by Zahra Girard
His Captive
A Bad Boy Mafia Romance
By
Zahra Girard
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by Zahra Girard
All rights reserved. This ebook or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you'd like to share this book with another, please purchase a separate copy for them. Thank you for respecting the hard work that went into my work.
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Table of Contents
Copyright
Connect with me!
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Epilogue
Author's Note
Chapter One
Connor
I have the biggest dick in Boston.
The people who mess with my family learn that fact the hard way. They go about their lives, thinking everything is fine, oblivious to the fact that they’re marked for death. Then, like always, I find them, their eyes go wide, and they learn that they are well and truly fucked.
Then they die. No matter how much bribing or begging they try to pull off, it always ends up the same way, because there’s not an ounce of mercy in me.
When I was young, my mother – like any good Irish mother – filled me with a good helping of Irish Catholic Guilt. Sermons on morality delivered with the business end of a thick wooden spoon. My dad reinforced it, giving me fire and brimstone and a stiff backhand when guilt wasn’t enough.
They did it out of love. They wanted me to turn out right.
I didn’t.
I’m not even close.
When I was fourteen, I sold my soul. Or so they told me.
I had my reasons, and I still do: family and money. Sex, too, but that’s more a perk of the job. When they find out who I am, women beg to climb atop my cock and, when I cast them aside like I always do, I know that they’ll come running back to me as soon as I call.
When I was eighteen, I was baptized in blood and became a full-fledged member of a new family. The MacCailins. The most powerful crime family in Boston.
My old one disowned me. I didn’t disown them, though. I still love ‘em, even if we don’t talk much nowadays. But now, instead of heeding the teachings of my Irish Catholic mother and father, I follow a new path.
I kill.
That’s my job. Plain and simple, I kill for the MacCailins. And I’m the best at what I do.
This morning, word comes in about a new job. A new target. Somewhere out there, someone fucked up in the way that there’s no coming back from. They’re dying tonight.
All that doom-and-gloom is printed on an innocuous little flyer for a club I’ve never been to — The Angel’s Share — a flyer that’s to someone who doesn’t even live at my place. Erin G. Bragh.
It’s the same way, every time. Anyone else would chalk it up as mis-delivered trash, or just plain old junk mail. But that’s the beauty of the system. It’s anonymous.
So when someone slips a little something like this flyer in my mailbox, it means two things: first, money’s changed hands somewhere and my boss has given the word for some jackoff to take a bullet to the back of his skull.
And two: only an act of God can save you now.
I ain’t talking about the man upstairs. I’m talking about the man who runs things down below. Here in Boston, his name is Lochlan MacCailin, head of the MacCailin crime family.
He shows no mercy and I sit at his right hand.
Tonight, the Angel’s Share is going to celebrate their opening night with tragedy and blood.
I don’t have a name for my target, yet. Only the sure knowledge that tonight I’ll be watching some grown man cry and piss and shit himself while he begs for me to have a heart and show him some mercy.
I spend the rest of my day like I always do whenever I’m about to off someone: I hit the gym, I drink some whiskey, I call up one of the gals I keep in my cell and I fuck her senseless.
Days like today, I have to keep my body prime and my head clear. I can’t let the thought of pussy distract me. Though I know busting my nut right now ain’t going to do much for later, because I’ll be ready to fuck again by the time I’m on the job.
I still have to try. I’m a professional.
And if I fail, Lochlan MacCailin will rain down on me the type of wrath that’d make the Old Testament types piss their fucking robes.
* * * * *
Like clockwork, my apartment buzzer goes off at six. I walk over and hit the intercom button.
“What do you want?” I say.
A nasally, squeaky teenage voice crackles out of the intercom back at me. “Delfino’s pizza. I have a delivery for Elliot Meyers.”
“Yeah, come on up.”
My name isn’t Elliot Meyers, but this delivery is definitely for me. I buzz him in and a minute later, he’s knocking on the door to my penthouse.
I open it. Taped to my door there’s an envelope containing a license-sized picture. I yank it off, ignoring the delivery boy’s strange look, and jam the picture in my pocket.
“You got my pizza, kid?”
He’s standing there, in an ill-fitting blue and red uniform, pimple-faced and sweaty from carrying around hot boxes of pizza all day. He holds one out to me and I take it, pop it open.
It’s pepperoni. Not my favorite. But it’s pizza. It’ll do.
“You’re Elliot Meyers?”
“Sure, kid. How much do I owe you?”
He’s got the bill in his hand and he stares at it awkwardly for a long time, in the way only teenagers in the full swing of puberty seem able to manage. When he finally clears his throat and speaks up, his voice cracks even more than before.
“Fourteen dollars, Mr. Meyers.”
I pull a twenty out of my wallet and toss it to him.
“Keep the change,” I say, then shut the door on his face.
I toss Elliot Meyer’s pizza in my fridge. I pull the picture out of my pocket and I stare at it until I have every wrinkle, every freckle, every wispy whisker that he calls a mustache memorized.
I don’t know who the fuck Elliot Meyers is, but I know what he looks like and I know what I need to do. Tonight, he dies.
Chapter Two
Evelyn
No matter how much I glare at the keyboard, the words just won’t come out. I try hitting the damn thing — which is close to typing, right? — and even that doesn’t work.
Who would’ve thought that the life of a journalist would be so mind-numbingly boring?
But then again, when I graduated, I never thought my journalism degree would lead me to reporting on the minutes of City Council road improvement project meetings.
My life isn’t very exciting. And neither is my job.
There are pages and pages of notes in front of me — all of Boston’s upcoming infrastructure projects laid out on yellow, college-ruled notepads — and the best I’ve got for a column is that there’s going to be minor traffic next week because the transportation department has to do fix some potholes out in Dorchester on one of the main arterial roads.
Oh, and that the road-striping project is one hundred dollars under budget.
Yay.
I sip my coffee — cup number three this morning — and stare at my monitor, hoping inspiration will strike, or that I’ll see something in my notes that wasn’t there the last hundred times I checked them.
It’s not like I don’t try. I let loose with question after question at that City Council meeting and they just had nothing to give me.
My deadline is in two days, and, even with all the work I put in, I’m probably going to have to reach down to the bottom of the barrel and do some crappy “human interest” piece.
Somewhere out there, someone is training some service dog for some injured person.
Which is exactly the kind of hard-hitting journalism I envisioned for my career.
At least I’ll get to look at puppy pictures.
As if I wasn’t already. I’ve got three tabs of them open in my browser.
My desk phone chimes like a funeral bell.
That’s probably my editor, Greg, wanting to know how my story is coming along.
I slide aside a growing stack of bills that I’d brought from home — chief among them the dressmaker’s bill for my bridesmaid dress — because somehow I thought it might be a good idea to try and sort them out during my downtime. Turns out, unless my goal was to demotivate and discourage myself, it wasn’t a good idea.
I’m nearly broke and trapped in a fluorescent-lit hell-job that’s so boring I could almost cry, but I can’t leave, because I need the money. And my family needs the money, too. I’m not just working for me, here.
I stare at my notes for another second — hoping I’ll come up with some kind of useful lie about my progress — before I pick up the line.
“This is Evelyn Thomson,” I say, doing my best hardboiled reporter voice. Like I spit the truth and have ink flowing in my veins and smoke a pack of cigarettes a day.
You know, instead of being a wide-eyed, fresh-out-of-college journalism major who’s trying to tread water because she landed her dream assignment — somehow — at the Boston Times.
And then promptly finds out that dream assignment is a nightmare. “Making it” as a journalist involves more late nights, caffeine, alcohol, and stress than I ever imagined. All that just to climb onto the bottom rung of the career ladder.
If I didn’t need this job so bad, I’d quit, go sling some coffee somewhere and write part-time for a community newspaper while trying to get over the PTSD from the Boston Times.
But my dad getting laid off means getting my younger brother Matthew through college at Boise State is very much a family affair.
“Is this the same Evelyn Thompson that was at the Council meeting last Tuesday?” the mystery voice asks.
“Who is this?” I say.
There’s a second of silence. Some muffled breathing.
“Hello?” I say.
“I was there, too. I saw you were the only one who seemed to be asking questions. You were the only one who was interested in finding out what was really going on.”
I roll my eyes. Hard. Some heavy-breathing mystery dude was watching me. Great.
“Thanks, I guess,” I say, just trying to fill the silence. I have no idea where this call is going, but this guy is starting to weird me out. Like all the creepiest parts of a Tinder date rolled into one maniacal phone call.
“How would you like the story of the year?”
Again, I roll my eyes.
I’ll bet anything ‘story of the year’ is this guy’s nickname for his dick.
“Just what are you offering?” I say.
Please don’t say your penis.
“Evidence of organized crime affiliation within several City Hall departments, including transportation.”
He’s quiet.
I’m quiet.
Huh?
I try and let that sink in.
“Why are you calling me?” I say.
“No one else was asking questions. Everyone else just eats up the lines that they’re fed.”
I’m intrigued, but this guy sounds way too crackpot for me. Like, off-the-grid cabin-in-the-wilderness kind of crackpot.
“How do I know this is for real? Who are you?”
“I can show you all the proof you need. I have un-edited copies of every department’s books. Kickbacks, bribes, collusion, it’s all here.”
My mind races back to that Council meeting — to everyone who was there who would have this kind of information. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled at the chance for a real scoop, but I don’t like not knowing who the heck I’m dealing with. I’m a journalist, after all.
Seconds later, a name pops in my head.
“Elliot Meyers?” I say, keeping my voice low and hushed even though I’m alone at my desk and there’s no one listening.
He coughs and doesn’t answer. Which is answer enough for me.
“When can we meet?”
“7:30, tonight. There’s a new bar opening off Pelham Drive in the West End, the Angel’s Share. I’m already on the guest list, so when you show up, tell them you’re with me. We’ll talk there.”
He hangs up and I’m left gawking at the receiver.
Did I really just land a scoop? An actual story? Or is this a prank?
I make like some sort of suspicious prairie dog and stand up at my desk, casting my eyes around the office.
Everyone’s at their desks, heads down, working hard. Even Greg Hosking, my editor, looks like he’s doing something non-assholish. Which, usually that would be cause for alarm, except he’s on the phone with someone else so I know he wasn’t the one who pranked me.
Maybe this isn’t a prank.
I sit back down and look at the half-finished article on my screen. It’s going to feel so good to put a real story in its place.
Something that could make a difference. Which is really what I want. I want to feel excitement, for once. I want to feel like what I do matters.
If everything checks out, then tonight, I might feel like an actual journalist for once. This could be my chance to make a difference.
Chapter Three
Connor
There are things about my job I don’t like. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot I love: the money, the respect, the power, the women. Being great at what I do brings me a lot of benefits.
But one of the things I don’t like? When my job brings me to a place like this.
Here I am, in a suit, sitting at a bar surrounded by yapping yuppies going on and on about their fake lives. Taking selfies, sending tweets, and someone even used the term “gram-worthy” to describe this bar.
What does that even mean?
And I swear to God, I saw the bartender serve a man a drink with foam in it. Fucking foam.
Bartender told him it was pomegranate essence.
I nearly threw up.
I’m the only man at this bar drinking a beer that isn’t infused with some sort of flower or fruit or made with fair-trade this or organic that.
Hell, I’m the only man at this bar.
At least the women here are hot.
Yeah, some of them are older than I’d like, but judging by how they look, even the older ones do yoga. Which is a huge plus.
Never thought I’d come to like yoga — never tried it myself, seeing as how I have dignity — but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t give a woman a fine ass. The pants are nice, too.
And the flexibility.
It’s a beautiful thing.
I check my watch for the nineteenth time.
Still twenty minutes to go.
I can probably finish another two beers in that time.
Hell, considering I just heard the bartender explain the house special cocktail — a modernist martini, with something called a spherified olive in it — I’m going to need a few drinks just to keep my ass in this bar stool.
Seriously, a modernist martini? That’s just fucking wrong.
James Bond would be fucking turning in his grave.
And I don’t even care for Bond, since he’s a fucking English twat and every true Irishman hates the English, but I got to give credit where it’s do. The man can shoot, and the man nails some top-quality pieces of ass.
“Whiskey, straight, please.”
A feminine voice like the chiming of church bells heralding in a choir of fucking angels just sidled up next to me and ordered an actual fucking drink.
Be still my heart.
“Put it on my tab,” I say to the bartender without a second thought.
I haven’t even looked at the woman yet, I’m just so fucking happy.
Maybe I am drunker than I thought.
How many beers have I had? Five? Six?
“Thanks,” the woman says.
Then, I look at her.
Lord above.
She’s wearing a little black dress that would be conservative on anyone else, but on her, it’s the most seductive thing I’ve ever seen. Hazel eyes that reach inside me and stroke my heart to beating stare back at me, and black hair that’s just begging to be ruffled up in my bed elegantly frames her face.