Forgotten & Found: A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Boxset

by Serena Akeroyd

  “And whether or not I wore a jimmy last night is none of yours.”

  “If it turns green and looks like a moldy corn on the cob, who you gonna call?”

  “Ghostbusters?” he tried.

  I shook my head, then pointed a finger at him and back at myself. “No. Me.”

  Grunting, he got to his feet and pressed his fists to the desk. “We need that building, Finn.”

  “The business development plan was mine, Aid. I know we need it. Don’t worry, I won’t do anything stupid.”

  He snorted. “Your kind of stupid could go one of two ways.”

  That had me narrowing my eyes at him, but he held up his hands in surrender.

  “Fuck her out of your system quickly, and then get started on the deal,” he advised. “Best way.”

  It probably was the best way, but—

  He sighed. “That fucking honor of yours.”

  I had to laugh. Only in the O'Donnelly family would my thoughts be considered honorable.

  “If I’m fucking someone over, I want them to know it,” was all I said.

  “That makes no sense.”

  “Makes for epic sex, though,” I jibed, and he shot me a grin.

  “Angry sex is always good.” He rubbed his chin, then he reached over again and flipped through the photos. “Who’s the old guy to her?”

  “To her? Not sure. Sugar daddy?” The thought alone made the beast inside rage. I cleared my throat to get rid of the rasp there. “To us? He’s our meal ticket.”

  Aidan’s eyes widened. “He is?”

  I nodded. “Just leave it to me.”

  “I was always going to, deartháir.” He tilted his chin at me, honoring me with the Gaelic word for brother. “Be careful out there.”

  “You, too, brother.”

  Aidan winked at me and, with a far too cheerful whistle for someone whose dick might soon be ‘ribbed for her pleasure’ without the need for a condom, walked out of my office leaving me to brood.

  The instant his back was to me, I stared at the photos again. Flipping through them, I glowered at the innocent face staring back at me through the photo paper—if only she knew.

  Hers was a building in Hell’s Kitchen. Five Points Territory. One of many on my hit list.

  Back in the 70s, Aidan Sr., following in his father’s footsteps, had bought up a shit-ton of property, pre-gentrification, and it was my job to either sell off the portfolio, reconstruct, or ‘improve’ the current aesthetics of the buildings the Points owned.

  This particular one was something I’d taken a personal interest in.

  See, I was technically a legitimate businessman.

  This office?

  I had views of the Hudson. I could see the Empire State Building, and in the evening, I had an epic view of the sunset setting over Manhattan. This office building, also Points’ property, was worth a cool hundred million, and I was, again technically, the CEO of it.

  On paper?

  I looked seamless.

  The businessman who sported hundred thousand dollar watches and had a house in the Hamptons. No one save the Points and my CPA knew where the money came from. I liked that because, fuck, I had no intention of switching this pad for a lock-up in Riker’s Island.

  Still, this project cut close to home, and the reasoning was fucking pathetic.

  I’d never admit it to any of the O'Donnellys. The bastards were like family to me, and if I admitted to this, they’d never let me hear the end of it.

  Extortion?

  I usually doled that out to someone else’s to do list. Someone with a far lower paygrade than me, someone expendable. But the minute I’d heard of the troublesome tenant who was refusing to sell her lot to us? After not one, not two, not even three attempts with higher prices?

  Five outright refusals?

  The challenge to convince her otherwise had overtaken me.

  See, I liked stubborn in women.

  I liked fucking it out of them.

  Throw in the fact the woman’s name was Aoife? It had been enough to get me sending someone out to follow her.

  If she’d been fifty with as many chins as she had grandchildren, she’d have been safe from me.

  But she wasn’t.

  She was, as Aidan had correctly stated, my kryptonite. All milky flesh with gleaming auburn hair that I wanted to tie around my clenched fist. Her soft features with those delicate green eyes that sparkled when she smiled and were like wet grass when she was mad, acted like a punch to my gut.

  Now?

  My interest hadn’t just been piqued.

  It had fucking imploded.

  Yeah, I was thinking with my cock, but what man, at the end of the day, didn’t?

  I’d just have to be careful. Just have to make sure I put pressure on the right places, make sure she’d bend and not break, and the old bastard in the pictures was my key to just that.

  See, every third Tuesday of the month, Aoife Keegan had a habit of traipsing across Manhattan to the Upper East Side. There, at three PM on the dot, she’d enter a discreet little boutique hotel and wouldn’t leave until nine PM that night.

  Five minutes after she arrived and left, the same man would leave, too.

  At first, when Jimmy O’Leary had told me that Senator Alan Davidson was at the hotel, I hadn’t thought anything of it.

  Why would I?

  Senators trawled for donations in fancy hotels every fucking day of the week. It was the true luxury of politics. Sure, they made it look real good for the press. Posing in derelict neighborhoods and shaking hands with people who did the fucking work . . . all while they lived it up large with women half their age in two thousand dollar a night suites.

  My mouth firmed at that.

  Was Aoife selling herself to the Senator?

  The thought pissed me off.

  I couldn’t see why she’d do such a thing. Not when I’d looked into her finances, had seen just how secure she was. But maybe that was why. Maybe the Senator was funneling money to her.

  The only problem was that the lot Aoife owned—did I mention it was owned outright? Yeah, that was enough to chafe my suspicions, too, considering she was only twenty-fucking-five years old—was a teashop in a small building in a questionable area of HK.

  I mean, come on. I loved Hell’s Kitchen. It was home. But fuck. Where she was? What kind of Senator would put his fancy piece in that?

  My jaw clenched as I studied the Senator’s and Aoife’s smiling faces as they left the hotel. Separately, of course. But whatever they’d been doing together, it sure put a Cheshire Cat grin on their chops–that was for fucking sure. Jimmy being a dumbass, hadn’t put the two together, had just remarked on the ‘coincidence,’ but I was no fool.

  How did I know they were together in the hotel?

  Jimmy had been trailing Aoife for four months—told you I was obsessive—and every third Tuesday, come rain or shine, this little routine had jumped out, and when Jimmy had picked up on the fact Davidson had been there each and every time, I’d gotten my hands dirty, bribed one of the hotel maids myself—and fuck, that had been hard. Turned out that place made even the maids sign NDA agreements, but everyone had a price—and I’d found out that my little obsession shared a suite with the old prick.

  My fingers curled into fists as I stared at her. Butter wouldn’t fucking melt. She was the epitome of innocence. Like a redheaded angel. Could she really be lifting her skirts for that old fucker? Just so she could own a teashop?

  Something didn’t make sense, and fuck, if that didn’t intrigue me all the more.

  Aoife Keegan had snared one of the biggest, nastiest sharks in Manhattan.

  She just didn’t know it yet.

  ***

  Aoife

  “We need more scones for tomorrow. I keep telling you four dozen isn’t enough.”

  Lifting a hand at my waitress and friend, Jenny, I mumbled, “I know, I know.”

  “If you know, then why the hell don’t you list
en?” Jenny complained, making me grin.

  “Because I’m the one who has to make them? Making half that again is just . . .” I sighed.

  I loved my job.

  I did.

  I adored baking—my butt and hips attested to that fact—and making a career out of my passion was something every twenty-something hoped for. Especially in one of the most expensive cities in the world. But sheesh. There was only so much one person could do, and this was still, essentially, a one-woman-band.

  With the threat of Acuig Corp looming over me, I didn’t feel safe hiring extra staff. I’d held them off for close to six months now. Six months of them trying to tempt me to leave, to sell up. They’d raised their prices to ten percent above market value, whereas with everyone else in the building, they’d just offered what the apartments were truly worth. Considering this place wasn’t the nicest in the block, that wasn’t much.

  Most people hadn’t held out because, hell, why wouldn’t they want to live elsewhere?

  Those who were landlords hadn’t felt any issue in tossing their tenants out on the street. The tenants grumbled, but when did they ever have any rights, anyway?

  For myself, this was where my mom and I had worked to—

  I brought that thought to a shuddering halt.

  Mom was dead now.

  I had to remember that. This was on me, not her.

  My throat thickened with tears as I turned to Jenny and murmured, “I’ll try better tomorrow.”

  The words had her frowning at me. “Babe, you know I’m not the boss here, right?”

  Lips curving, I whispered, “I know. But you’re so scary.”

  She snickered then peered down at herself. “Yeah, I bet I’d make grown men cry.”

  Maybe for a taste of her. . . .

  Jenny was everything I wasn’t.

  She was slender, didn’t dip her hand into the cookie jar at will—the woman had more willpower than I did hips, and my hips seemed to go on forever—and her face looked like it belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine. Even her hair was enough to inspire envy. It was black and straight as a ruler.

  Mine?

  Bright red and curly like a bitch. I had to straighten it out every morning if I didn’t want to look like little orphan Annie.

  I’d once read that curly-haired women straightened their hair for special events, and that straight-haired women curled theirs in turn, but I called bullshit.

  Curly-haired women lived with their straightening irons surgically attached to their hands.

  At least, I did.

  My rat’s nest was like a ginger afro. Maybe Beyoncé could make that work, but I sure as hell didn’t have the bone structure.

  “I think grown men would cry,” I told her dryly, “if you asked them to.”

  She pshawed, but there was a twinkle in her eye that I understood. . . . She agreed with me, knew it was true, but wasn’t going to admit it. With anyone else, she might have. She had an ego–that was for damn sure. But with me? I think she figured I was zero competition, so she felt no need to rub salt in the wound, too.

  I plunked my elbows on the counter and stared around my domain as she bustled off and started clearing the tables. It was her last duty of the day, and my feet were aching so damn bad that I didn’t even have it in me to care.

  This owning your own business shit?

  It wasn’t easy.

  Not saying I didn’t love it, but it was hard.

  I slept like four hours a night, and when I wasn’t in bed, I was here. All the time.

  Baking, cooking, serving, and smiling. Always smiling. Even if I was so sleep-deprived I could sob.

  Jenny’s actually a life saver.

  My mom used to be front of house before. . . .

  I sucked down a breath.

  I had to get used to thinking about it.

  She wasn’t here anymore, but just avoiding all thoughts of her period wasn’t working for me. It was like I was purposely forgetting her, and, well, fuck that.

  She’d always wanted to have a teashop. It had been her one true dream. Back in Ireland, when she was a little girl, her grandmother had owned one in Limerick. Mom had caught the bug and had wanted to have one here in the States. But not only was it too fucking expensive for a woman on her own, it was also impossible with my feckless father at her side.

  I didn’t want to think about him either, though.

  Why?

  Because the feckless father who’d pretty much ruined my mother’s life, wasn’t the only father in my life. My biological dad hadn’t exactly cared about her happiness, but once he’d come to know about me, he’d tried. That was more than could be said for the man who’d lived with me throughout my early childhood.

  “You look gloomy.”

  Jenny’s statement had me blinking in surprise. She had a ton of dishes piled in her arms, and I’d have worried for the expensive china if I hadn’t known she was an old pro at this shit. Just as I was.

  We could probably earn a Guinness World Record on how many dishes we could take back and forth to the kitchen of Ellie’s Tea Rooms. I swear, I had guns because of all that hefting. My biceps were probably the firmest part of my body.

  More’s the pity.

  I’d have preferred an ass you could bounce dimes off of, but, when it boiled down to it, there was no way in this universe I could live without cake.

  Just wasn’t going to happen.

  My big butt wasn’t going anywhere until scientists could make zero calorie eclairs and pies.

  “I’m not glum.”

  “No? Then why are your eyes sad?”

  Were they? I pursed my lips as I let the ‘sad eyes’ drift around the tea room. I wish I could say it was all forged on my own hard work, but it wasn’t. Not really.

  “I was just thinking about Mom.”

  “Oh, honey,” Jenny said sadly, and she carefully placed all the dishes on the counter, so she could round it and curve her arm around my waist. “It was only seven months ago. Of course, you were thinking of her.”

  “I just—” I blew out a breath. “I don’t know if I’m doing what she’d want.”

  “You can’t live for her choices, sweetness. You have to do what you think is right for you.”

  I gnawed at my bottom lip again. “I-I know, but she was always there for me. A guiding light. With Fiona gone and her, too? I don’t really know what I’m doing with myself.”

  This business wasn’t something that made me want to get up on a morning. It was my mom’s dream, her goal. Every decision I made, I tried to remember how she’d longed for a place like this, but it wasn’t my passion. It was hers, and I was trying to keep that dream alive while fretting over the fact my heart wasn’t in it.

  “I think you’re doing a damn fine job. You have a very successful teashop. Your cakes are raved about. Have you visited our TripAdvisor page recently? Or our Yelp?” She squeaked. “I swear, you’re making this place a tourist hotspot. I don’t think Fiona or Michelle could be more proud of you if they tried.”

  The baking shit, yeah, that was all on me, but the other stuff? The finances?

  I’d caved in.

  I’d caved where my mom had always refused in the past.

  With the accident had come a lot of medical bills that I just hadn’t been able to afford. Without her help, I’d had to take on extra staff, and out of nowhere, my expenses had added up.

  Mom had been so proud of this place, so ferociously gleeful that we’d done it by ourselves, and yet, here I was, financially free for the first time in my life, and I still felt like I was drowning because my freedom went entirely against her wishes.

  “Is this to do with Acuig? I know they’re still pestering you.”

  Jenny’s statement had me wincing. Acuig were the bottom feeders who wanted to snap up this building, demolish it, and then replace it with a skyscraper. Don’t get me wrong, the building was foul, but a lot of people lived here, and the minute it morphed into some exclus
ive condo, no one from around here would be able to afford to live in it.

  It would become yuppy central.

  I’d rejected all their offers to buy my tea room even though I didn’t want the damn thing, not really. Mostly I wanted to keep mom’s goals alive and kicking, but also, it pissed me off the way Acuig were changing Hell’s Kitchen. Ratcheting up prices, making it unaffordable for the everyday man and woman—the people I’d grown up with—and bringing a shit-ton of banker-wankers and 1%ers to the area.

  So, maybe I’d watched Erin Brockovich a time or two as a kid and had a social conscience . . . Wasn’t the worst thing to possess, right?

  “Aoife?” Jenny stated, making me look over at her. “Is Acuig pressuring you?”

  I winced, realizing I hadn’t answered—Jenny was my friend, but she also worked here and relied on the paycheck. It wasn’t fair of me to keep her hanging like that. “They upped the sales price. I guess that isn’t helping,” I admitted, frowning down at my hands.

  Unlike Jenny who had her nails manicured, mine were cut neatly and plain. I had no rings on my fingers, and wore no watch or bracelets because my wrists were usually deep in flour or sugar bags.

  I spent most of my life right where I wanted it—behind the shopfront. That had slowly morphed where I was doing double the work to compensate for Mom’s loss.

  Was it any wonder I was feeling a little out of my league?

  I was coping without Fiona, grieving Mom, working without her, too, and then practically living in the kitchens here. I didn’t exactly have that much of a life. I had nothing cheerful on the horizon, either.

  Well, nothing except for next Tuesday, and that wasn’t enough to turn my frown upside down.

  The money was a temptation. I didn’t need to sell up and start working on my own goals, but that just loaded me down with more guilt and made me feel like a really shitty daughter.

  Jenny squeezed me in a gentle hug. But as I turned to speak to her, the bell above the door rang as it opened. We both jerked in surprise—each of us apparently thinking the other had locked up when neither of us had—and turned to face the entrance.

  On the brink of telling the client we were closed for the day, my mouth opened then shut.