Deadly Seduction

by Selene Chardou

  “Tomorrow night…I’m gonna kill a man…and eventually, his death will lead back to me. Promise me, you’ll represent me in court.”

  She dragged on her joint one last time before she put it out in the ashtray and ran her hands through her hair. “You don’t have to do it—”

  “Yeah, I do.” He took another drag on his cigarette before he stubbed it out in the same ashtray. “It’s the only way Dizzy will allow me to leave Brianna.”

  The look on Gisela’s face was priceless as she met his eyes with her own inquisitively. “You’re…leaving Brianna?”

  “It’s no secret she’s the biggest Saint Slapper and she happens to be married to me, Gisela. I look weak with her by my side. She won’t get the kids but she will be leaving Northern Nevada. I’ll relocate her ass to Vegas or L.A.—wherever the fuck she wants to go as long as it’s not around here.”

  For a moment, he thought he saw a look of relief in her eyes but it was short lived as she stood and began to pace. “Why are you telling me this if you want me to represent you? Is this some kind of emotional blackmail?”

  “What?” Cillian watched her body as she continued to pace before she stopped and looked directly at him with tear-filled amber eyes.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about!” she exclaimed before she threw herself against the sofa. “I have to save you because I have no choice. You are our son’s father after all, even if we don’t have him. What kind of…biological parent…would I be if I allowed my own kid’s father to go to prison for the rest of his life?”

  He scooted closer to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He expected her to pull away from him but she didn’t; she held her face in her hands and shook her head repeatedly.

  “I’m not doin’ this ‘cause of Conan, Sela.” It was his pet name for her and he hadn’t used it in over thirteen years but he thought it was fitting now. “He doesn’t know us therefore all we were…all we are in his eyes are sperm and egg donors. Kian and Alannah are his parents—not us. I would never guilt you into doing something you didn’t want to do.”

  Gisela buried her face in the crook of his neck. “Then why did you tell me? I would have defended you if you said you killed Christ himself and I hate myself for that…but I hate you more.”

  Cillian didn’t know what to say as the wetness of her tears felt warm before they quickly cooled and felt cold against his skin. “I know you do, darlin’…and you have every reason to…doesn’t mean I don’t love youse with every bone in my body. I would still take a bullet or catch a fookin’ grenade for you, baby. That’s how much I still think about ya and love ya.

  “I know…I use women. I just got done fuckin’ Chiara but I would take it all back to spend just one night in your bed. You know I would. You’re the one who made it clear to me you wanted nothing to do with me—with us. I did what any sixteen year old kid would do. I moved on and Brianna was there, wantin’ me and seducing me with those gorgeous gray eyes and that dark ginger hair. How was I supposed to know you’d ever speak to me again when I betrayed your trust?”

  “We hurt each other.” Gisela pulled away slightly and he felt her eyes on his profile. “I can’t let you take all the credit. I just wanted out…I thought at one time that it was possible. I was stupid and naïve. I didn’t want to live this…life…and I sure as hell never wanted it for my children. I wanted to live what I thought was a normal one with parents who were executives and respectable. The problem is our way of life enables white-collar criminals to skate by and they never pay for their crimes but our kind always do.”

  “What do you mean by our kind?” He turned toward her and though he didn’t move his arm. Who knew when she would be vulnerable enough to ever let him hold her again?

  “I mean people like your dad and my father. We’re considered the scum of society because of what we do. I release drug dealers, murderers, pimps and gang members back into society. I am actively fighting against the war on crime, and I don’t see anything wrong with my job what so ever. You’re more than an ‘ordinary decent criminal,’ Cillian. You are part of an MC and murder people like you take a dump. In fact, do you ever think about the lives you’ve ended?”

  Cillian’s crystal blue eyes stared into hers and with coldness and precise calculation, he said, “No, never. If I did, I’d drive myself mad. I have to think if there is a…God…maybe I’ll get what’s comin’ to me one of these days. But until that day happens, I’ll do what I do best and whether you believe me or not, Sela, I’m the best. There is a reason why they nicknamed me ‘The Killer.’ I am one and I have no qualms about what it is I do. It’s not on me to fix what’s fucked up with society and yet, I don’t see how I personally make it any worse either. The people I’ve murdered…most were infinitely worse than me and the world doesn’t mourn them. They got what was comin’ to ‘em.”

  She smiled slightly. “I always did love your honesty.”

  “So, about tonight…”

  “What about it?”

  Cillian yawned out loud. “I’m mighty tired. Please don’t make me drive all the way back to Birch Tree tonight. I don’t think I can stand to see Brianna…not now.”

  “You can stay over and I won’t even put you on the sofa if you do me one favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Take another shower and brush your teeth. I have some extra toothbrush heads in the cabinet for my Sonicare toothbrush and there should be some spare men’s boxers around.”

  Cillian opened his mouth to object as she stood and held her hands up. “I don’t give a crap if you showered over at Chiara’s house but I am not sleeping in the same bed as a man who just crawled out of a whore’s bed. Sorry, it’s not how I roll, Cillian, and you oughta know that.”

  “Chiara is an escort—a highly expensive one at that—and she’s one of the cleanest women I have ever met. If I were you, I’d be more worried about me sleeping with my old lady.”

  Gisela stopped walking and turned around to face him. “If you’d come from fucking her, you wouldn’t get in my bed, no matter how tired you were.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Sorry, love, you know how I’m all about the truth.” She smiled before she disappeared into the bedroom.

  Cillian approached her hallway bathroom and closed the door behind him.

  He thought it was sick how he’d just finished fucking another woman less than two hours previously and his cock was ready to go again.

  How could he not have these thoughts when he was about to crawl into bed with the beautiful and untouchable Gisela Jackson? His first love and the woman who’d obliterated his heart until he didn’t think he’d ever be capable of loving another person again?

  To this day, although he had love for his brothers and sisters, he only loved his children as much as he loved Gisela and this was a major transgression on his part.

  The Club came first before everything. Love the man, you have to love the Club—no ifs, ands or buts; and the old ladies got that.

  However Cillian could never wrap his head around this and it bothered him deeply.

  He felt like a priest, surrounded by religion his entire life but the concept of God still eluded him.

  He felt ambivalent about the Club.

  It was a means to an end, a way to make income and the only life he knew yet he didn’t love it. He was power hungry and got off on all the respect being the VP provided him. He also liked the brotherhood involved because at the end of the day, that was what the Club was about. He would take a bullet for his brothers but it wouldn’t be one he’d want to take.

  From the moment Gisela had entered his life, she’d been his reason for getting up and taking a shower, living from day to day. Hoping, praying, and wishing they would someday have a chance at a real future together.

  Perhaps that was the reason why she felt justified enough to make her speech. She’d finally accepted she would never escape this life and she’d stopped trying. Not only did she not want to
escape it, she’d finally embraced it and made peace with it.

  God knows he wanted that kind of peace to settle within him about the Club. He was tired of living in his father’s shadow and being Desmond Cox’s son. He wanted to forge his own path and he had no intention of changing a thing except perhaps switching to something that was a bit more lucrative and safe.

  Human trafficking.

  The Triads, Russian Mafia and Albanians were rolling in the fucking dough because it’s what they did.

  Desmond would have no part of it.

  Raymond refused to employ Asian or Eastern European women because of it.

  Everyone thought it was too damn dirty to touch.

  And yet, running guns and selling drugs was perfectly all right because no one got hurt?

  As far as he was concerned, their brand of crime was a way to make money and there was more money in pussy than anything else in the world.

  Cillian didn’t want to change human trafficking but he would have made it more user friendly for the women. He would buy up a bunch of women and there would be a system in place where they could earn their way out of the life in a year’s time.

  The amount of profit he could turn on a whore in one year would be immeasurable. And he would set aside a small sum to send her on her way, perhaps ten thousand dollars. He approximated that he could probably make ten times that much in a year so give her part of what she earned and she would still be better off than the shithole she’d come from.

  It was a plan he’d shared only with Ronan and his uncle in England, Dexter “Hardy” Cox, and his father’s youngest brother. In fact, he and his uncle were, ironically, the same age.

  Hardy was already involved in human trafficking and making a killing but he hadn’t told Dizzy about it. He knew his father would send him to London personally to murder his own uncle if he knew about it. There was a lot of shit Cillian had done in his life but murdering a family member was beyond the pale, and a line he wouldn’t cross regardless of the consequences. That was some scary, Sicilian Godfather bullshit and he couldn’t do that. His heart was made of stone but he could never stoop that low and think he’d ever be redeemable. Once someone stepped over the line, they didn’t come back.

  He’d seen it happen with his brother, Jaden’s first kill and again, when his half-brother, Kaz, murdered someone for the first time. It wasn’t in their DNA and they weren’t strong enough to get past it, to let it go. Perhaps that made them better people than he was or maybe it just meant he was a sociopath.

  No, he couldn’t have been one because he could feel empathy and he always had to justify his murders. He couldn’t just kill a random individual; perhaps that is why he felt like shit about having to kill Riley.

  The guy might be a Fed or he might not be but he hadn’t personally wronged him. And in his heart of hearts, he knew the guy didn’t have enough to indict any of the Club members because all of the evidence he possessed was purely circumstantial. He was being ordered to hit this guy because his father had something to prove to Emilio Navarro. He wanted to demonstrate he could be as badass as the Aztecas Infierno cartel and that would never happen.

  Cillian wasn’t chopping anyone’s fucking head off with a machete and he wasn’t about to have a kamikaze shoot-out with the cops anytime soon.

  There was crazy and there was fucking insane.

  Aztecas Infierno were about a million miles past fucking insane. They would murder their own families if money was involved. It was a different culture, a different mind frame, and Cillian couldn’t buy into the concept of human life being so worthless and cheap.

  He soaped himself down and rinsed off before he stepped out of the shower and toweled himself off quickly.

  Gisela’s toothbrush and toothpaste were set on the large area of the double sinks. She also had a bottle of Listerine which he liberally drank from and swished in his mouth for thirty seconds before he spit, grabbed her toothbrush, applied toothpaste and turned it on.

  If she was worried about getting germs from him, she could live with it. They’d exchanged bodily fluids in another life for God’s sake. He didn’t see the harm in using her toothbrush; after all, it wouldn’t cause her any permanent damage.

  After he’d finished up, he turned off the light and walked into the bedroom. He could tell by her soft breathing she was asleep. She was drunk when he’d spoken to her and the marijuana hadn’t helped her inebriated state.

  Cillian removed his towel and let it drop to the Persian rug beneath his feet before be crawled into bed behind her and spooned her. He buried his face in her hair for a moment and smelled the delicious scent of Garnier and her perfume, something by Christian Dior or Chanel. She always did prefer French perfumes.

  The scent of her and the proximity to her warm, soft body lulled him to sleep.

  Chapter Four

  Gisela

  I knew it wasn’t my imagination when I awoke in the middle of the night and felt something hard pressed against the small of my back. I turned over and met Cillian’s sleeping form face to face.

  How could I have fooled myself into believing it’d all been a dream? It sure as hell had felt like one. I hadn’t given him permission to sleep in my bed, did I?

  Oh holy fuck, I had because his skin smelled of my body wash and he looked so innocent, so sexy, so mouthwatering hot as he slept.

  This was all so very wrong.

  I was single but that didn’t mean I was dead. I had a regular bootie call with Leo Abandonato. He was a few years older than me and married but we had great bedroom chemistry and it kind of just happened. Maybe it was because he always managed to get himself in so much trouble and was in my office at least once every few months.

  We enjoyed one another’s company, spoke about the same subjects because we were both Harvard school grads, and then we would go up to one of his father’s luxurious hotel suites and fuck one another’s brains out.

  It was the perfect arrangement because I wasn’t tied down and I didn’t have to feel anything for anyone.

  My heart had and always would belong to the man right across from me who slept in the nude and was married to a whore he would soon be rid of—hopefully.

  Although we never managed to rid ourselves of each other and that was the fundamental breakdown.

  No relationship we ever attempted would ever work out okay because we were unfinished business.

  I touched his cheek reluctantly before I allowed my fingers to trace the tattoos on his right arm. They all meant something, from the guns and roses tattoo that was a “Boston” thing and had something to do with family to the names of Caitlin and Declan on his arms.

  I knew he loved his children, and why shouldn’t he? But I always wondered how he felt about our child together? Did he ever think about our son at all? Did he ever wonder what he would be like when he was a man?

  I thought about it all the time as a single, successful, twenty-nine-year-old child-free woman. I didn’t feel child-free—I felt like someone had taken a piece of my heart and stepped on it until it was nothing but pulp, opened up my ribs and threw the deformed organ back into my chest. It beat just the same and I woke up, went to work, did my job and attended family and society functions but I was walking wounded.

  It’d been like this for me since I was sixteen years old and the baby that had suckled on my right breast for ten minutes was rudely snatched away from my arms. Even though my breasts were normal now, I could still feel the phantom suckle of an infant child who was now a teenager and wouldn’t know me from Eve if we passed each other on the street.

  The tears came though I tried to wipe them away and I laid on my back before I grabbed Cillian’s hand and placed it over my empty stomach. It was then I noticed it. Right there, on his forearm, was a “C” in Celtic-style lettering and the words, Beidh mé ag cuimhneamh ort underneath in fancy lettering.

  Loire had done the tattoo and I knew enough Irish Gaelic—after spending six months of my life in Belfast in wha
t seemed to be a lifetime ago—to know it read, I will remember you.

  The waterworks began and soon, I was sobbing though I bit my lip and tried to stay quiet. I didn’t want him to wake up to see me like this because it wouldn’t fundamentally change anything. My parents had been gung-ho about the idea of adoption, the same way they were now gung-ho about taking Misty’s baby away from her once she gave birth.

  It was tit for tat.

  The Coxes were allowed to keep my child with Cillian therefore they would be allowed to take Misty’s child by my brother, Drake.

  Not that I blamed them.

  Misty was known as a party girl and she wasn’t in a fit state to raise a child. My parents were actually doing her a favor.

  Perhaps like they’d done with Cillian and I.