Craving Sin (Sinful Things #1)

Prologue

Rian

Nine Years Ago

“I can’t do this without you.” I take Moira’s hand and kiss it. She’s lying in the hospital bed we have set up at the house, the machine that delivers her pain meds making a soft sound beside her.

How am I ever supposed to survive without my wife? The love of my life. The person who is somehow my rock, my strength, and my heart.

I have loved her since I was sixteen years old—for twenty-three years—and now I’m supposed to live without her?

“Yes, you can,” she says, her voice soft and rough. She smiles, and even now, with how sick she looks, with the weight loss and the way cancer has ravaged her body, staring at her still makes my pulse speed up. She is still the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.

I look down, gaze meeting our joined hands because I can’t handle meeting her eyes. She always had more faith in me than I deserved, always saw more in me than what is really here.

If you searched the word good in the dictionary, you’d see a photo of Moira there.

She is the definition of love, of caring about others.

I don’t know what she’s ever seen in me, but I’ve spent every moment since I met her trying to be worthy of her—despite all the terrible things I do—despite the drugs, guns, and murder.

And somehow, she has loved me regardless.

She has given me a son, who is more his mother than he is me, and I’ll never deserve him either.

How do I look her in the eyes when I know I’m going to ruin him? That, without her, I’m afraid of what I’ll turn into, afraid that I’ll kill the parts of him that are her.

“Rian,” Moira says, but I don’t reply. “Rian,” she says again. “Look at me.”

I do because I could never deny her anything. To some—like my brother, Sloan—my devotion to her makes me weak, but I never looked at it that way. Now though, I wonder if they were right, because I don’t know who I am without her.

“Do you remember the first day we met?” she asks.

“Of course.” We were in high school. She’d just moved to Boston, and the second I saw her, my heart had stuttered. I’d felt a tingling at my nape, and I’d known she was the one for me.

“You walked right up to me that first day of school and told me you were going to marry me.”

I smile at the memory. “And you hated me. You thought I was cocky…an asshole.” And she hadn’t been wrong.

“I did,” she says. “But I’ll tell you a secret…I thought you were cocky and an asshole, but I didn’t hate you—no matter how hard I pretended to, because I knew that first day too. One look and I knew, Rian, and it wasn’t because you were the most handsome man I’d ever seen.”

“But I was.” I wink, and she chuckles before coughing, the sound nearly ripping out my heart.

“You were…you still are, but I knew because I felt you right here.” She places her other hand over her heart. “Because I sensed how big your heart is for those you love, and I wanted to be that person for you so badly.”

My eyes flood with wetness, my vision blurring, and I quickly swipe at the tears, not wanting anything to keep me from seeing her—not even for one second. “You were. You always have been. You always will be. The only person I’ll ever love.”

The person who never deserved her. I can’t help thinking about that now, seeing her in this bed and knowing she’s dying…all the times I’ve hurt her come back to me, all of the things she’s given up in her life because she loves me, and now she will die without a second chance.

“No.” She shakes her head. “I was. I always have been. And yes, you’ll always love me, but I won’t be the only one for you.

I refuse to believe that. You have too much love to give.

I want more for you. I want more for Cillian.

How will he learn to be happy, learn that it’s okay to love big in this dangerous world of ours if he doesn’t learn from you? ”

I shake my head, unable to even fathom what she’s saying, how she thinks I could ever give myself to someone after having her. “He’ll learn because he’ll know his father loved his mother completely, eternally.”

“I want you to be happy.”

I won’t ruin her last days by telling her there is no happiness without her. “I know.”

“Can you make me a promise?” she asks, and I nod, even though I know that if she asks me to be open to falling in love with someone else, it will be the first promise between us I’ve ever broken.

“Trust yourself.”

“I do.”

“In business, yes. In here, yes.” She points to her head.

“But not where it really counts…in your heart. You’re a good father, Rian.

The best. You’re the best uncle, friend, family member, even to people who don’t deserve it.

” We both know she’s talking about Sloan.

“You’re loyal and kind, despite what you think.

Don’t lose that. Don’t pull away when I’m gone.

Don’t get lost in the pain. I can’t…I can’t go peacefully if I think that will happen. ”

“It won’t,” I lie, before kissing her hand again. “I promise.”

And just like I knew I would, when Moira dies, I break that promise to her. I’m no longer the same Rian O’Shea without her.

I’m not the man she knew, or the father Cillian deserves, and no matter how much I love my son, I don’t know how to be worthy of him, without her.

*

Last Thanksgiving

I’m meeting my son’s boyfriend. When I’d called, letting my nephew, Tiernan, know I wanted them home for the holiday that really shouldn’t be a holiday, I hadn’t expected Cillian to come.

I’d wanted him to, of course. Not being close to him since Moira’s death had never been because I don’t love Cillian.

It’s because I love him too much, and loving hurts. And because I always knew it would only be a matter of time before I let him down—before he saw I’m not nearly the man everyone thought I was when I had his mother.

My good came from her.

My strength, too.

Cillian was better off without me.

I’d been selfish with Moira, and I hadn’t wanted to be selfish with Cillian, too, but in the end, all I did was hurt him because I hadn’t been there for him. I’d abandoned him when he needed me.

It’s impossible to miss the hate in my son’s eyes when they arrive. His boyfriend—Ollie—isn’t what I expected. He’s blond and wears glasses, looks like the kind of boy who would spend his free time in the library, not hanging around mobsters…but then, Moira had been the same, hadn’t she?

Ollie’s got a backbone, that much is clear from the second I meet him.

He doesn’t take anyone’s shit, and as my house fills with more and more Irish mobsters, he holds his own, proudly at my son’s side and standing up for himself, as my closest friend, Conan, or Finan, Flynn, or any other members of my organization try to test him.

It’s important that he be made of tough stuff if he and Cillian have a chance at making it work.

And as I spend the day watching them together, seeing the way my son looks at him, the way he always makes sure Ollie is comfortable, the way he wraps his arms around Ollie, keeping him close and guaranteeing everyone in the room knows he’s Cillian’s and that he’ll always protect him, I find that I actually have to try and force myself not to smile.

Moira would have loved to see him in love.

She would have been proud of the man he is.

I’m proud of the man he is.

And I want to make sure Cillian knows he has options I never had. That he gets to choose if he wants to protect Ollie in ways I couldn’t with Moira.

Eventually, the party settles down, and my family members—both blood and found—begin to leave.

Fia, my brother’s wife before he died, kisses me goodbye. “He’s great,” she says softly.

I only nod.

“Moira would have loved him. He’s a good fit for Cillian.”

“Good,” is all I say. I’ve never been great at showing my emotions to anyone other than Moira and Cillian, before her death.

I’m not cruel in the same ways my brother was, but it’s safer in this life if no one knows what can hurt you.

Especially now that I’m the leader of the O’Shea family—something that happened with the death of my brother.

My life is always in danger. People will always try to hurt me to take control of the hold we have over Massachusetts.

“I love you, Rian,” she says, then squeezes my hand and slips away.

I’m thankful Cillian and Ollie don’t leave with my niece, Aislin, Tiernan, and his partner, Dean. Cillian often chooses to stay at Fia’s house when they’re visiting Boston from Ashford, where they go to college.

He also doesn’t linger around waiting to talk to me, instead going upstairs with Ollie and leaving me downstairs alone.

I don’t bother with the mess and make my way into my office, the house feeling emptier than it usually does, even though Cillian is right upstairs.

I avoid my room because I know I won’t be able to sleep.

I try to distract myself by going over business transactions—what money is funneled where to be cleaned and how to continue to make everything look like it’s on the up-and-up. Our drug and gun business is lucrative, but I’m a businessman too.

I don’t know how much time passes when I hear the creak of the fourth stair from the bottom and know someone is coming down.

I slip from my office and see Cillian go into the living room. He’s at the bar, pouring himself a drink when I step into the room, leaning against the wall to watch him.

Though his hair is dark like mine, so much of him is like his mother. He has her blue eyes, her nose, the same shape of her face. He loves big like she had, and is fiercely loyal the way she had been too.

Moira had been a caretaker at heart, and Cillian is the same—whether it be the way he would do anything for Tiernan and Aislin, the cousins that are more like siblings to him, or the love he has for Rory.

From the moment I brought the wild redhead to our house, after the death of his mom, Cillian had accepted him—hell, taken responsibility for him—and he loves him in a way I don’t think many people would understand. I know I don’t.