages everyone on our payroll. Legit and not so legit. Snow sits on a razor’s edge in between. The compensation package I threw at him made his jaw drop. He’s got a lot of secrets and sins.
And a wicked gambling addiction.
I hope his bank statements don’t look too fucked up because Eoghan will run a background check on him. Plus, World Trade Bank sponsored his work visa. He’s not a U.S. citizen and still maintains a damn Russian citizenship.
I kick Eoghan’s chair to get his attention. I need to speak to him privately after this. But he’s another love-sick eejit staring at his phone.
All my brothers have fallen like bricks for women in the last two years.
“I filed those drone patents,” I say to a room full of men who are glued to their phones. “I plan to blow up the White House on Friday.”
Fucking nothing.
“I also spent twenty-thousand dollars on a five-thousand-dollar hooker.” Why twenty-grand? It was the most I could get as a cash advance at the hotel and she deserved it.
I had these crazy thoughts about asking to see her again. Maybe even offer her one of those thirty-day contracts to live in my house and suck my dick the minute I step in the door. Something I’ve never done.
I never sleep with the same woman twice. Although, many try to get into my bed a second time.
That’s why I called Trace, who was in Las Vegas with his brother, Rhys, guarding Eoghan and Jillian. I needed him and the goddamn O’Rourke jet to get me the hell out of Los Angeles before I did something stupid.
I couldn’t sit on a plane with that woman for another five hours to New York. She was too tempting.
I didn’t even trust myself to pay her. I made Trace do it. A dick move, but she’s an escort. She didn’t care as long as she got her money.
Only, something felt really off with that woman. Maybe it was the long flight and changing time zones. She seemed so fucking into me and my dick, it confused the hell out of me.
Tempting my fate, I left a note with my burner phone number on the last hundred-dollar bill in the envelope of cash.
Christ, that butterfly was the hottest sex I’ve ever had. Deep down, I paid her all that extra money so she wouldn’t have to immediately sleep with someone else.
The idea of anyone else’s face in that sweet pussy clenches my jaw so tight, it could break. My blood pressure roars in my ears and the compulsion to commit murder floods my veins thinking of someone else touching her.
The murderous visuals in my head of some other John , dead on a hotel floor, his dick out, are way too real for comfort .
I never even got her name. By choice. I could have hacked into the airline’s manifest, but the mystery is that itch I’m dying to scratch.
I’ve used only my hand and the memory of her to satisfy me.
Fuck me, I don’t know why.
I glance around the room and my spine stiffens. Is falling in love contagious?
No, thank you.
Especially not with an escort. Not when my brothers moon over their pure wives and how it drove them fucking nuts seeing virginal blood on their cocks. I’m pretty sure it’s what made them feral.
Not me. I prefer to be in control of myself.
A text message pulls me out of my thoughts.
Corvin: Are we still meeting for dinner this Saturday, Mr. O’Rourke?
Me: Aye, I made reservations. I’ll drop you a pin.
Getting a table anywhere on a Saturday night requires hacking skills these days, but I made a call and got a table at my favorite Italian restaurant.
Corvin: Excellent. I asked my daughter to join us for dinner so you can meet her in a casual setting.
Fuck, the assistant I don’t want.
I’ll do anything to trap Corvin Snow in my web. The ransomware code he developed allows someone to hack into any server with no trace. Snow is a walking financial weapon of mass destruction.
Despite making three million a year, Snow confessed over a few too many whiskeys in a Sydney bar that WTB had terminated his contract. The bad blood with such a prestigious bank wrecked him. There he was, drunk and threatening to drain his former employer of a cool billion before fleeing to Bora Bora.
I talked him off the ledge and offered him a job for five million. No way would I let him disappear into the shadows.
I even used his daughter as a selling point. And a guilt trip.
How would she feel if you disappeared?
He kept details about her close to his chest. Just that her mother died when she was young. He stroked a silvery-white beard, telling me how he raised his daughter himself. And that she’d dropped by the conference a few times.
For all my spying on Snow, I hadn’t seen a young woman with him. I must have kept missing her.
Me: Look forward to meeting your daughter.
Not really...