Leave Me Breathless: The Black Rose Collection

by Dakota Willink

  Silence fills the SUV until Liam clears his throat. “Luca, I need you to turn around and head back to Caprice’s flat. We need to grab her sister before we can go.”

  “Boss, I don’t think it’s a good idea. It’s much safer for me to drop you off at Father O’Sullivan’s since we’re only a minute away. Please, don’t compromise your safety. I’ll go get the girl and bring her back before you two tie the knot.”

  “I hate to admit it, but he’s right,” I tell Liam. If we both go and something happens to him, I’m fucked regardless. “How far away are we, Luca?”

  Luca abruptly turns. “We’re heading down his driveway now. I’ll drop you both off and go to your flat to retrieve your sister, Miss DiGiovanni. I’ve already notified Bishop and Shaun to meet you here.”

  “When did you have time to do that?” Liam asks him in an aggravated tone.

  “I’m a man of many talents, Liam. Surely, you knew that since you’re the one who hired me. Now, get the hell out of my vehicle so I can go check on the girl.” Luca comes to a stop in front of a small cottage and turns toward me. “What is her name?”

  “Alessandra. She’s not trusting because of the situation we’re in. Tell her I sent you and that I said fiducia.” I doubt Luca knows it, but the word I’ve told him to repeat will cause her to trust him. I unbuckle my seatbelt and open the door, hopping out. I see Liam do the same from the other side and venture around the car.

  Luca still has his window down and speaks to me. “Don’t fret about your sister. I’ll get her.” I can’t even respond before he takes off with the speed of light, racing down the long driveway.

  9

  When I count my blessings, I count you twice.

  ~ Irish Proverb

  Luca

  I want to say I didn’t see this coming, but I did. There was something about Caprice that never lined up for me. A lot of private security wouldn’t have ever asked their boss about the new hot bartender. However, I’m not like every other man in my field. I’m a bit of a nosy bastard if I do say so myself.

  I didn’t waste any time rushing over to where I’ve driven alongside Liam and who we all now know as Caprice when he’d walk her home after her shifts. In all honesty, it took me longer to get the two of them out to Father O’Sullivan’s cottage.

  I park my tank of an SUV around the corner from Caprice’s flat in case someone beat me to the punch already. I hop out of the car and shut the door quietly while placing my hand on my gun, cautiously approaching the flat. I see the door is busted open, hanging by only the bottom hinge.

  This alone causes goosebumps to cover my body. Without a doubt, I know trouble is ahead. “If I can’t have Caprice, maybe your dear old daddy will throw you over in my direction. Now, get over here!”

  I take in a breath, aggravated with hearing another word mentioned by that son of a bitch from earlier. I saw the way he left Maeve’s and knew he was trouble. More importantly, when I didn’t see this man enter the pub, I knew something was wrong. He’d already exited at that point and Liam was inside talking to Caprice, packing up his shite and heading in my direction.

  “Get away from me!” a young woman screams, obviously in distress.

  I hastily run up the stairwell and head into the danger zone. Glancing around, I see a younger woman with wavy, chocolate brown hair who’s about the size of my pinky finger with a pair of mosquito-bite-sized tits screaming at the oversized middle-aged buffoon. They say Spanish women are the feistiest, but after seeing Alessandra, I’d tend to disagree.

  I raise my gun, pointing it directly at Sergei. “You know, I’m pretty certain my boss told you to get the hell out of Ireland. If he didn’t, please allow me to speak on behalf of the Mackenzie family.”

  “They do not own the entire country,” Sergei spits out.

  With my thumb, I pull back the safety on my copper-plated pistol. “I will add another hole to further ruin that white dress shirt of yours. Don’t test me, old man.”

  “Who the fuck are you anyway?” Sergei asks, glaring at me from across the room. I keep my eyes trained on his face, but I don’t miss the way he’s going for his gun. Alessandra is pressed up against the wall, fear embodying her.

  “You don’t need to know who I am. What you need to do is step away from the young lady and get the fuck out of Ireland. I don’t like repeating myself. It really makes me a bit trigger happy. I’m betting you don’t want that to happen, considering you’re already up there in years. It must be hard when the ladies deny you.”

  Sergei scoffs, pulls up his gun, and fires in my direction. The heat of the bullet whizzes past my right cheek, barely missing me by an inch. “Alessandra, get over here! Your sister sent me,” I holler, firing at Sergei. I have eighteen rounds before I run out so this girl needs to hurry up. My dumb ass didn’t bring another magazine in from the SUV.

  Alessandra still has her back glued to the wall, arms holding her firmly in place as her eyes dart between me and Sergei. She’s trying to figure out what to do. It would be stupid of her to trust Sergei considering what I overheard, but I’m a stranger. I’m gonna bet her sister didn’t tell her what she was doing either as far as working for the Mackenzies goes. For the life of me, I try to remember that damn word Caprice said to me before I left. “Caprice sent me. Fiducia!” I yell, hoping I pronounced it correctly and didn’t just say something completely different.

  Alessandra jolts herself from the grip fear has on her and runs in my direction as I keep firing at Sergei. She runs down the stairwell behind me. I stop firing for a moment, head down the stairwell myself, and grab the girl's hand as I lead her in the direction of the car. Sergei catches up to us as we hop in my car. I look back, firing away as we speed off.

  “Oh my, are you okay? You’re bleeding.”

  I keep my eyes fixated on the road as I take Alessandra to Father O’Sullivan’s cottage. There’s no telling if Sergei has friends on the lookout for us so I need to ensure we get there as soon as possible. “I’m fine,” I say, dismissing her.

  “You don’t look fine. Your arm is bleeding really bad.” Out of nowhere, I feel intense pressure on my left arm. Looking over, I see she’s taken off her cardigan and has it bundled up, trying to stop the bleeding. I don’t know what comes over me, but I can’t stop staring at this woman who seems to have so much compassion for other people. She literally took the shirt— or sweater thing— off her back to help me, a complete stranger.

  “Lass, you can take your sweater back. Don’t want the blood to stain it,” I mutter, looking back onto the road before I veer us off it.

  Alessandra scoffs. “I’d rather have a ruined cardigan than a dead body. How else am I supposed to repay the man who saved my life?”

  “I didn’t save your life, hon. Simply got there at the right time.”

  “No, you did. You don’t know what my life would have been like if he was successful in his attempt. I’ve heard horror stories about that man . . . if I can even call him that. So, thank you for coming.”

  “You should thank your sister for asking me to grab you. It’s obvious she cares for you dearly,” I reply, turning down Father O’Sullivan’s lane after I’m sure no one has been following us. Alessandra doesn’t speak another word after I did. She simply grows quiet as we venture toward safety.

  10

  “Your value does not decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.”

  ~ Unknown

  Liam

  “Are you alright?” I can’t help but ask. She puts her hand under her hair and moves it behind her head. She’s still in the Maeve’s apron, not bothering to take it off when we were rushing out. Father O’Sullivan told us to stand in his foyer while he went upstairs to get changed. Considering I was knocking on his door at one in the morning, I’m not going to argue with him about changing out of his pajamas.

  Caprice has her hands drawn in front of her chest, looking a lot like a scared little girl. “I’m fine,” she dismisses, averting her eye
s to the photographs on the wall.

  Father O’Sullivan has been involved with my family since before I was born. He married my biological mum and father, baptized me in the same church where my entire family had been baptized, and married my father and step-mum.

  I catch the gold frame she’s walking up to and place my hand over hers as she touches it. “Father O’Sullivan is practically a Mackenzie.” In the photograph, I see the last time I ever remember being happy. It was before my step-mum’s accident when the girls were still with us. They’re in white baptism gowns and I’m standing there in an all-white tux. I remember how my father grumbled at mum that day, saying it was too modern. She’d always been the type to get her way, though.

  “I thought the twins were merely a myth, but here they are,” Caprice admits.

  I press my chest against her back and look at the auburn specs that were just starting to grow out of Greer’s head. Sloane, on the other hand, has black locks just like her mum Sofia. “They feel that way sometimes like they were only ever a figment of my imagination . . . but then I see photos like this that remind me they’re alive. As a child, it was odd to grieve the loss of my two baby sisters knowing they were alive but locked away for safekeeping. My father told me they were princesses and how evil beasts were going after them. Back then I hated the way he said it to me, but he couldn’t have been more accurate.”

  Caprice turns, brushing every part of her body against mine. I want to ignore it, the tension I feel between the two of us, but I can’t. When she first came into Maeve’s, I wanted to screw her against the wall, however, that changed when I found out her true identity. The only thing I wanted then was the status of marrying her, knowing it would put me on the path I need to go down. Still, there’s part of me that truly wants to help her, where it’s not solely for my own personal gain. I’ll admit she’s a vision, in that caramel sort of Alessandra Ambrosio way. I swear Caprice could be the Victoria’s Secret supermodel’s twin sister. I feel the internal pull between two sides of myself— the part that wants to save her, and the part of me who is only concerned about my position as next in line to lead the Irish Mob.

  I have a gut feeling I’ll be fighting against these two parts of myself for quite a while.

  “He was only trying to keep them both out of harm’s way,” Caprice says, skimming her fingertips over the photograph of Sloane and Greer. “And this was your step-mother?”

  Everyone assumes she’s dead, but she isn’t. No one knows she’s still technically alive. She’s my father’s best-kept secret, tucked away in a locked room of the Mackenzie estate. “Yes, that is Sofia Ramirez.”

  “She was so beautiful,” Caprice states, and I have to agree with her. Her face is in the shape of an oval, framed by long curly locks that span down to her hips. Her eyes are the color of the darkest Cadbury chocolate and her lips are plump and bountiful. I stare into the eyes of the one person I knew who was so full of life, missing her essence. It’s been far too long since I’ve heard her voice, or witnessed her dancing in the kitchen with my father to nothing but the sounds of a teapot getting warm. She was silly but oh so beautiful. If anything, I miss her spirit. More than that, I hate that my sisters had to grow up with no memories of her. In a sense, I was the lucky one because I had the chance to know her.

  “Yes, she was,” I reply, taking a step back as I hear a coughing sound interrupt us. Looking back, Father O’Sullivan descends down the stairwell in his usual ensemble.

  “Now that I’m in presentable clothing for guests, would you care to tell me what in God’s name is going on?”

  I take the lead, not wanting Caprice to say a thing. “I want to be married to the love of my life, right now. I can’t go into too much detail, Father, because . . . well, you know the type of business my family is in. Another man is trying to harm her, to force her into a marriage with him instead, and I can’t allow that to happen. The other man will most likely kill her within a year and our only option to save my beloved Caprice is by marrying her, taking her off the market from this monster.” I bullshit the hell out of him with half-truths. If anyone is going to believe Caprice and I are in love with one another, I need to sell it the way I am right now.

  Father O’Sullivan looks between Caprice and me, obviously unsure. “I didn’t know you were seeing anyone, Liam.”

  “We’ve been communicating in secret for over a year, Father. I was able to get Caprice to Ireland a couple of weeks ago, getting fake passports in the process. We both assumed we’d have more time before anyone caught her . . . but the man I was telling you about came into Maeve’s tonight, threatening her. The only way to avoid potentially harming her is to unite us in God’s most precious way. I need your help, Father.” I turn away from Father O’Sullivan and take Caprice’s face in my hands, staring deeply into her eyes. I need to continue selling this, making it appear as though we’ve been in love for ages. “Now I can imagine going through hell, my love, but losing you would cripple me beyond compare. I won’t allow it to happen. Not now, and not ever.”

  11

  The lion doesn’t turn around when a dog barks.

  ~ Unknown

  Caprice

  I’m blown away at how easy it is for Liam to lie about loving me. He’s convincing this man of God that we’ve been in a relationship for a year and how he cannot imagine his life without my presence, begging Father O’Sullivan to marry us, ensuring my safety from Sergei. If I didn’t think this was insane . . . he’s buying what Liam is saying. I should’ve known. This is how all mafia men are— fabulous liars.

  Liam is cradling my face as he leans in, leaving a chaste kiss against my forehead before he turns back to Father O’Sullivan. “So, will you help us? Unfortunately, we don’t have another option and you were the first person I thought of before taking her to the family estate.”

  “Well, I never thought I’d see the day. Give me a few minutes to prepare the chapel and we can head over to the back part of the property and proceed,” Father O’Sullivan states, pausing for a moment before he continues. “If you want to lead your beloved out to the chapel, feel free. You know where it is.”

  Liam takes my hand in his own and escorts me toward the back of Father O’Sullivan’s home. We head down a narrow hallway that comes to a kitchen, but he tugs me in the direction of a doorway, where I see a stone path that leads out to another building. That must be the chapel.

  It’s pitch black out here, but the path is illuminated with small lights every twenty feet or so. As we get closer to the chapel, I see it’s made of old stones. The rocks look to be so old, I imagine it’s been here for centuries. There are small stained glass windows on the side of the building and a massive green door in the middle with three steps leading up to it.

  Liam and I walk alongside each other and enter the chapel. He moves his hand, turning on the lights and revealing the beauty of this historic location to me. “Oh, my word . . . ” I whisper, taking in everything.

  To the right, I see church pews, probably enough to seat twenty people or so. Beyond it is a podium and more glass, all of it green with bits of yellow and blue. It spans across three windows, but I can see how the artist wanted us to envision the countryside of Ireland. It’s magnificent. In my opinion, some of Rome’s artists don’t put this much detail into their stained glass work.

  “This has always been one of my favorite places in all of Ireland,” Liam states, and it’s now that I realize I’ve seen the chapel before.

  “This is where the photograph of your family was taken,” I say, turning to face him. He nods, giving me a soft smile before shifting his gaze away. There’s a part of me that thinks bringing up happier times makes him upset. While my family aren’t angels and most days, I want to be far away from them, I can’t imagine what the Mackenzies have gone through. I decide to shift the topic of our conversation. “How was it so easy for you?’

  “What was easy?” he asks, focusing his eyes back on me.

  “To lie like t
hat,” I say.

  Liam chuckles. “Neither of us has a choice. If I didn’t lie and tell Father O’Sullivan the truth, he likely wouldn’t have agreed to marry us, even with my family connection. You need an out to ensure your safety and I need a wife before I can take my father’s place. It seems like a win-win situation to me.”

  Finally, it clicks. “Ah, you’re doing this for power.”

  I wonder if he’s going to deny it, but instead, he gives me that half-smile which tells me more than his words do. “I’m doing it for many reasons, Caprice. There isn’t just one.”

  “Do you really care if I get filleted like a fish by Sergei?” I ask, honestly wanting to know. His answer will tell me what type of man he is.

  His eyes widen for a split second at the shock of my question. “I don’t wish anyone to be treated in such a way. Especially not—” Liam cuts himself off, walking toward the other end of the chapel.

  “Finish what you were about to say,” I demand, needing to hear where he was going.

  He grumbles something softly before turning to face me. “Especially not to a nice woman like you. I’ve heard the rumors about what your father made you do, Caprice. Honestly, I think everyone knows the way he treated you opposed to your sisters.”