AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Four
Katriona
He leads me to sit across from him, and he takes the other chair. Tonight cannot get any more surreal so I let the mobster guide me to the chair like some chivalrous knight. I don’t hold any misgivings about how my hospitable mobster with the soft lips can turn Grim Reaper on me, snap his fingers and take my life. But I don’t feel I’m in danger and so far my instincts have kept me alive this long, so I don’t question them yet. Just my sanity.
“Not much, honestly,” I answer. “I mean, give me a few years. Do you take a credit card? An installment plan?” I’m trying to lighten the mood for my own sake because the grim line of his mouth and hard edge to his expression is freaking me out.
Scarface pushes up off the wall when Sylan gives him a chin nod. “Your life is not a joke to me. I won’t let anything happen to you, but you have to take this seriously. My rivals want what I have and they will do anything to take it. That includes trying to kill me and definitely killing you. If that’s not bad enough, your old man did you the favor of owing the two most powerful warring mobsters in the city and then getting himself killed. But don’t take my word for it. I’ll let Luka tell you. We’ve mostly stayed to our own, but I have no hopes of that holding after tonight.”
It’s nice to have a name to go with the face. Calling him Scarface was getting tiresome, and I only did it to annoy the man. “Luka.” I give him a faint smile because I still haven’t forgiven him for snatching me up the way he did.
“Ms. Kane. I apologize if I scared you earlier this evening. I did it for your own protection and at the request of my brother.”
Brothers. I should have seen the resemblance in the eyes and widow’s peak. He doesn’t say anything else for a long moment, just standing there towering over me.
“Maybe you can offer more on what’s going on? Elaborate a little. Frankly, I’m confused why you two haven’t whacked me yet and be done with all of it. Isn’t that the mafia’s regular MO? Not that I’m promoting my own demise.” I rub my hands over my arms again when a chill hits me from my own stupid words. I hate how I can’t seem to shove a sock in it, but talking often and fast always helped to calm my nerves. A trick I learned to help fill the abundant silence in my life. Too much of it can drive a girl crazy, so I learned how to fill it until I could get my thoughts gathered and on an even keel. Tonight I keep getting knocked off and it’s growing tiresome.
Sylan sighs beside me and grabs his jacket to wrap back around my arms. “You definitely watch too much TV. Dead men, or women, in this case, can’t pay debts. So I have no interest in whacking you, as you put it, Katriona. Now or ever.” There’s a slight humor in his tone.
Well damn. How can you be mad at that? “Okay, you have me there and I’m glad we’re on the same page.”
Luka speaks up next. “You’re a popular commodity tonight and your life is in danger because Sylan’s enemies, our enemies, want payment for what your father failed to deliver. Our biggest rival isn’t as understanding as Sylan is, and they know we have you.”
There’s a certain weight on that last part, and I can tell Luka is surprised by his brother’s actions concerning me.
“I can’t pay you what my father owes you. I’ll be honest and straight up. I’m a waitress, for crying out loud, scrambling to pay rent with only a high school diploma who can only dream of something bigger. In fact, I’m pretty sure by now my landlord has all my things packed and sitting outside my apartment since I didn’t arrive with rent after you did your snatch and grab on me.”
Sylan is standing so close I can reach out and smack the smug smile off his face, but the compassionate look in his eye keeps my hands at my side. “I’m afraid a man like our rival only takes payment in the flesh. No degree needed for that. One way or another, he’ll want a piece of you and we have to be ready.”
My brows pinch together in a fresh wave of worry. “Flesh as in murder?”
Both men are staring at me, and under that intense weight, I have the sudden urge to flee from the devil I was raised to fear like a good Catholic girl my momma wanted me to be.
But do I listen? Nope. Too late for that anyway. Instead, I melt into Sylan’s gentle touch as he wraps an arm around me. I take comfort in the clean, masculine scent of his cologne. If wealth had a scent, I would say it was the scent of Sylan Ward. Opulent as much as it is dangerous. Dark yet powerful.
It is like the man who wears it. Dominant, forbidden and utterly mind-consuming. Both work in tandem to destroy my better judgment.
“More like prostitution or selling you to the highest bidder if you’re still untouched.”
Despite the large number of improbabilities happening to me in such a short time frame—my father getting killed and me getting kidnapped—I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea I would be the one to pay off the debt for a man that refused to acknowledge my existence. The irony of the whole situation is one large impossible pill to push past my heart, which is still solidly lodged in my throat since yesterday’s evening news.
Luka doesn’t say anything else, and I vaguely notice him fade into the shadows, leaving me alone with Sylan.
I pull out of his arms. “All of this is too much.” I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I need to go home now.”
He turns me to face him, and I see that chiseled jaw of his clamp tight and a fire in his eyes so intense I can feel the burn everywhere his gaze touches me.
“I’m not some starry-eyed girl who believes in some fairy-tale love at first sight or that I found the gold at the end of the rainbow here, Sylan. I’ve heard what you’ve told me, and I want to go home. Please. You have my word I won’t go to the cops, but all this needs to end. I’m so tired.” My feelings are all over the place, and I am in no shape to be listening to them much less following through with the insta-lust that has my panties wet from proximity to the man I have no business desiring.
“And then what would you do when my rival comes knocking at your door. Make no mistake, mo chroí, he won’t be as nice as I am being.”
“Which begs the question why are you being so nice?”
And why do I want him to kiss me again?
He flicks away my question, insisting I answer his own. “Answer my question. What will you do when he has his muscle break in your door, rip you out of your bed with a gun pressed to your head and then gives you two options: take a bullet or go with him quietly?”
“You’re a cold bastard, you know that, Mr. Ward? Heartless like all the newspapers have painted you.” I fling the hurtful words at him, hoping to share a fraction of the pain swelling in my heart.
