by M. O’Keefe
“Drop it,” Tiernan said, pointing his gun at Poppy. “Or I’ll put a bullet in her shoulder for real.”
“There’s no need for this,” I said, putting my gun down on the bed.
“That’s not the way Bryant sees it. My dad is a little pissed with you, cousin.”
“You can’t kill him,” Poppy said to the men, trying like a daft fucking girl to get in front of me. To protect me with her body. “He’s a Morelli.”
I put her behind me. Too rough. But it was rough or nothing. I thought of Niamh and her little boy with his sleeves rolled up. I stepped towards the men. “I’ll come with you. Let her go.”
One of Tiernan’s thugs stepped forward as if to grab Poppy and I met him with my fist. Putting him on the ground. Another one swung towards me and I grabbed the gun out of the man’s hand so fast he didn’t have time to react.
And then I kicked him in the stomach, sending him backwards against the wall. He fell onto his hands and knees and then to the ground, gasping for breath with at least one broken rib and a diaphragm that wasn’t working the way it should.
I pointed the gun at Tiernan, but I was too late. He had Poppy against his chest, the gun in his hand pressed to her head.
“You’re too fucking predictable, Ronan,” he said. He spread his hand out wide across her stomach, trying to get me to do something stupid. “Stop,” Poppy said, shoving his hand away. My brave fierce girl. “We’ll go. No problems.”
“See?” Tiernan said. “That wasn’t so hard. She’ll drive with me and you can follow behind. Anyone does anything stupid and she’ll pay the price.”
* * *
Poppy
“I heard you were a meek little thing.” Tiernan sat next to me with his gun on his knee as we drove from the Constantine part of Bishop’s Landing to the Morelli side. “That you wouldn’t be a problem.”
“I always heard you were a bully and a sadist.”
“Is that any way to talk to family?”
“You’re no family of mine.”
We crested the top of a small hill, and the Morelli mansion came into view. It was giant and medieval looking, made more sinister in the moonlight. My bravado withered a little and I pressed my hands together in my lap.
“What does Bryant want?” I asked.
“For everyone to follow his orders.”
I remembered who I was before Ronan killed the senator and unlocked me from my prison. I’d been grateful and submissive. Confused and easily led. I gave away every bit of my power thinking it would keep me safe. Now, I had to be smarter. More cunning. More ruthless. I didn’t have the money but I had the account numbers. It had to buy us some time. It had to buy me Ronan’s life if it came to that.
The car stopped in front of the house, and I opened the door before anyone could do it for me. Ronan’s car was behind us and he was getting out of his car, too. “Ronan!” I cried and he turned, and stumbled, his hands tied behind his back. The collar of his shirt wrinkled and torn. His face…
“What the fuck!” I screamed and wrapped my arms around him like armor. The two men he’d been traveling with crawled out of the car after him, each of them looking a little rough. Ronan, it seemed, had gotten a few punches in before his hands were bound behind his back.
“It was a bumpy ride,” said one of the assholes as he braced a hand against his rib.
“I’m fine, Poppy,” Ronan said through a split lip. His eye was swollen and there was a gash on his cheek, covering his face with blood. All my brave words in the car crumbled and I wanted to be the mouse I’d been, promising anything to keep him safe.
Except it never worked that way.
We were shuffled out of the night into the foyer, and I blinked, trying to get my eyes to adjust. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Ronan was there and he was. Walking, chin up, battered face lifted.
I thought of Pikey Tom and what Ronan had learned from the priests. We owe them nothing. We give them nothing. Right. I lifted my chin and pulled my elbow from Tiernan’s hand.
“I’m not a dog,” I said to him. “You don’t need to pull me.”
He chuckled in his throat, pushed open a door and shoved me into an office. Moonlight poured through a window and settled like poured silver over Bryant Morelli.
I watched him, breathing through my panic. Ronan was pushed into the room beside me, his hands still tied behind his back.
“Well, it seems Ronan put up a fight,” Bryant said as he walked around the desk to the comfortable leather chairs in front of it. A fireplace was to my left. Bookshelves to my right. There was only the door at my back. No other way out of the room that I could see unless I went running through that window. We were on the second floor.
“I’m Bryant Morelli,” he said, approaching me, with his hand out, like we were at a cocktail party. “We haven’t officially met.”
I stood there, shaking with rage. But I looked at his hand and then back at his face. There’d be no pleasantries while Ronan was tied up. He dropped his hand. His eyes narrowed and I felt a chill down my spine.
“I thought the senator taught you better manners than that,” he said.
“Untie Ronan and then we can show off our manners,” I said.
Bryant shook his head. “He’s the most dangerous man in the room. Only a fool would let him go. And I am no fool.”
“Why don’t we cut to the chase,” I said, and out of nowhere, Bryant backhanded me across the face.
“You are not in charge here!”
I stumbled backwards and Ronan roared, lunging for Bryant with his hands still tied behind his back but Tiernan and the other two men were on him. Ronan fought, but Tiernan kicked his knee, sending his leg out from under him and he fell down hard on his other knee. I swallowed my scream and stared at Bryant.
“Three men against one? You really are scared of him.”
“I’m not scared of anything, Poppy. It’s one of the pleasures that comes from being the apex predator.” He leaned back against his desk. “What I am, is angry. I gave you a chance, Ronan. An opportunity to be a part of a dynasty. To become a king. And now… you’re taking meetings with Leo?”
“We just had drinks,” I said.
“Stupid girl, drinks are meetings. Dinner is meetings. Golf is meetings. When you’re wealthier than God, business happens all the time. In fact,” Bryant held out his hands. “This is a meeting. Why are you meeting Leo?”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. It had just been drinks. Some good brie. A surprising amount of laughing. Ronan was silent, too.
Bryant lifted a finger and Tiernan smiled with malice and punched Ronan across the face.
“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop! I’m telling the truth. It was just drinks.”
“He offered you a job?” Bryant asked Ronan and after a second Ronan nodded.
“Did you take it?” Bryant asked.
“I’m not working for the Morellis,” Ronan said and then spit blood on the carpet.
“You are a fucking Morelli!” Bryant shouted. “It’s your blood, Ronan. It’s your goddamn destiny and I don’t know what I need to do to convince you.” His face lit up. “Well, now, perhaps I do.”
He walked over to me and I could feel the violence coming off of him in waves. The pleasure he was taking in this game.
“Touch her and I will kill you,” Ronan threatened. “Lay one finger—”
Bryant touched my face. The shoulder bared by the dress and I felt my skin crawl. “I paid your husband a lot of money over the years to work for me. And he died before he could give me what he owed me.”
“What does he owe you?”
“Information. Influence,” he smiled at me and then grabbed me by the hair. “Perhaps I can take it out in trade.”
“I’ll work for you,” Ronan said. “I’ll take the job. Don’t touch her.”
Bryant’s face lit up and he stepped away from me. My breath heaved in my chest.
“When?” Bryant asked.
“I need…just give me a week,” Ronan panted.
“Two days. That’s what I give you. Two days and you’re back here where you belong. A Morelli. Say it.”
Ronan, beaten and bloody, nodded. The soul he’d been showing me. The heart. The dreams. The man he’d been, were all gone. He was the killer I met years ago. Distant. Cold and remote.
“Say it!” Bryant roared.
“A Morelli,” Ronan said.
“I’ll raise you up at my side like my sons, Ronan. You’ll see. You’ll have more power than you’ve ever dreamt of.”
“Ronan,” I whispered. “No. Don’t do this.”
“It’s already done,” Bryant said.
He gestured to the men standing behind Ronan, they stopped pressing on his shoulders and he got to his feet.
“Two days.” He grinned, wolfish and confident. “Welcome to the family.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Poppy
“Your face,” I said once we were back in our car. I reached for him, the bleeding from his eye and lip. He dodged my touch.
“Are you all right?” he asked. He was driving. When we were dropped back off at my house, we found Raj, unconscious in the back seat of the car. He was conscious now, but in no shape to drive.
I touched my cheek, tender from the backhand. “Fine. That was more for show than anything.”
“Are you really going to work for him?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Can’t we… I don’t know, find what the senator was doing for him?”
“How? Where? Poppy, that’s all a dead end.”
“Ronan—” I felt all those dreams for us vanish like they’d been popped. It was violence and more violence. I reached out to touch him and he shifted away.
My stomach knotted with fear.
At the apartment, I went to the bankers box for no good reason but that I was desperate. Perhaps there was something we’d missed. Some treasure map.
I heard Ronan back in his bedroom thumping around with something and I pulled out the files we’d already looked through. The plastic bag of all my jewelry was still on the table and I picked it up and tossed it on the couch to get it out of the way.
Ronan came stomping into the room with a leather bag open in his hands. In the bag I saw a bunch of my new clothes all bunched up. “What are you doing?” I asked, though it was painfully obvious.
“Are you pregnant?” He asked me that question without looking at me. “Is that why we went to your house? To get that shit? And don’t fucking lie to me.”
I flinched at him calling that box shit.
“I…I don’t know yet.”
He sucked in a deep breath. “When do you know?”
“Two weeks.”
“Jesus Christ, Poppy.” He looked sideways, his jaw hard. He’d washed his face and changed his shirt, but he looked deadly. As deadly as I’d ever seen him. And far away.
“Don’t be mad at me,” I said. “Be mad at science.”
“I want you out of my house. I want you out of the country.”
I blinked at him and went back to the box. I should have expected this. I should have seen it coming. “No.”
“I don’t want you here.”
Even though I knew what he was doing, it still stung. He grabbed the bag of jewelry off the table and I snagged the edge of it as he was about to put it in the suitcase.
“I’m not leaving,” I said.
“Jesus, you really are pathetic. I don’t love you.”
The truth was, I knew that. I knew he didn’t love me and maybe he’d never love me. Not in any conventional way. But we were long past conventional. But I also knew what he was doing, trying to make me safe. He tore the bag out of my hand, ripping the thin plastic. Jewelry spilled out onto the couch. A waterfall of gold and diamonds. Turquoise and sapphires. I didn’t care about the jewelry; I’d throw it out the window if I had to.
“I know what you’re trying to do to me,” I said. “You’ve been trying to do this practically since the minute we met.”
“What’s that?”
“Keep me safe by pushing me away. But the safest place for me in the world is with you.”
“You believe that? After everything that just happened? What the hell is wrong with you, Poppy?”
“Nothing,” I snapped. “So stop treating me like a fool.”
“I can’t keep you safe if you’re here. You talk about revenge. You talk about war. This is what war looks like, Poppy. Pack your things,” he said. “Leave and you’re free.”
“What about you?”
“I’m never free, Poppy,” he yelled. “I’m a killer. That’s all I am. That’s all I’ll ever be. I’m a fucking Morelli and the Constantine monster. Don’t you understand, this is my world.”
It wasn’t just his father who made him believe he was a weapon. Or where he was raised. Or the priests and losing his friend Tommy. It was Caroline, too. No boy grew into a man believing his only worth was killing people unless that was reinforced every step.
“You killed the senator because he hurt me.”
“Why do you want to make that noble?” he cried. “What is wrong with you that you want to make that noble?”
“Because the rules are different with you,” I cried. “With this world.”
“And that’s why you need to leave. You need the regular world, Poppy. Where good guys are good guys not because they didn’t put a bullet in a man’s head. Where fairy godmothers don’t save you just so they can fuck up your life. Where—”
I stood. “You’ve ruined me for the regular world, Ronan,” I told him. “The only world I want is what you and I build together. If you’re staying, then I’m staying too. You want me to leave, you have to come with me.”
“Why do you want this?” He honestly didn’t know. Didn’t see. And I would take the rest of my life convincing him if that was what he needed.
“I love you.”
“Poppy—”
“I do. I love you.” I would say it until he believed it. “I love you. I love—”
He dropped the bags and grabbed me, lifted me off my feet and stomped me across the room to the wall between two windows. I expected him to shake me and tell me to grow up. That he would never love me. But instead he asked in a low, heated voice, “How do you know?”
I blinked, stunned by the question, by the torment in his face. He arched his hips against me and I felt the hard length of his cock against my belly and moaned in my throat. “Because that’s not love,” he snarled in my face, trying to defile everything between us. “Anyone can fuck.”
“No one makes me feel like you do.”
“You liked Eden well enough on that plane.”
“Only because you were watching.”
He tried to stay so furious, he did. He clung to it with all his strength. And I almost felt bad for him. I reached up and pushed his dark hair off his face. His beautiful, broken face. His hands left my shoulders to grab on to the windowsill and I was boxed in between the window and his body.
And I didn’t want to be anywhere else. I kissed his forehead. His cheek. He dropped his face against mine.
“I love you,” I whispered against his face. He flinched and I said it again. And then again. Binding him to me with my hope and my heart. With everything I was sure we could be if he would believe in me. Believe in what I saw when I looked at him. He wasn’t just a killer. He had a code that was pure iron. He was a victim, still grieving. Still hurting. He was my fierce protector and he would break the laws of man if I was hurt.
If I was a queen, he was my king. And we’d find our own fucking kingdom.
“I love you,” I said again, determined to say it until he believed me.
“How do you know?” he asked.
I cupped his face and lifted it so our eyes met. “How do I know I love you?” I read the question in his eyes. And I realized this wasn’t his searching for a compliment. He honestly didn’t know ho
w this was supposed to feel and, granted, I hadn’t had a lot of experience, but I’d loved people in my life. But he’d had no one. Everyone who should have loved him left him. Or used him. Twisted him into this man who thought the only way for him to live was alone. A version of himself he never should have been.
“Because I want to make you happy,” I said. “Because you make me happy.”
“How? By fucking you?” Again, he wasn’t even trying to be crude. These were the metrics he was used to in his life. “Killing for you?”
“Because I know sometimes what you’re thinking. Because you know what I’m thinking. Because when you smile at me, I feel like I’ve won something.”
He dropped his head back down against mine, grinding our foreheads together. “I’m no prize, Poppy.”
“You’re my prize,” I said.
“Fuck, you deserve so much more than this. Where’s your fucking pride, lass?” I could feel how he was fighting this. Fighting me. All the strength of a last-ditch effort.
“Who gives a shit about pride?” I asked. “What has pride ever gotten me? You make me feel like a queen. Like anything is possible. After years of being hurt and scared and never ever being able to put what I want first, you are what I get. A man who takes me to the end of the earth to be safe. Who opens up all his wounds to show me his pain. A man who makes me omelets and farl and when he touches me my whole world changes.”
I put my fingers through his hair. Ran them down over his neck and shoulders.
“And I think, Ronan Byrne, you’re only getting started. If you let yourself love me…” I whistled, tears burning in my eyes as I imagined the fierceness he would bring to loving me. I gasped, thinking of the baby I might be carrying. And the way Ronan would love it. “We’d be a force of nature. We’d be untamed.”
Something in my words kicked something over inside of him and his hands left the windowsill to tear and pull at my clothes. His mouth found mine and it was not so much a kiss as it was a storm. “How do you know?” he asked again, still not ready to believe me.
“Because I know.”
He was wild and fierce and I matched him. Desperate for the way I felt when he touched me and when I touched him. He got the zipper on my dress half undone and tore the rest of it off. I stood there in underwear and nothing else, visible to anyone who looked up, and I didn’t care. As long as he was touching me. My fingers got his belt loose, the zipper of his pants, but he knocked my hands away and fell to his knees in front of me.