Lovely Corruption (The O’Malleys #5)

Chapter One

Something’s coming.

Charlie Moreaux, formerly Charlotte Finch, tucked a strand of long white-blond hair behind her ear, narrowing her eyes.

This time of night, the party should have been in full swing, everyone a little too drunk, a little too loud.

Instead, people kept to their tables and talked in low voices.

It created a dull roar within the faded wood-paneled walls of the bar, but nothing close to what it would have been on any other weekend night.

She picked her way around the full tables, ignoring the handful of regulars who tried to catch her eye.

Jacques nodded at her. The old man had taken a liking to her from the first time she’d wandered in here, scraping rock bottom and halfway down the road to drinking herself to death.

He was the one who’d pulled her back into the land of the living, who’d inadvertently put her on the path to retribution.

Charlie leaned against the bar. “Weird mood tonight.”

“It’s a full moon.”

No one tracked full moons like ER nurses and bartenders.

Jacques poured two healthy shots of whiskey and set one on the faded wood of the bar in front of her. “You’re as edgy as they are.”

“Yeah, I know. No specific reason.” She downed the whiskey, but the warmth curling through her stomach did nothing to battle her nerves. Intuition or superstition, she couldn’t shake the feeling of fate hurtling down the tracks, pointed directly at her.

Her first clue that something had gone wrong was a hush falling in a wave through the room.

Charlie didn’t spin around, despite the feeling of eyes on her.

Her attention fell to Jacques, as still as a rabbit facing down a wolf.

He spoke low, but the words reached her easily in the new quiet of the bar.

“You know I love you, girl, but you’re gonna have to take this one outside. ”

I was right. Trouble’s come, and it’s here for me.

She turned slowly, still fighting against the instinct to spin, and propped her elbows on the bar as if she hadn’t noticed the change in the room.

Trouble stood in the doorway, his broad shoulders filling the frame.

The neon lights of the bar signs didn’t quite reach his face, though they highlighted his square jaw.

She didn’t have to see his eyes to know he was looking at her.

She could feel it. And the danger was just as intense as it had been a year ago when he’d first come to find her.

Aiden O’Malley.

“I’ll take care of it.” Charlie put enough authority into her voice that Jacques wouldn’t question her. This was her problem, and she wasn’t about to bring the old bartender into it. She shrugged a little, testing the weight of her holster beneath her leather jacket.

She pushed away from the bar, stalking toward Aiden.

In her six-inch heels, she was almost his height, but even the fancy suit didn’t hide the fact that he was cut.

It wasn’t just the size of his shoulders.

It was in the way his thigh muscles pressed against his slacks when he shifted.

Utterly cold and contained, he watched her watch him.

Standing across from him made her feel…vulnerable. She didn’t like that. She didn’t like that shit one bit. “Outside,” she snapped.

He took a step back and then another, allowing her to lead him outside and down the street.

Aiden kept his hands at his sides and away from any weapon he had on him. It was designed to make her feel at ease, but it only ramped up her tension. The man had come here for her. Pretending that he wasn’t dangerous just meant he wanted her to underestimate him.

Fat chance of that happening.

Charlie wrapped her arms around herself, sliding her fingers along the butt of her 9mm.

The feeling of metal warmed by her body comforted her.

She’d defended herself before against worse than Aiden and his bodyguard.

She could do it again if she had to. “Why are you here?” Why now?

Why wait an entire year to come back around?

“I said I’d be back for you. And now it’s time. We’re going to take down Romanov—together.”

The old anger that she’d never quite escaped rose, threatening to drown her.

She made herself let go of her gun and drop her arms to make sure she didn’t do something regrettable, like shoot this damn fool who’d decided to walk into her life to throw her past in her face.

“Maybe I’ve gotten over it and moved on with my life. ”

She hadn’t. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to move past what Dmitri Romanov had done.

She’d spent the last twelve months poking at the few people on the force who’d actually still talk to her, but no one could—or would—answer her questions on why it was taking so long to build a case against the Russian crime lord who ruled the city.

He’d never see trial. Not for what he’d done to others, and sure as hell not for what he’d done to her.

Four years. An eternity and no time at all. Cops had long memories, and there wasn’t a single one in the NYPD who thought she was innocent. How could they when the evidence was so damning?

So, no, she hadn't gotten over it.

Aiden’s green eyes flicked over her face, taking in every response, though she’d long ago trained herself not to give anything away. “I don’t believe it.”

“I couldn’t care less what you believe.” There were several reasons the head of one of Boston’s Irish organized-crime families would be in a shitty little bar in New York seeking her out, and none of them were good for her.

Charlie turned to him, taking in the slight tension in his shoulders that hadn’t been there when he’d first shown up. Don’t like being told no, do you?

Well, too damn bad for him. “For the last time, why are you here? Why me?”

* * *

Aiden O’Malley figured he should be grateful Charlotte hadn’t pulled the gun on him that she kept touching like a security blanket.

He hadn’t really thought she’d fall all over herself to agree to help him—especially since she hadn’t called him once during the last twelve months—but her cutting through all his bullshit didn’t bode well.

He’d never had a problem getting people to do exactly what he wanted—whether he needed to force them or they only required a subtle nudge—but he couldn’t do that with Charlotte Finch. He needed her to agree to help him of her own free will, or a vital part of his plan would fall to pieces.

It had taken him twelve months to get his dominoes in place and ready to knock down.

The balance of power between the three Boston ruling families—the O’Malleys, the Hallorans, and the Sheridans—was as stable as it would ever be.

The feds had backed off enough that he could breathe.

Even Dmitri Romanov had been lulled into a false truce at the chance of bringing down a new player in the game.

The Eldridges.

They couldn’t have timed their power grab better if Aiden had conjured them himself. All of it added up to a confrontation he knew he could win—if he played his cards right, he could remove the threat of both Romanov and the feds in a single strike.

But to do it, he needed Charlotte.

So he weighed his odds and, after careful consideration, decided being blunt was his best option.

“You’re familiar with the Eldridge operations.

” She’d worked the organized-crime unit in the NYPD, so there was no way she didn’t know about them, at least in passing, but she wasn’t going to trust him if he didn’t slow-play this.

If she was smart, she wouldn’t trust him even then.

Her step hitched almost imperceptibly. “They’re run by Alethea Eldridge and her daughter, Mae.

Scary, scary ladies, who have a habit of making their competition disappear, though no one has ever been able to put together enough evidence to pin anything on them.

Their main income is from drugs—heroin mostly—though they dabble in gunrunning and human trafficking when it suits their purposes.

They’re small players in the overall New York scene. ”

“Not anymore. Romanov has made a deal with them—a deal he has no intention of following through on.” Or so said the dossier Aiden had gotten from Jude MacNamara.

Yes, he’d sold his sister Sloan for information on his enemy—a weight he’d never truly be free of.

It didn’t matter that Sloan had chosen Jude.

If Aiden had paid better attention, she wouldn’t have been put in that situation to begin with.

He wouldn’t allow it to happen with his youngest sister, Keira.

He didn’t trust this unexpected opportunity from Romanov any more than he trusted anything in life, but he’d be a fool to pass up the chance to put his plan into motion.

“How could you possibly know what Romanov intends?”

“It doesn’t matter how. All that matters is that it’s the truth.

” He understood her disbelief. Dmitri Romanov was about as easy to pin down as smoke.

Aiden had spent the last twelve months verifying Jude’s information and looking for other options, but Romanov wasn’t the kind of man to leave bread crumbs that could be connected to him and his operations.

Even with the sheer amount of intel Jude had on him, there was nothing concrete that could be used against him.

Or there hadn’t been until Romanov himself called Aiden.

Charlotte paused, and he stopped next to her. There was a distant look in her blue eyes. “Even if it’s true, I don’t see how I play into it.”

“You know the Eldridges. You know Romanov. You know what they will or won’t do in any given situation.”

“So do quite a few other people.”

She wasn’t saying no, so he pressed. “None of those people are as uniquely motivated as you are in seeing Dmitri Romanov taken out at the knees. The O’Malley family barely registers on your radar. You have no reason to double-cross me, because I’ll be giving you what you desire above all else.”

“And, pray tell, what is that?”