6. Fintan
FINTAN
Closing her door quietly, I lean back against it and close my eyes.
Three fucking years.
That’s how long it’s been since my body reacted without the force of will behind it. Women have tried. Some were paid. Some wanted the Keane name, the access, the danger.
None of them got close.
Elle Langley stands in a freezing flat with unpaid bills stacked on a cheap table, takes off her clothes because she needs money, then orders me to touch myself as if she has any power in the room.
And I obey.
That is the part I don’t like.
I push off the door and head down the narrow stairs, each step creaking under my weight. The building is damp, cold, neglected. A lock on the main entrance hangs loose. Anyone could walk in.
That pisses me off.
I step out onto the street and scan both directions before I move toward the Range Rover. Nothing obvious. I don’t trust it. Snowden is a problem, and we all know it.
I get into the driver’s seat and shut the door. For a minute, I don’t start the engine. I sit with my hands on the wheel and stare at the building.
Her window is on the first floor. Curtains closed. Thin glass. Bad frame. No security. No fucking sense.
She lives like prey and doesn’t even know the worst predators in the city have noticed her. I start the engine and ignore the phone when it rings. Tiernan can wait. I don’t want to talk to anyone right now. I need to process what the fuck just happened up there.
Elle gave me a hard-on for the first time in three years.
That should be a good thing. It isn’t. It’s a complication I don’t need, on top of a woman I can’t stop thinking about, on top of a brother who has already decided she belongs to him.
Lorcan doesn’t share.
Tiernan does, sometimes, when it suits him, when the situation calls for it.
I don’t operate on those terms. I don’t share a meal, a fight, or a woman. I never have.
But something tells me this woman will be different.
I keep ignoring the phone as it rings. Nothing can be that urgent. Tiernan just wants the dish on the girl. He won’t get anything out of me. That is our little secret. Mutual masturbation in a freezing, damp flat with a woman I can’t stop thinking about.
I pull away from the kerb and drive without a destination for a few minutes, letting the city move around me. London is grey, cold, and indifferent. I like that about it. It matches my general outlook on everything.
My phone rings again. This time it’s Lorcan. So I answer.
“Well?” he says.
“She’s fine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“You didn’t really ask anything.”
Silence. The kind Lorcan uses to remind you he doesn’t enjoy being denied information. I’ve been immune to it since I was twelve years old. “Fintan.”
“She’s broke and scared and living in a building with a broken lock on the front door,” I say. “She hasn’t told anyone what she saw. She won’t. She doesn’t even know what it was.”
“A highly fucking illegal set-up,” he growls.
“You don’t need to preach it to me.”
I stop at a red light and watch a woman push a pram through the rain. “She wants to forget it happened. She isn’t a problem.”
“She’s already a problem,” Lorcan says.
Yes, she fucking is. “Only because you had to play with her.”
“It was that or kill her.”
“She’s not a threat.”
“She’s a loose end with a pretty face and no one to notice if she disappears,” Lorcan says.
“You want to own her.”
“Tell me you don’t,” he responds. “Tell me you went there and you feel nothing.”
The light turns green. I pull forward and take the next left.
The rain picks up against the windscreen.
I turn the wipers on and think about her face when she told me I didn’t have enough money for her to ride me.
The defiance in it. The terror underneath.
The way her body said something entirely different from her mouth.
“Don’t hurt her,” I say.
The silence that follows is long enough to make me regret saying it.
“And there you have it. She is under all of our skin.”
“And you plan to share her?”
He chuckles. It’s dark and only a bit depraved. “Someone has to keep her warm when I’m busy.”
“Someone that isn’t Alex Snowden,” I say and smile. It will hit a nerve.
He growls. “If that cunt lays a finger on her, he is dead. Tiernan has got someone on him now, anyway.”
“You know he’s only interested in her because of you, right?” I point out the obvious.
“I’m aware. This is something of mine he won’t get.”
“Fine. Whatever. I’m going to Grifford’s. Bye now.” I hang up, which will piss him off, but I don’t give a fuck.
A few minutes later, I pull up outside Grifford’s and get out of the car. Pushing open the door, I nod at the old man behind the counter.
“Fin,” he says. “What can I get ya?”
“I need to fix a lock. Metal box, add-on. It’s hanging off.”
He nods and disappears to get me what I need. I’ll go back and fix Elle’s flat block lock, but I know this isn’t the best solution. I also know that by this time tomorrow, she will be somewhere under Lorcan’s protection.
Grifford returns with screws, a reinforced plate, an electric screwdriver and the kind of old-fashioned advice men give when they don’t know the full danger. “You want a proper locksmith for that, lad.”
“I’ll manage.”
He looks at me over the top of his glasses. “You Keane boys always do.”
I pay in cash and leave before he decides to say anything else. The rain has eased into a fine mist that beads on my jacket as I walk back to the car. My phone sits heavy in my pocket, silent now. That means Tiernan has stopped calling, or he’s driving over to yell at me in person.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
I drive back to Elle’s block with the tools on the passenger seat and the memory of her body affecting mine. That stack of money on her counter will give her enough to breathe, but it’s not enough.
It should matter that she took the money. It should make her easy to classify. Transactional. Practical. Desperate.
Instead, I keep thinking about how she looked at me after. She wasn’t grateful or broken, or even mad or disgusted. She was aroused.
And that right there is something I will not be able to put aside for anything. I park half a street down and sit for a minute.
No one watches the building from a car or stands under the awning of the off-licence pretending to smoke. No one looks twice at the front door that any idiot with half a brain could kick in.
Still, the back of my neck stays tight.
I get out with the bag of tools and cross the road. A woman with a pram gives me a nervous glance and hurries past. The block’s front door swings when I push it. The lock is even worse than I thought. Someone has already forced it at least twice, judging by the damage around the frame.
I set the tools down and get to work.
It takes longer than it should because the frame is rotten in places. I have to make the plate bite into something that will actually hold. Rain drips from the edge of the canopy above me and runs down the back of my neck. I ignore it. The screwdriver whirs, too loud in the quiet entryway.
“What are you doing?”
Elle’s voice doesn’t make me look up. I stayed focused on the task. “Fixing the lock.”
“Jeffery’s boyfriend kicked it in two weeks ago.”
“Didn’t ask.”
“You were wondering.”
“It’s not the first time it’s been damaged.”
“Not the Ritz. Remember?”
“You aren’t safe here.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
“From whom?”
“People.”
“That’s vague.”
“People are arseholes.”
“Yes, some more so than others.”
“Facts.” I drive the last screw in and test the lock. It holds.
Elle stands three steps above me in the stairwell, wearing an oversized jumper, leggings, and a face that says she doesn’t know whether to thank me or kick me.
Probably both.
“Why are you still here?” she asks.
I pack the tools back into the bag. “Because your building is a security failure.”
“My building isn’t your problem.”
“It is now.”
Her eyes narrow. “Don’t say things like that.”
I straighten and turn to face her. The stairwell light flickers above us.
It makes her look tired. Too tired. Dark smudges sit under her blue eyes, and her blonde hair is tied up messily, damp at the ends.
She looks smaller than she did upstairs.
“If you think you’re walking away from me, think again, mo pheaca álainn. ”
She blinks. “What is that? What did you call me?”
I smirk. “That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”
“Oh, real mature with your sexy Irish words. Fuck off, Fintan Keane. I’m not interested in you or your brothers, or anything you have to offer.”
I raise an eyebrow, and she grimaces.
“Anything else you have to offer.” She looks away.
That irritates me because I want her eyes on me. I want the fight in them, even when it’s aimed at my face. “You named the price. I’d have paid double.”
She practically hisses at me and then gets herself under control. “I’m not arguing with you in a stairwell,” she says. “Some of us have neighbours.”
“Do they help you when men break your locks?”
Her jaw clenches. “No.”
“Then I’m not worried about them.”
She descends one step, then stops. She keeps her distance. “You can’t just decide my life is your business.”
“I can.”
“That’s not how normal people work.”
“I’m not normal people.”
“No shit.”
I pick up the tool bag. “Go inside, Elle.”
Her brows pull together. “You don’t get to order me around.”
“You came down here because you heard a noise. You’re barefoot, your door is open, and you’re standing in a stairwell with a man you don’t trust. Go inside.”
She glances down at her feet as if she forgot she had them. Her toes curl against the dirty step. “I thought you were the landlord fixing the lock. I wanted to ask him about the light.” She points up at the flickering bare bulb.
I glance up, and she sighs.
“No,” she says. “You are not some fucking hero that swoops in and saves my flat-block from a spurious landlord.”
“Spurious? Someone went to school.”
Her cheeks heat up as she fires daggers at me with her gaze. “Fuck you, arsehole. Just because I’m not a billionaire doesn’t mean I’m dumb.”
“I never said you were.”
“You implied it with your arsehole comment.”
I’ve hit a nerve, and it intrigues me. “Why are you a stripper, Elle?”
The question comes out of left field, and it startles her. “What?”
Her face closes down.
It happens fast. The embarrassment, the anger, the flash of hurt. Then she shutters it all behind a tight expression that makes her look older than she did a second ago.
“Why do you take your clothes off for men if you hate being looked at?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I’m asking anyway.”
“And I’m not answering. Eight grand doesn’t give you the right to stick your nose into my life.”
I take one step up. She takes one back. She still doesn’t trust the space between us, even after she let me watch her come while she watched me unload onto my hand because of her.
“You don’t act like the women who work rooms because they enjoy the control,” I say. “You act like someone who ended up here and can’t get out.”
Her lips press together. She looks past me, toward the door I just fixed, then back to my face. “Are you done psychoanalysing me from a stairwell?”
“No.”
“Well, I am.” She turns to go back upstairs.
“Elle.”
She stops, but she doesn’t look at me.
“This isn’t over.”
Her shoulders slump, only slightly, but I see it. “Leave me alone,” she says and races back up the stairs, slamming her door closed, loud enough to hear.
“Not over by a long shot, mo pheaca álainn.”