Chapter 2 Aiden
TWO
AIDEN
The moment the woman bolted, I knew she’d be trouble. Yet, who could blame her after what she’d witnessed?
My brothers and I returned to the club where we now crowded around the mayor’s corpse, the stench of bodily fluids clinging to the air.
“I’m guessing you didn’t find the girl,” my uncle hissed, visibly irritated as he paced the hallway.
“No.”
“She works here,” he gritted. “Check the employee records, find her, and then kill her.”
My jaw clenched. “So quick to add her to the death toll, Uncle?”
“She’s a witness.” He flung an arm wide. “Do you know what the state’s attorney would offer her to get to us?”
“Sure, because killing her won’t raise any flags.” Kyran snickered while Tyran popped a bubble with his chewing gum, punctuating our brother’s statement.
“Or Aiden can just marry the girl,” Kyran added. “Spousal privilege and all that.”
I scoffed.
“Why don’t you marry her?” My brothers always had the worst ideas. “The girl looked younger than Margaret.”
“Oh, she’s definitely younger than baby sis,” Tyran chimed in. “Whoever hired her should be fired, because there’s no way that girl is even of age.”
“What?” Uncle screeched. “She’s not even twenty-one?”
“Don’t stress, Uncle Jack,” Kyran drawled. “Aiden’s going to marry her and it’ll all be over. You don’t have to testify against your husband. Look it up.”
I shook my head. “You two idiots want me in lockup? You just said she’s underage.”
“She’s not,” Tyran deadpanned. “At least not on paper. That will be your defense. Not our fault she falsified a legal document.”
I couldn’t believe we were even having this conversation. We didn’t even know if she was a real threat. There had to be another, more realistic option.
“Fuck,” I muttered, then turned toward Kyran. “You said the club was empty. Since you fucked up, you marry her.”
“Staff weren’t scheduled to arrive for another hour,” he bit out. “I’m too young to be tied down. You’re fucking thirty-one—high time to get hitched, if you ask me.”
“Nobody asked,” I pointed out. “And I am way too old for her. You just said she’s underage.”
“I don’t give a shit what happens to the girl,” Uncle roared. “Someone will marry her, or we kill her. Either way, fucking handle it.”
“Not to worry,” Tyran said calmly. “She’ll have a ring on her finger by tomorrow morning.”
Kyran coughed, spitting out my name, and I shot him a glare.
“I want an extensive background check and a decision on who’s to marry her by tomorrow morning. Or I expect a notice that she’s been taken care of,” Uncle spat, then stormed off, muttering to himself about heart attacks.
The moment he disappeared from view, I got into my brothers’ faces.
“Of all the thoughtless, idiotic suggestions, you come up with this one?” I roared, tempted to smash their faces into the wall.
“Maybe she doesn’t know what she saw,” Kyran suggested, although judging by his expression, he didn’t believe his own words.
My gaze locked on the discarded heels.
“Oh, she knew,” I hissed.
“Come on, bro, you don’t have to marry her,” Tyran offered, doing his best to pacify me. “Just kill her.”
I was already walking, brushing past the heels she’d ditched.
“She’s probably scared shitless,” Kyran added, following me. “She won’t talk.”
“You sure about that?” I turned to face him with narrowed eyes. “You think she’s gonna wake up tomorrow and forget she saw us torturing a politician? One who’s likely going to be alerted as missing in the coming days?”
Kyran stayed quiet.
Tyran cracked his neck, then crossed his arms. “If she talks, we deal with it.”
But we all knew it’d be too late then. We had to move now.
“Get me her name and address,” I said in a calm voice, ignoring my brother’s suggestion. “I’ll call my contact and get everything I can on her. And you, Kyran, clean up this fucking mess. It’s the least you can do.”
“Come the fuck on,” Kyran hissed. “We have men for that. Plus, blood makes me—”
I shot him a glare hoping it’d shut him up, but no such luck.
“—queasy.”
“You want me to bring her in?” Tyran asked.
“No,” I said. “I just want her name and address. I’ll handle this. You two have done enough.”
After the clusterfuck at the club, I came straight home and showered.
My phone buzzed angrily the moment I stepped out of the hot spray, and I wrapped a towel around my waist, then answered it.
“Uncle, it’s not tomorrow morning yet,” was my greeting.
“Don’t fucking kill her,” he retorted, sounding out of breath. “She’s Duncan Lyons’s daughter.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, regretting every decision I’d made in my life that had brought me here. I should have stuck to my own schedule and let my uncle and his goons handle the mayor.
“The witness,” he spluttered when I remained quiet. “You have to marry her.”
“And why’s that?” I asked, stepping into my walk-in closet where rows of suits waited for me on one side, my preferred attire—jeans and T-shirts—on the other.
I plucked out a navy-blue suit and started to get dressed.
“Were you not listening?” he hissed, and I could picture him pacing in his office, pushing his hand through his thinning hair over and over again. “Your contact sent us both the background check. Did you not read the email? It’s fate, Aiden. She’s our ticket to making a deal with Lyons.”
“I didn’t read it yet, but I did hear you.” I slipped on my slacks one-handed and looped my belt around my waist. “Don’t you think it will piss him off if he learns of this? Why not leverage the fact that the girl was in our club, possibly spying for him, and—”
“No!” he shouted. “That won’t do. He’s known for his confrontation.
” Uncle wasn’t wrong. Duncan wasn’t the reasonable sort and ruled his criminal empire by instilling fear into men and women around him.
Rumor had it that he tortured his mistresses because he couldn’t find his wife and make her pay for her transgressions. Whatever those were in his mind.
“That bastard only respects marriage alliances,” Uncle continued. “It was the only reason he didn’t kill his sister’s man a decade ago. The two married before Duncan had a chance to end the fucker.”
I put my uncle on speakerphone and shrugged on my shirt, buttoning it up as he continued his rant.
He gave me the rundown on Lyons, telling me about how, while Duncan was serving time, his sister had had a fling with her bodyguard.
When he was released, he lost his shit, claiming the bodyguard didn’t bring anything to the table: no territory, no drug deals, no alliances.
But his sister was just as stubborn and married the poor schmuck behind his back. The rest was history.
I made a noncommittal sound and adjusted my cufflinks as I headed into my office. I powered on my laptop and settled at my desk, the Manhattan skyline glimmering through the wall of windows, then pulled up the email.
“Why is she going by ‘Croft’?” I questioned, noting the key points in the file, although it seemed scarce. “Her birth certificate doesn’t list Duncan as the father. What am I missing here?”
“We don’t have fucking time to care,” he roared. “She’s his only daughter and you’ll marry her. Tonight! I’ve already called Father Hubbart, and the twins are on their way to fetch him.”
And that was how my night descended from a clusterfuck to a full-blown catastrophe.