The morning brings a hangover and the oppressing reminder of the fact that I’m thirty days away from being locked behind bars, a wanted criminal in my own organization. It’s early; the clock on my phone points out that normally, I’d still be asleep at this time. Too fucking early, definitely. The rest of the house probably isn’t awake yet, but the champagne still fizzing in my veins clearly had an impact. I get up, brush my teeth and run a comb through my hair, then settle back into the comfortable bed. The light on the walls is the dove-gray particular to the very beginnings of dawn, and I let myself soak it in while trying to sort through the racing thoughts in my head.
The despair hits me like a sucker punch.
No chance of seeing my mom again.
No chance of finding her.
No chance of falling in love or having a family or just fucking going to Ibiza for the weekend, or doing any of the other things that I’ve toyed with doing with my life after I found my mom.
Jail. Forever.
For a crime I didn’t do.
Stassi put me in one of the guest bedrooms, which I’m kind of grateful for. I did have a room here, once, but I have no attachment to it. The guest room is perfect, a soft blend of fabrics with cream tones that work well with the ancient stone walls. It’s not even freezing in here, which I attribute to the prolific use of space heaters, and what I suspect might be a sub-floor heater under the luxurious rugs at my feet.
The bed linens are soft. They feel relatively new, and I know that they weren’t here when I last left the manor house. Granted, that was a good deal of years ago, but still.
They look nice. Soft. Neutral. Nothing to let anyone know about the fucking vicious past that these walls have witnessed.
I look down, surprised at the feeling of a tear slipping out of my eyes. I scrub my hand against my face, trying to stem the rest of them.
There’s nothing to cry about, Ro. You’ll figure it out. They won’t arrest you. Marco will help…
And then he’ll leave.
Again.
A soft knock on my door makes me suck in a breath quickly, tugging the sheets up to wipe away the rest of the tears. “Yes?” I call, annoyed at the thickness in my voice as I try to clear the last of the sadness from it.
“It’s me,” Marco rumbles.
Fuck.
I went to bed in the guest room last night alone, thinking that it would be less suspicious to try and find Marco and get him settled, but now I realize that I might have made a mistake. Liam is never going to buy that Marco and I sleep in separate rooms.
I just thought that since Marco wasn’t with me when I went to bed, it wouldn’t make sense for me to send someone to gather him. Normal couples would just wait until one of them wanted to go to bed.
Right?
“Roisin, open the door.”
God. Damn. It.
I hate how I respond almost immediately to his commanding voice. My muscles lurch forward, like a puppy, eager to follow his every command.
I’m on my feet before I even know what’s happening, and I approach the door so quickly, I pause for a second because I don’t want to make it seem like I’m hopping to his every command.
“Roisin—”
I pull the door open. “What?” I hiss.
Marco steps inside, the movement bringing him overwhelmingly close to me. The heat rolling off of his chest, the smell of his skin, momentarily overwhelms me. I step back, just trying to put space between us.
The door clicks softly behind him, closing on hinges that are absolutely new, because when I lived in this house every single hinge squeaked bloody fucking murder when you closed the door.
Which my father liked to punish me for. With his fucking fist.
The reminder of the darkness that haunts this house brings the crushing sorrow back.
Full force.
I spin, so that Marco can’t see the tears in the corners of my eyes. “Where were you last night?”
“Garden.”
I blink. “All night?”
Marco studies me. “I was talking to Elio,” he says after a moment.
Oh.
“Do you… usually talk to Elio all night?” I ask. I know that he doesn’t. or at least, he didn’t when we were… living together.
It’s not being together. It was when I held him in custody in witness protection.
But I don’t know how else to describe the relationship we had. We were living together, I was holding him in custody.
But there was more. There was absolutely so much more.
He shrugs. “It’s new.”
“Okay. Well. Good for you, I think,” I mutter. I eye the bed. If I just tug the sheets back, he won’t be able to see the tear stains…
I go for it.
Quickly, I tuck myself back in, pulling the covers up around my chin. I look at him, then glance at a chair that Stassi tucked up under the window. “You can sit there.”
“I’ve been out in the cold all night,” he growls.
“And you smell like it,” I say. It’s a cheap shot, I know. But I don’t know what I’m going to do if Marco climbs into the bed.
He glowers at me.
Without saying another word, Marco grabs his bag and stomps into the bathroom attached to the guest suite. I hear the shower come on, and I cower under the blankets.
Stop thinking about him naked, Ro. It’s not okay. Just focus on your problems. The fact that you are at risk of losing everything. The fact that you…
The door to the bathroom opens and Marco reappears…
Without a shirt on.
I resist the urge to squeak with shock, and instead roll over. I’m fully ready for Marco to get into the chair, but to my shock, the bed dips.
“What are you doing?” I hiss.
“Sleeping.”
My jaw works. I can’t believe that he just… got into the bed.
“I recommend you do the same.”
I huff. “I was sleeping.”
“No, you weren’t.”
The sound is slightly muffled by the blankets, but I snort again. “How do you know?”
“I heard you crying.”
I stiffen. “I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“I heard you.”
“You heard wrong—”
Abruptly, the bed shifts. The covers get pulled down, and within a heartbeat, Marco looms over me, his eyes dark as he stares down.
“You were crying. And I’m not doing a childish back and forth with you, Roisin. I heard you crying. You have every fucking right to be scared. We’re here, but it doesn’t sound like your brother or your future sister-in-law is in a position to figure out what happened, or why you’re being blamed. Someone in your brother’s organization is fucking selling you out, and Liam is going to have to trust both of us in order to figure out who the fuck it is. Hell, it could be him,” he grunts.
I look away.
“It’s not looking good. But sitting here and arguing with me isn’t going to fucking help,” Marco mutters.
I don’t answer.
He’s right. The thought that Liam might be the one who sold me out has crossed my mind, but considering that I’d be able to tell Interpol exactly how fucked he is as a business leader, and where I’d be able to sell his secrets to the highest bidder.
It’s not love or commitment, sure, but at least I know that I could hurt him just as badly as he hurts me.
Unless, of course, there’s more.
Marco seems to understand, and moves off of me. I breathe, sucking in air that seems oddly cold without his heat to warm it.
“We need to figure out who the fuck did this to you, Roisin. We need to figure it out, fast, because you don’t have time to argue with me. For better or worse, I’m here with you. I’m here to fucking figure this shit out.”
“And then you’ll leave when it’s done,” I whisper.
It’s too vulnerable. Too fragile. The question sits in the air like a glass suspended mid-drop, waiting to hit the ground and explode.
Marco breathes.
“Yes. When it’s done, I’ll be gone. We’ll be connected through Liam, but I have my own family to look after.”
I roll over.
The words hit me, somewhere that fucking hurts. I don’t want him to see me cry. I don’t want him to hear me.
But the fact that he will be gone, after this?
It’s the icing on the fucking cake.
Eventually, I suppose I fell asleep, because when I awaken, the light has changed from the soft gray of early morning to the muted, rainy gray of the wintery Irish morning. I sit up, blinking, and notice the lack of male presence next to me.
He’s gone.
But, he hasn’t left.
I think.
I shower quickly, opting for a comfortable, if luxurious, outfit. Expensive jeans and a cloud-soft cashmere sweater. I do my best to wrangle my hair into a composed state, choosing to keep it back and off of my face, before I head out into the manor.
I have no idea what to do right now.
Marco is, unfortunately, right. I need to start working Liam and Stassi over for information about who might have come up with the plan to frame me in the organization, but I don’t know how to do that.
Liam is my brother. For better or worse, I would rather just ask him outright.
And Stassi is… Stassi.
She is the unknown, though. So I do probably need to start there.
Sighing, I head into the kitchen, in search of my future sister-in-law.
Stassi, poised and perfect as always, is sitting in the kitchen. I note with some satisfaction that her outfit echoes mine; dark, well fitting jeans, and a black sweater that also looks quite soft. Stassi, however, looks like a literal model, and I give her sleek blonde hair an envious glance before sliding in next to her.
“Morning,” I say, reaching for the pastries displayed on the table in front of her.
“Oh my god. I’m so happy you’re awake!” Stassi beams. “Okay so, I’m thinking today that we need to go into town and run some errands.”
My fingers freeze on the croissants. “What for?”
“Well, I need to confirm some things with the florist, and I think that someone in town has a really cute little stationery shop that I’m thinking of using for the invitations.”
“Invitations?”
Stassi nods. “Liam agreed that we need to make sure people buy into what we’re doing. So. Invitations, flowers, the whole nine yards. My mom will never believe that we’re getting married unless I really sell her on it, you know?”
Slowly, I pull my hand back. “You’ve said this a couple of times, Stassi. Are you in love with my brother?”
She rolls her eyes. “God, no.”
I blink.
Stassi sighs. “I mean, I’m not trying to say he’s like a bad guy or anything like that, you know? He seems fine, comparatively. But like, I owed Gia Rossi this huge favor, and there was a lot at stake with a marriage contract that she’s supposed to have with one of your brothers—”
“One of them?” I say sharply.
Stassi nods. “Well, technically I guess it was Caterina, which set off like a whole chain of events a while ago. But then Gia got kidnapped by Liam, who was trying to make an alliance with the Rossi crew because like, they’re pretty darn powerful, and Kieran was many things but a good leader wasn’t one of them, you know?”
I narrow my eyes. Stassi is either the best actress in the entire world, or she actually fucking trusts me with this.
“Anyway,” she continues, sipping her latte. “Gia and Sal had this whole problem, and Liam needed someone to marry, and I said okay here I am.”
“So, you don’t love him?”
She shrugs. “Why would I fall in love with my husband? That seems like a sure-fire way to get a broken heart.”
I snort. “I don’t know what to do with that.”
“Oh, come on. Tell me a single person you know who fell in love with their husband and actually stayed that way. Especially in our world, men don’t play by the rules,” she says.
I glance at Stassi. Her voice is so much harder now, the bubbly blonde receding. “I think that Marco’s siblings seem to be pretty happy.”
“There’s still time for all of that to fall apart,” she chirps cheerily.
Something about this beautiful, fun person talking about the prevalence of heartbreak feels kind of… wrong. “Stassi, you know that any man would be falling over their fucking feet to have you, right? Men literally worship the ground you walk on.”
She looks away. “Yeah, but there’s a big difference in how men treat women like that and how they treat a partner.”
“Okay. You’re going to have to say more about that.”
Stassi looks at me. “Men like pretty things. They like to look at them, take them out and play with them, and then put them back on the shelf. They don’t want me, Ro. They want to look at me and parade me around, but then I’ll go back on the shelf with everyone else,” she whispers. “And when something else pretty catches their eye? I’ll be locked away. Forever.”
Jesus Christ. “Stassi…”
“My mom taught me that. She was Ivan Novikov’s pretty thing. And she was fine with that. She knew how to get what she needed and then just get out. My mom was fine with the shelf. I’m not,” she whispers.
I search her face. “And Liam?”
She winks. “I don’t want him. He doesn’t want me. It’s perfect.”
There is absolutely no way that my brother doesn’t want Anastasia Novikov. It’s fucking insane to think that he doesn’t. “There’s no way that’s true.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t. So,” she says, giving me that bright smile. “Flowers?”
Slowly, I nod.
“I’ll get my coat.”
Stassi glides through my brother’s staff like she’s meant to be here. She knows them, already. She’s asked about four babies and has offered condolences to one grandmother by the time we pull into the village, which is by no means as elevated as the shopping that Marco and I did in Dublin. But, I will say as we walk around, Doolin appears to have become at least a little more modern since I was here last year.
The shops, at least, have figured out that high-end tourists are their target market.
Stassi drags me to not one, but two florists, and by the time we’re headed for the stationery shop, I can’t believe the fact that she’s already signed contracts with both.
“How do you do that?” I ask.
She smiles. “Do what?”
“Every person you meet isn’t a stranger, instantly. You somehow not only signed that contract, but got an invite to come over for dinner tomorrow.”
“Oh my god, I know!” she beams. “Mrs. Murtagh was just the cutest old lady, there’s no way that I’m going to say no!”
I laugh. “See? That’s what I’m talking about. You don’t have a single bad thing to say about them. Everyone, even strangers, love you. Like, instantly.”
She shrugs. “I guess it’s my mom. She was raised by people who were Hollywood stars for the past… well, since movies started coming out. If she knows how to do anything, she knows how to socialize, because she and her family basically invented it.”
“Well that’s all well and good,” I say, following her into the stationery shop. “But you somehow find something to like about everyone you meet.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Stassi beams. “Everyone has something they bring to the world. It’s just a matter of seeing it.”
Good lord.
For a moment, I’m insanely jealous of Stassi. How in the world she and I both managed to be raised by men in the mafia, with mothers adjacent to it, and we turned out so… different, is beyond me.
I don’t see the good in everyone I meet.
Because I’m too busy trying to figure out the ways that they could hurt me, so that I can hurt them first.
Stassi waves at me. “Over here! Look, these are the invites that I was telling you—”
The door to the shop tinkles, and a chill of fear instantly skates down my spine.
Something isn’t fucking right.
My hand instinctively goes to my hip, where my Interpol-issued gun would usually be, but I feel nothing except soft cashmere instead.
Fuck.
Stassi is chatting, looking at paper samples. I don’t want to turn to confront whoever just walked into the shop, but the little room is so small, I don’t have any other way to look and see them.
So, slowly, I turn.
I lock eyes with someone that makes my heart skip a beat.
Andrei Moretti.
He’s a famed assassin. Most recently, he’s been in Brazil, and he’s got a list of crimes so long they span the Atlantic.
And he’s here.
In a fucking paper shop in Ireland.
Behind us.
There’s absolutely no way that he’s here for anything except something bad. Moretti has been nicknamed the Grim Reaper, and some other names that are rolling through my mind.
Angel of Death.
Assassin’s assassin.
We need to get the fuck out of here.
I look over at Stassi, trying to catch her eye.
She’s entirely focused on paper samples.
“…I really think that at such short notice, we should go with something more casual, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I respond, aware of Moretti coming closer. The shop is tiny. He’s practically breathing down our necks. If he hasn’t shot either of us yet, he’s probably here on capture orders.
Which means a sedative.
Which means we need to get the fuck out of here.
In my pocket, my fingers reach for my phone. If I can call Marco…
“And what do you think for the envelopes? Cream or eggshell?” Stassi points.
“Stassi, I don’t feel well,” I whisper in her ear.
She blinks at me. “What?”
“I need to leave. Right now.”
“Um, okay, but…”
I tug on her hand. “Please, it’s the… it’s my cramps,” I add.
If Moretti is listening, I’m hopeful that the mention of something feminine will put him off. You’d be surprised at how often men, even ones with killer intent, hesitate when it comes to a period.
Stassi frowns. “Okay, but…”
“Now,” I tug on her hand.
I can’t linger. I know she’s going to want to talk to the shop owner, who I really hope isn’t going to be a casualty of Moretti too. I drag Stassi, who is trying to wave down the shop keep, out the door.
When we get outside, she tugs her hand back. “What the heck, Ro? You feel that bad? I swear, that was so rude—”
“Andrei Moretti walked into the shop behind us,” I whisper.
Stassi’s blue eyes widen, then her face goes pale. “What?”
It’s good to know, I guess, that she finally understands the severity of the situation. “We need to fucking go,” I whisper.
“What? How on earth would he… I thought he was in Brazil? I thought he died in that landslide?”
“Nope,” I shake my head, dragging my phone out to call for our driver. “He was right fucking here, in the shop with us.”
“Let me call for the driver…”
A booming noise, followed by searing heat, cuts her off.
Instinctively, I grab Stassi. She’s a head or so taller than I am, but I’m stronger, and I wrestle her to the ground. The sound of the explosion echoes around the picturesque seaside village, and I hear screaming from the direction of where we parked.
Stassi’s eyes widen. “Roisin. Do you think…”
“Call Liam,” I hiss. “Now.”
My fingers are already pulling up Marco’s number. I dial it, my fingers flying across the screen.
He picks up on the first ring. “Roisin, what—”
“Andrei Moretti is in town. The car blew up. Come get us,” I hiss.
Then, I shut the phone off, and grab Stassi’s hand.
I tug her toward the explosion.
“Where are we going? Don’t go this way, we need…”
“We need to hide. Moretti probably set the bomb to start a distraction so he could take you or me,” I murmur.
Stassi follows. “So why are we going to the explosion?”
“Because that’s where a crowd will be. We’re harder to kidnap in a crowd,” I mutter.
Already, people are running out of their homes and businesses, and the screaming gets louder as we approach the explosion.
My heart sinks.
The people of Doolin are peaceful. They live in a sleepy seaside town.
God, I hope no one died.
Praying, we move closer. I want to keep looking back for Moretti, but I don’t want him to know that I’m watching for him.
“Look behind us,” I whisper to Stassi. “Do you see Moretti?”
“I don’t know what he looks like…”
“Dark and fucking mean,” I hiss.
She turns her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Good. Stay with me. Don’t let go of my hand. He wants one of us, and I don’t know who. He probably has a sedative, so keep a distance from other people so he can’t stick you.”
Stassi breathes.
The site of the explosion finally comes into view. My chest sags with relief. Our driver, David, is standing, looking shaken, leaning on the seawall. The SUV is on fire, but there’s no obvious bodies.
Good.
“Don’t go to him. Stick near the road, Marco will be here any second,” I whisper.
Stassi and I stand back, out of the way, where we can easily leave. When the Jaguar pulls up that Marco bought the other day, I grab her.
“Let’s go.”
Marco doesn’t even stop. I open the door and shove Stassi in, then climb in. He peels out while the car burns in the background, and as soon as I shut the door again I look out.
There, standing next to the seawall, is Andrei Moretti.
And he’s staring at us as we drive away.
