Filthy Dark: A SECOND CHANCE/SECRET BABY, MAFIA ROMANCE (THE FIVE POINTS' MOB COLLECTION Book 3)

by Serena Akeroyd

  While I wanted to slice her throat from one side to the other, I knew I couldn’t. I knew, in the long run, we’d be safer if she still walked around, and I had to take my need for vengeance out on one person—Benito Fieri.

  Tonight, the war with the Famiglia would be over because the infighting would begin. The second Eoghan slaughtered Fieri, things would get real messy with the Italians. Though the Rossis were second in line to the Famiglia throne, I’d bet my life savings that the Genovicos weren’t going to let them ascend without a fight. They’d start brawling and battling over who’d lead them, which would give us time to regroup.

  Time we badly needed.

  “What do you want?” she sobbed, breaking into my thoughts.

  “Typical. Low pain threshold. What the fuck do they teach Feds at Quantico?” I grumbled.

  “Apparently not how to be good at their jobs. If she was, she wouldn’t have been found out, after all.”

  “I dunno, bro. What’s that old saying? About tangled webs and deceiving?”

  Brennan grunted, but his boots echoed around the warehouse as he moved toward me.

  The place was empty except for me and him, but that was because we did the wet work. Eoghan too, but his was from a distance. Someone had to take out the trash, and we were fucking good at it. Unfortunately for me, Caroline would end up in the ER tonight, not the city morgue like she deserved.

  He flashed me his cellphone, and we shared a smile as I saw the picture Eoghan had sent over.

  Benito’s corpse with a bullet between his eyes and my brother’s boot between his shoulders as he kicked him into the water.

  Per Da’s rules, Eoghan wasn’t supposed to get that close to the fucker. Was supposed to shoot from a distance. It figured he had to get nearer, that he needed to make the bastard know who was taking him out.

  This was personal.

  The second Da had learned that Seamus was the intended target, he’d gone on a little rampage that not even Ma had been able to contain. There were a lot fewer Italians roaming around, let’s just put it that way. But he was out of sorts, and I couldn’t blame him.

  Not knowing who to trust, who to lean on was wearing on us all.

  While Fieri was dead now—the plan for the assassination had taken three weeks of solid organization—there was no real justice in this world. Still, I breathed a little easier knowing that cunt was out of the picture.

  Which let this one take front and center.

  “W-What d-do y-you w-want?” she sobbed again.

  “How is it you’ve been blackmailing me all these years?”

  Her sudden stillness told me she hadn’t expected me to veer down that route.

  “I-I haven’t.”

  My fist sailed through the air before she could finish the sentence. She howled as her head flung back with the force of my punch. The move pulled at her roots and she hopped up and down, trying to find her balance once more.

  “You think you can fucking lie to me?” I snarled, my hand coming to her throat which I squeezed. I squeezed so hard I knew I could drain her of oxygen without a shadow of a doubt.

  “N-No! N-No! S-Sorry, promise I won’t,” she sputtered.

  A calming hand was laid on my shoulder.

  I cut Brennan a look. He stood there, utterly understanding, but it was still a wet fish to the face as I took a step back.

  As she gasped for air, I got myself under control.

  She could die tonight.

  Or she could pay for her sins for the rest of her life.

  I was too Catholic not to appreciate the latter.

  When she was still sputtering, just not as much, I rasped, “How did you arrange it?”

  “I brought Cillian Donahue in,” she whispered miserably, but she said it fast. Her words tripping over themselves as she hurried to give me what I wanted. “Told him I needed dirt on you. If he didn’t give it to me, I had a nice little cop murder I could pin on him. So he did. Easily. He wasn’t happy with you after his sister died, so I made arrangements for him.

  “He went into WITSEC after we figured out a way to make him look like he was dead. He sang like a canary.”

  “About what? There’s no way your superiors would put him through WITSEC unless he gave them something good.” When she fell quiet, I reached for the corner of the duct tape I’d rolled over her eyes and yanked it good and hard.

  She howled as I took off a few eyelashes and half her left eyebrow.

  When she screeched some more as it ruptured her balance, I folded my arms, just waiting for her to find her new equilibrium.

  “They’ll kill me if I tell you,” she whispered, blinking at me through pain-dazed eyes.

  “I’ll kill you tonight if you don’t.”

  “They have eyes and ears everywhere.” Her mouth trembled, and she cut Brennan a beseeching glance. “I’m a Fed. There are repercussions for doing this. If you let me go now, I’ll tell them I was mugged.”

  Brennan snorted. “Muggers don’t wax half your eyebrows off.” His smirk turned deadly. “We don’t make deals with pork byproducts. You ain’t good enough to even be called bacon, bitch. You will talk.”

  She started trembling, but I sensed that whomever she was scared of, she was more terrified of them than us.

  Well, we couldn’t have that, could we?

  I strolled off, leaving her with Brennan, and I headed over to the table that was just out of the light, hidden in the shadows. Finding the wire cutters, I hefted them in my hand, tossing them slightly as I returned to her. With each step, tension filled her, especially when I approached from behind.

  She started to twist, then she’d stop as it pulled on her hair, but each time, I sensed her growing panic, and I let it build and build until I snapped out my hand, grabbed hers, slotted the cutters onto her pointer finger, and let it chomp through her bone.

  She didn’t even scream, just passed out.

  I moved around her with the finger in my hand which I wrapped up in a napkin, and tossing it at Brennan, murmured, “Go and see what she has in her safe.”

  “Can’t believe Conor couldn’t hack it open,” he grumbled.

  “Whatever’s in there must be worth hiding.”

  “What if it needs a retina scan?” he joked. “Gonna plop out her eye with a melon baller?”

  “A major component of every torturer’s bag of tools,” I replied wryly, watching as he strolled out of my warehouse, leaving me alone with this bitch.

  I was covered in blood, but before the night was out, I’d be covered in plenty more.

  Taking a seat on the stool in front of her, I grabbed my cell and dialed my woman.

  “Hey, baby,” she greeted, and because she knew more than she ought, she asked, “Is it done?”

  “Part one, sure. That’s over. Part two, not so much.”

  “Having fun?” she asked dryly.

  “Plenty. Not my usual scene. Do it for the job. This is different.”

  “I expect no less.”

  “My bloodthirsty wench,” I replied with a grin, but it tapered off as I inquired, “How’s the kid?”

  “Better. Hasn’t screamed yet.” She let out a breath. “First time in three weeks. You know who the woman is yet? The woman he saw get killed?”

  “No. It’s on the to-do list. She just doesn’t realize she needs to be more scared of me than whomever she’s working for.”

  “Do me proud?”

  “Always.”

  She smiled, I heard it in her voice, and that smile cleansed me somehow. Better than confession. It made all of this right. All of it acceptable.

  I was doing this for my woman, for my boy. What other purpose was there for a man like me other than to defend his family? Other than to make the enemies of that family pay?

  “I’m sorry you’re spending the first night in the brownstone alone.” I’d been looking forward to fucking her in the big four-poster in the master bedroom.

  “I’m sorry too, but I’d prefer you to
be doing what you’re doing.” When I started to smile, she murmured, “Guess what I found.”

  Wasn’t hard to guess.

  A little sheepishly—which was ridiculous because she couldn’t see me—I ducked my head. “What did you find?”

  “Master of Dawn.”

  My nose crinkled. “You know how long it took my broker to find that?”

  “My first work of art? Christ, I don’t even know. It’s good to see it again.”

  “I should have realized you’d immortalized me in art a long time ago.”

  “My way of trying to get closure.”

  “How’s that working out for you?” I joked.

  “Badly,” she teased. “I like having it back home.”

  “I paid for it.”

  She laughed. “Good to know, cat burglar.”

  I could feel my eyes twinkling. “You going to be all right?”

  “Of course I am. Make her pay, sweetheart.”

  “Don’t worry, I will, laoch.”

  A sigh drifted from her lips. “I love that you call me that. I don’t always feel like a warrior, but when I’m with you, I do.”

  “You were born to reign at my side, sweetheart.”

  She fell silent at that, and I let her. I let her process how much I meant that, and then she sealed the deal perfectly by whispering, “I love you, Declan.”

  “I love you too, Aela. This is the first night of the rest of our lives, okay?”

  “Without destruction, there is no creation,” she murmured.

  And while I could have joked about her turning all poetical on me, I didn’t.

  Couldn’t.

  Instead, feeling a little choked, I murmured, “Aela? Does that mean what I think it means?”

  Her laughter tinkled down the line, but at that exact moment, Dunbar began to moan.

  “Shit, I have to go. We’ll talk later.”

  “Oh, I’m sure we will. I’ll wait up for you,” she teased, before her tone hardened, darkened, enough to make my cock twitch. “Now, make the bitch pay.”

  She cut the call for me, and when I stared into the pig’s terrified eyes, I smiled.

  I had my orders, and like any good foot soldier, even one as high-ranking as me, I knew to always obey.

  AELA

  I stayed up for him like I promised.

  Didn’t matter that it was past four AM and I was exhausted. Didn’t matter that I wanted my bed more than I wanted my next breath.

  I told him I’d stay up for him, so stay up I would.

  That was how we were going to work from now on.

  No more secrets, lies, half-truths, or broken promises.

  Just the truth. Nothing but.

  I couldn’t cope with anything else, because I needed him more now than I ever had before, and that was really saying something.

  The world was in chaos, and Seamus had been in danger long before he’d even entered the Five Points’ hemisphere. That told me something—some people were born to violence, and that was us.

  That tied us together as well as blood.

  I rested my head against the armchair’s wing and closed my eyes. I loved the brownstone. It was what I’d needed—solid and not paper screen walls—but it was in dire need of being spruced to my specifications. At the moment, it was a house and not a home.

  If this was where we were going to put down roots, then I was going to make it that for us. Our nest. Our haven amid the insanity outside these walls.

  The room had a fireplace, complete with mantelpiece, and atop it, there was a carriage clock that ticked and ticked, endlessly ticking. It was soothing, though, and it lulled me into a half-sleep until I jerked awake when Declan murmured, “Oh, laoch, you didn’t have to stay up this late.”

  My eyes popped open, and I almost jumped back at the sight of him.

  He was covered in blood.

  Jesus.

  He stared at me, and I knew what he was doing.

  Letting me see the real him. Letting me see the monster who hid inside the love of my life’s soul.

  As he leaned down, I reached out and touched his blood-stained cheek. I didn’t need to know what he’d done to see it was gruesome. No one bled this much from a nosebleed, after all.

  His skin was crispy with it, and the prospect of him driving home like this had me shaking my head at him. “You have a death wish? Driving around looking like something from a horror movie?”

  His lips didn’t even twitch, which told me his mind was elsewhere. “Needed to come home,” he rasped.

  My throat was thick, because I knew why.

  He’d heard filth, and he needed to be clean.

  He’d heard things that made him think we weren’t safe, and he wanted to protect us.

  “I love you, Declan,” I whispered.

  He blinked, and for the first time, his features were less wooden. “I love you too.”

  My feet were numb from being cooped up in the armchair, but I lowered them to the ground and surged to a standing position.

  “Let’s get you clean,” I told him, holding out my hand for him to take as he also moved to stand.

  He was still wooden. Still a little robotic. And even though I worried for him, I knew this was a part of the job.

  You couldn’t tear into someone without a part of you being affected too.

  That wasn’t how the soul worked.

  We were quiet as we crept through the house, not wanting to disturb Seamus who was on the third floor, and I moved us straight into the bathroom.

  I didn’t turn the light on, just began to undress him, working the expensive leather jacket off his shoulders, removing the wifebeater, and then the boots, followed by the grimy jeans.

  When he was naked, I stripped too, and though he touched his hand to my belly, I merely smiled up at him.

  “I’m ready,” I told him, my tone strangely serene. And I was. I’d never thought about getting pregnant, but I’d made no move to prevent it from happening either.

  I wasn’t getting any younger, Seamus was too old for babies around the house to be anything other than annoying, but mostly? I just wanted his kids. More of them. I wouldn’t say I was a natural mother, but this felt right.

  Perfect.

  As perfect as this imperfect world was capable of being.

  Sure, I knew what I was bringing this baby into, but Declan wasn’t the man he’d been before. He knew who Seamus was. What our kids could be like. I knew he’d do his best to keep them untainted from the life. And me? I’d never be like my mom or Lena. I’d fight for my kids. I’d fight for their futures.

  “Thought you had an IUD,” he admitted.

  “Had it taken out a couple of months before everything went down,” I told him, my lips quirking. “Fate has a funny way of working out, doesn’t it?”

  He hummed. “I hope it’s a girl. Hope she looks like you.”

  “Only fair considering Seamus is your twin,” I teased, but I prompted him into action, and he let me guide him into the shower.

  Declan’s soul housed a monster. One that was cultivated from his father’s dictates. But he was still my man.

  Mine.

  My protector.

  My children’s defender.

  I was careful with the water temperature, then I prodded him until he stood underneath the fall. He let me soap him up, let me tend to him, and when I reached up and cleaned his face, he tilted his head back and bent his knees so I didn’t have to lean up on my tiptoes.

  When he was clean, I pressed a kiss to his lips, and when he curled his arms around my waist and hugged me to him, I let him. I gave him what he needed in silent thanks for what he gave me.

  Tonight, and every other night since this disaster had begun, he’d put his soul on the line for Seamus and me.

  That went deeper than love.

  I hugged him back, showed him that my need for him was just as fierce, and when the water ran cold, I switched it off, and we drifted, soaking wet, to the bed.


  We didn’t make love.

  We just lay in each other’s arms.

  The monster was tucked away for another night, until he’d have to rear his head once more to defend those he loved the most.

  Me and his son. And now this baby too.

  Forever.

  Aela

  Six months later

  Scowling, I opened the door. “What?”

  Lena’s brows surged to her hairline. “I told you I was coming.”

  A little dazed because I was knee-deep in my work, I rubbed my forehead, shoving a few strands of black hair away. The blue dye had long since disappeared.

  “Sorry, Lena. I was busy. Didn’t remember you were coming.”

  Her laugh was wry as she looked me up and down. “I can tell.” Rubbing her hands together, she asked, “How long until I get my first painting?”

  “A few more days, if Declan will just sit still,” I hollered up the staircase.

  “I sit still,” he growled back, loud enough to trickle downstairs.

  “Not still enough.”

  Another laugh tinkled from Lena, and she slipped her arm through mine even as she went to tap my belly before instantly freezing. “Oops.”

  I sighed. “It’s okay. You can touch it just this once.” Why everyone insisted on wanting to touch my bloated belly, I’d never know.

  I’d already made it a point of telling Lena not to do it, and though she was pretty good about it, she sometimes forgot.

  My belly was my belly. The only person who could touch it was Declan, and that was if he was going downtown to Oralsville. I didn’t even like Seamus touching it, for fuck’s sake.

  Though I gave her permission, she moved away from me with a sheepish smile and instead opened her arms to me so we could hug. I liked that we were closer now. It made things easier for Declan. Even though I knew Lena had failed a lot as a mother, she loved Dec and that love was returned.