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Chapter I
Heath
When a Connolly wakes to banging on the door, it’s never good.
I reach for my Sig before I even swing my legs out of bed, and I’m halfway across my condo in seconds.
Throwing a look at the security monitor, I expect to see armed men standing outside my door.
“Jesus Christ.”
Instead of the Russian mafia, I see a woman. This better not be one of my brothers’ sick jokes, sending me a “gift” in the middle of the night. I just spent hours as my father’s errand boy, out kneecapping enemies who owe us.
What I need is sleep—not a blowjob.
My breath settles as I study the woman who lifts a small fist to pound on my door again. Her knocks are taking on a frantic edge now. She glances over her shoulder as if somebody’s after her.
I have no doubt that if she’s coming to me, somebody is.
Slipping my Sig along the waist of my jeans that I fell into bed still wearing, I run a hand over my face and reach for the handle just as she knocks again.
I whip it open.
As soon as I meet those eyes, I’m blasted with the past. In a flash, I see a dozen moments between me and this woman.
Then, she was a child. We both were.
Relief washes over her features, rippling each dainty one.
Christ, she grew up to be more beautiful than I ever imagined.
“He-e-eath.” My name falls off her lips in three syllables instead of one. Again, she looks over her shoulder.
I eye up the grounds behind her but all I see is a well-lit parking lot where my truck is and the shrubbery a gardener takes care of. Who is she afraid of?
I look at her again. Clearly, she’s desperate if she came to me. We’re enemies.
But once, we might have been more.
“What the fuck you want, Serenity?”
She winces at my question, but rule number one about me is don’t fuck with my sleep.
“I need your help. Please!” she rasps out.
I haven’t seen Serenity Hunt in almost a decade. Her voice is throatier, despite the fear lingering in it. She’s no longer the sixteen-year-old I knew.
And I’m far from the same. You can’t grow up as the son of an Irish mobster in Detroit without getting hard around the edges. By now I’ve seen so much that I’m fucking petrified wood. Hell, what I did to those guys tonight alone would send people to the psyche ward for an extended stay.
Serenity’s big blue eyes beg me.
A lot of people beg. I’m immune to such antics. I start to shut the door in her face.
She shoves a hand into the crack, and I catch the door before it crushes the delicate bones of her fingers. Those fingers could pitch a baseball better than most boys, tie a fishing hook on a line…but were so gentle when one of my triplet brothers or I had a scrape.
Fuck. I don’t have time for walks down memory lane—or for helping enemies who show up on my doorstep even if they’re begging for help.
“You’ve got the wrong house, Serenity. Find someone else.”
