Begging for Bad Boys

by Willow Winters

  One of the church ushers rings a small bell, and people start to break off their conversations and head into the nave.

  “Something you need, Bujar? I can tell him—”

  “Tell your brother—” his face suddenly tightens, eyes burning right into me, “—that I would like to know what he might know about my cousin’s death.”

  I shake my head. “Shit, I’m sorry to hear about your cousin, Bujar, but what does this—”

  “There was a fire.”

  I freeze, eyes narrowing.

  “My cousin, some of his friends,” Bujar’s face darkens. “They had a card game. The police say it was a cigarette that started it.”

  Oh, fuck.

  “Fuck, man.” I shake my head. “I’m really sorry to hear that.”

  “My cousin didn’t smoke. Neither did his friends.”

  My muscles tense as I try and keep my face neutral and size Bujar up at the same time.

  “I know a good clean-up job when I see one, Mr. Roarke.”

  My eyes narrow. “I’m not sure I like what you’re insinuating about my brother, Bujar.”

  “Your brother is very good at what he does, yes?”

  The usher’s bell rings again.

  “This is an invitation only event,” I say firmly, locking my eyes with his. “I am sorry to hear about your cousin, and I’ll tell me brother you said hello, but I think it’s best you leave.”

  His mouth tightens. “This is not over, Mr. Roarke.”

  I give him one more hard look before I turn at the sound of third bell and head inside.

  My mind flashes to the four guys in that basement room around the card table, the one Connor and I cleaned up. The “Russians” with Albanian tattoos.

  Yeah, something smells like fucking smoke here, and I’ve been around enough fires to know.

  Inside, I take a seat next to Damian, next to the aisle. I nod grimly at my friend before I look past him at my brother.

  “We gotta talk.”

  Con’s brow raises. “Oh?”

  The organ starts, and I feel my heart drop in my chest.

  “Later,” I growl, fighting the icy cold feeling as I turn to look ahead.

  The whole charade starts, and it’s just a damn blur to me. I know most of the faces, of course — Saints, dates, people from the neighborhood. You get the general idea that most people understand what this farce is, but then there’s also the little old ladies who’ve lived here forever, beaming and taking pictures like this matters.

  Like it’s real.

  Damian elbows me, and I glance down to see him passing me a flask.

  I smile grimly. “Thanks.”

  “Down the hatch, buddy.”

  I glance up to see Tommy, grinning away up there at the altar, and I can feel the heat rising inside. There are no groomsmen, no maids of honor.

  Aela’s request, apparently.

  I doubt anyone cares.

  But there’s Tommy, and Father O’Malley standing to the side. And then there’s the music.

  The cue.

  The doors open at the back of the church, and everyone’s standing and turning. I just take a long pull of the flask, letting the whiskey burn hot down my throat.

  I take a deep breath and I stand and turn like everyone else.

  And I instantly regret it. Because goddamn does she look like a vision.

  She’s gorgeous, of course. All white dress, all wild red hair.

  All not mine.

  I grit my teeth, and when she walks past, her eyes dart to mine. And for a second, the fantasy overtakes me.

  In the fantasy, there are no responsibilities.

  No debts.

  No choices that aren’t our own.

  In the fantasy, I’m sweeping her up, telling Tommy and Mick to get fucked, and taking her away from here. In the fantasy, it’s me up there about to have and to hold her.

  But this is the real world, not fantasy, and in a second, she’s moved past me.

  She takes the steps, Nora helping her before taking her own seat. She faces Tommy.

  “We are gathered here today…”

  I tune it out, drinking, eyes on her.

  Eyes on her and nothing else.

  I’m blocking out the rest of it, seeing nothing but the girl I threw away once for love, and the one I’m going to let get away again because of duty.

  They’re reaching for rings.

  Tommy is grinning.

  Father O’Malley is smiling.

  Mick is nodding, off to the side.

  I close my eyes, bringing the flask to my lips and hoping the whole thing burns away.

  And that’s when the explosion tears through the church.

  Chapter 27

  Aela

  There’s a half a second of frozen time — a slow-motion, underwater moment.

  And then it cracks, and it shatters, and there’s only chaos.

  I feel the heat and see fire and black smoke belching out of the doorway I just walked through. People are screaming, and running in a panic for the side doors, and my breath freezes in my chest, my feet glued to the floor beneath my heels.

  My eyes dart to the third pew back on the left, and I watch as Liam, Connor, and Damian lunge to their feet, guns in hand.

  There are shots, screaming, and the whole place explodes in madness. And suddenly, there are men rushing in through the fire at the front of the church, guns blazing.

  I shatter the frozen grasp clinging to me, keeping me rooted to the spot, and yank up the side of my dress, reaching for the blade I tucked into my garter.

  Liam, his brother, and Damian are shoving people out the far side of the pew before Liam kicks it over, the three of them dropping down behind it.

  There’s more screaming, more chaos, more sounds of guns firing, and I’m pulling my dress up and starting to run for the pew Liam and his brother are behind when hands grab me from behind.

  I scream.

  And even though it’s a mad house, and even though the whole place is screaming, something about my scream must catch Liam’s ear, because he stops and turns.

  And his eyes turn to pure fury.

  Hands close around my waist and over my mouth, silencing me. And then it’s only the adrenaline roaring through me like fire, the desperate way I jerk the blade in my hand out behind me.

  I catch something, and I hear the grunt before the knife is twisted brutally out of my fingers. And then they’re dragging me away. I’m screaming into the hand over my mouth, thrashing out with both feet, but they’ve got me tight.

  Liam bellows — that look in his eye I saw before, at the fight next to Rose’s, that look of a cornered animal — as he comes charging towards the altar.

  One of the hands holding me lets go, and in my peripheral sight, I see the hand raise up holding a gun, pointing straight ahead.

  I scream again. I kick, and thrash. I plead with my eyes with everything I have for Liam to stop — to duck, to dodge it, like he might hear my thoughts.

  But he can’t, of course.

  The gun explodes.

  Time stops.

  Liam goes hurtling backwards, crashing to the floor at the foot of the altar steps.

  And I scream.

  Hands pull me tight, dragging me away as a bag goes over my head.

  And I’m still screaming.

  Chapter 28

  Liam

  The gun clicks in my hand as I load one into the chamber. I safety it and set it on the bar before reaching for my backup and loading that up too.

  “Mag?”

  I nod mechanically, reaching for a spare on the bar in front of us and passing it to Damian. Connor’s silent next to us, loading up with the other guys we’ve rounded up.

  “You’re still bleeding,” he mutters, glancing at the blood-soaked bandage wrapped around my upper arm.

  “Let me know when it stops bleeding, because then we’ll have real problem.”

  My brother smiles grimly as he turns back to
loading the cartridges into his shotgun.

  We’re up the street from Saint Michael’s, at The Burren, and we’re on full lock-down, loading up for war.

  A couple of the Saints are back at the church, helping the EMTs, the firemen, and yes, even the cops get things sorted over there. Normally, Southie gets pretty insular, and with the Saints keeping things tight, we rarely see uniforms around. But a pipe bomb detonating at the front door of a historic church sort of changes that.

  We’re still getting updates, but final tally is five wounded — one of our guys in critical condition with a bullet in his chest. Nothing fatal yet.

  Yet.

  I grit my teeth as I chamber a round into my second gun and feel my fingers curl around steel.

  This time, Vadim and his crew of Russians have gone too fucking far. This time, they’ve crossed a line they never should have crossed. And this time, we’re going to war.

  Mick and Tommy and their inner circle are holed up back in his office under guard — following protocol of course, but back in the day, when Jack was in charge, it’d be me, Damian, and Connor over there. Gray too.

  But we’re here, loading guns and getting ready for battle. There are twenty of us here in The Burren — Connor, Damian, Jonathan the bartender, and even Eddie Walsh, from the clean-up job. All locked, loaded, and ready to go in guns blazing.

  Sure, it’s a mix of the old-guard Saints and “Mick’s guys,” but fuck it. None of that office politics bullshit matters right now, because priority number one is finding Aela and getting her back.

  Priority number two is murdering every single one of the people who took her with my bare fucking hands.

  I hate that Mick was right on this one about the Russians. But multiple eyewitnesses pegged the marked van from one of Vadim’s fronts, and a few more of our guys saw it heading right back to their territory.

  Fucking Russians.

  Mick was right. They were starting shit, alright. And now they got real.

  “Liam!”

  Jonathan, the bartender who also happens to be a loyal enough Saint that he’s been loading up hunting rifle to come with us, hollers my name from the back of the bar, by the back door.

  “Visitor.”

  “It’s a fuckin’ lock down, Jon!” Connor growls.

  Jonathan shoots me a look, and I swear. “Fuck it, hang on.”

  I stuff my gun into my belt and head to the door as he steps away.

  My brow furrows.

  Nicole.

  I scowl. “The hell are you doing here, Nicole?”

  She bites her lip nervously, hands twisting manically in front of her. “I— I gotta talk to you.”

  I stare at her. “Yeah, not exactly a good time,” I growl.

  “Please.”

  I’m about to tell her to run back home and lock the door until this shit is over, but that’s before I catch the look in her eyes.

  She’s terrified.

  I pause, eyes narrowing at her. “What is it?”

  She swallows. “You need to tell me I’m protected.”

  “From?”

  “Just promise me,” she whispers. “Promise that me and Julia will be safe.”

  My eyes peer into her terrified ones. “From what, Nicole,” I say, softer this time.

  “Please just promise?”

  She’s almost in tears, and even though I know we’re getting ready to go, something about the look in her eyes stops me from cutting this short to deal with later.

  “Look, if you’ve got something to say—”

  “It’s about Sheila Reilly.”

  I freeze.

  “I—” Nicole looks down at her twisting fingers. “I was there, Liam. I mean the night she OD-ed.”

  My blood turns to ice in my veins.

  “We were shootin’ up a lot together back then, and I was there.” Her eyes dart from mine, to the bar full of guys behind me, her look fearful before she turns back to me.

  “Please promise that me and my girl—”

  “I promise.”

  My voice is cold, leaden, as I think about that day those years before when I heard the news about Sheila. It’s ironic in a fucked-up way that Nicole and I are having this conversation. Because she might have been with Sheila then, but I was with Jack when he got the phone call about it that morning.

  “What do you need to say, Nicole?”

  She blinks, and she leans close. Her voice is hushed. “She got the drugs from Mick.”

  The floor drops out beneath me.

  “She was always gettin’ them from him. He—” She looks away, and I feel my jaw tighten into a grimace.

  “What?”

  “He used to hurt her, you know?”

  The floor continues to shatter under my feet, only now the walls are crumbling too.

  My head shakes side-to-side.

  “Like…” Nicole looks down again. “You know. Like, he did things to her.”

  The blood’s turning to ice in my veins, and I can feel my fingers digging into my palm so hard that they start to bleed.

  “I think it started with touching her and stuff, when we were all younger, and it just got worse. He got her hooked in the first place, you know.” A tear rolls down Nicole’s cheek. “I think it made her easier for him to control.”

  “Roarke.”

  I blink, dragging myself out of the cold, frozen hell I’m falling into at Nicole’s words. I turn at the sound of Eddie’s voice.

  He frowns at Nicole before glancing back at me. “You ready to do this?”

  And suddenly, that feeling I’ve been having for weeks comes sharply into focus. The feeling that something just isn’t right comes blaring to the forefront of my mind.

  Because something isn’t right.

  Mick hurt Sheila.

  Badly.

  If this is true, this goes deep, and this makes Mick more than just a pain in the ass to work for.

  He hurt Sheila. He took Jack’s place. He’s having us clean up hits and telling us the dead Albanians are Russians. And he’s marrying Aela to Tommy in order to make his claim to the Saints legit.

  The puzzle pieces start to click into place.

  Because how long would a fake marriage like this go on for? Aela and Tommy? How long would that actually last? No one’s gonna stay fake married forever. Eventually, there’s no way this whole plan wouldn’t have backfired. I mean Tommy would eventually fuck up.

  Or Aela would kill him.

  And Mick might be an asshole, but he’s not an idiot.

  I take a deep breath, turning back to glance at Nicole.

  What would I do?

  What would I do if I—

  I freeze as it clicks.

  Insurance.

  If I were Mick, trying to make my claim legit like this, I’d have insurance.

  And suddenly, it’s like I see the whole thing. Right then, the whole damn picture is suddenly crystal fucking clear to me.

  We’re being played.

  I turn back, looking at Eddie, then back at the room full of guys behind him. And suddenly, it’s not just office politics. Suddenly, it’s a clear divide. There’s Connor, and Damian, and then Jonathan of course.

  But the rest?

  “Mick’s guys,” the lot of them.

  I turn back to Nicole. “Get home,” I hiss, my eyes narrowing at her. “Get home, keep Julia safe, and if anyone asks,” I lower my voice as I lean in, as if giving her a friendly hug. “You were never here.”

  I pull away, and she nods, swallowing quickly, before she turns and darts away.

  My pulse hammers in my ears, and I know this is goddamn insane, but I know there’s no other way.

  I’m not going into anything guns blazing without knowing who’s got their gun out behind me. So we’re going to settle this “which kind of Dark Saint are you” bullshit right now.

  My hand drops to my waist, fingers curling around the butt of the pistol.

  Connor and Damian will have my back instantly.
Some of the other guys will too, I hope. It just means I’m going to have to act fast.

  I take a deep breath.

  My hand tightens on the gun, I turn—

  And the barrel of Eddie’s gun rests right against my temple.

  Chapter 29

  Aela

  Muffled silence.

  The van makes a sharp turn, and I gasp, biting the gag in my mouth as I almost go toppling over. Hands catch me, roughly yanking me back up, but not before my head cracks against the metal side.

  I hiss, wincing, my brow bunching under the blindfold as the van makes another jerking turn. There’s a rumbling sound as asphalt turns to gravel, and the van makes a final lurch before it comes to a skidding stop.

  The engine turns off, and then for split second, the only sound is my pulse thundering in my ears.

  I scream through the gag as hands grab my arms and my legs, lifting me and pulling me from the van. I try to kick out, try to fight, but there are just too many of them.

  Them, as in, whoever took me.

  I can only assume Vadim and his Russian crew.

  The memory of the flicking spatter of blood and Liam toppling backwards in the church slices into me like a blade. But I will the thought away, because I have to.

  He’s okay.

  He HAS to be okay.

  The hands gripping me haul me upright and then shove me down into a chair. I wince again as they yank my arms behind my back, tying them there.

  The hands move away, and I’m alone in my own little cocoon of sensory deprivation. But bound, gagged, and blindfolded.

  And alone.

  Suddenly, I feel fingers at the back of my head, and the gag is yanked down. I gasp, sucking in air and filling my lungs before I snarl.

  “Do you know who the fuck I am!? Do you even know what this will start!?” I bark out a bitter laugh. “Jesus, Vadim, when Mick—”

  “Oh, he’ll be upset.”

  The whole world freezes.

  My heart stops thumping in my chest.

  My blood turns to ice.

  Because the voice I hear isn’t Vadim’s at all. It isn’t even Russian.

  “He’ll be upset, and he’ll mourn you, of course.”