He whipped back around and snatched the phone from Connor’s hand. Connor ran his fingers through his hair, the backs of his eyes stinging.
“I’ll call Cian,” Finn said before motioning to the soldiers standing outside the storage room nearby. “Take Connor to—” He looked at Liam, who flashed the phone screen at him, “Holy Cross. Stay with him. Stay sharp. My guess is our friend Ramon was messing with Lila as a distraction for the real business, which was going after Jess.”
“They got Jess?” one of the soldiers asked. Jess had grown up with all the MacFarlane employees. Their neighborhood was tight-knit, Irish, and Catholic. Everyone knew everyone else.
“Yeah,” Finn said, clamping a hand over Connor’s shoulder and giving him a squeeze. “But she’s going to be fine.” He bent slightly to look into his brother’s eyes. “You need to believe that. We all do.”
Connor nodded, then swallowed.
“Take care of him,” Liam said gruffly to the men. They both nodded and led Connor out of the warehouse. As the cold night air hit his cheeks, Connor vowed silently to make Vasquez pay. No matter what it took, even if it meant his own life, he was going to see Vasquez burn in hell for touching Jess. Burn. In. Hell.
Jess was pulled out of a deep and troubled sleep by the commotion at the door.
“You’re the one who texted me!” a voice she knew nearly as well as her own boomed.
“Well, I thought better of it. I’m sure this was some bullshit that followed you, Connor. You’ll just put her in more danger if you’re hanging around now. I always said you were bad for her, and this proves it. I’m not letting you in.”
“Carmen,” Jess called out weakly as she tried to sit up more so she could see across the room. Her left eye was swollen shut, though, so she had a hard time discerning much.
“I had a man assigned to her. I don’t know what happened, but please, Carmen…” Connor said, his voice gravelly and desperate in a way Jess had never heard before. “You have to let me in. I don’t want to force you, but I will. You don’t understand. If I don’t see her, I’m gonna lose it.”
Jess leaned on one arm to push herself to sitting but forgot about the fractured wrist. “Ahhh!” she shrieked as pain shot up her arm all the way to her shoulder.
“Oh my God, Jess!” Carmen came running across the room and gently helped Jess up, pressing on the electric bed to adjust it, then fluffing her pillows. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you were awake.”
Jess gave her a wan smile, but her gaze was pinned to Connor, who was now standing just beyond her friend, utter devastation in his eyes.
“Hey,” she said to him softly, glancing at Carmen, who scowled and fluffed her pillow some more.
“I can get hospital security to make him go,” Carmen whispered. “Just say the word.”
Jess shook her head. “It’s okay. We need to talk.”
Carmen glanced back at Connor, and Jess could see two of the MacFarlane employees standing on either side of the doorway to her room. Oddly, even though she knew this was Connor’s fault, it was comforting to have his guards there.
“You should make him leave,” Carmen hissed. “He’ll never change, J. I can’t stand to think about things like this happening to you again. It’s not cool like it was when we were eighteen. It’s just dangerous.”
Jess cupped her friend’s cheek with her good hand. “I know. It’s okay. I’m going to be okay. I promise.”
Carmen sighed and shook her head. “I’ll be right outside the door. You make one peep, and even his goons won’t be able to stop me from rescuing you.”
Jess chuckled. “Got it.”
Carmen swung around, and Jess knew she was glaring at Connor as she pointed a finger at him like a schoolteacher. “Do not upset her, or I will come for your balls.”
Connor didn’t even flinch as she stormed past him and out the door, shutting it behind her.
He stepped to the bed and sat on the chair placed next to it. He lowered his head to the mattress and grabbed her good hand as his body shuddered. For long minutes, Jess simply stroked his hair as he silently worked to control his emotions. And when he was able to look at her finally, there was a steel in him she’d never seen before. Something hard and cold that nearly broke her heart.
“Where is your dad?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t let them call him. He can’t see this. He’ll go nuts and try to go after the guys himself. I won’t let him get himself killed over me.” Jess’s stomach turned at the mere thought of what Sean would do if he saw her right now.
“And where was Ricky?” he asked.
“He said your dad needed him and that he’d get someone else there as soon as possible. He asked me what I had planned, and I was only going to be at home for the rest of the night. I was working on some billing for the gym.”
Connor’s eyes grew harder as his jaw tensed.
“He did his job, Connor. And he’s been…so nice and helpful. Please don’t hold this against him. The guys busted down my front door only about half an hour after he’d left.”
“So they’d been watching.” He shook his head, defeat hovering around him. “How many?” he asked.
“Two,” she answered.
“You fought them?”
“Of course.” Her father hadn’t owned a boxing gym her entire life for nothing. Jess was skilled at boxing and kickboxing, and she’d put up a hell of a fight before two big men on one average-sized woman had simply been too much. She shuddered to think what would have happened if she hadn’t been trained as she was.
“Did they…” Connor’s voice caught, and he swallowed.
“No,” she said firmly, silently thanking God they’d only beaten and not raped her. “I made such a racket, they had to leave. They knew the neighbors would be calling the cops.”
“This was Vasquez,” Connor said. “He screwed with us earlier after a business meeting. I think it was to distract us from his real goal, which was proving he could hurt you.”
She nodded. The guys had spoken Spanish, and there wasn’t much other reason someone would come after her. Her father’s gym was in trouble, but they’d paid the MacFarlane protection money every month no matter what, and they didn’t owe anyone but the bank. She’d never heard of a bank sending out enforcers.
“God, baby.” Conner ran a hand down her bruised cheek. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to live with myself.”
She sighed, resisting the urge to turn into his hand and let him lie to her more. She knew he was hurting, knew he genuinely cared about her, but Connor was a MacFarlane, and one way or another, something like this was bound to happen to anyone they were close to. It was the life, and as much as she loved him, she didn’t want to live it.
She’d seen enough of the lives of the women MacFarlane employees kept around to know it wasn’t for her. They were either skanks who wanted the money, or good Catholic wives and mothers, and either way, they stayed in the neighborhood their whole lives, taking what little bits of their men’s time and attention they were given without complaint.
Jess’s mother hadn’t been able to do it. The cooking and cleaning and pretending not to know what the husbands did when they left home every day. The mob wives in their little piece of Chicago spent decades on the endless loop of church, school, and bunco—see no evil, hear no evil, act like your husband never did any evil. Jess wanted more. She wanted a career, she wanted to travel, she wanted to be able to walk around in broad daylight without a security detail. And most of all, she wanted love, and a man who would be not just faithful, but a true partner. In a different life, Connor might have been able to offer her those things, but not in this one.
“You did what you could,” she told him sadly. “Maybe now he’s gotten his shot in, Vasquez will be satisfied and back off.”
Connor snorted inelegantly. “Not a fucking chance, baby. This means war, and he knows it.”
“You really think your dad’s going to okay a war w
ith Vasquez over me?” If she could have rolled her swollen eyes, she would have. The sexist old dinosaur treated women like possessions. There was no way he’d think Jess being assaulted was worthy of a mob war.
Connor paused as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “Cian will,” he answered. “Cian’s in charge, and he knows what you mean to me. He’ll never let this pass without answering it.”
She shut her unblackened eye and laid her head back, suddenly very tired.
She felt Connor’s fingers feather over her cheek once again as he whispered, “Just sleep now, baby. I’m right here, and I won’t leave you again. You’re safe with me. I’ll keep you safe no matter what it takes.”
As Jess’s mind gave up consciousness, she let a momentary fantasy sift through her head—a dream of her and Connor someplace new, just the two of them, and a life without the MacFarlanes.
Sergei Petrov put one booted foot up on the crate resting in front of him and leaned down to pull a knife out of his ankle holster.
He began using the tip of it to clean his fingernails, a habit he’d picked up several years ago when he was working in the Ukraine and everything, most of all the people, was filthy.
“You thought it was prudent to leave her alive?” he asked his companion.
Alejandro Vasquez shrugged before leaning against the wall of the loading dock where his workers were moving Sergei’s merchandise from one truck to another.
“You said to get them off balance, so that’s what I did. I’d rather not kill her until I get my cousin back, right?”
Sergei shook his head in disgust. Both the Irish and the Mexicans had so many complicated family ties. It was always in the way of business, complicating every negotiation, interfering with every decision. They were pathetic and weak. It drove him crazy.
“I was born in the prison camps in Siberia,” Sergei said, replacing the knife in his boot as he stood. “My mother worked twelve hours a day carrying water and food to the men who chopped down forests. She doesn’t know who my father was since she was raped by four different men before she was pregnant.” He paused, one eyebrow lifted as he looked at Vasquez with disdain. “I wouldn’t know my cousin from a musk deer in Siberia, and I would never let an enemy get the better of me because of one.”
Vasquez put his hands out to the side in a “what can I do?” gesture. “Do you want me to kill the little bitch? I can.”
Sergei thought for a moment. “No. Just proceed as you would for now. I need to leave town for a few days on other business.”
“And if they attack us?”
Sergei shrugged. “Hit back.”
“And if they want to use my cousin as a bargaining chip?”
“Make it a good bargain,” Sergei replied.
Vasquez narrowed his eyes at the bigger man. “I got no problem helping out, but I have to say, I’m not sure how you’re going to get what you want this way.”
This was why men like Vasquez would never be on top. No vision.
“I always get what I want,” Sergei said as he strode away.
Chapter 9
“You hear from Connor yet today?” Cian asked as he watched Liam working out at Sean’s gym. His brute of a brother took jabs at a punching bag, dancing on surprisingly light feet around the dangling object.
“Yeah, he’s still at the hospital. I don’t think we’re going to be able to get him to come to work until she’s released. I still can’t believe the old man pulled Ricky off protecting her.”
Cian raised an eyebrow at Liam. Liam was the only one other than their father who’d been there all those years ago. He was the only one who knew what Robbie’s initiation for his oldest son had involved. “Really? Doesn’t surprise me at all,” he answered coldly.
Liam looked uncomfortable and shrugged. “Yeah, guess not.” He took another half-hearted jab at the bag before removing his gloves and resting his ass on the edge of the adjacent ring, letting his arms hang over the ropes behind him. “So, what are we going to do about Vasquez?”
Cian watched a few of his guys working out on the other side of the gym. He always let them work out when he did. No sense in making them stand around getting fat if they had a chance to put in some gym time. And he had to admit, most of his men were in great shape. He prided himself on having a fit crew. Liam joked that Cian’s worst nightmare was running a crew like Tony Soprano’s—a bunch of middle-aged fat guys in bad suits.
“Connor’s going to insist we retaliate,” Cian said, his attention shifting back to Liam and the question of what to do about Vasquez.
“How the hell can we not?” Liam asked. “He fucked with us not once but twice in one evening.”
“His guy’s still alive?” Cian asked.
“Yeah. There’s someone watching him. We let him eat this morning. He’s fine.”
“Here’s what I want—in Vasquez’s mind, Jess was his due for Connor sullying his sister. In my mind, Lila was extra, so we get the soldier to balance the accounts. If he’ll agree to that, we’ll make peace, and Ricky can handle the soldier once the deal is made. It’ll give him some satisfaction. I’m sure he’s pissed about Jess since she was his assignment.”
“He feels like crap,” Liam said. “I was afraid Connor might go after Ricky, but he knows there’s no reasoning with the old man when he gets something in his head. As soon as Pop let Ricky go, he went to the hospital. Got there about two a.m.”
“Okay. I’ll have Finn send the message to Vasquez. If Connor’s busy at the hospital, maybe that’ll keep him occupied until a deal’s been negotiated.”
“What about the info you have on the informant in the Vasquez ranks?” Liam asked.
“I’ll save that to sweeten the deal if he doesn’t go for it initially.”
Liam shook his head. “I’d still like to get a piece of him. The guy rants about his honor, but who the hell does that to a female civilian?”
“I agree, but with this new project with Rogue, we don’t have time for a war right now. I need this to go away so we can focus on the business end of things.”
Liam nodded and stood. “Okay. I’m going to go to the hospital and keep an eye on Connor. Since him going off half-cocked is what started all this, I’ll try to keep him in line.”
“Thank you, I appreciate it.” Cian bumped fists with his brother, shot a text off to Finn, and leaned against the wall of the gym for just a moment. He sighed. The exhaustion in him ran bone deep. His head was a tangle of FBI demands, mob wars, and internet sales. He doubted any corporate CEO had more complications to deal with.
“You ready to go, boss?” one of his men asked. Cian gave him a thumbs-up, and the guys gathered their stuff, one of them heading out first to bring the car around.
Back at his condo, Cian took a shower and dressed before pulling out a burner phone from the top drawer of his desk. He dialed the preprogrammed number and waited until Don answered.
“Yeah. What do you have?”
“A load of international laundry. Three years’ worth.”
There was a pause on the other end. “Yeah,” Don answered casually. “Just email me that invoice now.”
Cian ended the call, popped open the phone’s SIM tray, and pulled the card out, destroying it before also removing the battery, then crushing the burner’s case under his bootheel and tossing it in the trash. Next, he pulled out a zip drive from the locked drawer of his desk, slid it into his laptop, and did a click and drag to a shared drive that popped up on his screen. After the file transferred, the drive was unshared as quickly as it had shown up.
Next, he removed the zip drive from his USB port and sat back in his office chair, a tension headache spreading through his skull. He stared at the zip drive in his hand for long moments before grabbing a staple remover sitting alongside a fancy set of pens his mother had given him when his dad retired and he took over the business. He placed the small piece of plastic in the jaws of the staple remover and crushed and twisted until it was thoroughly destroyed, t
hen he tossed it in the garbage with the phone.
Several miles away at the headquarters of Rogue, Xavier watched the footage of Cian making the phone call while he also pulled up the files his hack had copied while they were briefly being transferred from Cian’s laptop to the shared drive.
“Oh, MacFarlane,” Xavier said, grinning as he opened the files. “You’ve been a very naughty boy.”
“What do you mean we’re not going to hit back?” Connor ground out as he stood in front of the hospital facing Liam.
“You know I’d love to go after him,” Liam counseled. “I’d always rather fight, especially with a pussy like Vasquez who goes after women, but Cian’s right about this. It’s not the time. This new venture with Rogue means we don’t have the resources for a war.” Liam leaned closer, putting his hand on Connor’s shoulder as his voice dropped. “We’ll get him later. I promise.”
Connor shrugged off Liam’s touch, a fire raging inside him. This couldn’t be happening. From his father, he’d expect it, but from Cian? Cian always had his back. Always. His oldest brother was the foundation Connor’s life was built on.
When a kid in middle school decided he’d like to take on a mobster’s son, it was Cian who showed up at the end of the school day and stood there leaning against the side of the school building waiting for Connor to come out. He’d done nothing more than put an arm around Connor and watched the other kid. As the kid had looked back at Cian, his eyes wide with fear, Cian had talked in a low voice, coaching his youngest brother on survival in the MacFarlane world.
“People will be gunning for you from here on out because they know who your dad is,” he said. “You remember you can’t ever let them see fear. You are ice, and they cannot melt you. If they throw the first punch, then you punch back hard, just the way Liam’s been teaching you at the gym, but your first and best weapon is your cool. You can’t be bothered to get scared, because you have the ultimate weapon—you have me and Liam and Finn, and we are always behind you. Together, we are invincible.”
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