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I represent all three.
To both sides.
My father, brutal coward that he is, has taken himself away on business. Somewhere in this penthouse is his right-hand man, Liam, making sure things go smoothly.
And this man…
I swallow.
This man is escorting me to my future husband, a stranger I’m being forced to marry to complete an alliance.
“No one asked me if I want to marry Oliver Dowd.”
“And yet,” the tall and lean man with the compelling voice says, “here we are.” The man checks his watch. “It’s a long way to Chicago. Let’s get this show on the road. Death isn’t in the cards for you today.”
Anger and frustration bubbles. This man is a lackey, no point arguing. Mafia kings don’t do their own dirty work. They all have men for that.
Like the one in front of me.
Except the word lackey doesn’t fit his stance. His air.
Still, it doesn’t change why he’s here.
For a moment I think of appealing to his good nature, but men in this business don’t have one. Besides, my father’s made it clear he needs this marriage to further his own ambitions, and I’m nothing to him but a commodity—this is mafia, after all.
It turns my stomach, it really does. But my mother is gone and my father is a man without a heart who has a long and brutal reach, so here I am.
Raised to put on a good face, to handle all situations with charm and sweet calm.
The most I can conjure is the calm. Minus the sweet.
“When’s the flight…um, whoever you are?”
He turns, and for a moment, it’s like looking at destiny.
I can’t breathe.
He’s the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen and I think maybe the most dangerous.
Heart thumping hard, the air swirls hard and fast as I look into his dark, sable eyes. Something inside of me fractures. Those eyes hold a thousand stories – hard, soft, sad, cruel, bitter, passionate. There’s heat, too, right behind the wall of ice.
My mother once told me when I was a little girl the eyes would show me my prince. But I don’t think this man is a prince. He might be a fallen angel instead.
“Cal Quinn.” The gravel voice holds velvet at its depths and his name rolls over me, licking against my skin, humming down beyond my flesh. “And we’re not flying but driving.”
I try and work out the meaning of that. “Do you work for my father or for Oliver?”
A ghost of a smile touches those chiseled lips. “Let’s just say I’m the third-party hire who’ll get you to the church on time.”
I push a wayward curl back from my face and take a deep breath. “Well, let’s get on with it, shall we?”
2
QUINN
Hellena O’Brian is a bargaining chip in a fucking dress. She’s mafia princess, down to her DNA. One last job so I can disappear off this path I tumbled down.
Nothing more than a job. Whether or not I like a sadistic bastard like Oliver Dowd, a bastard like her father, or any of the other lowlifes littering this particular corner of the world of organized crime and mafia.
