Lila nervously swiped at the screen of her tablet, as she sat alone at the long wood table. The back room of the old pub Robbie MacFarlane owned smelled of stale beer and peanuts, and she could hear the voices of the bartender and the waitress on the other side of the door. The pub itself was nearly empty. A few older Irishmen had been playing dominoes when she’d walked in, and what looked to be a commodities broker of some sort was drowning his sorrows in the corner.
Most of the coordination for the Rogue-MacFarlane project had been done by her and Finn, so she’d only met with Cian a total of three times, and she hoped she’d answered or anticipated all his concerns. He made her uncomfortable—in good and bad ways. He was dangerous, she knew—she’d asked around. But he was also smart, straightforward, and seemingly a very savvy businessman. While part of her was afraid of what he’d do if she failed in her assignment, another part didn’t want to disappoint him. It was a confusing mixture of feelings and one Lila was unused to.
The door to the room swung open, and in strode the man himself. He wore his usual dark colors, but dressier than the last few times she’d seen him—his suit was obviously custom cut, and his high-thread-count dress shirt was snowy white. As he entered, he shot his cuffs, rolling his powerful shoulders and giving her a glimpse of polished platinum cuff links. As she stood to greet him in her black wool jumper dress, black wool knee-high stockings, and red-and-black Mary Janes, Lila felt like a little girl in comparison.
“Lila from Rogue,” Cian said, his voice like velvet, sending shivers down her spine. “You’re early.” He grinned, and her heart raced.
She narrowed her eyes, pressing her lips together, hoping he couldn’t tell how discombobulated he made her feel.
“I take my work very seriously, Mr. MacFarlane,” she answered.
“I’ve never doubted it,” he said, also serious. He gestured for her to retake her seat, then chose the one next to her, rotating his chair so he could look at her full on. She fussed with her tablet screen, unable to meet his gaze.
“You don’t need to be nervous,” he told her softly. “My father only cares that the job gets done. He’ll not understand any of the details, and my brother Finn says you’ve done an excellent job preparing the systems.”
She nodded, finally looking at him, but then away again just as quickly.
“I’m not nervous,” she lied.
He rested one arm on the table, leaning into her space, his head tipping toward her in an intimate gesture.
“I’ve missed our coffee dates,” he said, his voice gravelly and deep. Lila felt everything inside her become heated and pliable.
“They were business meetings, not dates,” she corrected primly.
“Call them what you will, I enjoyed them. Much more than any other business meeting I’ve had.”
She couldn’t help the smile that snuck across her face then, along with the blush she felt heat her cheeks. Cian chuckled softly but pulled back, turning his chair to the table as the door opened and several other men entered.
Lila looked up to see an older man with white hair followed by two younger men and Xavier. She could have picked out the MacFarlane patriarch in a crowded room. He was somewhat rough, but wore authority like a second skin, every mannerism dripping with the assumption that his orders would be followed. He was shorter than Cian, but she could see the resemblance immediately. Robbie MacFarlane still cut a powerful figure, his physique solid, his blue eyes sharp, his clothing casual but immaculate.
Behind him was a much younger man, very like Cian in appearance, but with darker eyes and a certain lightness to his demeanor that Lila doubted Cian had ever worn. The final MacFarlane brother, Finn, was thinner than Cian and an inch or two shorter as well. His hair was in need of a trim, but beneath the floppy bangs were eyes the most beautiful shade of green Lila had ever seen.
Cian stood as the men worked their way into the room and selected seats at the table. Only when his father had sat did Cian sit back down as well.
“Pop,” he began. “I’d like to introduce you to the Rogue staff member who will be presenting the system to us. This is Lila Rodriguez. Lila, this is my father”—he gestured toward the silver fox—“and my brother Connor”—the one with darker eyes. “You know Finn, of course.”
Lila smiled and nodded to the head of the table on her left. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. MacFarlane.”
He gave her a charming smile and an extra dose of Irish brogue. “They make computer geeks much prettier than they did in my day,” he joked, but his blue eyes were cold, and a frisson of discomfort crawled down her spine as he reached out and patted her hand where it lay on the table.
She heard Cian clear his throat on her other side, and then Connor was leaning over the table from where he sat on his father’s other side. He extended his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Lila,” he said. She shook his hand while Finn gave her a sweet smile and a nod of his head.
“So,” Robbie said, turning his attention to his eldest son. “Let’s see how you’re going to earn the family more money.”
Lila felt Cian stiffen beside her, but she kept her gaze forward. She’d dealt with enough alpha businessmen in her line of work to understand Robbie was going to be a jerk now. From what Xavier had told her, Robbie had a heart condition that had necessitated his retirement. Cian was officially in charge of the family business, but Robbie was the man behind the curtain, keeping tabs, manipulating events, and still very much the source of approval that any new undertaking would require.
But it wasn’t Cian who answered Robbie. It was Finn.
“I can tell you how it’s all going to work, Pop,” he said, leaning into the table.
Robbie raised a brow, his head swiveling slowly toward Finn’s side of the table.
“Finn has managed all this,” Cian said quickly. “He developed the shipping methods, and he’s met several times with Lila and Xavier about technical details I don’t understand.”
Finn continued to look at their father, his face calm and determined. Lila could feel the tension in the room, and watched as Robbie leaned back in his chair, his barrel chest expanding as he took a long, slow breath.
Across from her, Connor’s gaze was pinned to the tabletop. At the opposite end from Robbie, Xavier was otherwise engaged with his phone, obviously leaving Lila to dangle along with Finn.
“So, let’s hear it,” Robbie finally said, and the room gave a collective sigh of relief.
Finn launched into an explanation of the internet sales, with asides from Lila regarding technical security measures. Cian and Connor chimed in with details about the packaging and distribution.
When they were done, Robbie looked at Cian. “You really think this’ll work?”
Cian nodded slowly. “I trust Finn’s judgment.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Robbie fired back.
Cian’s gaze checked left to Lila, and she gave him a sympathetic smile. His father’s disdain for Finn was obvious.
“It’ll work,” Cian answered evenly. “And it’ll earn. A lot.”
Xavier finally piped up from the far end of the table. “We sell body parts on the internet,” he said. “This is simple by comparison. As long as your people handle the packaging right, this will work.”
“It’s certainly in your best interest that it does,” Robbie shot back. “You’re getting a hell of a cut.”
Xavier leaned forward, his eyes pinned to the older mobster. “If you’re not earning six figures a month in the first three months, I’ll cut my percentage in half. How’s that?”
Robbie smirked. “Big words from a small man.”
Xavier gave him a cold smile. “I know my business, Mr. MacFarlane. This will work, and it will earn. We’ll both get very rich from the arrangement.”
Robbie gave one sharp nod, then stood abruptly. “All right, then. Do it. Cian, you watch this one personally. I come to you with questions, I want you to have the answers.” Then he turned to Finn. “T
his goes south, it’s on you, understand? And I can tell you right now, they’d have you for lunch at Menard.” He chuckled darkly, the mention of the state’s largest maximum-security prison turning Lila’s gut cold.
“I’ll handle it all, Pop,” Cian interjected before his eyes met Finn’s across the table. “I’ll be happy to tell you anything you want to know about it.”
Finn didn’t respond, leaning back in his seat and seeming to shut down after having presented the entire project in great detail.
Before he turned to leave the room, Robbie gave Lila another of his charming smiles and lifted her hand as though he was going to kiss it. “Lovely meeting you,” he said. “You make sure to let me know if my boys don’t treat you right.” Her skin crawled, but she gave him a weak smile in response, and then he was gone, the door shutting behind him.
“Holy shit,” Connor breathed as he laid his head down on the table.
Finn smiled. “It wasn’t so bad. He didn’t throw anything.”
“Or punch anyone,” Cian added darkly.
“I have to be somewhere,” Xavier said, as though no one else in the room had spoken. “Lila, after you wrap this up, can you check on the backup servers? I don’t have time today.”
“Sure thing,” she answered.
Xavier left, his head down, still frantically tapping at his screen. Even for him, he’d been weird and rude, and Lila wondered what he was working on or what had gone wrong at Rogue.
She turned to find all three MacFarlane men looking at her. It was disconcerting. They were all very attractive, but at least two of them were also dangerous as hell. She doubted Finn would harm a fly, although his intellect was dangerous in its own way.
“So, do you have any more questions?” she asked, looking around at each man one at a time.
“You did great,” Finn said kindly. “I think we’re ready to go as soon as we have a couple of practice runs with the packaging and the dogs we’re borrowing.”
“You’re borrowing dogs?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Connor said, his eyes alight with excitement. “A friend of the family has access to a couple of retired drug dogs. We’re going to run the packages by them, see what they can find.”
Cian chuckled, his laugh gentle and rich. Lila fought the urge to lean into him. “Connor wants one of those dogs for a pet. He’s got a serious hard-on for German shepherds.”
“They’re amazing, man. Have you seen some of the things they can be trained to do?” Connor asked. “I’d get one to bring me beers when I was watching a game, and maybe hide Jess’s underwear so she couldn’t get dressed when she was at my place.”
Finn snorted. “As if you’ll ever get Jess naked at your place again in this century.”
“Okay!” Cian’s voice was firm. “That’s enough. We have company, and business to wrap up.”
Connor had the decency to flush. “Sorry, Lila,” he said, smiling sweetly.
“It’s fine,” she answered, not able to help grinning at Cian’s younger, lighter double. “I can see the appeal of the dogs.” She winked at him.
Cian did his throat-clearing thing again, and Connor stopped smiling and sat up straighter, his brows drawing down.
The next few minutes were spent wrapping up. Lila gathered her belongings and said her goodbyes before heading out to the front of the pub.
Things had changed since she’d gone into the meeting. The place had filled up with an eclectic mix of older neighborhood types and young men who looked like they were in the MacFarlane business—big guys, gun holsters apparent on some of them. Irish accents were scattered throughout the voices around the room.
She ignored some of the appraising looks she got as she made her way through the room and exited, turning the corner around the side of the building once she was outside, heading to the parking lot off the back alley.
It was a chilly night, and Lila’s breath misted in the air. Though she’d spent her whole life in Chicago, she’d never been a big fan of cold wind. She pulled her scarf closer around her neck, shivering lightly in the damp night. As she got to her little Nissan Leaf, she had to dig through her bag for the keys, cursing herself silently for being so nervous when she’d arrived that she hadn’t put them in the usual pocket.
She heard him only a split second before his arms closed around her, one across her chest, pinning her arms to her sides, and the other around her throat, cutting off the air she so desperately needed.
Lila kicked and thrashed, jamming her heel into his shin and stomping on his foot a couple of times, but he was much bigger than her, and she knew, as she gasped frantically for breath and clawed at his arm around her neck, she wasn’t going to win.
“Shh, baby,” an accented voice hissed in her ear. “Don’t fight me, and it’ll go a lot easier for you.”
She stilled, her heart pumping at ten times its normal rate.
“You be a good girl for Ramon, and I’ll make sure they lube up before they pull the train on you.”
Lila panicked, thrashing wildly, making pitiful squealing noises with the little air she could pass through her constricted windpipe. But the man only squeezed harder, and she saw stars on the edges of her vision as everything went darker and her throat began to close completely. Then a new voice came from behind her, and the click of a gun being readied.
“Take your hands off her.” She recognized Cian’s voice, but it carried a deadly quality she’d never heard before. He spoke softly and carefully, but menace laced every word.
Her attacker loosened his hold.
“I said, now,” Cian emphasized.
Then the man released her completely, and Lila slumped against her car in front of her, gasping for air, shaking like there was an earthquake rolling through her.
Behind her, she heard Cian giving instructions to her attacker. “On the ground. Facedown. Hands behind your head.” His voice was like ice, and she heard the other man swearing in Spanish.
“Que te jodan, hijo de puta irlandés.”
Lila’s father hadn’t spoken a lot of Spanish to her growing up, but even if she hadn’t understood her attacker, she’d have gotten the gist of what he was saying from the harsh tone in his voice. She heard the man grunt as something struck him, and finally turned to see Cian standing in his expensive suit, one foot pressed on the other man’s neck, a cell phone in one hand and a gun in the other.
“Out back, now,” he barked into the phone. He slid the device back into his pants pocket, then looked up at Lila. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice a touch gentler.
She nodded, but when she tried to speak, she coughed, and only a rasp came out. “I think so.”
Cian’s brow drew down farther when he heard her. “Pull down your scarf,” he commanded. She didn’t even think before she followed his instructions. His expression went from cold to red-hot anger as he looked at her neck. He dropped to his knees, planting one firmly in the man’s back, digging the gun into his head. The man hissed out another profanity.
“Things just got a lot worse for you, my friend,” Cian snarled. “Vasquez send you?”
“Fuck you,” he spat in English.
The back door to the pub slammed open and Connor and two other men came jogging across the parking lot, guns drawn. Finn followed a minute later, talking rapidly on the phone to someone named Liam. Lila vaguely remembered Liam as the fourth MacFarlane brother.
“What the hell happened?” Connor said as he reached Lila and Cian.
Cian gestured for the other two men to deal with the attacker, then stood. “Looks like Vasquez sent a greeter. He grabbed Lila.”
Connor turned to Lila where she was still being partially propped up by her car. He looked ill, his face a mask of horror. “Jesus. I’m so sorry.”
She didn’t understand why he seemed to be taking it so hard. It was obvious the attacker was tied to the MacFarlanes somehow, but that didn’t make Connor personally responsible.
“It’s okay,” Lila rasped. “I’m
all right.”
Connor’s eyes grew wide as she spoke, and his hand shot out to her throat. He stopped shy of touching her, but fury crawled across his face, and then he turned abruptly, stepping toward her assailant.
Cian stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Not here,” he said, leaning in. “Why don’t you and the boys take Ramon here on a ride for a couple of hours. I’ll meet you back at the club.”
Connor nodded and pointed to the two men holding the attacker by both arms, then toward the other cars in the lot, indicating they should load him into a nearby SUV.
“Liam’s on his way,” Finn said, giving Cian a stern look. “He said you don’t move from here until he gets here with more guys.”
Connor spun to look at Cian. “What the hell were you doing out here by yourself, anyway?” he asked as the other men took the struggling captive away. Someone had produced handcuffs, so the man was partially disabled, and when they got him to the car, Lila saw one of the MacFarlane men pull a zip tie out of his pocket before looping it around the prisoner’s ankles.
Cian rolled his shoulders as if sloughing off the previous ten minutes. “It wasn’t me who was attacked,” he said calmly.
Connor and Finn automatically closed in, keeping their backs to the wall alongside the parking lot, their eyes scanning the lot, but placing themselves between Cian and Lila and the drive aisle.
“Doesn’t matter. I assumed you’d be leaving with the same security detail you came in with, but now you’re out here alone, and the boys said you told them to have the night off, enjoy a drink.”
Cian shrugged. “I was just going home. I didn’t need babysitters for that.”
Finn crossed his arms and scowled at Cian. “I’m with Connor and Liam on this one. You’re the head of the family now. You can’t go anywhere by yourself. Look what almost happened.” He glanced at Lila. “And it wouldn’t have only been your head.”
As if the remark had reminded Cian of Lila’s presence, he turned to her, his hand drifting to her throat. She held as still as if she were a bunny in the sights of a falcon. He gently stroked the bruised skin with one finger.
Breath of Deceit (Dublin Devils Book 1) Page 7