Reckless Seduction (Kavanaugh Crime Family #1)

Chapter 1

ONE

The parking lot is dark and wet.

Streetlights shimmer off the side of the brick buildings, casting an eerie glow into the interior of my broken-down Jetta. Tears stream down my face in torrents as I gulp and sob into the steering wheel, an empty bottle of Jameson loosely in my hand.

What the fuck have I done to deserve this?

I thought we saw eye to eye. Our arrangement isn’t one built on love, but I thought we had an understanding. That maybe, despite our circumstances, we might grow to love one another. Then again, how can a snake love the mouse it strikes at?

Work has been hectic recently, and I know it has caused a rift between us. Things have been heating up on the Ward front, and I am inching closer and closer every day to finding out where my friend has disappeared to. Still, with my busy schedule, I’ve been sure to make time for him when he asks.

If he asks.

Not that he ever does. Now I know why.

If anything, he should be grateful for my job and hours.

My career as an investigative journalist kept us afloat when he first started his security company.

Everything he has is because I’ve spent years working my ass off so that I had the capital to invest in his company without taking on too many business loans.

It wouldn’t exist without me. All because he didn’t want to ask his father for help.

He wanted to do something on his own.

I snort at that. Drew hasn’t done shit on his own. It has all been done for him—by me. He spent five years building up the company with the money I gave him. He even hired my best friend, Brittany, when she needed a job.

The same best friend I found in his bed, sucking his cock, and apparently not for the first time.

Treacherous bitch.

Three years.

Three years of late nights in the office and weekend consultations.

That is how long he’s been sleeping with her behind my back.

And who knows how many other women came before her.

I’ve been nothing but a fool. A completely oblivious fool, because everyone knew but me.

My friends’ tones when I called to ask for a place to stay for the night said it all.

They knew and never told me.

At least I know where I stand.

No wonder he didn’t want me to move in with him full-time.

How many other women have there been over the years?

We’ve been engaged since I was sixteen. I know he had women before we made the engagement official.

My father told me it was his right as a man, but I never got that same courtesy.

My father made damn sure that I remained virginal until I was eighteen and Drew could claim it for himself.

I was na?ve then.

Wanting so much to prove to my father that I was more than just his bastard daughter. I looked away when I saw Drew with other woman, but the moment we became official, it all stopped, and I thought he had changed.

Fucker was just getting it closer to home.

We made our engagement official five years ago, on my twenty-first birthday. A long engagement, he said—so he could get his company off the ground. Once everything was stable, we’d get married.

So why wait all that time if he was just going to cheat on me?

There’s only one answer that makes sense.

He didn’t want to lose access to my bank account—or the financial backing my father provided.

The arrangement started when I was sixteen, wrapped in expectations and obligations, strings attached so tightly I barely noticed I was a puppet. A pretty one. A useful one. But when I saw Drew and Brittany together today, I took fucking shears to every last string.

No one gets to use me anymore.

I’m done.

He can marry her, for all I care.

I stuffed everything I owned from his apartment into a bag, ignoring his pleas and protests as I stormed out. Brittany sat on his bed, smug and naked, her body on full display like she’d won some sort of prize. She’d wanted him once, long before me, but our families had already decided.

It was never going to be her.

It was always going to be me.

He said he chose me. Not her. That is what he led me to believe. Drew hadn’t chosen me at all. He chose my family’s name and power. Nothing more. I was stupid and foolishly na?ve.

Knowing there was no way in hell I was going home to face my father, because he would send me right back to Drew, I tried to find somewhere else to stay for a while. The problem is that every hotel in the area is booked.

So much for a place to sort things out.

My plan had been to get my shit together, find a hotel, and regroup. I am going to make sure to get every penny back that I gave him for that company. I’ll be damned if I let him profit off my hard-earned money.

Not after this.

Now, I am sobbing like a baby in my car with only the whiskey to keep me company. The festival weekend has all the hotels in the area booked. Seahawks games are no joke.

For some, it is practically an Olympic sport.

Earlier, I pulled into the small alley parking lot behind Clover, an up-and-coming Irish club, to sort out my maddening thoughts. It isn’t the best place for me to be, considering who owns it, but I had little choice at the time, and I doubt anyone will be sober enough to recognize me.

When I went to leave and find a hotel out of town half an hour ago, my car refused to start, stuttering like a forty-year-old virgin.

Just my luck.

Calling my father is out of the question. My engagement to Drew is pivotal to the deal he’s been brokering with Drew’s father since I was sixteen. His family, like mine, is full of prominent figures in Seattle politics, and our marriage gives my father greater reach.

From the thirty missed calls and forty unread text messages I’ve received in the past half an hour from my stepmother, Drew has already informed her of what happened, no doubt spinning everything so that I am the villain.

Not that Sarah, my stepmother, needs much of an excuse to villainize me.

He probably complained that I haven’t given him what he needs because I refused to leave my career to have his babies and become his trophy wife.

Something he didn’t want me to be in the first place.

It was his idea for me to keep my career.

I gave him everything, and all I’ve gotten in return is shit.

“Forget this,” I mumble drunkenly as I rip the keys from the ignition. I wipe away the excess tears with the sleeve of my dress, and after a quick glance in the rearview mirror, I grab my purse from the passenger seat and climb out of my useless car.

Might as well find more alcohol and get even more shit-faced than I already am. It will take at least another bottle of Jameson before I can think about abandoning everything and crawl back home to my father.

Maybe two bottles… or three…

It is beyond luck that I’ve stalled behind a club. If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is.

Slamming the door shut, I stumble behind the alley toward the main road. My heels wobble slightly on the uneven cobblestone.

Or it might be because I am tipsy.

Who knows?

The lights in the alley are dim and flickering, casting an ominous shadow around me. Fuck, maybe I should walk around the other way?

A door in the back of the alley swings open violently, raised voices reach my ears, and I barely manage to stifle a scream before ducking into a small alcove a few feet down.

This isn’t the best neighborhood, I know that.

Not that crime is particularly high in the Irish Village, but it isn’t a secret that it is run by the Irish mob, who keep things on a tight leash.

“Please…” a nasally man pleads, his voice echoing off the brick walls of the alleyway. “I was just hired to do a job. I swear. I didn’t know she was with you. The hit said she was a Dashkov. You have to believe me.”

“Problem is…” another voice speaks up, his accent holding an Irish lilt. It is dark, deep, and deadly. There is no mistaking the dangerous edge to his tone, even from here. “We don’t.”

There is a scuffle and the sound of bone cracking against bone. The nasally man screams, and then there is nothing but ragged breathing.

“Tell us who sent you,” the Irish voice growls. “Was it Romano? Ward? Tell me who the fuck put a hit out on my sister!”

“I don’t know,” the nasally man whines and sobs. “The hit was encrypted. Anonymous payer.”

“How much?” another voice questions. It is nearly identical to the first, with the same lilting accent but rougher. Gravelly.

“Three mil.”

Someone whistles.

“That’s a lot of dough for a wee little woman,” the first voice scoffs. “You didn’t bother to do any research, huh?”

The man simply whimpers.

“Here is what you are going to do, Jimmy,” the rougher voice snarls. “You’re going to send a message to your boss.” The man’s name on the wind has my journalistic instincts perking up. Sure, it is a common name, but there are very few people named Jimmy who pull out hits on people.

“I… I can do that.”

Don’t do it. Don’t do it.

The mantra whispers through my mind like a broken record, my inner caution goddess singing the warning of her people, but the Nancy Drew altar I worship won’t be subdued. I am a reporter, and this is a front-page scoop.

At least, it will be if I plan on writing about it.

Which I am not.

Maybe drunk me is bordering on suicidal, pushing aside the logical goddess, who has been waving red pom-poms in my face like a red flag.

Still, it can’t hurt to take a peek. Just a skosh.

I take a deep breath and peer around the corner with ample parts curiosity and fear.

Biting my lip, I swallow back the gasp that threatens to bubble up my throat and fly free as I take in the scene before me.

It is a scene right out of The Godfather.

The two men tower over another, their looks nearly identical, from the height to the ginger color of their hair to their angular noses and cut jaws.