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This was the Irish Village, however, and if I wasn’t mistaken, those two men were part of the family that ran it. Which meant there wasn’t really anywhere safe for me to hide. No one would dare go against them, and I’d be a sitting duck.
Then I’d be a dead duck.
Peking style.
“Fuck,” I screamed. My ankle rolled in the heels I was wearing, and I hit the wet pavement hard. Shouldn’t have drunk all that whiskey. Panic surged through me as hands grabbed at my hair, pulling me up from the ground.
“Fucking bitch.” I recognized Kiernan’s rough voice, just a bit edgier than Seamus’s, more bitter and controlled. “You broke my goddamn nose.”
“It’s an improvement.” That was a bald-faced lie. “I’ll do more than that if you don’t let me go,” I snarled and dug my nails as painfully as I could into the hand that held my hair. “Someone help!”
“Shut the hell up.” Seamus strolled up behind his brother, his neck and face red, his eyes narrowed in a vicious glare. “Or you’re going to end up like Jimmy back there.”
His accent had thickened with his anger.
“Go to hell,” I screamed at them as I kicked out at the man in front of me.
“Fuck this shit,” Kiernan muttered, blood dripping down his face, staining his teeth red. “Just do it, Seamus.”
Fresh tears fell from my eyes, but I refused to give up. If they were going to kill me, then I wasn’t going down without a struggle. I scratched, kicked, clawed, and screamed as Seamus approached me, a devilish smirk forming on his lush, kissable lips.
What the fuck, Bailey? Now isn’t the time to be thinking about how handsome his lips are. He’s about to fucking kill you.
“Sorry about this, wildcat,” Seamus murmured.
The last thing I saw was the flash of metal straight at my head.
Then there was nothing but the hollow veil of darkness.
3
Fucking hell.
“How did it go, son?” my father asked from behind the counter of our family bar. McDonough’s. He’d bought the building and named it after my godfather, Seamus McDonough, the man he’d looked up to since he was a child. He had a bar towel thrown over one shoulder, his matching green eyes finding mine while he stacked clean glasses on the shelf below the counter.
It was well past five in the morning and none of us had gotten any sleep. I’d left Kiernan and the fiery reporter to their own devices. Last I checked, she was still knocked out cold in Kiernan’s trunk while the cleaners picked up Jimmy’s body.
We had ample employees to do cleanup at the bar, but my father always made sure to be part of the grunt work. He’d once told me that if a leader cannot do what he asks of those who follow him, then he is no leader. He’s a dictator.
Hard work, he’d said, built character. A genuine leader would never be afraid of getting his hands dirty. It was what his father taught him and what I knew I would one day teach my children.
If only my mother carried the same values.
I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she twiddled away on her cell phone, completely ignoring the surrounding workers, who were cleaning up after the late night.
She rarely worked unless my father threatened to cut off her credit card. I loved my mother, there was no doubt about that, but she’d never been the mother my grandmother had been to my father.
“The cleaners are taking care of the mess at the club,” I murmured so we weren’t overheard. Most of the workers in the bar were part of our operation or family to them, but it still paid to be cautious. Hopping behind the bar, I grabbed a clean dish rag and proceeded to wipe down the sticky bar top.
“Oh, honey,” my mother chastened lightly, her eyes flitting up from the screen of her phone. “You don’t need to do that. That’s why we have employees.”
Employees who were already hard at work and champing at the bit to go home to their families.
“I like the work, Ma,” I told her. She huffed a bit before waving her hand dismissively at me, her attention back on her phone. “Seriously?” I muttered beneath my breath.
“Your mother will be your mother.” My father sighed, the muscles of his jaw visibly tightening. Unlike mine and Kiernan’s, my father’s Irish accent wasn’t as rough. We’d spent years studying and training in our homeland, learning the family business, before coming back to America. My father never had the opportunity because of the clan wars that had shoved his father off the island. “How is your sister?”
“Dashkov says she’s tucked back safely in his penthouse.” I kept cleaning. “From what I heard, the two had some pretty strong words on the dance floor before she stormed off.”
