Screw You
Serena Akeroyd
Copyright © 2019 by Gemma Mazurke
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Afterword
Also by Serena Akeroyd
Foreword
You’re about to meet Finn O’Grady and Aoife Keegan.
Before you get started, just FYI: Aoife is pronounced Ee-Fah.
Ah, the joyous marvel that is Irish Gaelic.
Chapter One
Finn
Obsessive habits weren’t alien to me.
They were as much a part of me as my coal-dark hair and my diamond-blue eyes. Ingrained as they were, it didn’t mean they weren’t irritating as fuck.
As I rifled through the folder on the table in front of me, staring down at the life of one pesky tenant, I wanted to toss it in the trash. I truly did.
I wanted not to be interested in her.
Wanted my focus to return to the matter at hand—business.
But there was something about her.
Something. . .
Irish.
I was a sucker for my own people. When I was a kid, I’d only dated other Irish girls in my class, and though I’d become less discerning about nationality and had grown more interested in tits and ass, I’d thought that desire had died down.
But Aoife Keegan was undeniably, indefatigably Irish.
From her fucking name—I didn’t know people still named their kids in Gaelic over here—to her red goddamn hair and milky-white skin.
To many, she wouldn’t be sexy. Too pale, too curvy, too rounded and wholesome. But to me? It was like God had formed a creature that was born to be my downfall.
I could feel the beast inside me roaring to life as I stared at the photos of her. It wanted out. It wanted her.
Fuck.
“I told you not to get those briefs.”
My eyes flared wide in surprise at my brother, Aidan Donnelly’s remark. “What?” I snapped.
“I told you not to get those briefs,” he repeated, unoffended. Which was a miracle. Had I been speaking to Aidan Sr., I’d probably have lost a finger, but Aidan Jr. was one of my best friends, as well as a confidant and fellow businessman.
When I said business, it wasn’t the kind Valley girls dreamed their future husbands would be involved in. No Manhattan socialite, though we were wealthy as fuck, would want us on their arm if they truly knew what games we were involved in.
My business was forged, unashamedly, in blood, sweat, and tears.
Preferably not my own, although I had taken a few hits for the Family over the years.
“My briefs aren’t irritating me,” I carried on, blowing out a breath.
“No? You look like you’ve got something up your ass crack.” Aidan cocked a brow at me, but his smirk told me he knew exactly what the fuck was wrong.
I flipped him the bird—the finger that I’d have lost by showing cheek to his father—and he just grinned at me as he leaned over my glass desk and scooped up one of the pictures.
That beast I mentioned earlier?
It roared to life again when his eyes drifted over Aoife’s curvy form.
“She’s like your kryptonite,” he breathed, tilting his head to the side. “Fuck me, Finn.”
“I’d rather not,” I told him drily. “Now her? Yeah. I’d fuck her anytime.”
He wafted a dismissive hand at my teasing. “I knew from that look in your eye, there was a woman involved. I just didn’t know it would be a looker like this.”
I snatched the photo from him. “Mine.”
My growl had him snickering. “The Old Country ain’t where I get my women from, Finn. Simmer down.”
Throat tightening, I grated out, “What the fuck am I going to do?”
“Screw her?” he suggested.
“I can’t.”
He snorted. “You can.”
“How the fuck am I supposed to get her in my bed when I’m about to bribe her into selling off her commercial lot?”
Aidan shrugged. “Do the bribing after.”
That had me blowing out a breath. “You’re a bastard, you know that, right?”
Piously, he murmured, “My parents were well and truly married before I came along. I have the wedding and birth certificates to prove it.” He grinned. “Anyway, you’re only just figuring that out?”
I shot him a scowl. “You’re remarkably cheerful today.”
“Is that a question or a statement?”
“Both?” The word sounded far too Irish for my own taste. My mother had come from Ireland, Tipperary to be precise—yeah, like the song. I was American born and bred, my accent that of someone who’d been raised in Hell’s Kitchen but, and I hated it, my mother’s accent would make an appearance every now and then.
‘Both’ came out sounding almost like ‘boat.’
Aidan, knowing me as well as he did, smirked again—the fucker. “I got laid.”
Grunting, I told him, “That doesn’t usually make you cheerful.”
“It does. I just never see you first thing after I wake up. Pa hasn’t managed to piss me off today.”
Aidan was the heir to the Five Points—an Irish gang who operated out of Hell’s Kitchen. It wasn’t like being the heir to a candy company or a title. It came with responsibilities that no one really appreciated.
We were tied into the life, though. Had been since the day we were born.
There was no use in whining over it, and Aidan wasn’t. But if I had to deal with his father on a daily basis? I’d have been whining to the morgue and back.
Aidan Sr. was the shrewdest man I knew. What the man could do with our clout defied belief. Even if I thought he was a sociopath, he had my respect, and in truth, my love and loyalty.
Bastard or no, he’d taken me in when I was fourteen and had made me one of his family. I’d gone from being his kids’ friend, the son of one of his runners, to suddenly being welcome in the main house.
All because Aidan Sr.—though I was sure he was certifiable—believed in family.
I shot Aidan Jr. a look. “Was it that blonde over on Canal Street?”
He rubbed his chin. “Yeah.”
Snorting, I told him, “Hope you wore a rubber. I swear that woman has so many men going in and out of her door, it should be on double-action hinges.”
He scowled at me. “Are you trying to piss me off?”
“Why? Didn’t wear a jimmy?” I grinned at him, my mood soaring in the face of his irritation. “Better get to the clinic before it drops off.”
Though he flipped me the bird as easily as I’d done to him—I was his brother, after all—he grumbled, “What are you going to do about little Aoife?”
I squinted at him. “She’s not little.”
That seemed to restore his humor. “I know. Just how you like them.” He shook his head. “You and Conor, I swear. What do you do with them? Drown
yourself in their tits?”
Heaving a sigh, I informed him, “My predilection for large tits is none of your business.”
“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 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 Donnellys. The bastards were like family to me, and if I admitted the truth on this score, 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 love Hell’s Kitchen. It’s home. But fuck. Where she is? 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 dumbass.
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.”
&nbs
p; 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 listen?” 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.”
Screw You: A Screwed Duet (Five Points, Hell's Kitchen Book 1) Page 1