“Where is he?” I ask Sean, and then he lowers his head briefly. “What?”
Oh. My big brother is tucked inside the entrance to the hall leading to the jacks. Some girl has her back pressed up against the wall, and he’s kissing her.
So, he’s screwing half the city, too?
“What do we do?” I ask Sean, suddenly wishing I said no and stayed outside.
“I’ll get him.”
And I let him go alone this time. I watch Sean head toward the back of the bar where Adam is.
My brothers are so different. Sometimes I wonder how Sean and Adam are even twins. Hell, how are they even related?
Sean has his hand on Adam’s shoulder, and Adam stops groping the woman in front of him and turns to face our brother now.
Adam then peeks over Sean’s shoulder and looks at me.
I look away, embarrassed.
I suck in a few breaths, and then I can feel him closing in on me. My brother has some sort of aurora around him, I swear. It’s kind of like the seas (and I mean all of them) part for him. He has a presence.
I see his hand locked with the woman’s when I drag my gaze up to Adam’s eyes.
“Stay out of my business, Holly. I mean it.”
I was expecting him to curse, but he doesn’t. He tends to go easy on me, even now. Even when he’s hit rock bottom.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand when the door opens and a gust of cold air hits me.
Sean is dragging his palms down his face and shaking his head when he comes before me. “I think we’ve lost him, Holly.”
Adam
My head is pounding like something fierce. I roll to my side and see a brunette lying next to me. I don’t remember her name, and I’m not even sure if I ever bothered to get it.
I need to wake her up, to tell her to get out of my home. I don’t want her getting the wrong damn idea.
But I hear something—or maybe someone, from outside my bedroom.
I sit upright and tug at the sheet, covering my lower half because feck me—I think it’s Ma. “Leave!” I call out after a moment, but I know full well she won’t be going anywhere.
I’ve been avoiding her since I was in jail. How’d she get the damn key to my flat? I clearly need better security.
“We need to talk, Adam,” Ma says and taps at the door.
The woman next to me groans, but she doesn’t wake.
“We’ll be waiting in the living room. So, send home whoever you’ve got in there!”
Shit.
I look down at my hands and curl them into fists on my lap. I haven’t thrown a punch since I hit Owen. I feel like I’ve given up breathing, though—like I’m dying on the inside.
Maybe I can’t quit fighting? And that damn thought keeps popping into my head—and so does my desire to go back to the sick prick, Donovan, and tell him he was right.
I’m a fighter. I’ll always be one. Feck the suits and the ties. Feck the money.
And that’s why I drink. And screw.
So I don’t go to him.
But I’m not sure how much longer I can stay strong.
“Mm. You were incredible last night.”
The brunette’s awake. She wets her lips and stares up at me, and she wants more. But there’s nothing of me to give to her—to anyone.
“You need to go. Get dressed and get out, please. My folks are here.”
“What?” Her eyes widen as she sits. “I mean, I’d love to meet them. They’re like royalty in this city.” She smiles. “So are you.”
My wallet and my name. That’s all women want from me. Well, not going to happen.
“Listen, do you really think I’m going to introduce some woman I met at a pub to my family? I don’t even know your name.” She starts to open her mouth, but like a dick, I cut her off, “I don’t want to know.”
“You’re a real asshole. I guess the rumors are true.”
I impatiently wait for her to get dressed and leave before I tug on some sweats and a tee in preparation to face Ma.
“I told you I needed space,” I say once I see Ma and Da in the living room. Da’s arms are folded, and he’s casually leaning against the window.
“We’re worried about you. You need to come back to the office. You have a job,” Da says in a low voice.
“You aren’t fighting again, are you?” Ma rises and comes in front of me. The pain in her eyes is almost unbearable.
I copy Da’s move and cross my arms, standing on the edge of the living room, unable to come any closer.
“No, I’m not.” But maybe I should. Maybe fighting would make this pain in my chest go away.
“Good. I expect after you paralyzed that boy you’d never do it again,” Da says and drops his arms to his sides.
Ma looks over her shoulder at him, her brows pinched.
“He’s paralyzed?” I almost choke out. I had hoped that maybe with physical therapy Owen would recover, but . . .
“We saw him last week, and I cleaned up your mess,” Da said.
I let out a breath and turn away from them.
“Please, Adam, I miss you.” Ma’s hand comes down on my shoulder, and I squeeze my eyes shut, remembering Owen’s body as it fell to the ground.
I paralyzed a man.
“I don’t want to lose you. Promise me you won’t ever fight again, Adam. I need to hear the words.” Her voice is nearly a whisper, and it cracks as she talks as if she might cry.
What the hell have I done?
I slowly turn around and face her and open my eyes. And I say the words that need to be said, “I promise I’ll never fight again.”
***
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On the Line
Dublin Nights 2
Chapter One
Adam
“I know it’s bad luck to see the bride on her wedding day, but is it bad luck to talk?” My hands landed on each side of the doorframe as I waited for a response. My heartbeat rose with every silent second.
No way was she having second thoughts.
“Please, Anna, can you just tell me to bugger off, at least? I need to hear your voice to know you’re okay.” I shook the door handle as if that’d do something.
“Still nothing?” my sister, Holly, asked.
I turned to see Anna’s sisters trailing behind Holly.
The looks they were giving me as they neared . . . sympathy. Like they assumed Anna had pulled a runaway bride move.
“You think something’s wrong?” Dana, Anna’s younger sister, stopped in front of me. “When she didn’t answer I got worried.”
“You did the right thing in getting me.” I grabbed my mobile from my pocket. “This is Adam McGregor. I need someone to open the honeymoon suite,” I said straight away when the hotel front desk picked up. “Bring a key. Now.”
Silence spanned the line for the space of a heartbeat, like the woman was questioning whether Anna had taken off as well. “Be right there.”
“There’s something wrong.” I could feel it in my gut.
“I’m sure there’s an innocent explanation as to why she’s not answering.” Holly was attempting to be the voice of reason, the calm in the ever-growing storm.
I cradled the back of my neck and tipped my gaze skyward on the verge of losing my bloody mind.
Be okay. Please, be okay.
“When was the last time you saw her?” I glimpsed a look at Anna’s older sister, Becca, cutting a path between Holly and Dana to get to me.
Every memory from last night snapped through my mind as I waited for Becca to answer.
“I saw her around midnight before I went to bed. And then when I knocked on her door this morning there was no answer,” Becca replied.
“Same,” Dana said.
“We thought she was in the shower,” Becca added. “We waited for enough time to pass before coming to get you
when she still didn’t answer.”
Feck. I redialed her number, then lowered the mobile to my side and pressed my ear to the door, trying to listen for a ring.
“Anything?” Holly placed a hand on my forearm, and I shook my head and ended the call.
“Mr. McGregor.” I pivoted to find a woman heading our way. “Everything okay?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” My throat tightened.
“Hopefully she didn’t slip in the shower or something,” Dana said.
An idea I hadn’t thought of. “Can you hurry and open the damn door?”
“But it’ll be bad luck to see—”
“Just open the door,” I hissed at the woman through barely parted teeth, ready to pummel my way through the door to get to Anna.
She sidestepped me to open it.
“Anna!” I flung the door open so hard it hit the wall and came back at me, so I blasted it out of my way again. “Anna?”
The bedroom. Closet. Shower. All empty.
“She’s not here.” I hung my head, searching for breath.
I redialed Anna’s number, and my eyes connected with Holly’s as I waited and hoped she’d pick up. To tell me she was grabbing a snack downstairs.
But . . .
I turned my head at the faint sound of a ringtone. I followed the noise and crouched to the side of the bed.
“Her phone.” Dana pressed a hand over her mouth at the sight of Anna’s mobile in my grasp. “She wouldn’t run without—” She dropped her words when her eyes whipped to my face.
Heat licked beneath my skin like a fire ready to eviscerate everything down to my last breath.
I killed the call and tucked my mobile into my pocket, then entered the four-digit code to Anna’s mobile and scrolled through her last calls then texts.
Nothing abnormal.
“Do you have security cameras on these floors?” I asked the woman since there was nothing unusual on Anna’s phone. And hell, nothing unusual about the room.
No signs of a struggle.
The woman blinked. “I . . . Yes, we do.”
“I need to see them.” I rubbed at my forehead, trying to collect my racing thoughts, and then I left the room.
“Adam.” Holly followed me. “What do you want me to do?”
I faced her once outside the lift. “Look for her in the hotel. Don’t tell anyone anything until we know what’s going on.”
“I’m sure she’s still here, and we’re all overreacting.” She was trying to reassure me, but that was impossible.
“She wouldn’t risk bumping into me on the day of our wedding by wandering the hotel. She’s too nervous about everything.” The lift doors parted, and we headed inside. “But look anyway.”
I clutched my chest while we descended, as I grappled with possibilities.
Anna had either run away—or . . . she was taken.
Either way, it felt like the end of the fecking world.
“Did your bride-to-be run?” a reporter hollered as I surged through the crowd with my brothers on each side of me acting as bodyguards.
The press continued to huddle around us as we pushed through them.
The cameras snapping pictures. The lights. The questions. I shielded my eyes as if the sun were in my face as I moved.
“What enemies do you have?” someone asked.
“Who may have taken her?” another voice ripped through the air.
“Get them out of here!” my twin brother, Sean, yelled to the two hotel guards who were failing miserably to gain control of the situation.
“What’d you do to make her leave?” a woman asked, and I caught sight of my younger brother, Ethan, halt in place.
“How about you go to hell?” Ethan sputtered, then looked at me and tipped his chin toward the lift, motioning for me to get out of there.
“Why are you letting these people in here?” I heard Sean’s question roar from behind as I closed in on the lift.
I couldn’t bring myself to look back, to see the throngs of people eyeing me as if Anna’s disappearance was my fault.
Once inside the lift, I bowed my head.
I had to keep it together.
She wouldn’t run; I knew it. She’d been worried something would jinx the wedding. No way would she leave me.
But the idea that someone took her was like scorpions crawling across my flesh, stinging my skin in every place at once.
“No one came in or out,” the detective in charge said the second I met him inside my hotel suite.
I’d called the Garda, the police in Dublin, and reported her missing. And if I wasn’t a McGregor, they would’ve told me to wait forty-eight hours before filing a report. Hell, they probably would’ve told me she ran away and didn’t want to marry me.
But . . . because of my money, my last name—half the officers in Dublin now flooded the hotel. The unfortunate side effect: reporters barking out questions and accusations.
My parents were handling the guests for me, letting them know Anna was gone and attempting to field their questions.
I wasn’t ready to face any of them. I could barely look at myself in the mirror—let alone anyone else.
“McGregor?”
I blinked at the sound of my name coming from the detective’s mouth. “Yeah?” My eyes were blurry. My vision obstructed by unshed tears. I couldn’t fight the battle of emotions ripping through me, shredding me into scraps of nothing.
“The cameras show your fiancée entering her room at midnight last night, so unless she learned how to fly and went out the window, someone must’ve tampered with the security footage.”
His words had my gaze swinging to his face, and my heartbeat climbed higher and higher.
“Any enemies you may have? Someone who may have taken her?”
He halted his line of questioning so I could collect my thoughts. Not exactly possible, though. My thoughts were scattered all over the place.
“Enemies . . . I . . . the only guy who’d want to hurt me like this is already dead,” I said slowly.
“Donovan Hannigan?”
“Yeah.” Donovan had been the Dublin crime boss who’d sunk his teeth into me when I was a teenager, creating the fighter I’d become.
But Donovan’s body had washed up in a river five kilometers south of the city less than three months ago—shortly after Da’s heart attack. There wasn’t much left of Donovan’s face, but I’d insisted on seeing him to confirm he was no longer a threat to Anna or my family.
It’d been him, though. The bastard was dead.
“Donovan could have family who may want revenge. We’ll look into it.” Detective Grady, I think that was his name, took a breath. A long-winded one. “Anyone else? Your family runs a multibillion-dollar empire, surely, you’ve acquired enemies? Ever receive threats? Hate mail?”
I held my palms in the air. “Not that I’m aware of.” I couldn’t imagine who’d target my family. Well, me. They took Anna, so this had to be an attack against me.
The man stroked his brown beard before his hands slipped into his pockets. “If not enemies, then maybe someone saw this as an opportunity to score a high-priced ransom.”
“How often do you see the person safely returned when ransoms are paid?”
He was quiet for a bit. “About half the time.”
A fifty percent chance.
No, those odds weren’t good enough.
“Adam?” I looked to see Marco Valenti entering the hotel room. We’d become friends since he was on the football team my family owned in Rome. “Can I talk to you for a second?” He motioned for me to step out into the hall.
He was probably going to offer condolences of some sort—but that was the last thing I wanted, which was why I’d stayed away from as many wedding guests as possible since I’d discovered she was gone.
All I wanted was Anna back safe in my arms.
“Give me a second.” I crossed the room and went out into the hall with him.
�
��Hey.” A tight line cut across Marco’s forehead as he observed me. Pain in his eyes. An echo of my own.
I bit down on my back teeth as I waited for his words, for an apology to flow between us—for the moment I’d want to knock the word sorry away.
“Maggie wanted to come, but I, uh, figured you’d, eh, need space.” His Italian accent whipped through his tone harder than normal.
Good call.
“I know the police are here, but my buddy’s wife . . . well, finding and helping people is her sister’s expertise,” he said in a low voice, catching me off guard, and I leaned in closer to try and absorb what he was saying. “She was MI6. I’m not supposed to know, but she works freelance with a new team.”
I looked to the floor, my head spinning.
“I made a call, and they’re catching a flight out of London to come here. I’m sorry, but I didn’t know what to do for you and—”
“Thank you.” I found his eyes again. “I’ll take all the help I can get.”
He braced a hand on my shoulder, and emotions settled in the back of my throat. That or it was the rise of bile, and I was ready to lose my dinner from last night all over Marco’s shoes.
“I’ll let you know when they get here.” Marco nodded.
“Thanks,” I think I said as I caught sight of my brothers heading my way.
“Anything?” Sean asked once Marco left.
My twin brother and I looked nothing alike, and we couldn’t be more different in every single way, but somehow, he’d always been able to feel my pain. Channel it. And the way he was looking at me right now was as if he lost his fiancée, too.
“Looks like someone tampered with the cameras.” I rubbed at my forehead, collecting my thoughts.
“So, she didn’t run.” Ethan’s words had my hand falling to my side as I observed him.
“No,” I said through gritted teeth.
“I’m sorry. It would’ve been a better alternative to . . . you know.” Ethan shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. “Sorry.”
I dropped my gaze to the floor.
Dublin Nights Series Box Set: On the Edge & On the Line Page 30