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Wicked Ruin: A Dark Irish Mafia Friends to Lovers Romance
CHAPTER ONE
Six years earlier…
Ashland
I love the taste of blood in my mouth during a fight. Proof I’m alive, that I’m winning. It tastes like victory.
I spit it on the floor of the ring, and red splatters across grey.
The echo of cheering’s like distant thunder, the smell of sweat and Guinness flooding my senses.
The abandoned warehouse is officially a gym, but the underground knows that beneath the official exterior is where the real action takes place.
This is where men like me come to fight, and I fucking love it.
Lawless. Violent. Cathartic.
My ribs ache from where the Cork bastard caught me early, a hit I'll feel tomorrow, but when he comes in with a right hook, confident, thinking he's got me figured out, I duck.
I drive my fist into his kidney, Once. Twice.
Three times in rapid succession, each hit precise and targeted.
I feel something give under my knuckles.
And I love this. God help me, I love this.
He grunts and tries to pivot away, but I'm too fast for him. He swings wild, desperate now, and clips my jaw. Blood floods my mouth, the familiar coppery taste sweet and satisfying. My opponent’s desperation is my first taste of victory.
Beautiful .
He grins, breathing hard, and his guard's dropped.
“Come on, then,” I say, my voice rough. I tap my jaw where he hit me. “That's all you’ve got?”
He charges.
I sidestep and hammer my elbow into the base of his skull. Not hard enough to do permanent damage— I'm not trying to kill the fucker—but hard enough.
He staggers. Knees buckle.
I'm on him before he can recover. Left jab to the temple, right cross to the cheekbone. I feel the satisfying crack under my knuckles. Another shot to his fucked up ribs, and this time something cracks .
“Finish him, Ash!” Tiernan shouts from somewhere behind me, and it's all the encouragement I need.
I drive my knee into his stomach. The air leaves his lungs in a sick whoosh.
He drops face first on the canvas. The ref's beside him instantly, checking him, and I step back. My chest heaves. My hands throb. There's blood on my knuckles, and I can't tell if it's his or mine.
His crew screams for him to get up, but he won't, not after what I did to his ribs. Wouldn't be wise, would it?
“Time,” the ref's voice echoes through the warehouse, and the crowd erupts.
I don't hear them when I'm playing, don't hear them when I'm fighting, but I do after I win a damn fight.
“McCarthy! McCarthy! McCarthy!”
The McCarthy family's name is one of their favorite cheers, and I fucking love it. I love being a part of something bigger, of knowing I stand in solidarity with my brother and cousins.
Today, I don't move or raise my arms, don't celebrate. I just stand there, knuckles split and bleeding, waiting for the roar to fade. It doesn't, really.
I've found that violence just sits in my chest like a living thing, coiling tighter and tighter until the next fight. I've come to welcome it.
“Ash.” Tiernan's voice cuts through the roar of the crowd. “Get out of the damn ring, lad, will you?”
I turn and find him at the ropes. Tiernan's my uncle. My mom's younger brother, he was nearly an adult himself when my parents married. He has a family of his own now, but he's always been my mentor.
“Y'alright, lad?” he asks as I duck through the ropes. He tries to dab blood off my face with a rolled up rag, but I swat his hand away and reach for the bottle of water. Swig it, swish it in my mouth, spit out blood. He reaches for my hands instead and starts unraveling the tape.
“Aye. Grand.”
“That wasn't grand, Ash,” he says, giving me the look of pride mixed with worry I've come to recognize.
“That was fuckin' brutal.” He leans closer, and I can see the gray mixed with ginger in his hair, the lines around his eyes, and the way his brow creases. I remember when I thought he was invincible, the day I saw him in this ring and decided it would be me, one day. Tiernan’s a legend in Ballyhock.
He tosses me a towel. I wipe away sweat and blood and ball it up in my fist. I shrug. “You're acting like I tried to kill the bastard. If I wanted him dead, he'd be dead.”
I wink at him. He stands beside me, my bodyguard by habit even though I haven't actually needed one for some time now .
Tiernan huffs a laugh, but there's truth in it. We both know what I'm capable of, what I've been taught, what the family's made me.
I'm the weapon they bring out when negotiations fail.
I'm fucking good at it, too.
I like to think the ring's like sharpening a blade—necessary maintenance for what I am.
I walk toward the exit and he follows. I’ll forego the locker room tonight and shower at home.
I want to be in my own place, alone for a little while.
“Your Da wants you to ease up, you know,” Tiernan says, falling into step beside me as we head toward the back exit. “He says you're fighting too hard, too often. People are starting to talk.”
I shrug. “Let 'em talk.”
I drag the towel across my face again, tasting copper and sweat. I know what I'm doing. I don't like to think about what would happen if the coil of violence inside me didn't have an outlet, but I know better than to say that out loud.
Tiernan sighs, but doesn't push it. He knows better. We've been doing this dance for years now—him trying to keep me from going too far off the edge, me pretending I'm not already halfway there.
The ring's a few blocks from The Craic, the McCarthy family bar and exclusive club, so means the crowd largely favors us.
I nod to people who cheer and absorb the congratulatory slaps to my back.
This is home.
But sometimes, every once in a while, I fantasize about getting on a plane and flying far, far away. Somewhere nobody knows my name or what the ink carved into my skin symbolizes. A place where I don't have to be who I've been trained to be.
“Fancy a drink at the club?” Tiernan asks, hands shoved in his pockets. He doesn't go much now that his family needs him. Still, he likes to grab a pint with the lads, just like I do. “I heard Cavin's there. Declan, too.”
I shake my head. Cavin runs the place and Declan's a frequent flyer, but I'm not in the mood to see my cousins tonight.
“Nah, I'm good.”
“Honestly, brother,” he says, giving me a look. “I know things have never been the same since Donovan?—”
“I don't want to talk about Donovan.”
I interrupt him before he can go further. My older brother betrayed the McCarthy family and paid the ultimate price. When I go to The Craic, I still fancy I can see him there sometimes with his pale blue eyes, smirk, and sharp tongue .
His punishment was justified, but I won't ever forget. Ever .
“Not tonight,” I say, my voice husky. “I might?—”
I freeze when I hear a scream just outside.
“Did you hear that?”
Tiernan concentrates and listens, then shakes his head. “Sometimes my ears ring a bit after a fight. Aye, but doesn't sound serious, is it?”
Laughter follows the scream, and I reckon it's just some drunk eejits having a go at each other.
“Go home, lad,” he says. “Take care of yourself, will you? I'll supper with you at the weekend. See you?”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
Maybe not. I like my quiet.
“All right, then,” he says. “Watch your back. Don't think that lad from Cork has anybody who's gonna shiv you in the alley, but you never know, eh?” He says it with a wink, but it's only half a joke. We've all learned to have eyes in the back of our heads.
“Sure you don't fancy a ride?” he asks. “I got here by cab.”
I'm rarely fit to drive home after a fight but tonight, I want to walk.
“Nah, I'm good, honestly, Tiernan. Please, just go to the club. Have a pint. Maybe I'll see you at the weekend, right? ”
He nods. “Right.”
“You did well there, lad. Proud of you.”
Something like warmth blooms in my chest.
I cuff his shoulder back. “Thanks. Could still best you, eh?” He fakes me out, and lands a solid but playful jab to the stomach before I block and retaliate. We jokingly spar before he gets into his car and leaves.
But before I'm a few paces into my walk, I hear it again.
A scream. Sharp and sudden and cut off too quick. I wait, breath caught.
This time, there's no laughter that follows.
Every instinct I have flares to life. I stand up straighter, my hands balled into fists.
I'm already reaching for the knife tucked in my waistband before I realize I left it in the fucking locker.
Jesus .
The scream came from the alley behind the ring, the one that runs parallel to the main street.
It's dark back there with only one flickering streetlight at the far end.
I observe everything in an instant, cataloging threats.
The smell of rain on the blacktop, a dog barking in the distance, the hum of traffic on the street.
I turn the corner, and my eyes adjust instantly.
Who screamed and why ?
I see it all in seconds.
Two men. Masked. Vaguely familiar, though I can't place them.
One holding a struggling figure who's fighting with everything he's got, the other pulling a black bag over his head. They work in sync, wasting no time. Professionals.
They haven't seen me yet. Good.
The figure they're trying to kidnap is slight, small enough to be a teenager, but I can't see their face with the bag half over their head.
“For fuck's sake, hurry,” one growls. “The goddamn McCarthy fight got out.”
“Thought it'd be easier!” the other snarls.
We're in McCarthy family territory. This is my turf. Could be anyone, someone I fuckin' know for Christ's sake.
I don't think. I move.
The first man doesn't even see me coming. I hit him full force, shoulder to his ribs, and he goes down like a sack of shite.
The second one drops his victim and reaches for something, but I'm faster. I grab his wrist, twist it until I hear the snap, and drag my fist into his face.
Once. Twice. Three times.
He crumples .