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SAOIRSE
Isee Connor go very still. “His life?” he says quietly, his voice low and grave, although he doesn’t turn around yet. “Think carefully about what you say to me next, Graham O’Sullivan.”
Even now, with our ruse complete, the gravelly tone of his voice sends a shiver through me.This is the man I’m going to marry if our plan works,I can’t help but think, and the thought makes me feel slightly breathless. I hadn’t expected to want Connor as I knew him before, and I should want him even less as I know him now. He’s rough, crass, belligerent, and defiant, and yet the feelings that he sends quivering through me are undeniable.
Iwanthim, and in a different way than I wanted Liam, differently than anything I’ve ever wanted before. It’s as if Connor, by his very presence, has awakened a craving in me that I never knew I had.
Deep down, I’d always felt so stifled by my family, so devoid of emotion and passion. I’d thought that maybe Liam would be the one to awaken that in me, that he would spark something inside of me once we were married and intimate, something other than the duty and loyalty and poise that I’d always been taught was paramount.
But he hadn’t wantedme. He’d wanted his ballerina, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was willing to burn everything down, including me and my future, in order to have her. And as much as I want to blame her for my misfortune and losing Liam, I can’t. I know now that he never would have been all of the things I’d dreamed about in the wee hours of the night, nurturing the small rebellious crush I’d had on him since we were young. Even if he’d married me, he would never have wanted me or loved me. I would have spent my entire life aching for a man who would have never even really seen me.
And Connor?
I look at him, at his tense squared shoulders, facing away from us as he awaits my father’s response, and I wonder what else is in him, deep down, thatInever saw. I’d only ever seen a stoic, emotionless man, one bound by duty and family just as I was. In the end, there had been something in him rebellious enough to make him defy his father’s plans to double-cross Vito Rossi, to make him abandon everything and disappear.
Not to mention, tonight–
The man I met tonight is anything but emotionless. Anything but passionless. And after wanting his brother for so long to be the one who finally sparked something to life inside of me, it turned out to be Connor after all.
Or what’s left of him, anyway, under the guise of William Davies.
“If you refuse to come back,” my father says slowly, his voice calm and gruff, “the Kings will likely execute your brother, putting an end to the McGregor name. They’ll want to remove any chance of him trying to hold onto the seat. He’s put a child in the Russian girl’s belly, and the Kings won’t hear of a half-Russian heir taking Liam’s place when he’s dead.”
I watch with bated breath as my father pauses, Connor still turned away from him. I can see the tension running through every line of Connor’s body, the effort that it’s taking for him to remain calm, and I can feel my own body humming in response. Something about the restrained violence in Connor turns me on, even though I know it shouldn’t, that I should be flat-out terrified of marrying this man, tying my future and my children’s future to his.
“Once your brother is dead,” my father continues, “they’ll marry one of the other sons to Saoirse, and put him at the head of the table, whoever is chosen. The power will shift away from the McGregors, your family line wiped out except for you, and a new family will take over the Boston Kings.” My father lets out a breath. “And who knows? Maybe whoever takes power next will send someone after you, too, to ensure that the McGregor line is officially ended. I won’t be able to help you then, lad.”
“I don’t need your help,” Connor says stiffly, facing my father again. “I’m well able to avoid whatever excuse for an assassin the Kings decide to send after me. And as for another family taking over the Boston arm of the Kings—” he shrugs. “I fail to see the problem with that, and I maintain that it has naught to do with me.” His English accent slips, a hint of the old Gaelic slipping in, and I feel a shiver go down my spine.
“You don’t think your brother’s life has something to do with you?” My father raises one thick eyebrow. “You’re a colder man than I thought, Connor McGregor.”
Connor keeps his face carefully blank, but as I watch him, I think I see some hint of emotion hidden there. It’s an unsettled look in his eyes as he considers the possibility of his brother’s death when he might be able to make some difference in the matter.
“And you’re not the loyal servant of the McGregors that I thought, Graham, if you’d let the table execute my brother the way they did my father and for less.” Connor frowns. “I know he threw over your daughter—” he doesn’t look my way as he says it, effectively talking about me as if I’m not there, which makes me bristle “—but that’s no reason to have a man killed.”
“This isn’t about Saoirse,” my father says tightly. “He’s had his punishment for his broken vow already, delivered in the old way.”
Connor blanches slightly at that, a flicker of emotion showing on his face. “A humiliating punishment for a man of his position,” he says flatly. “And yet that’s not enough?”
“He did more than break a vow.” My father narrows his eyes. “And you know it, lad. Or perhaps you don’t. There’s an alliance between the new Italian mafia, under Luca Romano, Viktor Andreyev’s Bratva, and the Kings. An alliance that the men of the table have mixed feelings on, particularly when it comes to aligning ourselves with the Bratva. Liam was already young and untried, not raised to lead. The table has been a tinderbox since your father’s death, and Liam’s betrothal to my daughter was more than just an engagement. It showed his commitment to carrying forward the alliances of the past as well as those of the future. It showed that he was willing to do what was necessary, to do hisduty, and when he married of his own volition—and a Russian girl no less—he thumbed his nose at every man at that table who questioned whether he ought to leave.”
“So exile him.” Connor shrugs. “Make him leave Boston with his girl and his child. Put someone new at the head of the table. Let the McGregor line die, for all I care.”
“The table, and the alliance, will not agree to this,” my father says firmly. “They will not allow Liam to live, to come back and challenge the table again or put his child at the head of it unless a different McGregor sits at the head of it.” He pins Connor with his steely gaze. “The only other McGregor left.”
“And if he’s executed?” Connor raises an eyebrow, and though my father doesn’t see it, I think I glimpse the struggle within him, how hard it is for him to talk about his brother’s life so casually. He wants my father to believe that it doesn’t matter to him, that he’s put all of that behind him, but I don’t believe it for a second.
I don’t think Connor is as cold or devoid of feeling as he’d like us to believe.
“What stops the Russian girl from trying to put her child at the head of it later, or that child coming back to claim the birthright they believe is theirs, as half-McGregor?” Connor pauses, his gaze searching my father’s chilly expression, and his mouth drops open.
“Shit,” he swears under his breath. “You’ll get rid of the girl and the child, too? That’s cold, Graham, colder than I’d believed even you could be. But still—” he shakes his head. “You’re asking me to leave an empire I built on my own, for a brother who likely never wants to see me again and his wife and child who mean nothing to me.”
I feel a chill run down my spine at that, and I look at my father, startled. I hadn’t known that part of the table’s plan for Liam if Connor won’t return included putting an end to Ana and her unborn child. It makes me feel faintly sick.
“I don’t think—” I start to say, but my father puts a hand up, glaring at me in a clear directive to be silent.
“It’s ridiculous that Liam needs to die,” Connor says flatly. “If they’re so worried about the child coming back, set terms on the lives of all three of them if any of them ever set foot in Boston again. There’s no need for this—these dramatics. It’s archaic.”
