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And I fucking hate him for it.
I shouldn’t be here, doing this, whispering in his ear.
I should be with my woman.
“Tell them all to go back inside and wait until we’re gone. Tell the men in the windows to put their guns away. Or I’ll kill you, Juan. I’ll choke you to your last breath.”
Juan raises his voice and gives my instructions, his voice trembling as he betrays the fear that must be stabbing through him. The men turn and walk inside, dragging their feet like reluctant school kids returning to class, the weapons disappear from the window.
None of them are happy about this, but they have no choice.
It’s that or open fire, killing Juan and facing the Cartel’s retribution.
I walk backward toward the cars, dragging Juan, my forearm unyielding against his throat.
“You can’t—take—me,” he manages to choke out.
“I know,” I growl. “But I’m not going to take a bullet, either.”
I back up until I’m at Cillian’s sedan, and then I toss Juan aside and climb in.
I wish I could take him with us, use him as a bargaining chip, but that’s not how the Cartel works.
Maybe with the Italians, the Yakuza… hell, even with biker gangs, that sort of shit works. But the Cartel is ruthless. They’d lay waste to the city if they learned I’d kidnapped one of their leaders.
But I can take the grunts who actually wielded the knife.
Cillian backs us out, his jaw tight, his eyes glinting. “That went better than expected.”
“But…”
“Who said there’s a but?”
I laugh gruffly as he drives toward the road. It’s just us in the car. The prisoners are in another car, bags over their heads, their hands tied in their laps.
“Your face, Cillian,” I growl. “So get on with it.”
“But it was risky.”
I nod. “I know. But it had to be done. Nothing will stop me from protecting this city.”
Nothing will stop me from protecting the world my and Molly’s children are going to be born into.
Chapter Fifteen
Molly
I sit across from Dad, back in the break room, emptier now that everyone is back to work after their lunch breaks. I expected him to go after he visited, but it turns out he wants to wait to see if he’ll get any news about the job.
So I’m sitting here with my body still screaming from all the things I did with Murphy, but I have to pretend to be Dad’s daughter, Murphy’s driver, nothing more. It’s like I suddenly have to be an actress and I hate it.
But what’s the alternative, just blurt it out, tell him what we did… what we’re planning to do?
Murphy wants to start a family with me. He wants to claim me. He wants to own me.
I want a family. I want to be claimed.
I want him to make me his.
The late afternoon sun stretches across the city, winking in windows, as clouds drifty across the sky in the distance. I stare at it because it’s easier than looking at my Dad, at that glint in his eyes… he wants to get better.
He wants to prove to me he can improve.
But trusting him is difficult, and there’s a horrible part of me, an evil part that wants to use what Murphy and I did as a weapon. And I hate it, because I want Murphy for what he’s promised, for our closeness and our heat, not as an insult.
I sigh, grinding my teeth.
I’m going crazy with worry not knowing if Murphy is safe.
It’s making my thoughts fuzzy.
“Are you okay, Mols?” Dad says.
I nod, still staring at the city, knowing Murphy is out there somewhere and bad things could be happening.
“Dad.”
“Yeah?” I can feel him looking at me, but my eyes remain fixed ahead. “What exactly is the Irish mob?” I ask.
He chuckles, drawing my eye, and I see the real Dad come out, the one he was before Mom died and his world shattered.
I forget when I’ve got a bet on, he told me once, months after her death when I was only a child. I don’t have to think… And then he trailed off, and I was left wondering about what.
But I know now. Mom, he didn’t have to think about losing her.
“That’s a broad question,” he says.
“Well?”
He shrugs. “It was a gang like any other, like the Italians and the Yakuza and the Cartel and the bikers… for years it was that way. That’s where we grew up, me and Murph, what we grew up around. It was crime on every damn corner in our neighborhood.
“We looked out for each other. I went legit. I met your mother… she would’ve killed me if I ever got involved in crime. God, she was a fierce woman.”
I nod, my heart brimming, desperate wishes flurrying through me that I can be a fierce woman for Murphy, that I can inspire the same love in our children my mother inspired within me.
