AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Hm.I tilted my head, wondering how to word my next question.
He saved me the embarrassment. “My grandparents immigrated to Ireland from Nigeria. My father turned out to be a piece-of-shit, and my mother moved here to escape him when she was pregnant. Then she dated more piece-of-shit assholes until one of them took a beating too far and left her hospitalized.”
He didn’t take my hand when I reached across the counter. I left it there anyway, waiting for him to finish.
“I murdered the fucker. He’ll never beat another woman again.”
My breath caught in my throat, sympathy overwhelming me. I didn’t want to feel anything, but their stories were as tragic as mine. I leaned further and grabbed his hand. He stared at it for a moment, as if not sure what to do with the affection and comfort I offered.
Stubborn man.
I clambered down off the kitchen stool and walked around to the other side of the island to wrap my arms around him from behind. We stood there together for long moments before he set his utensils down and clasped his hands around mine, accepting the comfort I offered.
“It was a long time ago, darling.”
I squeezed him tight, pressing my cheek against his back, before releasing him and returning to my stool to finish my dinner. If Cormac wanted to talk, I needed to take the opportunity to better understand these dark and violent men I’d tied myself to.
“How did you all get involved in the gang, then?”
He gave me a puzzled look. “Wearethe gang, darling. Before Rian, the Irish in Yorkfield were scrappy fighters, nothing organized. He took everything he learned running drugs and guns during his summers in Ireland and brought it back here to build our empire.”
I tried to wrap my mind around their history, but came up short. “But you went to school, I thought?”
“Running information security in gangland is as intense an operation as running it for a Fortune 500 company. I studied computer science at MIT while Rian went to business school, and then we came back here and got to work.”
That would have been about the same time the Russians kidnapped me, and I made my bones as a Russo for murdering that Russian kid. I shook my head, grateful for the ten-year respite I’d enjoyed, and sorrowful that I’d never have that again.
“And Liam?”
Cormac twisted his lips. “You should ask him yourself.”
I raised an eyebrow, but dropped the subject, turning the conversation to lighter topics as we ate. Cormac was companionable, letting me shine a light on him outside of the mind-blowing and stomach twisting sex we’d had for the past few days.
“What do you do for fun, Ginny?” I started at the nickname. He’d used it during sex, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I was Ginevra. Something inside me warmed, though, at the sound of it.
I grabbed our now empty plates and walked them to the sink. The guys—no,we—had a chef and a maid, but I wasn’t quite ready to let go of this moment of domesticity with a man who had, until this point, barely spoken to me outside of sex and business.
“Who has time for fun? I work eighty hours a week. What do you do for fun?”
“Fucking same,” he answered. We stared at each other for a moment.
“We have the house to ourselves, right?” I grinned, knowing his mind was going straight toward sex.
“Yes,” he answered, drawing out the sound, trying to figure out where I was going with this.
“Do you have a gaming console?”
Fifteen minutes later, we sat on the couch, side by side, knees knocking together, shouting at each other as we played a racing game for kids.
“You dick!” I shouted as he ran me off the side of the course. “I’ll fucking pay you back in spades, you asshole.”
“If only you could back up your trash talking with actual winning,” he said, laughing as I careened off the track again.
“Right? I’m utter shit at this game.”
“Why did you pick it, then?”
I slouched back into the couch, fatigue overwhelming me despite the fun I was having playing a lighthearted video game with this dangerous man. “Because it’s been a terrible week, and I needed to do something fun tonight.”
