Consequence

by Rachel Higginson

  Although I would have stayed in the gridlock all day if it meant I didn’t have to face the Irish. I wasn’t prepared. And I didn’t know our game plan.

  By the time the too short cab ride was over, I was practically hyperventilating with desperate thoughts. Sayer glided from the cab and reached for my hand. I couldn’t manage to give it to him.

  We were in a wealthy area of town with massive town houses and manicured lawns. The cab had stopped in front of a red brick and white stone palace with a circular drive and step out balcony in the front. It was one of those houses that immediately screamed pretentious and disgustingly rich.

  My curiosity only grew more intense as Sayer paid the cabby and walked straight up to the front door. It opened before he could knock, a discreetly armed bodyguard stepped outside to see what we wanted. His open sport coat covered the butts of two guns, but he stood in such a way that I knew they were there, waiting to be used.

  “How can I help you?” he asked in a deep, melodic Irish accent.

  “We’d like a meeting with your boss,” Sayer explained.

  “He isn’t expecting you,” the bodyguard returned, flapping his coat quickly so we could see the two guns more clearly.

  “He’ll see me,” Sayer insisted. “Give him my name.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “Sayer Wesley.”

  The guard visibly blanched, lowering his gun and taking a few steps back. “Oh, I’m sorry Mr. Wesley. I had no idea it was you. Please forgive me.”

  Sayer looked away from the guard, out to the street. “It’s nothing to worry about. Just get your boss.”

  The big guy took another few steps back. “Please wait inside.”

  Sayer nodded, letting Gus and me walk inside first. My intention was to turn on Sayer as soon as the guard disappeared, but the house we walked into demanded my full attention.

  The sprawling town house pushed into both houses on either side, making it a monstrosity of intricate parquet floors and flawless wainscoting. I could see all the way to the back of the house where French doors opened to a long pool with fountains pouring into it at each corner. The kitchen was up a few stairs to my left, all white tile and gleaming stainless steel. To my right was the formal sitting room in more neutrals save for a tattered Irish flag framed over the tall fireplace. The flag was a vulgar burst of color that caught the eye and didn’t let go.

  The bodyguard returned from the back of the house, looking obviously humbled. “Mr. O’Donnell will see you.”

  Sayer pushed up from where he’d been leaning against the wall. “Of course he will.”

  The name pieced together in my head fast enough that I tripped over nothing. “Conlan O’Donnell? The Conlan O’Donnell?”

  Sayer started up the stairs after the bodyguard. “Is there another one?”

  “Conlan O’Donnell as in the head of the Irish mob Conlan O’Donnell? The Conlan O’Donnell responsible for the coup that unseated the McElerys and took over the entire organization at the tender age of twenty-two? The Conlan O’Donnell who’s empire reaches into New York and all the way down to Florida? The Conlan O’Donnell that is rumored to put the heads of his enemies in bowling bags? That Conlan O’Donnell?”

  Sayer’s half smile was enough to make me want to punch him. “I had no idea you were so impressed with the man. I would have introduced you sooner.”

  “What the hell, Sayer?” Gus mumbled.

  “He’s a friend,” Sayer promised gently. “It’s okay.”

  It was not in any way okay. I was not prepared to have my head put into a bowling bag or detached from my body in any way. “How long has he been your friend?” I demanded, needing details, needing something solid to stand on before my knees gave way and I tumbled down the stairs.

  Sayer faced forward again. “Longer than I’ve known you.”

  Holy shit.

  Before I could ask any more questions, we’d reached the top of the stairs. The bodyguard stood next to double doors that opened to a beautiful office in the same style as the rest of the house. From this floor, Conlan could conduct business while enjoying the view of the city through his floor to ceiling windows on two sides or sit down in lush leather chairs in front of a roaring fire on the third.

  When I was a kid my dad had told me that the Irish were nothing more than white trash brawlers. He said they all lived in trailer parks and ate canned lamb for dinner—which sounded awful.

  I’d met a few Irish in my lifetime and I’d decided long ago that my dad was right. The men I’d been forced to interact with had missing teeth and fingers. They were brain-damaged fighters or druggies hoping to find a score. They did not live in pristine mansions and look like Conlan O’Donnell.

  He stood up when we walked into the room and I tried not to swoon at the auburn-haired man. He was all tailored suit and trimmed beard. His cufflinks blinked in the light of his desk lamp as he reached out to button his jacket with long fingers. His green eyes sparkled with mischief as Sayer invaded his space, challenging the Irish boss’s power with his own innate strength.

  “There’s a sight for sore eyes,” Conlan’s voice dipped and rolled over the R’s with that singsong Irish accent and when he grinned I decided that he was maybe the most attractive human being on the planet. Possibly also the tallest human being.

  He was definitely too good-looking to chop off heads.

  Conlan stepped around the desk and embraced Sayer in a brief hug. “It’s nice to see you’ve remained humble despite your success,” Sayer goaded.

  Conlan’s head tipped back and he let out a rough, rumbly laugh. “And I find it reassuring prison didn’t take away your sense of humor.”

  “I don’t have a sense of humor,” Sayer laughed.

  “Aye, I remember.”

  The two men shared a silent secret, one that was impossible to read. “It’s good to see you again, brother,” Sayer told him.

  “And you. Although I didn’t think you’d be returning so soon.”

  Sayer glanced back at me. “Not everything went as planned.”

  “I heard that too.” Conlan nodded solemnly. “They’ve returned the girl to you? Unharmed?”

  “How do you know so much?” I asked, unable to stay silent any longer. This was too strange. Sayer hated the Irish. He went out of his way to make them suffer. It was the Irish he’d stolen guns from all those years ago to break his way into the bratva. It was that job that had launched his entire career.

  Conlan’s gaze fell on me, seeing me for the first time. I didn’t know what I expected but the warmth and gentleness radiating from him was surprising. I’d assumed he would be nothing but hardened killer, ruthless criminal. Instead, I felt oddly uncomfortable with how affectionately he stared at me.

  “Is this her then?” he asked Sayer. “The reason behind everything we’ve done?”

  Sayer stepped to my side, wrapping an arm around my waist. I was too stunned to do anything but stand there. There was a smile in his voice when Sayer said, “Conlan, this is Caroline Valero.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The head of the Irish mob stepped closer to me, stretched out his hand, and shook mine. When he spoke, it was in riddles. He said words I understood but couldn’t understand at the same time. His head inclined toward Sayer and he said, “There were times when I thought he was mad for doing what he did. I understand now. It was your beauty that drove him from reason.”

  The blood rushed to my face and I blushed so fiercely I felt like I was thirteen all over again. Sayer’s grip tightened around my waist and he pulled me closer to his side. “You can’t help yourself, can you? You have to hit on every woman put before you.”

  Conlan grinned sheepishly, apology flashing in his eyes. “She’s more than a great beauty, isn’t she? What am I to do?” Before Sayer could answer that question, Conlan turned to Gus. “And you must be Augustus. I’ve heard plenty about you as well.”

  The two men shook hands, the same look of surreal surprise on Gu
s’s face that I imagined was on mine. “That’s strange,” Gus said, “because I’ve heard nothing about you.”

  “Yes, well, that was intentional.” Conlan gestured to the sitting area by the fire. Sayer led me to the love seat in the middle and Gus and Conlan took the two wingback chairs on either side. “There were too many variables, too many unknowns. Besides, Sayer never expected to make friends.”

  Sayer kept his hand on my back, but otherwise relaxed into the chair. “Conlan and I met when we were kids. Our dads worked for the Irish and we ran around together before my parents died.”

  “I thought your dad was a cop?” I asked, feeling like I knew absolutely nothing about this man.

  Sayer nodded. “He was. Local PD. He also worked for the Irish. Conlan’s dad would have taken me in had I not been snatched up by social services.”

  “Aye,” Conlan laughed. “And then he ended up on the streets, a preferable place to living with my da, the mean bastard.”

  Sayer nodded, a brief flash of exhaustion flickering in his eyes. “That’s true.”

  “When you heard about the shipment of guns that one time….” I couldn’t help but ask. Had we all been impressed for nothing all these years?

  “That was genuine. I left the Irish because I hated them. I only worked for them for that brief time to get something valuable enough to grab the pakhan’s attention,” he explained. “It just so happened that it worked in my favor. I had wanted to take them out, destroy them, for as long as I’d been alive. I genuinely wanted the Russians to take over. I’ve never had any interest in being Irish.”

  Conlan grinned as if absolutely amused by Sayer’s story. “So he gave it to me. He has less interest in destroying us now.”

  Gus leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “He gave it to you?”

  “Aye. He gave me the Irish and Luca the Italians and later, he helped Ry win his Yakuza. We were street kids and thugs with little desire to lead empires. Sayer rounded us up and put the keys to the kingdom in our hands. We worked together for ten years, slowly chipping away at the old regime until we found ourselves at the top.”

  I was dumbfounded. “Luca Rossi?”

  Gus echoed with a name I didn’t recognize. “Ryuu Oshiro?”

  Sayer said nothing. He leaned on the arm rest and kept his hand on my back as if he were afraid I would take off running and he would need to hold me back.

  Conlan filled in the blanks. “Sure, you’ve heard of them. And he did it all from his prison cell. Our dear Sayer went off to prison and became the kingmaker. His girl disappeared, and Sayer razed the whole damn city in retaliation.”

  My mouth dried out so quickly, my tongue became a useless rock in my mouth. It was too much to comprehend, too much to accept. My heart pounded harder than it ever had as I grappled with what all of this meant.

  And then I gave up because it was impossible. How could any of that be true? How could Sayer have orchestrated the rise and fall of families from prison? How could he have been working on building new empires for ten years? How had I not known any of this?

  I grasped at the easiest piece of information and decided to grill him on it. Then I would move to the bigger issues. Eventually. Maybe. I turned to face him. “You told me prison was dangerous. You had the three biggest families in your pocket the entire time.”

  His lips twitched with that suppressed smile I hated so much. The one I equally loved and lusted over. “Conlan and Luca might have been taking over their families at that time, but Allenwood was filled with old regime assholes that suspected I had something to do with their loss of power.”

  My heart struggled to keep up its current pace. “Oh.”

  “When he finally got out, we thought he would take his place at the top of the Russian food chain,” Conlan went on. “But to our surprise, he abandoned the legacy he’d been fighting tooth and nail for since we were kids.”

  “That was part of my deal with Mason,” Sayer explained. “He wanted the Russian’s gone for good.”

  “And you let him have his way?” Conlan asked, his eyebrows pinching with surprise. “After all these years? After everything you worked for?”

  Before Sayer could respond, I jumped in with a different question. “Does Mason know about your alliance with the other families?”

  Sayer gave me a side glance that said everything. Of course not.

  “Nobody knows about our alliance,” he admitted. “That’s why it works.”

  I stared at him with a whole new perspective, trying to understand the years of secrecy and plotting it would have taken for the four of them to rise from street kids to kings. How had they worked together to make it happen? How had they orchestrated the regime change of four different families? It was insane. And completely genius. My mind spun, my blood rushed in my veins. Did I know him at all? Did I want to? “What else aren’t you telling me?”

  He turned, meeting my gaze and there it was, the depth of him. It was shocking and overwhelming and home all at the same time. I was swept away in the riptide of his intensity, the perfect symmetry of his face and the quiet sorrow he tried so hard to hide.

  I waited for his answer, waited for him to unleash another secret that would rock my entire world. But he only stared, revealing secrets without telling me what they were. Dangling them in front of me, admitting that they existed, but not giving anything away.

  At that moment, I hated him. I hated him for keeping the secrets to himself. I hated him for having them. And I hated myself for not being able to figure out what they were.

  At the same time, I loved him more than ever. Sitting next to him, I fell in love with him all over again. I thought of the boy I had met in a dingy alley when I was ten years old. The boy that wore all of his hate, rage, and pain like a coat of armor, or an entire army spread out before him on the battlefield. And how he had grown from that furious kid to the capable, alluring man sitting beside me now. From the starving street rat to the man that had singlehandedly redesigned the DC underworld.

  He’d caused kingdoms to fall and new rulers to rise. He’d carefully, meticulously moved his chess pieces around the board and seen every move before it happened. He was a genius. A literal battlefield mastermind.

  He belonged in a different time. He deserved to have armies at his beck and call, nations in debt to his battlefield mastery. And I loved him even more after seeing who he truly was.

  When it was clear he wasn’t going to spill the rest of his secrets, I asked him something I had always been curious about. “Were you devastated when you learned about Juliet then?”

  Genuine confusion transformed his expression. “Why would I have been?”

  “Because she derailed your plans for world domination.”

  He shook his head, one corner of his mouth lifting, but not in a smile. “You derailed my plans for world domination. Juliet isn’t at fault. You’re the one that left.”

  “To protect her.”

  “I would have protected you both no matter what, no matter where I was. The bratva would never have hurt you, Six. Not while I could do something about it.” His voice was hard enough and serious enough that I knew he was telling the truth. It was backed up by Conlan’s dark look and cracking knuckles.

  “We would never have let them touch you,” Conlan echoed.

  “For what it’s worth, I would have stopped them too,” Gus added.

  Feeling flattered by their loyalty and protection, I confessed, “I didn’t know that. I didn’t know any of this.” I turned back to Sayer, my voice breaking with truth. “I did what I thought was right for our baby.”

  “I know.”

  My eyes pricked with tears, but I held them back by sheer force of will. “I never meant to hurt you.”

  “I know,” he said again. His eyes darkened, and his entire body tightened, hardened, became that rock of a man I had always known him to be. He lifted his hand off my back and stroked the curve of my cheek with just one finger. The gesture was so heart
breakingly intimate I shivered and leaned toward him, drawn by the magnetic force that was his soul.

  Conlan cleared his throat and I remembered where we were. To defuse the heated tension between us, I quickly added, “You didn’t have to move all the way to Frisco though. You could have called me. I’m not totally irrational.”

  He shook his head, a smile finally breaking through. “You still don’t get it, Six. I will go anywhere you are. I will do anything you want to do. It’s not about the brotherhood or being the boss. Everything, everything I have ever done, is about you. I only want to be with you.”

  “But what about…?” I gestured at Conlan and out the window.

  “It may have started as something different. Job security maybe… Revenge, definitely… Real, true anger that I could never seem to settle until I met you. It all turned into something more when you showed up. I wanted to keep you safe. And the only way I could imagine you safe in our world was to become the boss, to make people I trusted bosses of the other families. It was more than power for me. It was about giving you everything you wanted.”

  His words stopped my heart, stole my breath, flipped my entire world on its axis. “You mean that?”

  “Are you still asking?”

  “Give me a straight answer. Just once. No dodging, no going around in circles, just tell me the truth.”

  “Yes,” he said, the word soaring through me, setting loose entire battalions of butterflies. “Yes, I mean it. Every word.”

  “Say what else you mean.” I was being demanding and this was a totally inappropriate place to have this conversation, but I needed to hear it. I needed him to say the words.

  He didn’t flinch, didn’t even ask me what I meant. “I love you.”

  God, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. It healed the broken pieces inside me, fixed the shattered, mess of a girl I’d been for five long years. It was water and air and life all at once. “I love you, too.”

  He tilted his head, his eyes softening with a well of unspoken emotion. “I know.”