Dad's Irish Mafia Friend (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 110)

by Flora Ferrari

  That's the part I was stuck on, because that was suddenly as plain as day to me. She'd only ever been here for her college fund. Meeting me was by the by and it wasn't going to get in the way of her plans.

  I shouldn't have let myself get so invested. I should never have gotten involved.

  Who was the fool now? I should have stuck to my principles and kept her at arm's length. Kilpatrick was right. The only thing she was to me was weakness and temptation and I'd fallen for her hook, line and sinker.

  After another five minutes, there was still no sign she'd be joining me. I got into the car, slamming the door behind me.

  She thought she'd be fine without me, then let her try it out for a change. She reckoned she could defend herself. Well, she could have at it. I was done.

  "Mickey, let's go."

  The man glanced back at me, a frown on his usually inexpressive face. "What about your one?"

  The very last thing I needed was my own driver playing moral compass.

  "I said let's go. She's finding her own way back. She's a free woman."

  ---

  I expected she'd stay out late to flex her muscles and prove her point, but the hours crept by without so much as a phone call from her. And I wasn't going to be the one to chase after her. Not after she'd made it clear she'd rather go it alone than by my side.

  I'd never understood women, but I thought I understood her, and none of this made sense. I guess I was wrong. And I was rueing it.

  I stayed up with a bottle of whiskey and recordings of old boxing matches to keep my mind off what she might be doing out in Dublin all on her own.

  She thought I was possessive but she didn't know the half of it. Any man who touched her was going to lose the use of their limbs if I got to hearing about it, whether or not she wanted to be by my side.

  I knocked back another slug of whiskey. Keeping her safe was built into my DNA.

  But she didn't care about that. Didn't care that she was the one. The only one. So screw the bitch. Garrett Brannigan didn't need a woman like her.

  ---

  Some time after three in the morning, I passed out on the sofa with far too much of that bottle of whiskey in me.

  When I woke up, I regretted everything from the crick in my neck and my thick head to stranding her at the restaurant.

  She wasn't home and the apartment didn't feel like home without her in it.

  She had to be at Finnegan's; she had nowhere else to go and in the light of day I refused to believe she'd have let some random wankstain take her home. Kaitlin had more class, and she knew the city was teaming with Tiernan's boys, desperate to get their hands on her.

  After the warnings I'd sent out I was confident no one would touch her, but she didn't know how plain I'd made it that touching her was drawing battle lines with me. Not one of them was ballsy enough to see how that would play out.

  But what if I was wrong about that? What if last night one of them tried something?

  I slammed the door of my apartment behind me, heading out in the same clothes as the night before because I wasn't going to risk any more delays.

  Bypassing taking my car in deference to my pounding head, I hailed a taxi. It was faster than calling Mickey to come around and I could have done with being spared the lecture on my actions last night coming back to bite me in the arse.

  ---

  "Where is she?"

  Behind the bar, Nora was stacking coffee cups and the clattering chink of them was getting on my last nerve.

  "Who?"

  "Kaitlin."

  Nora frowned at me and I started to feel dread well in my stomach. "I haven't seen her. I thought she was superglued to you for her own protection."

  "Don't start."

  Nora's face softened. " Uncle G? You look like a dog's breakfast. Are you okay? What's going on?"

  I gritted my teeth. "We had a fight."

  "Okay." Nora turned back to the machine a moment and then set a coffee in front of me. "That happens. It's not the end of the world. She probably needs a bit of time to cool off. She'll get over it."

  The role reversal - my niece giving me relationship advice - was odd, but strangely welcome. Except for the fact that the woman I loved was missing because of me.

  "I don't know about that."

  "What did you do?"

  If there was a chance that she'd just gone off in a mood with me, then maybe everything was all okay.

  "I said we should get married so she'd have my name and everyone would forget about her father."

  Nora knew more about the working of my world now that I would have liked her to, but I was learning that it was impossible to keep anyone innocent forever without refusing to let them live and I didn't want that for her any more than I wanted it for Kaitlin.

  Nora scrunched her nose up. "Let me guess. That didn't go down so well?"

  "She said she wanted to go home, and I kept trying to stop her."

  She winced, sucking in a breath over her teeth. "Can you blame her, though? You basically proposed a business deal to a total romantic who is, by the way, pretty nauseatingly in love with you. What were you expecting? What were you thinking? Did she storm off?"

  "No. I left her at the restaurant."

  "You did what? I thought half of your nutcase associates were trying to murder her?"

  "I sorted it."

  "Did you?"

  "Yes."

  "Well where is she then, Romeo? She doesn't know anyone here apart from us."

  As much as I didn't want to hear it, Nora was right. Something had to have happened after I left her. The bottom dropped out of my world in an instant.

  I whipped my phone out, already dialing.

  "Mickey. Pick me up from Finnegan's and take me back to the restaurant. Now."

  ---

  Less than twenty minutes later we pulled up outside the restaurant and my heart sank at the sight of the Gardai taping off the smashed in windows and sealing the door. A crowd of journalists had gathered, hungry for the scoop and I recognised the news anchor who'd interviewed me before the fight for the local news.

  I rolled down my window, beckoning her over.

  "What's going on?"

  "The place got hit last night."

  "Any bodies?" She looked at me, pressing her lips together and she glanced away like she knew she was not supposed to say. I intensified my stare, jaw clenched tightly to keep everything locked down inside me until I knew for sure that Kaitlin wasn’t one of them. "How many?"

  "No. None. One of the waiters is in hospital, but that's it."

  I refused to feel relief. Not until I had Kaitlin in my arms again. Until then, I couldn't relax. "Who did it?"

  "Too early to say."

  "Bullshit. I know the party line. What's the M.O.?

  "Paramilitary flavour. Balaclavas, the works."

  I nodded, feeling myself go numb with rage. Tiernan's boys. I shouldn't have let them off so lightly after what they did to Kaitlin's things. I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.

  There was no doubt in my mind that they had Kaitlin and she must be petrified.

  The news anchor smiled at me through the window, flipping her hair back behind her shoulder and leaning down into the car so her blouse opened a direct line of sight down right between her flabby tits. "Hey, we should try and reschedule that coffee we never ended up having."

  "Absolutely. Pencil it in for right after the world ends. Mickey, drive."

  CHAPTER 25

  Kaitlin

  I came to in the dark, aware that my hands were tied. It was totally silent and every movement I made resounded off the walls of the space around me. Gradually my eyes started to get accustomed to the lack of light and I shifted to sit upright, testing the stretch of my restraints. The wall was metal, and I realised the notches in each of the walls were the tops of the wheels. It must have been the back of a van. And I was handcuffed and chained to a metal loop in the floor.

  The back of my head w
as pounding and my whole face ached, echoing out of the point in the centre of my forehead where the man who'd put me here had slammed me against the wall.

  On the off chance I'd developed super strength, or there was some critical flaw in the metal, I gave the chain a good tug, but nothing moved an inch and the rigid cuffs bit into the skin of my wrists.

  What the hell was I going to do?

  I didn't need to touch my forehead to know it was caked in blood. I could taste nothing but iron when I swallowed and fragmented memories of what had happened outside the restaurant bathrooms were filtering through. Garrett was right. I really had to learn not to aggravate men who were attacking me.

  I gave another tug to the ring on the floor, just for the sake of trying, and looked around the rest of the van as much as I could, in the dark.

  There didn't seem to be anyone in here apart from me and it had an empty kind of echo when I clunked my foot against the floor. This was it, I was locked in a metal box just waiting for a bunch of angry men to decide my fate. Wasn't that just the story of my life?

  I quelled the rising panic and forced myself to breathe calmly. Garrett would come after me. There was no way he'd let anyone do this. Not in his city.

  Except, what if he had already? I had no idea how long I'd been unconscious, but I figured it was hours rather than minutes. My panic started up again at the thought that maybe he hadn't come out on top of the total psycho that had clocked me over the head.

  What if they'd killed him? What if I was all on my own?

  No.

  Garrett wouldn't let that happen. He was always in control. He wouldn't have let anyone get the better of him and the sooner I started believing that the better.

  Getting hysterical wasn't going to help get me out of here.

  I forced myself to take a few long, deep breaths.

  It wasn't looking good. I didn't have a clue what to do and it was dark and cold, but I had to think of something. If I was ever going to see Garrett again, I had to come up with a plan to get out of here all by myself.

  The only thing I could do was make as much noise as possible. And that's what I did, shouting and banging until my throat was ripped raw, and finally the door of the van was yanked open.

  I winced at the sudden influx of light, blinking hard and fast to try to get my eyes to focus.

  A man stood in the doorway, arms folded across his chest.

  "Shut your face."

  I recognised the voice. It was the same as the man who'd attacked me and knocked me out, but I wouldn't have recognised him any other way. His face was covered with the same balaclava he'd had on in the restaurant.

  "I will not. You don't know what you've done taking me. Garrett Brannigan is going to-"

  "No one here gives two shites about Garrett Brannigan. Shut up, or I'll make you."

  CHAPTER 26

  Garrett

  The confessional was busy when I stormed into the church.

  I paced back and forth outside it for a full three minutes before I lost patience and yanked the door open.

  "Confession's over. Father Riley's busy. Ten Hail Mary's and an Our Father. Get on with you."

  Ejected unceremoniously, the old biddy didn't do much other than glare as she picked up her handbag primly off the pew next to where she'd been kneeling.

  "Young men these days are so rude, Father."

  "I'm sorry Mrs Malone. Next week we can carry on right where you left off."

  I closed the door firmly behind me and sat down.

  "Brannigan, you really can't-"

  "I need to know what you've been hearing about me lately. Now."

  "Is this to do with that young lady of yours?"

  "I don't know. You tell me, Father. What have you heard?"

  "Is that a gun? Christ man!"

  "Come now Father, don't take the Lord's name in vain. I'm asking you a simple question."

  Father Riley let out a deep sigh, the same one he always used before he gave me the good stuff and I saw him cross himself through the lattice screen.

  "There are rumours."

  "What kind of rumours?"

  "That you're not the man you used to be. And that now would be a good time to knock you off your perch."

  I stiffened, balling my fist tightly. How had I not seen this coming? I was the man with my finger on the pulse of the Dublin underworld.

  "Where are these rumours coming from?"

  "You know I can't give you names, Garrett. Just telling you this much is crossing so many lines."

  "You better give me something, Father. Someone's got my woman and if she turns up dead in the Dublin Bay, right now I've only got you to come after."

  Father Riley cleared his throat. "I can see you're very agitated Garrett and I'm going to choose to ignore that. They - they think you should have been harder on this woman of yours. And that you not retaliating when they threatened her shows you've lost your bottle."

  "Go on." My voice trembled with anger. All I needed was to know which side had made such a lethal mistake as underestimating me. God help them all if they'd touched a hair on Kaitlin's head.

  "That's it. There isn't anything else. But I'd be careful, Garrett. You might have finally got your wish and united the two most evil men in this city over finding a way to get rid of you."

  I left the confession box with my head spinning. I never thought anyone would have the balls to try to end me.

  Kaitlin

  Balaclava man was in a mood the next time he opened the back of the van. I could feel his temper rolling off him, and he barely looked at me this time, grumbling to himself as he unshackled me from the ring in the floor of the vehicle.

  He yanked me to my feet and I stumbled forward, barefoot, my legs rubbery from sitting awkwardly on the hard metal for so long.

  It can only have been a few hours, but I had a new loathing for anyone who kept people locked up this way. At least I knew why they were doing this to me. I could imagine the terror of being kept in here without even knowing why.

  I turned around, facing my captor, hoping to get him to engage with me, because I didn't like the idea of him taking me anywhere at all. The inside of the van had come to feel safe, compared to whatever lay outside it. After the conversations we'd had, I didn't want to meet his buddies.

  "Where are you taking me, Big Boy?"

  "Shut up."

  "Oh come on. I thought we had something special going on. Now you're going to settle for sloppy seconds when you could have me all to yourself?"

  I wanted to scrub my mouth out with soap, but it was like Garrett had said - I had to use what I had and right now that was the square root of fuck all.

  He shoved me and I stumbled forward.

  "Keep walking."

  "You're killing me here, Biff. I can call you Biff, right? I have to call you something. Don't you want me? I know I'm only nineteen, but you could show me how to be a woman for you. I know you could."

  I wanted to gag at the words coming out of my mouth, but this charade was the only defence I had.

  Biff grunted and shoved me towards the double doors at the end of the corridor. What was this guy, a total robot?

  By this point I would have done nearly anything to avoid the fate I knew lay waiting for me behind those doors.

  Garrett had said right from the start that the Tiernan boys wanted their pound of flesh, and now there was nothing stopping every single one of them from taking it.

  Biff shoved me through the swing doors into the main hall of the deserted warehouse. Only, it wasn't so empty.

  "Alright beor."

  The kid from Ballyfermot had a ghoulish grin on his face and he flickered his tongue in that same suggestive way he'd used before as he leered at me. But he wasn't the only one.

  I counted seven others at a quick glance, not including Biff. Faces I thought I might recognise, but I had names for none of them. Biff shoved me into the middle of the ring, and suddenly it felt just like that day on the street,
except most of these guys weren't kids. They were fully grown men.

  Ballyfermot boy had his hand shoved down the front of his pants and he was already fisting himself. My skin crawled, knowing he was getting off on the idea of what they were going to do to me. All pretence of being compliant vanished and I kicked out, lurching back to try for a headbutt as Biff jostled me closer again.