Now the only question was what the hell did the man want at such an ungodly hour?
Why are you texting me at six a.m.? Normal business hours don’t start until 8. Mine don’t start until 10.
She waited for a response, her tension ratcheting up as the little dots danced on the screen while he typed. Her judgment at six a.m. wasn’t the best. Maybe she shouldn’t have mouthed off to the mobster.
But when the answer finally came, it took her breath away, and not out of fear. No, it was breath stealing for an entirely different reason.
I was thinking about you all night, so it seemed only natural to contact you first thing this morning. Will nine work?
Just like that. No warning. No explanation. Simply “I was thinking about you all night.” Did that mean about her in her capacity as a her? Or her because she was part of the project he was thinking about all night?
Lila stared down at the phone, a slight tremor passing through her body.
I’m not sure what to make of that, she typed out.
I’m not either, he replied quickly. But regardless, we need to discuss the project.
She agreed to the nine a.m. meeting and spent ninety minutes lying in bed, trying desperately to go back to sleep. When it became apparent that she was wasting her time, she climbed off the nine-thousand-dollar mattress she’d splurged on with her ill-gotten gains and went to the shower, trying not to think about the scary guy she had to go meet with.
It didn’t make a lot of sense to be so nervous about him. She’d probably met mobsters dozens of times when she was younger—her father’s bookies, the guys he made debt payments to, the guys who set up the backroom poker games he attended. There was rarely a car ride with her dad that didn’t include a stop involving his “job,” as he’d called it. There had to have been mobsters around in all that. But not a one of them had made her feel like Cian MacFarlane did. The man scared the crap out of her. But she didn’t want to examine why too closely.
At nine oh five, Lila walked into what seemed to now be “their” Starbucks. She stifled the urge to slap the inner her who would think of hot mobster Cian MacFarlane in any context that resulted in “we.”
“Good morning,” he said as she arrived at the table he’d staked out in a back corner away from the front windows and all the activity of the fancy reserve coffee bar. She wondered if he always sat away from glass in case of drive-bys. While she had to worry about getting caught up in an investigation of dark web activity and finding the FBI on her doorstep someday, she’d never had to fear for her safety walking around in the world. She was hidden behind some of the thickest virtual walls ever erected. Almost no one knew who she was, what her real name was, or how she earned her living. She couldn’t help but wonder what it was like to be a moving target every time you set foot outside your armored car.
Lila gave Cian a small nod in acknowledgment before sitting in the chair he’d pulled out for her in a gesture that was oddly gentlemanlike.
“What can I get you for breakfast?” he asked.
Lila peered at him, her brain still somewhat foggy from lack of sleep. “How do you know I haven’t eaten already?”
“Because I woke you up far too early, and you spent the next two hours trying desperately to go back to sleep before you finally had to crawl out of bed and rush to get here five minutes late.”
She stared at him, disgusted by how accurate his assessment was.
“It was only an hour and a half,” she muttered.
“What will you be eating?” he asked again, a placid smile on his face.
She huffed out a breath before giving him her order, which he texted to Danny.
“Now,” he said, a satisfied smirk in place as she tucked into the breakfast sandwich and chai Danny delivered to their table, “I have more questions about the security.”
Thirty minutes later, Lila had explained the entire setup of Rogue, with technical details she knew damn well Cian didn’t understand. But for some reason, he seemed to want to keep talking to her, asking question after question, ordering his henchman to refill her chai, and nodding thoughtfully as if he understood half of what she was saying.
“And that access code is switched out every thirty days?” he asked.
“Yes. We have a randomizer that pulls a new one at an exact time each month, then automatically sends it to Xavier and me. We then distribute it to two other staff members—different ones each month—so they can do certain types of work within the system.”
“And how do I know those other staff members are trustworthy?” he asked, looking at her from under his brows as he idly stirred his third cappuccino.
“How do any of us know anyone is trustworthy?” she answered, tiring of the inquisition. “Xavier pays well. The entire business is black market. There’s no reason to think our staff will suddenly go to the cops over your part as opposed to any other.”
Cian gave her a wry smile. “Lila from Rogue,” he said in that deep tone he had that set something in her stomach swaying. “You have no idea the types of enemies my family has. They would think nothing of bribing or threatening one of your staff members to jeopardize my business. They would love nothing more than to see my brothers and me in federal lockup.”
She felt her cheeks burn with the recognition he was right. This wasn’t like their ordinary business. Rogue had never been associated with anyone like the MacFarlanes.
As if he sensed she was fresh out of snappy comebacks, he continued. “I want all MacFarlane business separated from the rest of Rogue. And I want no one but you and Xavier involved. You will do all the work on this. You will be assigned to our account full time. And if Xavier balks at this, remind him how much his cut will be.”
Lila sat back in her chair, arms crossed, huffing out a breath as she did. “I wasn’t aware Xavier had made you co-owner of the company.”
Cian gave her a slow, dark smile, like the richest chocolate dripping from a spoon. “Do we need to go there?” he asked, leaving the unsaid…well, unsaid. Yes, his eyes communicated, I can insist on whatever I want because I’m bigger, richer, and meaner than Xavier Rossi will ever be, and he knows it.
His words were like a slap in the face, and she realized she’d been getting…comfortable…with him. She’d forgotten for a moment he wasn’t only mysterious, charming, and very sexy, but also dangerous, unpredictable, and very powerful.
“No. I apologize,” she amended quickly. “I’ll let Xavier know how you’d like it arranged.” She stood abruptly, something she seemed to do a lot around this man. Her hands shook slightly as she snatched her tablet off the table and lifted her messenger bag from the chair back. “I really need to get in to work now. I have a lot to do.”
Cian looked at her with those ice-blue eyes, then gave a small nod. He stood as well. “I’ll walk you out,” he said.
“It’s really not necessary—”
He suddenly stepped around the table, taking her elbow gently in his hand. Warmth rushed through her at the same time a strange chill did.
“I don’t—” He paused, his gaze fixed on something over her head before he looked down, straight into her eyes, penetrating and so intense. “I don’t hurt civilians.” His voice was quiet, his lips only inches from hers. “I’m not a monster, Lila. Just a businessman. You don’t need to be afraid of me.”
She swallowed hard as she looked up at him. A wry smile caused his lips to turn up ever so slightly at the corners. “You’ll get these things set up as I’ve asked?”
She nodded again, unable to speak for reasons that went far beyond fear.
“Good. Let me know when you’re done.”
His hand left her elbow, and before she realized it, he was walking away, his long legs eating up the space between her and the door. Danny was on his feet and at his boss’s side before she could blink. The two men strode into the weak sunshine and disappeared into the back of a dark SUV that mysteriously appeared at the front curb.
Lila realized she�
��d stopped breathing minutes ago and took a bracing breath, her heart racing, her elbow still tingling where he’d touched, held her captive, if only for a moment.
Times like these, Lila truly regretted the world her father had raised her in. Because no matter how scared she was by Cian MacFarlane, she was also drawn to him, like a piece of iron to a magnet. And that was the worst idea Lila had had in years.
Chapter 5
Connor slipped in the back door of his parents’ house, nodding to the man who stood guard outside before he shut the glass-paned door that had somehow survived the comings and goings of him and his brothers for thirty-plus years.
He stood still for a moment, his eyes fixed on the small light over the kitchen stove, the only thing illuminating the room, and listened, wondering if his parents had already gone to bed.
A gruff voice came out of the darkness in the corner where the kitchen table sat. “You get that shipment squared away at the docks like I said.”
Connor’s heart did a flip but he knew better than to let his surprise show. Like his brothers, he’d been trained to keep a poker face no matter what. If you didn’t, your face would meet the back of the old man’s hand. He took a deep breath and sauntered over to the table where his father sat in the dark, sipping a tumbler of whiskey.
“Hey, Pop,” he said, reaching for the bottle that sat in front of his father.
“Get a glass, or I’ll wipe those lips off your face,” the old man muttered. Connor couldn’t help but smirk that his father knew him so well. He walked across the kitchen and opened the cabinet to extract another tumbler.
As he returned to the table and sat, he poured a healthy serving and took a long swallow, the top-shelf whiskey burning its way down his throat, helping sharpen his senses, something that was always needed if you were going to have a conversation with Robbie MacFarlane.
A flame hissed to life across the table as his dad lit up a cigar. The orange flame illuminated the old man’s craggy features, his thick shock of white hair standing at odd angles that told Connor he’d come to the kitchen from bed. Probably unable to sleep.
Robbie MacFarlane had immigrated to the US from Ireland at the age of twenty, entering the country on a work visa with an Irish manufacturing company. The manufacturing company was, of course, a front for the Dublin Devils, Irish organized crime, and Robbie and the other young men who’d come in on visas spent more time running backroom gambling operations and dealing drugs than they ever had working the line at the factory.
Over the next two decades, the Devils changed. Robbie worked his way up, and eventually, when the leaders in Dublin decided to scale back and liberate the American arm of the organization, they handed Robbie the reins—for a significant sum of cash, of course—and suddenly, Robbie was forty and in charge of an organized crime network with ties to Ireland and a legion of soldiers at his beck and call.
He’d married the much younger Angela Milligan, daughter of one of Chicago’s old political families, a year later, and she’d borne him four strong boys to carry on the family legacy. Connor, as the youngest, had gotten the least of his father’s expectations and pressure, but he’d felt the force of Robbie’s hand enough times to realize when the old man told you to do something, you did it.
“Yeah, Pop, of course. The shipment’s all stowed, and the guys will send it out to Wisconsin tomorrow.”
“Good. You tell your brother I want that product on the street within ten days? We’re holding on to the damn stuff too long. The longer it’s in our hands, the more time the feds have to track it to us. He oughta know that by now. Some days, I wonder if I’m gonna have to come back and run shit. He’s too fuckin’ soft.”
“Yeah, I told him. He’ll work on it.” Connor felt a prick of unease as he always did when his father talked about Cian. He’d never known the old man to give Cian any praise. Cian never worked fast enough, never worked hard enough. Yet the men respected him deeply and would die for him if they were asked to, and so would Connor, Finn, and Liam. Robbie had enforced his rule with an iron fist. Cian had earned his authority.
“You know, Pop, it wouldn’t hurt to have a little confidence in Cian once in a while. He’s doing a good job.”
His father scoffed quietly before pulling the bottle back toward him and pouring a few fingers into his own glass.
“Cian noticed some feds at the bar this week. You seen any of ’em hanging out around the house here?” Connor asked, trying to move the conversation away from his brother’s perceived faults.
Robbie looked at him from under his bushy white brows. “Bloody bastards have been parked at the bottom of the drive every day for the last two weeks.”
“Dammit,” Connor spat as he banged a fist on the tabletop. “Can’t we do anything about it? It’s harassment. Why aren’t the lawyers filing some kind of restraining orders?”
Robbie stood, throwing back his whiskey in one go. “Nothing the lawyers can do. Feds have us like a bunch of rats in a hole, and that’s why we can’t afford any screwups.”
Connor nodded before his dad said good night and took off to the upper floor of the house. He sat in the silence of his parents’ kitchen and drank the rest of his whiskey, thoughts circling his mind. It was three years ago that Liam and Robbie had been picked up in a raid on one of the MacFarlane distribution warehouses. The place had been full of product, and Robbie and Liam had been in the midst of selling wholesale to a trusted associate from Springfield who, unbeknownst to them, had become an undercover rat, when the DEA had descended, pulling in everyone in the place in the wide net they’d thrown.
Liam and Robbie had been caught red-handed, their sales discussion on tape, the product sitting in plain sight. The entire event was shocking and sloppy, something Robbie never was. Cian, Connor, and Finn had been frantic, desperately afraid they’d be next, and also terrified they’d never get their father and Liam out.
But then, in the midst of a storm of constant media attention, pressure to give each other up to the FBI, and every business associate for five hundred miles cutting off the MacFarlanes like bad karma, the feds had suddenly, with no warning, released both Liam and Robbie.
The lawyers were told an obscure rule regarding chain of possession in the evidence process had been broken, nullifying the entire case. But no one in the MacFarlane family believed that. They feared someone in the organization had turned against them, promising to be an informant from the inside. It would be too tempting for the feds to have the possibility of getting not only Robbie and Liam but all four brothers plus associates. However, nearly three years later, no internal search Cian had done had yielded any results.
In the meantime, Robbie’s heart had nearly given out, and he’d had to hand the business over to Cian to manage. He might not give his oldest son much credit, but Cian had kept things running smoothly with no more arrests, and income was at an all-time high.
But the feds hadn’t faded back into the woodwork. They were like little dogs nipping at the MacFarlanes’ ankles, showing up here, then there, taunting, harassing. So Connor and his family operated as if there was a gun at their heads all the time. And now the feds were poking around yet again. Connor knew it wasn’t a good sign. And damn, he didn’t want to go to prison.
His phone buzzed from the table where he’d laid it. When he picked it up to see the screen, his brother Finn’s name flashed, and Connor couldn’t help but smile. Finn was two years older than him and the real middle son of the four MacFarlane boys. In a family of alpha men boxing, wrestling, and shooting guns, Finn kept up fine with the pack but had little interest in the things that had occupied his brothers growing up. Finn was the genius in the family, the closest to their mother, the technology whiz and family fixer.
Where are you? the text read.
Connor’s thumbs flew across the screen. Pop’s house. You?
Club Destiny. Jess is here. So is Vasquez. You may want to come down.
Connor tipped the chair over in his haste to get
out the door. His heart raced as he lunged outside, the door slamming behind him.
“I need men,” he snapped at the guy stationed outside. “Three. One of them needs to be Ricky. Meet me at the car.”
The guard nodded, speaking into his earpiece before Connor could even stride through the cobblestoned courtyard. He swung open the iron gate that led to the driveway, and by the time he reached his Range Rover, there were three of his father’s best men jogging to catch up.
“You’re shotgun,” Ricky said as Connor moved toward the driver’s side. He nodded and backtracked to the passenger side while the other two henchmen piled in the backseat.
“Where’re we going, and what’s happened?” Ricky asked as he started the car and backed out of the driveway, crusher fines flying beneath the big tires.
“Club Destiny,” Connor answered, his heart racing. “Vasquez is there, and so is Jess.”
Ricky just nodded, moving a hand to his inside breast pocket in reflex. Connor knew a Glock rested there, as did one in the waistband of his own jeans. He hoped they wouldn’t need to use them, but when it came to Jess’s safety, he wouldn’t pause to think about it. He’d never killed, but he would in a hot second for the only woman he’d ever loved.
Chapter 6
Connor strode to the back door of the nightclub and pounded on the heavy metal door. It was opened by a large bouncer, gun drawn.
“Oh, sorry, Mr. MacFarlane,” the man said, lowering the weapon immediately.
“Full house tonight?” Connor asked as he moved past the man, his three henchmen following in his wake.
“Yes, sir.”
“You know Alejandro Vasquez?” Connor asked.
The bouncer rubbed a hand across his short, rough hair. “Yes, sir.”
“He tries to leave this way, you stop him, got it?”
The man looked profoundly uncomfortable, and Connor stifled the urge to toss him against the wall of the dark hallway they were crammed in.
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