Page 2 of Carnal Wagers

I shoved the phone at him and gazed back out the window. “Not interested.”

“Looking at a picture isn’t going to kill you.”

“No point.”

“Is it me, or does Cillian not seem thrilled to meet his bride?” Liam teased.

Flattening my palm, I smacked him upside his messy quiff hairstyle. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t be here. He knew that.

“Oi,” he groused, rubbing the back of his head as I laid mine against the seat and focused on the scenery.

“You deserve worse.”

Liam snatched Da’s phone. “She’s fierce pretty. I’d tap that.”

“Appearance has never been a requirement for you,” my middle brother, Brody, droned, his nose buried in his laptop as he conducted last-minute research on my bride-to-be.

“I’m an equal-opportunity lover.”

“Give that back.” Da also smacked Liam across the back of the head, harder though, always harder, and plucked the phone out of his hand.

“Will you all stop hitting me? You know how long it took me to perfect this look?”

“No one needs your bleating.” Da massaged his probably stiff hand after that slap. “Just look at the bloody picture, Cillian. You’re about to marry her. Might as well know what she looks like.”

“I’ve no interest in what your gambling is costing me.”

We all had our ways of coping, but unlike my brothers and me, who internalized our trauma without involving the family and business, our father took to gambling and put us all in hot water with the Urabá cartel. This alliance with the French was how we fixed his mistake.

“Da, leave it be,” Brody said, not looking up.

“She’ll be dead in days. Weeks, if she’s lucky,” Liam added. “Just another O’Leary name on a tombstone.”

“She’s not taking our name,” I growled.

That was where I put my foot down. I would marry the woman, but I wasn’t doing anything more than signing my name on a piece of paper. It was a business contract. Nothing more.

I settled deeper into my seat and crossed my arms, wishing the day were over already. A pair of shooters clinked in my pocket. I took one out and downed it in two gulps, but the bland rum barely had any effect at all. Just my luck. Happy two-monthiversary as a widower to me.

“There’s a chance our Love Knot Killer won’t come all the way to France,” Brody commented.

I grunted. If it weren’t for the sake of our contract with the De Villiers and the money we very much needed to save our hides, I wouldn’t care whether my wife-to-be lived or died.

“All the better if she does,” Da added, and I pressed my lips together in a tight line. He really was a right selfish bastard. “The photo is so you know who you’ll be paying your respects to.”

Liam shivered. “Oh, that’s cold.”

I chugged down my second shooter—this one an American whiskey I usually didn’t get within ten feet of. Sadly, neither bottle numbed nor dulled the drag of my thoughts down the rabbit hole. “We need her to live. That’s nonnegotiable.”

“No, what we need is to catch this LK bitch. Don’t tell me you’re going soft, son.”

I turned my withering stare on him. “My priority right now is cleaning up your mess.”

“This may be Da’s debt you’re paying off,” Brody said, rocking back and forth over his laptop and wiping his hands along his jeans. It was one of his usual tics whenever the serial killer came up. His voice trembled slightly, but he remained in his analytical mode, focusing on facts to rework difficult stimuli in his favor. “But if LK offs Cillian’s new wife, the De Villiers will get involved. They have the resources to dig further. Her death will give them the motivation to find exactly who’s been fucking with the O’Learys. We might finally be rid of this once and for all.”

“We need their money more than we need their resources,” I stated, cold and steely as a grave.

“Now you listen to me, boy.”