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Muscle Page 25

by Michelle StJames


  But if she let him, he would destroy her. And their baby, too.

  She set the key down on the dining room table and pulled the little white stick out of her pocket. It was stupid to carry it around when she already knew she was pregnant. But it still didn’t seem real, and she found herself staring at the pink plus sign, trying to remind herself what was important. Trying to banish the panic that swelled like a storm inside her at the thought of leaving him.

  Telling him wasn’t an option. Men like Farrell didn’t have babies. And if they did, they didn’t make good fathers. She wanted more for their child than a father who could go to jail or be gunned down by a rival at any minute. She wanted a white picket fence — American as it was — and a man who would be home for dinner. A man who would keep them safe.

  They were things she said to herself a hundred times in the week since she’d found out she was pregnant. She repeated them like a mantra, a way to remind herself that the way she felt about Farrell — the way he’d moved into her heart like it was an empty room that had been waiting just for him — didn’t matter in the face of this new responsibility. It didn’t make it hurt any less, but it did harden her resolve when she felt it waning.

  Which was a lot.

  She pulled out the letter she’d written the night before and set it on the table under the key. It didn’t say anything about the pregnancy. In fact, she’d erred on the side of coldness, just to make sure he wouldn’t come after her. That part hurt, because even though Farrell liked to act like nothing could touch him, she saw the shadow that dropped over his eyes when he talked about the past, felt the air around them thicken with pain whenever the subject of his family came up.

  Most importantly, she saw the way he looked at her. Like she belonged to him. Like she always had. And that meant her letter and abandonment would hurt him. And she never, ever wanted to hurt the man who had held her so tenderly, made love to her so passionately, looked at her with such love.

  She shook her head as if that would banish her second thoughts. She’d already made her decision. She would go to New York, leave no forwarding address, make sure her sister, Kate, understood that she didn’t want to be found. She would have her child, raise him or her to be honest and true. She would begin again. It wouldn’t be easy, but she had her degree. She would manage.

  She ran her fingers across the name on the envelope one last time.

  Farrell.

  It seemed impossible that she would never speak his name aloud. That she would never say it as he moved over her, their bodies entwined.

  But Jenna knew firsthand that if you didn’t have a plan for your life, it would just happen to you. One day you’d be young and full of promise, like her parents in their wedding photos. The next you’d be cleaning up after your alcoholic spouse and getting dressed for the dead end job that barely paid the bills.

  No. She would be smarter than that. She would be practical. She would do the right thing even though it was hard. Even though it felt like someone was wrenching her heart, still bloody and beating, right out of her chest.

  She removed her hands from the letter, took one last look at the loft, and hurried for the door, fingering the pregnancy test in her pocket.

  It was the only thing that kept her from staying forever.

  1

  “Looks like she’s out cold.”

  Jenna looked up at one of the flight attendants, his eyes on the little girl asleep in the seat next to her.

  She smiled. “Too much excitement for a four-year-old.”

  “Sometimes it’s too much excitement for me,” he deadpanned.

  Jenna laughed softly.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asked. “We’ll begin our descent to Heathrow in about twenty minutes.”

  “I’m fine, thank you,” Jenna said.

  He nodded, then touched her shoulder as he passed. It was a small gesture, but it took her by surprise. The gentle pressure, the warmth of his palm. It had been purely professional, but it caused a powerful surge of longing to roll through her body. It had been a long time since she’d been touched even casually by a man. Her first year in New York she’d been focused on settling in. Later, after she went to work for Nico Vitale, there had been plenty of men around, but as nice as they were, they weren’t the kind of guys she wanted around Lily. And it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Not a single one of them had approached her for more than friendly office conversation. She’d always wondered if it was because of Farrell.

  The name tore through her like a hurricane.

  Farrell Black.

  Crime lord. Genius. Lover.

  She’d met him when she was fresh out of college, living in a dumpy little flat not two blocks from the childhood home she abhorred. She’d been desperate for a job that would prove she was more than the daughter of an alcoholic and a janitor, and she spent her days combing the job listings online and sending out her resume.

  Then one night she’d gone to a local pub after a particularly demoralizing day. Kate had called to say their mother was drunk, standing in the middle of the road in nothing but a T-shirt and her underwear. Jenna had rushed over to help, but by the time they’d wrestled their mother into bed amid a torrent of cursing and name calling, Jenna had been late to an interview. She told herself it wouldn’t have mattered — the sour-faced man who interviewed her hadn’t once cracked a smile — but it was small comfort. She was at the end of her rope. Depressed, lonely, beginning to wonder if everyone had been right about her after all. If she was destined to remain poor and desperate in spite of the years spent studying at university while her friends partied and traveled and had sex. She’d been sitting alone, hoping none of the men in the bar would approach her, when she’d looked up to find Farrell Black standing there — all six feet, four inches of him.

  Her heart had seemed to stall in her chest. He looked down at her with eyes so dark they were almost black, his gaze scanning her body with such intensity she almost believed he could see every inch of her, even through her clothes.

  He was massive, his shoulders straining against the fabric of his long sleeve T-shirt, the cut of his biceps visible even through the fabric. His knuckles were bruised and scraped. Tattoos peeked out from the neckline of his shirt, and when he leaned over the bar to order two beers, she saw more ink at the back of his neck. She had the crazy desire to see him naked. To uncover the image on his back, trace the lines of it with her fingers, touch her lips to the rippling muscle she knew would be there.

  She’d had to shake herself from the fog that had dropped over her normally rational mind. But when she really looked at his face, she was more captivated than ever. A faint scar ran under his left eye, all the way to a jawbone that was so defined it could have cut glass. Instead of marring his good looks, the scar seemed to deepen them, and she felt a dangerous kind of thrill, like riding on the back of a motorcycle that was going too fast.

  Terrifying yet undeniably exciting.

  They’d talked long into the night, and again the next night. She’d been surprised to discover that he was educated at Oxford, although he’d never actually graduated. He wouldn’t talk about his childhood or his parents — other than to say they were dead — but he was honest about the fact that his business interests were less than legal. He was a strange amalgam of brutality and refinement, a man who talked passionately about film and literature and philosophy only moments before his gaze hardened like stone. There was something violent about the energy that surrounded him, and she’d been horrified to realize that rather than scaring her, it turned her on so powerfully she’d grown wet sitting next to him.

  She’d resisted it for a time, giving herself pep talks about why Farrell was bad for her. Why being with him would only lead her toward the life she was trying to escape. She continued resisting — at least in her mind — even after Farrell had taken command of her body, showing her a side of herself that was so dirty, so shameless, that she sometimes blushed the next day thinking about what t
hey’d done together.

  Eventually she’d given in. She’d felt helpless in the wake of his hold on her. How could she resist when giving in was so delicious?

  But then she got pregnant, and she hadn’t been able to remain in denial. She’d agonized for weeks over whether to tell Farrell. Whether to stay or go. She was still agonizing the night he came to her apartment with blood on his hands. She’d been worried at first, but he’d only laughed, informing her that it wasn’t his. He’d said it with so much certainty that she knew it had never — would never — be his. And in that moment she knew what she had to do.

  She’d worked her whole life to build something better for herself. She wanted a clean life, an honest living, the respect of the people around her. She would not give her child the kind of life she had growing up. A life filled with insecurity and fear. She would do better.

  And she had. She’d left London, leaving a note she could only hope would make him stay away. She’d gone to New York, gotten a job with MediaComm in the marketing department, and then as Nico Vitale’s assistant. When she found out that he was the boss of the New York crime family, he’d met her concerns with surprising kindness and a promise that she would only work on the legal side of his business, arranging charitable contributions and discreetly seeing to the details of his personal life. Any hesitation she’d had was banished by Nico’s assurances and an increase in pay that meant she would be able to better care for Lily.

  She’d half expected Farrell to chase her down, to find her and discover she was pregnant. But the letter she’d left him must have served its purpose. She never saw or heard from him again.

  And now she remembered why she didn’t allow herself the luxury of memory. Remembering Farrell and all that had happened between them was like reopening an old wound; it hurt like crazy and was painfully familiar. It was better to forget. That’s how she’d survived without him all this time.

  Her life had been her daughter and her career until the Syndicate fell, which is how she found herself out of a job when she got the call saying her father had been killed. It hadn’t quite hit her yet. She hadn’t seen him or her mother since she left home for New York, and his death still felt surreal, like something that was happening to someone else. Her father had been an honest, hard-working man, a good man, and she suddenly wished she could go back and do everything differently. Stay in touch with her parents. Find a way to visit without worrying that Farrell would discover Lily. Be there for her father in what must have been a lonely middle age.

  But of course, there was no going back. She could only pay her respects, say goodbye, be there for her sister and her mother.

  All of which meant being back in London. Close to Farrell.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our descent to Heathrow International Airport.” The announcement, spoken by a woman, came over the loud speaker. “Please return all trays and seat backs to their upright position and buckle your safety belts.”

  Jenna reached over to check Lily’s seat belt, trying not to wake her. Her long brown hair — the exact shade as Jenna’s — was tangled around her shoulders, her small chest rising and falling at even intervals. She was so beautiful it made Jenna’s heart hurt, and she felt the ferocious determination that always rose in her when she thought about Lily. Being her mother was the most important job of Jenna’s life. She would have to be careful, keep a low profile while they were back home. She might be alone, but she was making a good life for her daughter. Lily was happy and safe. There were no threats to their well-being, no worries about police or criminal rivals, a very real concern after seeing what Nico and Angel had gone through when they got on the wrong side of Raneiro Donati before the Syndicate fell.

  Jenna had no desire to get mixed up in anything of the kind. She would attend her father’s funeral, spend some time with her mother and Kate, help them deal with the aftermath of her father’s death. Then she would go back to New York, find a new job, pick up where she left off.

  It was for the best.

  2

  Farrell Black stepped from the black Jag and headed for the door of the club. People were lined up outside, waiting for permission to step behind the nondescript metal doors. He walked past them, nodded at Caleb, standing in ready position at the door, and stepped into the vestibule.

  The music got louder as he continued down the narrow stairway. By the time he stepped into the cavernous warehouse space, he could feel the vibration of it under his feet. He knew intellectually that it was loud, but he was so used to it that it hardly registered.

  “Mr. Black,” one of the bouncers said. It was his first night, but Farrell knew that his name was Damian.

  Farrell nodded and continued past him, his eyes on the giant movie screen showing the film Casino behind the DJ. He allowed himself a moment to watch the scene unfold between DeNiro and Pesci, silently reciting the actors’ lines as he headed for the stairs that led to his offices.

  The film was one of his favorites, one he’d probably seen at least a dozen times when he was a kid using an elaborate system of distraction and deceit that he and Adam Denman, his best friend, had created to sneak into R-rated movies. The movie theater had been his refuge of choice after his mother’s death. He’d spent hours there while his father was immersed in his work at the lab, sometimes staying even after Adam’s parents demanded that he come home for dinner. Farrell had relished the silence of the darkened room, the expanse of high ceiling like a midnight sky, the flickering light on the faces of the people around him. It had been like magic, a place to disappear. To be someone else.

  Now he sought refuge here, in the unnamed club that had inadvertently become the coolest place in town. Not magic, exactly, but together with the organized chaos that had become his business since the fall of the Syndicate, it did the job.

  Leo stepped out of the crowd and walked with him.

  “Any trouble?” Farrell asked.

  “Nothing we can’t handle,” Leo said, keeping pace.

  Farrell nodded. Leo Gage was one of the very few people Farrell trusted implicitly. They’d come up on the street together, had fought and scraped their way through the ranks of the Syndicate. Leo had survived the cut after its collapse, when Farrell had wasted no time getting rid of anyone who was relatively new, anyone who rubbed him the wrong way, who might be part of the sting initiated by the FBI and Nico Vitale. He was the only one of Farrell’s men who knew him when he was starting out. When Leo said things were under control, Farrell knew they were under control. That was always a valuable commodity, but especially tonight when Farrell had other things on his mind.

  They continued up the stairs, down the dimly lit hall to the office that had been there since the warehouse was occupied by a floral wire factory in the early 1900s. Leo took up his position in the hall. Farrell stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. The music faded into the background.

  He walked to the metal desk that had been there since he bought the place and pulled the newspaper from his jacket, threw it on the desk’s surface. Then he sat, studying the paper for a minute before picking it up, unfolding it to the page he’d marked.

  He didn’t usually read the obituaries. He looked for boxing news and football scores, then read the business section and — not that he’d ever tell anyone — the movie reviews. He followed the same formula for several newspapers. Big London papers, local papers from towns that were under his control, the papers from the neighborhood he’d been working when he met Jenna.

  But the picture had caught his eye: a tired looking man with warm eyes that had struck a chord of familiarity as he flipped through the pages.

  It was John Carver. Jenna’s father.

  The name brought her to mind in an instant. The wide hazel eyes, the glossy chestnut hair, the little gap between her front teeth that she hated, the way she twisted strands of her hair around her finger when she was lost in thought.

  And then the other stuff. Different but just as risky.
r />   The way her body moved under his, the hips that were made for his hands. The way she’d let him command her, matching his desire with a fervor of her own. He’d never met someone who could match him in the bedroom.

  Until Jenna.

  It was a dangerous path. She was never far from his mind as it was, but he’d found out the hard way that thinking too long and hard about her could push him over the edge, filling him with the kind of frustration that made him do stupid things.

  And Farrell Black didn’t like doing stupid things.

  Yet he had. In the past year he’d stepped over the last two people blocking him from the top of the organized crime hierarchy that, unbeknownst to most people, discreetly ruled London. He’d helped Nico Vitale on his ill-fated mission to save Angel Rossi. He’d gone to Miami to get rid of a sleazy drug lord who was keeping his sister prisoner. He’d flown all over the States, putting himself in peril, checking on old friends, lending a hand to former associates of the Syndicate, all of them trying to gain their footing without the framework of the Syndicate, now in ashes thanks to Nico’s deal with the Feds. He’d gone everywhere but New York, the one place he’d forbidden himself to go since the day he learned Jenna was there.

  It was a matter of pride. He’d given her everything. Had been close to telling her everything. All the secrets he’d never told anyone. And then she left with nothing more than a letter. Like he was nothing to her. Like she wasn’t everything to him.

  He put the paper down and surveyed the room. It was intentionally bare, filled with old warehouse furniture and little of it. The paint had been peeling from the walls for years, the original concrete floor cold and unforgiving. It suited him. He didn’t like artifice. Cared little for comfort. He lived for only two things: taking care of his responsibilities and leveling the playing field by taking out the trash along the way.

  His eyes drifted back to the folded newspaper. He’d only met John Carver a few times, but he had always liked the man. Jenna had been ashamed of her childhood, but Farrell had found a kind of quiet beauty in John’s solidity. In his willingness to work an unremarkable job and come home to a drunk wife and two little girls that looked to him for what little stability they had.

 

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