by V. Theia
She’d been in some scrapes in her time, all of which he’d pulled her out of. But this… shit.
“Aoife… hold up.” She blinked and stopped talking a mile a minute. Everything he hadn’t heard because fucks sake… the mob, really?
Running a hand through his hair, he rested both forearms on the table, leaning towards her unconsciously. Every nuance on her face was stark against the backdrop of her freckles, but underneath that, her skin was pale.
He knew her.
He knew when she was scared.
Now he could say for good reason she was running from the mob with a mobster’s kid, they all better be fucking scared.
“Grigori Kuznetsov? You know who that is, right?” He had to ask, though it was pretty damn redundant when she nodded, head bent over the baby.
There might have been a slim chance she was unaware she was involved with a high-ranking member of the Russian mafia, currently residing part of their operation right here in town. But the moment her ginger head moved up and down, his belly sunk even further.
He needed to think, and he couldn’t do it sitting down. Popping to his feet, he got as far as the door, before he retraced his steps and plonked his ass back down.
Looked her directly in the eye.
“I can’t help you, Aoife, if you’re not honest with me, okay? I mean completely honest, whatever I ask you.”
“I need help, Danny. It’s why I’m here. It was the first place I thought of that he might not assume I’d go.” She told him, in a quiet voice. “I haven’t told anyone I knew you. Never mentioned your name once.”
“Okay. Good.” Air expelled, he was already in his mind trying to unravel this shit for her, though he didn’t have the first clue since he had no idea what trouble she was in. “Start at the beginning.”
“Two nights ago … I think it was two nights … all my days are jumbled. I don’t know how this happened, Danny, I swear. I just had to run. It was so bad, I can’t even—”
Watching her shaking and rush out words, Danny couldn’t stand it any longer, and he rounded the table to go down on his haunches in front of her, taking the hand not holding the sleeping baby in both of his. “Hey now, it’s okay, Aoife. You’re safe here, alright? Take it slowly. I’m not going to let anyone harm you or your daughter.”
“She’s—” Aoife had eyes on the baby, and he saw a tear drop down onto the little cheek. Nothing ever felt as bad as when Aoife cried. He used to say he’d move mountains to fix whatever had upset her and back then protecting her from her deadbeat family was easy in comparison to this.
Though his need to stop her tears was as strong as ever. He cupped her face, made sure she was looking at him. “I have to protect her from him, Danny. I saw him kill her—I saw Grigori kill a woman two nights ago and get rid of the body like she had never existed…he murdered my friend Yelena in cold blood.”
Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
It was worse than he thought.
Words failed him.
Down on his knees, holding his past love’s hand while she tried in vain to pull her emotions together and no words would come.
You couldn’t live in Armado Springs and not be aware of the two big factions. One who owned the town, that would be the local motorcycle club. The Renegade Souls was run by Rider Marinos. Danny knew most of them in one way or another and he liked the men.
The other group being a recent thing with the Russian mafia moving into town and making themselves known. You couldn’t switch on the local news without someone reporting part of their enterprise was breaking some law or other.
There’d been less and less mention of them lately and he’d wondered if the MC had finally gotten rid of the mafia.
He’d assumed she’d run because she’d stolen money from the mobster. Witnessing murder hadn’t even been in his list of options for what scared Aoife and for the love of Christ could it stop now with him assuming one thing then it turning out to be fucking ten times more dangerous.
It was making his head explode.
“I had to get out of there, Danny.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“He told me to keep my mouth shut about what I’d seen…I got his threat very clear.”
“You didn’t think to call the police?”
“Are you serious? You obviously know who he is. Would you call the police on a man like that who killed a woman and then went out to eat a steak dinner? He’s a screwed up lunatic.”
And you’re involved with him. Was on the tip of his tongue to spit out, until he got himself in check. Partly because his jealousy was burning a hole through the lining of his stomach.
She was right.
Even being a pastor who was far removed from that kind of life, he knew the cops had little jurisdiction with those type of men. Nor the MC either, but at least as far as he could tell, the MC ran on a different wavelength. Just this past winter they’d helped out with a charity event for his church and raised more in one night than Danny had managed over four years.
It would be laughable to claim Rider Marinos and co were legal men, far from it. But in comparison to the mob, the bikers were virtuous angels.
“You witnessed a murder, and then you ran with his kid? That’s a lot to process. I know you must be terrified, Aoife. Scared that this will all come crashing down.” He stroked a thumb over her hand and as one they both watched him touching her. It felt wrong and intimate and before he could haul her into his arms to hide her from everyone, he rose and wiped the tingling touch on his pants before taking a seat. “But you have to know, it’s going to be okay, you did the right thing.”
Not that he could give assurances, but the look on her face about killed him.
And then a nastier thought occurred to Danny.
It burrowed through the soft part of his brain until it nearly had bile throwing up into his throat. His eyes pinned hers. “Has he hurt you? This mafia man…did he put hands on you, Aoife?” He didn’t recognize his own voice.
“No. No. He was hardly around. We barely saw him. It was …” she took a breath like she was giving herself strength. What had her life become?
She was meant to have a life that was full of color and happiness.
Not this. Never this.
Had he known …
Had he known this was how it turned out for his lifelong girl; he would have done something about it forever ago.
He would have moved heaven and earth to pull her out of these situations before she could ever develop a flinch and a haunted look in her eyes.
He pushed the tea closer to her, so she’d take a sip of the hot sugary brew as his gaze dropped to the baby.
In another life that would be his baby.
They’d planned to have a house full of kids.
Good behaved ones, of course, that had been a stipulation because any kid of Aoife’s would ordinarily be a wild animal. They’d be a big loving family, a noisy boisterous one who all climbed into bed on Sunday’s and ate pancakes for dinner and never hated each other.
It was their dream and then it crashed and burned down around them.
Shit had escalated out of control for Danny after that.
Taking drugs became his only source of living.
He couldn’t get out of bed on a morning without his heart breaking in two thinking of her climbing into another man’s bed.
A bed she’d willing gone to, according to anyone in their town who went out of their way to gossip to him about Aoife.
He tried to hate her for a long time.
I can’t marry you, Danny-boy. We were stupid kids making grown up plans.
A stupid note was all he was worth.
He blamed her for his addiction.
And when he came out of the other side, he saw how he was always destined for self-destruction. It had been coming for a long time.
Weed, pills and powder.
Recreational drugs taken for fun that lasted for weeks instead of a night.
&n
bsp; Until the day came he used drugs as part of his everyday life.
Like drinking water and taking a piss.
The heartbreak might have expedited the drug use, but the compulsion was already within Danny even when he was still with Aoife.
She’d hated him smoking weed.
They’d argued more than once when she’d found out he’d taken off with his pals to get stoned and off his face on ecstasy.
He had an addictive personality; his ma would tell him.
One thing he knew as he watched Aoife slowly sip her tea, and lick droplets from her lower lip.
One addiction was never quite cured.
He looked at her and as though someone had taken a flame to his addiction, it started to flicker and rage to life again.
He was a man of faith now.
It was a cliché to say God saved him.
But that was his truth.
Stumbling one night into what he thought was an NA meeting when he was low and close to taking a score, he’d been there for forty minutes listening to a man speak at the front, when it became clear it was a church group meeting held in the same building.
He’d stayed, feeling oddly at peace listening to the words of the bible about forgiving yourself and accepting mistakes for what they were, owning them but not allowing them to own you … and he’d come back the next night and four nights after that.
It hadn’t been an easy road from junkie to pastor.
It was still downright difficult at times and he continually attended his NA meetings weekly, sometimes more if those old ghosts tried to creep in.
But as he listened to a girl he once loved more than his own life, recount the story of the most gruesome night of her life and then the consequent rush across town. In the howling snow no less, to get to his church for sanctuary, he felt something stir in his chest.
An unlocked box sprang open.
It was more than obvious those buried feelings weren’t so much forgotten or dormant anymore.
Not with his heart screaming to him to pick Aoife up and never put her down again.
One look.
One girl.
And a fresh bout of trouble.
And he’d fallen all over again.
He wasn’t pastor Danny Murphy, respected man of the community within his Baptist church, while he came up with a strategic plan to keep Aoife safe.
He was Danny Murphy. Man and protector of the girl who would always own him.
And always break him.
Time would tell if she’d walk away this time and leave him in irreparable pieces.
But there was a snowball’s chance in hell of him not helping her.
His default settings came factory made with him programmed to always put Aoife at the forefront.
She reached across the table with her free hand while she held a mobster’s daughter and clasped his fingers in gratitude.
He squeezed back, because he couldn’t help himself, as fire raced up his arm.
So it begins.
His addiction roared, and he opened the door to that flood of love all over again.
FIVE
“Lost love was just hiding.” – Aoife
Turns out, Danny did know someone who’d have a better idea as to what to do than he himself did.
One phone call gave him a meeting, now he just had to wait.
He wanted to keep informing the police as an option, as he’d told Aoife.
He was a law-abiding citizen now; he couldn’t just step over the law and think he could take on the mafia and live to tell the tale.
He was a realist, not a fucking moron and this wasn’t a Hollywood action movie where everyone got up at the end and walked off alive and well.
Nor did he have the kind of backing an organization such as the fearless mobsters would back down from. The Murphy’s held their small niche, but it was no match for the Russian mafia, dangerously established decades ago. That was asking to be killed and as much as he preached about the heavenly afterlife, he wasn’t ready just yet to find a new apartment on the other side.
“I have things I need to do today.”
“Priest things?” She asked standing at the sink looking like she’d lived in his house for a decade as she dried the cups and placed them back in the cupboard.
He swallowed a hard lump, turning from the sight to shrug into his jacket. If he went on looking he’d want to see more of her around his house and for now … for now there was more pressing shit to deal with.
“I’m a pastor, not catholic, remember? I need to visit a few sick parishioners, make sure they don’t need anything. Then I have a meeting with the mayor about landscaping funding for the grounds here before it starts to look like a jungle. There’s only so much I can rope the local teens into doing free labor. But after that I’m going to make a run to Target, so write me a list of everything you need. That means clothes for you and Misha too.”
“I won’t be needing anything for me,” she said, chin in the air. Pride staining her tone. Some color returned to her cheeks in the last hour.
Confession was good for the soul.
But the danger still loomed.
“Do you plan to wear the same pants over and over? Write the list, Aoife.”
She sighed. “I’ll pay you back.”
“No need.”
“But I will. I want to. I don’t want charity.”
She was proud, and stubborn as only Irish lasses could be, so he let it go.
With the list shoved in his back pocket thirty minutes later and Aoife holding the baby, trailing behind him, he made his way to the front door.
It was too domesticated. Too real. And his beating heart didn’t know what to make of it. The urge to kiss her goodbye at the door was screaming through his veins.
How fucking easy he fell back into that head space. How easy.
It was his churned stomach that made him snap. And Danny Murphy didn’t snap at anyone. Hardly ever and usually it was because someone tried to talk to him before his morning run. He tended to go before the sun was up to avoid the early birds, otherwise he found people liked to stop him in the street and talk his ear off.
Turning on a smiling Aoife and a baby with her big eyes gazing up at him, his heart lurched. “I’ll be back. Don’t go outside.” He growled and watched her ginger eyebrows fall over her eyes and her lips frown at the edges. Dammit. He turned around, ready to pull the door open and felt her hand on his arm. “Danny? Thank you. For everything. I won’t go anywhere. I’ll be right here when you get home.”
That was the problem.
She was going to be in his house, smelling as good as she did and looking at him through her beautiful eyes.
He was just a man.
A stupid man by all accounts, because he was tossing his morals away five at a time.
His meeting in a while would test him the most… see how far he was willing to go for the ginger girl who had once …owned him.
“I’ll be back,” he said this time without force but didn’t turn to look at her again. “Lock this door behind me.”
He waited on the other side until he heard the lock and both bolts slide into place. Then he unglued his feet and strode down the pathway from his house, gave a glance to his church at the side. Peace always settled over his skin when he saw the tall building.
None came right then.
He wasn’t unstable and hadn’t been in a long while, but that didn’t mean he neglected his self-care. He preached it enough to his parishioners.
How could they take care of others if they didn’t take care of themselves?
So with that in mind, and his head full of memories, he headed to an NA meeting first.
Some things from his past couldn’t be so easily ignored.
* * *
Maybe it was the situation of being on the run, having never experienced it before, Aoife was jumpier than ever as she climbed out of the huge bathtub she’d found upstairs right after Danny left.
With a wet, happy gurgling baby in her arms she quickly wrapped a towel around herself and then a smaller towel around the baby, prying the bathroom door open just a touch, she tried to listen carefully.
It might have been the wind.
It might be a Russian mobster climbing through the window to kill me. Her brain filled in, making her shake.
“Shh, A stóirín. I have you.” Though it was Aoife who needed the soothing and not her little treasure who was happily babbling away.
There it was again.
A kind of thump.
Danny said he’d be some time. Did he come home early?
Racking her brains, she tried to remember the layout of the house.
It wasn’t all that big, no bigger than a house in her street back home, but for the life of her, all logic fell out of her skull in replacement of the fear dancing behind her eyes, yelling that she was going to die.
There was a time … forever ago, when she was all about skinned knees and sneaky kissing a boy she loved … that she became wicked cool at hide and seek. She didn’t think crawling under the bed with a squirming baby who could cry any second would work.
Grigori would find her if he wanted to, she realized.
There the noise was again. Louder this time.
Before she lost her nerve or peed with fright, she told herself she was a Flanagan and she was brave.
Only she wasn’t.
She was so scared, her heart nearly burst out of her chest as she grabbed the closest thing she saw to use as a weapon, cuddled Misha close to her and she slowly opened the bedroom door.
“You better get lost,” she yelled as loud as she could. “I’ve called the police, so I have.”
“Dear lord above!” A womanly voice cried from the hallway. Her white hair caught up in a tight bun about as pale as her face. Aoife equally startled and relieved that it wasn’t a mafia hitman come to kill her dead.
She sagged against the wall and exhaled finally.
“Who are you? What are you doing in Pastor Murphy’s house in a towel and why are you holding his cricket bat?”
All superb questions, Aoife thought.