Chapter 2
Rhys
She talked to me. She talked to me.
She bleedin’ talked to me!
That’s a waste.
Maybe because I grew up modestly in Ireland, where sweating it out in the summer was a ritual and not a nuisance. I’ve learned to handle most physical discomforts. The military took care of the rest.
After a few seconds, I realize I’m standing in the center of my living room, staring at the shared wall with my neighbor’s flat.
Fallon…
I left here this morning with a heart full of sorrow and remembrance, facing Uncle Aiden’s memorial service. Then I left to kill a DEA agent. But there was a complication, and I didn’t.
Then I come home to find my neighbor holding a shovel, saying she took a swing at someone with it.
It was as if I saw her for the first time. Tall, at least five-ten, solid, and strong. I swore, my cock twitched.
She has the voice of an angel and the soul of a devil.
Sounds perfect for you…
Some distant, very loud thought has me spinning around.
I check my security app. With all eight boxes clear of body heat and breathing, I tuck my cell away. This place can’t cool down fast enough.
Before I peel off these clothes, I remove the 9mm Glock that I use for situations requiring stealth, and my .
45 Sig for when I don’t care if I make a mess.
I lay them on the long slab of marble that separates the kitchen from the living room.
My hands move on autopilot, fast but precise, muscle memory guiding every motion.
I never pulled the trigger today, but Connor did. I still wipe down each gun for any blood splatter, inspect the slides, and check each barrel.
No step skipped. No margin for error.
I take out the knives next. The folding one I keep at my ankle, a longer blade is strapped to my back. With a whetstone, I sharpen both until the edges gleam. Each weapon goes into my steel cabinet, and I smile, seeing every slot filled.
Order. Control.
It’s the only way I know how to breathe.
And yet, as I shut the cabinet, Fallon’s voice clings to me.
There’s my boyfriend.
I nearly shit myself hearing that, but she said it softly and sure, like she wasn’t asking me. Like I’d already agreed, and she was gently reminding me of the fact.
She thinks it’s real. That I think it’s real.
It’s not, right?
I’ve been known to get pissed after a rough night of slitting throats and crushing bones with my fists. A few weekend benders sit on my scorecard, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t touch that cute redhead next door.
Or ask her to be my girlfriend.
I strip, toss my suit in a pile for the dry cleaner, and fling the rest into the hamper. In the shower, the water scalds my skin, steam filling the space. I lean both palms against the tile, head bowed, trying to make the noise in my brain stop.
Thoughts of Fallon don’t leave me. I’ve seen her watch me in the hallways, wide hazel eyes following my every move. Half-curious, half-claiming.
I scrub my face hard, but her memory clings to every thought. Not the way she looked at me. Although that has my mind in a vise.
The mention of a man bothering her locks my jaw, and rage pulses hotter than the blistering pelts of water trying to cleanse me.
Someone had the stones to harass her, to corner her enough that she picked up a bleedin’ weapon.
If I’d been there, if I’d seen someone bothering her, there’d be one less bastard breathing in Manhattan tonight.
She’s fragile, that girl. More fragile than she realizes. But fragile doesn’t swing a shovel like she means to split a man’s skull.
The thought twists something low in me. I bite back a groan, water sluicing over my chest, down my stomach, stirring my cock awake. Heat surges in my balls, aching to come, unbidden with lust.
I curse, slamming the knob colder.
The spray turns icy, cutting through the need I don’t take further. I can’t. Not with her.
But then I remember the hard edge in her voice when she said she knows how to defend herself. And fuck, the image of her swinging that shovel burns in my brain.
I stay under the water until my pulse steadies, until the coil inside me loosens enough that I can breathe without seeing red.
When I step out, I stare at myself. I don’t always recognize the killer I’ve become. Finally, my survival instincts come back online, and the need for food makes itself known.
With the towel slung low around my hips and water trailing down my back, I pad barefoot into the kitchen to whip up a quick meal.
Sustenance.
The flat feels emptier than before, even with the big window that looms over the courtyard below. I move past the row of black steel appliances and a farm sink to glance down as I often do.
It’s fifteen stories. But am I safe all the way up here?
The phone buzzes, and it’s my brother Trace calling me.
I swipe to answer, bracing a hand on the counter. “Aye?”
“What happened at the club?” he asks, voice low and clipped.
“It was a clusterfuck,” I tell him. “That DEA agent turned out to be a woman.”
“Is that why you didn’t take her out?”
“There’s more to it.” I hesitate, resisting a grunt. “Listen, brother, that agent is the same bird I saw do the walk of shame from Connor’s place a couple of months back.”
Trace whistles low. “Fuck.”
“I already called Shane. We’re keeping an eye on him.”
There’s a pause. The weight in Trace’s silence is familiar, the kind that always means he’s steering toward something I don’t want to talk about.
“What about you?” Trace asks finally. “How’s the neighbor?”
My gut tightens, and I keep my tone flat. “Why?”
“I saw her in your flat on the security feed,” he says, voice oddly absent of any real concern.
I imagine her snooping around my flat. “Nothing’s missing. And it’s nothing I can’t handle.”
And nothing I wouldn’t do, like kill some eejit harassing her. She’s got shovels and can help me bury the body.
I smile at that one.
“You sure?” Trace knocks me from my thoughts. “I can run another intel on her. Update the one I did a while back.”
“Nothing’s changed.” I don’t tell him about the way she smiled as she threatened to kill a man.
Was the smile happiness from her gardening? Or seeing me? Like she’d been waiting for me all day?
“She’s harmless,” I confirm. “Just a little odd.”
He chuckles. “Was it two years ago that I ran a background check? I don’t remember half the details anymore.”
I don’t push. If Trace doesn’t remember, nothing about her raised a red flag or was worth storing in his steel-trap memory.
“We can’t all be married to a mob princess,” I mention his wife, and I’m dragged back to thinking about Fallon all over again. Who is not a mob princess or connected to a crime family at all.
Thank fucking God.
Her, with that dirt-smudged cheek, calling me her boyfriend, makes it feel like it’d be so simple to just make her mine.
I clear my throat. “I’m good here. Don’t worry about it.”
Trace mutters something about meeting Shane later and hangs up.
Silence fills the flat again. Only this time, it’s not the coffin kind of silence. It’s charged, heavy, because I can’t stop thinking about my neighbor.
I drift back to the window, towel hanging loose at my hips. The city heat sizzles in the air outside, but I’m not looking at the skyline. I’m looking across the narrow curve to the flat next door.
Fallon’s place.
And there she is.
Standing in front of her window, still a dirty mess, a wild river of red hair around her face. Those hazel eyes fix on me, and her gaze is a storm cloud about to burst.
The lass is holding me captive without a word.
Chaos and beauty. Fragility and fire.
My phone rings again, and I want to crush it. Even more so when I see who it is.
“What do you want?”
“My office, next Tuesday, eleven a.m.,” the deep voice I don’t hear very often says in a drawl that has the hair on the back of my neck standing up.
“What’s this about?” I ask, but there is only one reason the head of a mafia house calls an assassin.
“You’ll find out when you get here.” Ares Zervas hangs up.
God, I hate that man.
I keep my eyes on Fallon. We stare as the city roars on around us, above and below.
For the first time in years, I’m feeling something dangerous.
Not rage. Not vengeance. Not a craving for the taste of blood.
Want.
For a woman I can never have.