Chapter 2
LEO
The car peels away from St. Patrick’s Cathedral with enough speed to throw Emma against me, and I can already hear the sirens starting to wail in the distance.
Right on schedule.
The NYPD will be swarming the cathedral in about ninety seconds, which is exactly why we needed to move fast and why Marco and the others are still inside creating enough chaos to make pursuit impossible for at least twenty minutes.
By then, we’ll be long gone.
Five years of planning, and the execution was perfect.
Five years since Connor Brennan put a bullet in my younger brother’s head over a dispute about the Brooklyn ports.
Five years since I got the call from Dante telling me Gabriel was dead, left to bleed out on a warehouse floor like he was nothing.
Five years since I had to tell my mother that her baby boy—the one who wanted to be a chef, who brought her flowers every Sunday, who still called her Mamma even at twenty-four—was never coming home.
Connor claimed the Santoros were taking more than our fair share of port access, which was complete bullshit and everyone knows it.
The Brennans have always been greedy fucks, pushing for more territory, more control.
Gabriel was at that warehouse trying to negotiate a peaceful resolution.
Connor Brennan shot him in the head for his trouble and left him to die alone.
The Brennans paid blood money, an insultingly small amount my father accepted because he was tired and sick and didn’t have the stomach for war anymore.
They called it settled.
Business as usual.
But I never forgot. I will never forget.
My father died eight months after Gabriel, his heart giving out because he’d lost the will to live.
My mother hasn’t really smiled since we buried Gabriel, and I became the man I needed to be to run this family, to make sure no one ever thinks they can take from the Santoros without consequences.
When I heard Connor’s daughter was marrying Tony Lombardo, I knew the moment had finally arrived.
The marriage was clearly a power play, an attempt to expand Brennan influence and potentially squeeze us out of port access entirely.
The Lombardo shipping routes through Jersey combined with Brennan’s Manhattan stronghold would create a corridor that bypasses our territory completely.
It’s smart, I’ll give Connor that.
It’s exactly what I would do in his position.
Too bad that plan didn’t actually work.
Today, Connor Brennan learned what it feels like to have everything ripped away.
Emma Brennan, however, doesn’t seem to appreciate the meticulous planning that went into her kidnapping.
“You fucking cock-juggling thundercunt!” She launches herself at me the second she gets her balance, her fists pounding against my chest, my shoulders, my arms, anywhere she can reach.
The monstrosity she calls a wedding dress is wrapped around both of us and she’s fighting through it like a wildcat caught in a net. “Let me go! Let me out of this fucking car right now, you piece of shit!”
I let her hit me.
She’s entitled to her rage, and honestly the blows don’t hurt.
She’s not a large woman and doesn’t have the leverage or training to do real damage, though I’ll give her credit for trying.
Her fists connect with my chest, my shoulders, and once with my jaw hard enough that I actually feel it.
I keep one arm locked around her waist to prevent her from doing something stupid like trying to throw herself out of a moving vehicle, which based on the way she’s eyeing the door handle is absolutely something she’s considering.
Connor Brennan’s face when he realized what was happening, when he understood I was taking his daughter and there was nothing he could do to stop it, that moment alone was worth five years of planning.
The look of absolute horror and helplessness.
I’ll dream about that look for the rest of my life.
That’s what you get when you kill a man’s brother and think you can just pay blood money and walk away.
Emma’s still screaming, her voice raw and furious and the sound is starting to irritate me.
“You’re a dead man! Do you hear me? Dead!
My father is going to hunt you down and feed you to the fucking fishes!
He’s going to cut off your balls and shove them so far down your throat you’ll be shitting them out for a week!
” She pauses for breath, her chest heaving.
“I hope you get dick cancer! I hope your dick falls off and rats eat it! I hope—”
“Wait, did you just call me a cock-juggling thundercunt?” I interrupt as her words finally register and I’m genuinely impressed. “That’s new.”
Her green eyes narrow into slits of pure fury and I can see I’ve made a tactical error by showing amusement.
“Oh, you like that, you festering twat waffle?” She nearly snarls, her cheeks bright red.
“How about this—I hope you step on Legos every day for the rest of your miserable fucking life. I hope you get a papercut on your urethra. I hope someone replaces all your coffee with decaf and you never figure out why you’re always tired, you absolute fuck-knuckle! ”
Despite the adrenaline still pumping through my system and the very real possibility that Connor might try to start a war over this—I feel my lips twitch.
“You think this is funny?” Her voice climbs even higher. “You think kidnapping me is fucking funny, you rancid cum dumpster?”
“Not funny,” I say, keeping my voice calmer than I feel, which I know will infuriate her more.
“But I have to admit, your creativity is impressive. A papercut on the urethra is particularly inspired. Did you come up with these yourself or is there some sort of rich girl finishing school where they teach creative cursing?”
Wrong thing to say.
Emma’s hand comes up and her nails rake across my other cheek, and this time she puts real force behind it.
I feel the skin split and the hot sting of blood glide down my face.
Fuck, that hurt.
“You smug fucking bastard!” She’s breathing hard, her chest heaving against the tight bodice of that wedding dress, and there’s something absolutely magnetic about the fury radiating off her. “I hope it gets infected and your face rots off!”
I catch her wrist before she can go for a third strike, my fingers circling the delicate bones.
Her skin is soft, and I can feel her pulse hammering against my thumb.
Her heart’s racing, running at probably twice its normal rate, and I know she’s terrified even though she’s hiding it behind rage.
Good strategy, actually.
Anger is better than fear.
Anger keeps you sharp.
Fear just makes you stupid.
I’ve spent forty-three minutes in St. Patrick’s Cathedral watching the preparations unfold, sitting in that back pew.
I watched Connor work the crowd, shaking hands like he’s father of the year instead of a murderer.
I watched Teresa Brennan play the perfect mob wife.
Watched the groomsmen file out, Tony Lombardo looking appropriately nervous about his alliance marriage.
Then Emma appeared at the back of the church.
And fuck me.
I’d seen photographs of her before.
I knew she was attractive, but photographs don’t do her justice.
The white, beaded dress fitted close enough to show the curve of her waist, the swell of her breasts.
She’s tall, maybe five-seven or five-eight, with a willowy build.
The dress shows off her figure in a way that’s probably meant to be demure but just makes me notice things I shouldn’t.
Her dark auburn hair swept up exposes the nape of her neck, and there’s something about that vulnerable curve that made my fingers itch.
Even from fifty feet away I could tell her eyes were unusual—some light color that stands out against her dark lashes.
Green, I’d thought.
The kind of eyes that demand attention.
She’s the kind of beautiful that stops traffic and makes men stupid and reckless.
Connor Brennan probably had to beat potential suitors away with a stick, not that he’d let her choose her own husband anyway.
And as she began to walk toward the altar with her father, I could see she was miserable.
The smile didn’t reach those striking eyes.
Every line of her body screamed reluctance even as she maintained that picture-perfect bridal composure.
She didn’t want this marriage.
This was duty.
And for half a second, something that might have been regret flickered through me.
She’s only twenty-four, which seems impossibly young from where I’m standing at thirty-five.
By all accounts she’s innocent of Connor’s sins.
She was…what, nineteen when Gabriel died?
She was away at college, studying whatever useless rich girl degree was deemed appropriate by her father and probably doesn’t even remember hearing about Gabriel’s death, if she even did.
Connor is the type of man to make sure his women are sequestered from the darker points of our world.
But innocence doesn’t matter.
Connor took my brother.
He took him from our mother, from Valentina, from everyone who loved him.
He took Gabriel’s future, his dreams, his ridiculous optimism about making peace between the families.
He left my baby brother to bleed out alone in that warehouse and denied him help, denied him mercy, denied him everything.
Connor took all of that and left us with grief and rage and a hole that will never be filled.
So I’m taking his daughter.
It’s not fair to her and it’s certainly not just, but when has this life ever been about fairness?
We live in a world built on violence and retribution, where blood demands blood.
Connor should have thought about consequences before he put a bullet in my brother’s head.
“Careful, princess,” I tell Emma, keeping my voice level. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
“I’ll hurt you!” She tries to yank her wrist free, but I hold on. “Let go of me right fucking now or I swear to god—”
“You swear to god what?” I lean in slightly, genuinely curious. “You’ll hit me again? No offense to you, but my sister hit me way harder when we were kids.” I tilt my head to the side, studying her. “Or were you planning to scratch me again? Go ahead. I’ve got another cheek.”
If looks could kill, I’d be six feet under and halfway to hell.
Emma Brennan has the most expressive eyes I’ve ever seen.