by Zoey Parker
This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons--living or dead--is entirely coincidental.
KILLIAN: The O’Donnell Mafia copyright 2017 by Zoey Parker. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission.
***
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Contents
KILLIAN: The O'Donnell Mafia
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
GUNNER: The Immortal Devils MC
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Epilogue
Books by Zoey Parker
GUNNER: The Immortal Devils MC
BOUGHT BY THE BAD BOY: A Dark Mafia Romance
STARSTRUCK: A Dark Bad Boy Romance (The Destroyers MC)
HIS POSSESSION: A Dark Bad Boy Baby Romance (Vicious Thrills MC)
HIS PLAYTHING: A Dark Bad Boy Baby Romance (Voodoo Devils MC)
HIS PROPERTY: Iron Bandits MC (A Bad Boy Baby Romance)
UNCHAINED: Metal Monsters MC
UNTAMED: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance
UNDRESSED: Soul Catchers MC
UNPROTECTED: A Dark Bad Boy Baby Romance (Hanley Family Mafia)
Addicted: A Secret Baby Romance (Rebel Saints MC)
OWN HER: A Dark Mafia Romance (Mancini Family Mafia)
HARDCORE: Storm MC
A Price to Pay
Take Me, Outlaw
Break Me, Outlaw
Stolen
Overdosed
Ravage
Bounty
Trouble
Monster
INKED ANGELS: A Bad Boy Romance Box Set
Zoey Parker Mailing List
KILLIAN: The O'Donnell Mafia
By Zoey Parker
I was forbidden to see him. But he still put a baby in my belly.
My father said to stay away.
But that didn’t stop him from hunting me down.
When he did, there was fire – hunger – passion.
And when it was over, the bad boy had gotten me pregnant.
My father did his best to keep me away from the mob life.
But the underworld has a way of dragging you down to its depths.
I wasn’t smart enough to get out before it was too late.
I wouldn’t have done it even if I could have, though.
I had fallen for the bad boy.
He claimed me, savored me, made me his…
And then he died.
But not before putting a baby in my belly.
Now, I have nowhere to go.
Nowhere except for Niall’s brother, Killian.
He’s Niall times a thousand – darker, hungrier, angrier.
He sees right through me.
He knows what I’m feeling…
He knows I want him.
I can’t help it:
He’s a dark hole that I’m circling around, and around, and around…
And I’m about to fall right in.
Chapter One
Killian
I woke up at around five in the morning, unable to keep lying in bed. For a few seconds, I couldn’t remember why I was having a crappy night’s sleep, but then it hit me. My brother was dead. My baby brother, the boy with the round face and the lone dimple that all the ladies loved, was dust.
My feet hit the floor next to the bed, and I was surprised by how normal it felt. The ground was still solid, the blue light of early morning peeking through the tin foil I’d taped over the drafty windows, and despite the physical and emotional trauma of the last seventy-two hours, I still had to piss.
Such normality made me feel nauseous. Though, that could also be because I hadn’t eaten much of anything. Consuming food felt like a betrayal because it would be one meal Niall never got to have. It sounded stupid, even to me, but my brain and my emotions didn’t seem to be communicating much with one another.
After my morning pee, I walked to the fridge and opened it, more out of habit than an actual desire to consume calories. It didn’t matter either way because it was empty. I hadn’t been grocery shopping since I’d moved in two days earlier.
I slammed the fridge door shut, sending an “I Love My Yorkshire Terrier” magnet (left by the previous tenants) flying off and onto the floor, where it slid under the dishwasher. It was no real loss, so I didn’t bother retrieving it.
Half of the furniture in the apartment was left behind by the previous tenants, according to the Super. He said people moved in and out so quickly that few of them bothered to pack their things. So, that made me the proud owner of an olive-green couch with a rip in the center cushion, a black coffee table with the phrase “down wit da patriarchy” carved into it, and a lopsided entertainment center with a huge gaping hole where a television should fit.
The only things I brought over from the compound were my mattress sans frame and box springs and my clothes. There hadn’t been time for anything else. Dad sent over a few of the enforcers to make sure I left “peaceably.” As if there was anything peaceful about being thrown out of your own home by hulking men who beat people up on behalf of the mafia for a living.
This apartment was the first one I had looked at, and I signed the month-to-month lease without looking at another. There didn’t seem to be a point; I wouldn’t be here long. The truth would come out eventually.
It was supposed to have been an easy job. Debt collection. A guy, down on his luck and low on cash, borrowed money from us and hadn’t paid it back. It was little more than a chore. Typically, one of the grunt guys would’ve done it, but Niall and I were going to be in the area for a concert and decided we’d do it ourselves.
I set it up with Kevin Rourke, one of our family’s oldest and most trusted enforcers. He was supposed to already be there when we arrived. The whole deal was taking place behind a meat-packing plant that bordered the bay.
It was dark and nearly always vacant, perfect in case things went so
uth and we were forced to “draw blood.” That’s what Dad liked to call it, as if we were nurses performing a medical procedure.
I carried a pistol on my hip, just in case, but Niall didn’t like to carry one. He said it made him bulky and he never had to use it anyway. “That’s why we have enforcers,” he’d say.
When we arrived, Kevin wasn’t there. Per usual, we were early for the meeting. I thought we should leave and call Kevin—the guy owed $5,000, not exactly a sum I wanted to bet my life on—but Niall said we should stay and give it a few more minutes. Little did he know, he didn’t have minutes. Seconds later, shots rang out.
It’s funny. I’d heard gunfire my entire life, but at that moment, the noise was so unexpected that I didn’t recognize it. Like an idiot, I stood in the middle of the alley long enough for anyone with a decent shot to take aim, but they didn’t. Niall, on the other hand, tried to dive behind a metal dumpster along the chain fence behind us but was hit before he could make it.
He fell to the ground with a sickening crunch and then convulsed as he was shot twice more. Each bullet hit him square in the chest. I ran to him, grabbed his limp arms, and dragged him to the mediocre safety of the dumpster, but no more shots rang out. I tried to look up at the warehouse, to see into the windows and discover the culprit, but nothing moved.
The only sounds I could hear were the push and pull of water meeting shore behind us and the soupy sound of Niall’s breathing. He died without any last words and my goodbye consisted of a series of repetitive curse words as I pressed my palms into his bloody shirt.
Earlier that day, he’d told me about Heather.
“She’s pregnant,” he said, a nervous half-smile emphasizing the dimple in his cheek.
“Heather Rourke?” I asked, confused. I’d seen Heather around for as long as I could remember. Our families were friends, and her dad and brother worked for us as enforcers, but I’d never spoken to her.
Niall nodded.
“I didn’t even know you were seeing her,” I said. “I didn’t know you were seeing anyone.”
He laughed. “Well, I saw her. Twice. It was more of a fling than anything else. Though, if that counts as “seeing” someone, then I’ve been seeing several women on a regular basis.”
I didn’t understand how he could be so calm about the whole thing. He was basically living my nightmare. One-night stands were the rule in my life, not the exception. Any girl who walked through my front door knew what she could expect: a night of heavy sex and a bagel on her way out the door in the morning if I’d been to the store that week. I didn’t even make them coffee, so the thought of procreating with them, forming another human life with both of our DNA, was not only terrifying but absurd.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Be supportive, I guess,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “She told me she wants to keep it.”
I groaned. “Oh God.”
“Calm down,” he said, winking at me. “You should be thrilled. You’re about to be an uncle.”
I leaned forward to smack him, but he dodged my hand, laughing the entire time. “It’s not a big deal, Killian. Lots of people become parents, and they survive. Plus, I think I’ll be a cool dad.”
“Yeah, but lots of people don’t impregnate the daughter of a 300-pound Irish mafia enforcer,” I said. “And, for the record, there is no such thing as a ‘cool dad.’ You are either cool, or you are a dad, there is no crossover.”
“You only say that because you haven’t seen me in my leather jacket driving a minivan yet.” He laughed. “But I know. Explaining everything to her dad will be tricky, but I’m sure it will be fine. I have you and Dad on my side.” He paused. “Right?”
I wanted to tell him to talk Heather into an abortion or convince her to say it was someone else’s baby, but I knew Niall would never accept either option. He was a good person, through and through. He’d support her at every turn, always be there to help raise his kid, and be a great dad.
“Of course, bro. Always.”
“Good.” He looked relieved, and I felt a sting of annoyance that he’d doubted my loyalty. “Because I’m going to need help keeping her safe. Her dad is pretty old-fashioned.”
That was an understatement. Heather and I hadn’t spoken often, but that wasn’t by any accident. Her dad kept her on an incredibly short leash. Despite being twenty years old, she couldn’t move out of the house until she was married and her dad was in charge of choosing who she could and couldn’t date. I can say from experience that no guy wants to date a grown woman whose dad is as big and crazy as Heather’s. Except for Niall, of course.
I threw myself onto the couch, the rusty springs wailing under my sudden weight, and stared up at the ceiling. It wasn’t until I was being thrown from the compound by Heather’s older brother, Caleb, that I remembered the baby. I’d felt purposeless, lost without Niall by my side, but Heather and the baby had been his last request, even though he hadn’t known at the time that it would be his last request.
He wanted me to protect them, and I swore I would. I just needed to figure out how.
###
Heather
The pregnancy had been enough of a shock. My period was never exactly regular, but it had never been more than five days late before. I was in denial at first; positive I’d miscounted the days or was experiencing a weird hormonal fluctuation. However, by the ninth day, I had to entertain the idea.
Buying the pregnancy test had been tricky. Dad didn’t like to let me leave the compound without a chauffeur, and he checked my credit card statements. He claimed it was to “balance the books,” but I knew the real reason was to keep tabs on me. He didn’t check Caleb’s statements.
While they were out on a job, I snuck into Caleb’s room, which was a remodeled attic space, and pulled a ten-dollar bill from his bedside drawer. It was risky because his room was so impeccably clean, but the chances of him noticing such a small bill missing were slim, and the chances of him suspecting me of stealing it even if he did notice it missing were even slimmer.
I had the chauffeur drive me to a McDonald’s combo gas station under the pretense of needing a McFlurry. When I got inside, I ordered an M&M McFlurry from the pimply-faced cashier, bought three one-dollar pregnancy tests called Womb-an’s Choice from the gas station side of the building, and peed into the plastic cup I’d stashed in my purse from home. Three minutes later, all three tests showed a tiny pink plus sign. Shit.
The McFlurry tasted like metal in my mouth as we drove back to the compound, and I threw away the remaining three-fourths of it as soon as I got back to my room. I pulled the three tests out of my purse. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t throw them away. They were the only proof I had—aside from my absent period—that the pregnancy was real. Each time I began to allow myself to slip into denial, I pulled them out and reminded myself I needed a plan.
I had no doubt who the father was. I’d had sex twice the month before, both times with Niall O’Donnell. We’d used a condom both times, but the sex had been… rough, to say the least. The condom easily could have fallen off or torn. Plus, I had been way too preoccupied to notice whether he’d put it on properly. On the bright side, I thought, at least I got pregnant from good sex.
After allowing myself a few days to process the information, I texted Niall.
H: Hey. Can we talk?
N: Sure. What up?
H: In person?
He didn’t respond for a few hours. Such a typical guy thing to do, I thought as I sat in my room, lunging at my phone every time it vibrated to notify me of a new email or a new comment on Facebook. I assumed he probably thought I wanted to meet up and confess my undying love for him. He’d been clear before we’d had sex the first time that he wasn’t looking for a relationship, and I’d assured him that hooking up in a storage closet wasn’t my idea of a romantic first date.
Besides, my dad had been clear about his feelings for Niall and Killian. They were off-limits. There w
as absolutely no way he would let me date one of the O’Donnell boys. Though, he hadn’t specifically mentioned anything about not having meaningless sex with them, so I figured I was in the clear.
Finally, just after dinner, Niall responded.
N: Meet me at the closet?
H: Be there in twenty.
He took the news surprisingly well. I’d prepared myself for wide-eyed panic, and immediate mention of an abortion, but he merely leaned against the wall of the closet, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Have you thought about what you want to do?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said, though even then I thought that might be a lie.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I knew what I didn’t want. Abortion felt off the table. I was adopted. From the little my dad was willing to tell me, my birth mother had been young and unprepared for the responsibility of a child. She’d decided on adoption, and I officially became a Rourke when she waved her parental rights. If she hadn’t made that choice, I wouldn’t be here. I felt, somehow, like I owed it to her to make the same choice for this baby.
Niall bit his lower lip, and his dimple deepened. I hope this baby has a dimple, I thought before I could stop myself. It surprised me. The baby was still microscopic, and I was standing there thinking about its possible dimples.
