The first bullet I shot pierced straight through the man’s chest. A clear shot into his heart.
The second bullet flew to his friend’s forehead, making the man snap back like a bowling pin and land on top of his fellow soldier with a cry.
There were very few people who were as good marksmen as I was.
A retired veteran once told me I’d have made a great sniper. Joining the army was never in my cards. I was a selfish man who liked to wage his own wars and didn’t have the time or patience for anyone else’s.
Silence hung in the air, the echoes of the gunshots still buzzing in my ears. The faint scent of gunpowder and blood hung heavy in my nostrils.
I didn’t get into gang fights often, but when I did, I relished the hell out of them. Violence calmed me. Made my blood run cold rather than stir hot and restless.
Calmly, I tugged a cigarette out, lighting it as I sauntered toward the place where the two men were lying. We were in a Brookline attic, just above the deli where a massive drug deal had taken place just a few weeks earlier. Vasily Mikailov’s territory, which I’d conquered in recent months.
Back when Troy Brennan ruled the streets of Boston, the gang crime rate was low to nonexistent. Everyone had their own corner of the world to rule, to reign, and to hold. Troy was a fair underboss. He didn’t have a severe case of megalomania—something you couldn’t say about his predecessors—and had no trouble sticking to Southie, an area which he ruled with an iron fist.
I, however, had different rules, different aspirations, and an entirely different approach to life. You either bent or snapped for me. There was no middle ground, and I wanted it all—every nook and corner of the city and everything inside it.
From the moment I took over, there had been bloodshed. I didn’t settle for a finger. I took the whole fucking hand and built an empire on the ruins of bones and blood.
The Italians had been the first to bow down. They did so immediately. The majority of them ran to New York and Chicago after my first round of massacring their top bosses. The event was marked in the local newspapers as Night of The Long Knives, where I killed no less than ten mobsters in their beds.
The latinx had followed suit, scurrying to the edges of illegal betting and drug-dealing after I struck them.
The Russians, however, put up a fight. Brookline belonged to the Bratva, and I had to pry it out of their hands, using a lot of force and raising the body count on the streets. It had been an ongoing, uphill battle with many casualties, many assassination attempts—on both sides—and a hell of a lot of headache.
Bending down on one knee, I drew a black plastic glove from my back pocket, slapped it on, and pried the first bullet from the man’s chest. Next, I moved to my other casualty. Thankfully, the bullet wasn’t smeared in too much brain matter, which would have been a bitch to clean.
I wiped both bullets with the men’s shirts and pocketed them, sighing as I straightened back up and proceeded to deal with the rest of the situation.
“How bad is it?” I clipped, my annoyance loud and apparent.
“Bad,” Becker, one of my soldiers, wheezed behind me like a fan, shifting on the floor of the dusty attic. “I think they got my lungs.”
“Pretty sure I broke my arm,” Angus, beside him, added.
Both assholes didn’t even have a high school diploma yet somehow managed to medically assess themselves. I walked over to the two useless oxygen wasters I’d hired to do my dirty work, surveying them coldly.
Unbelievable. Not only had I ended up doing the job myself and wiping the floor with the two Bratva idiots who stole money from me—fine, didn’t pay me the cut I deserved for the deal—before putting bullets in them, but now I had to usher these two pussies to get medical help.
And don’t get me started on falling off the fucking rails and acting like a jealous girlfriend in need of a bloodbath, because I had a long-ass fucking month.
“Get up.” I rolled Becker over with the tip of my loafer, taking a long drag from my cigarette, releasing plumes of smoke through my nostrils like I was a dragon. “I ain’t carrying your ass to the car honeymoon-style. You too, Fucker Junior,” I spat in Angus’ direction.
They limped behind me, leaning against each other for support, and stuffed themselves into the back of the van I’d driven to Brookline. Behind the wheel, I made a call to Dr. Holmberg, the man I’d hired on retainer to tend to my soldiers and myself.
For obvious reasons, walking willy-nilly into the hospital with gunshot wounds wasn’t exactly an option.
Dr. Holmberg picked up on the third ring, the acoustics surrounding his voice implying he was talking from deep inside someone’s asshole.
“’Ello?” He sounded groggy.
“Enjoying an afternoon nap, fucker?” I inquired politely, taking a turn toward the South End, where he was located. “Make yourself a cup of coffee. I have a job for you.”
“Sam?” He sobered up instantly, clearing his throat. “Oh, Sam, I’m sorry. I thought your secretary left you the message. I’m not home. I’m in Greece until next week.”
That explained why he was asleep when I called him. There was a time difference. It also explained why the reception was so bad. The fact his message hadn’t been received did not surprise me. I went through secretaries like I went through one-night stands: fast and leaving a pile of angry, mistreated women in my wake. I was currently in between assistants—and also in between fucks, seeing as having sex with Aisling wasn’t a possibility anymore. My shit with the Fitzpatricks was complicated enough.
“What the fuck makes you think I talk to my assistants regularly?” I lashed out. “Next time, have the stones to tell me directly when you take an unauthorized vacation. Now give me your cousin’s address. I’ve got two injured soldiers I would very much like to keep alive because they owe me three weeks’ pay of work.”
Whenever Dr. Holmberg wasn’t available, he referred me to his cousin, Raul, who was technically a registered nurse but was still discreet and got the job done. At this point, with Becker and Angus’ lackluster performances in the field, they were lucky I didn’t let the local mailman tend to their wounds.
A nurse was more than they deserved.
“Raul’s out of town, Sam. Visiting his son in college,” Dr. Holmberg murmured sheepishly.
“Is anyone in your family familiar with the concept of work?” I muttered.
“Yeah, I know, it’s unfortunate.”
“The state of your face after I’m done with you will be unfortunate,” I deadpanned. “What the hell were you thinking, skipping town without having a medical backup for me?”
“It was poor planning on my behalf. I agree,” he said mildly, doing anything he could to ensure I didn’t actually break his nose upon arrival. “Surely you know someone who works in the medical field who can help you out?” Dr. Holmberg said, knowing damn well ushering the two fuckers in the back of the van to a hospital was out of the question. It was as good as admitting to the crime.
Even though the local DA and police department were in my pocket—I went to the sheriff’s son’s christening and the DA’s father’s funeral, I was on such good terms with them—I wasn’t dumb enough to rub it in their faces and make them ask me hard questions. Even if the DA and the police liked me, there was still the FBI to think about, and they were breathing down my neck recently.
“You’d be surprised, Holmberg, but I don’t know many doctors. Or fucking astronauts, for that matter. My line of work is killing people, not nursing them back to health.”
That wasn’t entirely true, though.
I knew Aisling Fitzpatrick, and she was a doctor.
A good one at that, if I were to believe my sister, Sailor, who wasn’t in the habit of handing out unwarranted compliments.
Nix also knew how to keep secrets. Came with the territory of being a Fitzpatrick and belonging to one of the most notoriously corrupt families in North America.
Perhaps standing her up without an apology then throwing what we shared on Halloween in her face the last time we met, proceeding to take a nice, big dump on her pride and lighting the entire situation on fire wasn’t the best tactic to handling things with her, seeing as I needed her now.
Normally, I was more calculated than to needlessly poke and humiliate people who didn’t deserve it.
Normally, I didn’t handle Aisling Fitzpatrick.
She brought out the worst in me. I was borderline allergic to her. So sweet, so innocent, so accommodating. Still living with her fucking parents.
And really, rejecting her was doing her a favor. I was going to have her father’s head on a platter in about two seconds, when I exposed him for everything he was and squeezed the truth out of him.
See? Even I had my fucking limits.
They were few and far between and faded, but they were, apparently, in existence.
Then there was the oath part. Even though I was a world-class bastard, I wasn’t a dishonorable one. The Fitzpatrick men paid me good money not to touch Aisling, which meant I needed to at least make a half-assed effort to keep my word.
“Perhaps you could—” Dr. Holmberg started, but I’d already hung up the phone and was calling Sailor to ask for Aisling’s number.
My sister and Nix were good friends. The wallflower and the lady.
“Does that mean you are finally going to ask her out?” Sailor asked on the other line. I heard her washing something in the background, probably Xander’s bottles.
I threw a glance to the back of the van, where Becker was bleeding out—possibly parts of his lungs—and Angus looked like his arm had been screwed into the rest of his body by a blind toddler.
“Are you fucking high?” I scowled at the road, talking to my sister. “She’s a child.”
A child I’d done some pretty grown-up shit to.
I didn’t think eight years were a big deal in terms of an age gap. I slept with women who were in their mid-twenties sometimes, although I naturally gravitated toward women my own age. But Aisling wasn’t only eight years my junior. She also had that pure as the driven snow halo of a blue-blooded angel.
A blue-blooded angel who sucked your balls like the future of the country depended on it then proceeded to take it up the ass like a pro.
“High? Oh, I wish. I can’t do shit while breastfeeding. Not even drink a glass of wine.” Sailor sighed wistfully, reminiscing about times when she didn’t have a husband to knock her up as soon as she pushed out a baby.
“If you want sympathy, I suggest you talk to someone with a heart,” I grumbled.
“Oh, really? So what’s the thing beating in your chest?”
“It’s not beating. It’s ticking. Probably a bomb.”
She laughed heartily. “Don’t be too harsh with Ash. You know she is a gentle one. Love you, asshole.”
“Bye, shitface.”
I hung up and called the number Sailor had given me. Aisling answered on the fifth ring, just as I was about to hang up and make a U-turn, delivering two, sweaty, injured beefcakes straight to her manicured front lawn.
“Hello?” Her sweet voice filled the van, flooding the goddamn place like an overwhelming perfume.
“It’s Sam,” I hissed in annoyance.
“Oh,” was her response. It was a response I was familiar with as she’d often used it when people told her things she did not like. But she’d never used that ‘oh’ with me before. “How can I help you, Mr. Brennan?”
I was Mr. Brennan now?
Being an asshole certainly had its cons. I trudged forward with my request.
“I have two injured soldiers. I can’t drop them at the hospital for obvious reasons. If I bring them over to Badlands, could you get a triage kit and treat them? You’ll be paid handsomely.”
I hated asking for favors and could count on one hand the number of times I had to do so. Usually, I had some kind of leverage over people, something they wanted back from me, hence the luxury of not ending a demand with a question mark.
“What are their injuries?” she asked, cold and quiet. “Give me the physical description, please, not your medical assessment, unless of course you went to med school without my knowledge.”
For the first time in my life, I got the ice princess treatment everyone else received and not her unabashed adoration.
Not that I could blame her, after shoving her pride into a blender and setting it on high that night at Badlands.
“One has a broken arm. The other was shot in the chest.”
“Where about in the chest?”
“Lungs. Meet me at Badlands in thirty.”
She was going to ask me if she was still banned from the nightclub, and I was not going to lift the ban. Nothing was going to lift the fucking ban, Jesus himself included.
If it were up to me, Aisling Fitzpatrick wouldn’t be allowed near a red-blooded man who wasn’t a relative until the end of her days. Not to mention a fucking herd of them, drunk and sweaty, in my club. The memory of her being yanked by that asshole in my club scorched through my brain. I’d almost killed the kid. The only thing that stopped me from slashing his throat in a room full of people was I didn’t know it was Aisling at the time.
“No,” she said flatly. “We’ll do things my way. Hold on a sec.”
She rummaged through things in the background. Little Nix was just full of surprises, wasn’t she? First, she gave me the fuck of my life. Now she was saving my ass, or at least my soldiers’ asses. I was half-sad to see the opportunity of ramming into her with my cock again go to waste because of her father.
“You won’t have the equipment I need. I’ll text you an address in a few minutes. Come alone—just you and your soldiers—and make sure no one sees you.”
I was going to ask questions. The most pressing one being “what the fuck?” but she hung up on me. Not a minute later, she texted me a Dorchester address. I drove to the address and was surprised to see that it was a residential building. One of those never-ending red-bricked Victorian structures a variety of college students and gang members favored.
I hurled Beavis and Butthead out of the van and dragged them to the black wooden door, punching the doorbell. The door opened on its own accord—unlocked—and when I stepped inside, there was a wordless sign leading to the basement. The apartment itself looked not only residential but occupied. Canned laughter of daytime TV shows echoed from somewhere inside the apartment, and the welcome rug was damp with melted snow.
What. The. Fuck.
Dragging Becker and Angus like they were sacks of potatoes down the stairway by the hem of their shirts, I dumped them at the foot of the bright, clean, white basement, scanning the place. Motherfucker. I knew an underground clinic when I’d been in one, and this was definitely it with an off-white couch, a shelf full of medical books, a fake plant, and cheap paintwork.
Illegal. Operating. And goddamn secretive.
The place looked empty.
Aisling walked out of a white door, dressed in one of her signature dresses that made her look like a sexually oppressed British royal. No scrubs, I noted, even though she’d been wearing them last time I saw her at Avebury Court Manor.
Even wearing something Queen Elizabeth would deem too conservative, the pale pink against her snowy skin made me want to tear off her stupid dress and eat her out on the floor. Especially now that I’d decided not to.
“What do we have here?” She went straight to Becker and Angus, notably ignoring my existence. She slapped on a pair of elastic gloves, starting with Becker. She flipped him over like he was a fish she considered buying at the market, zeroing in on his wound, frowning. Yet again, I realized that she was delicate looking but could hold her own. She wasn’t physically frail and wasn’t squeamish.
She pointed at Becker, not even asking for his name. “I’m going to start with this one, since he needs urgent medical attention. Make yourself useful for a change and help me set him up on the table, will you, Sam?”
Was that a dig? I’d bite her head off if I were in a position to do so. As it happened, she was doing me a solid, so I hoisted a mostly unconscious Becker against my shoulder, ignoring her patronizing tone, and followed her into the small room, which had a surgical table, a desk, and a large medicine cabinet.
The room was fully decked out in medical equipment, anesthetics, IV stands, and a blood pressure monitor.
The what-the-fuck questions were piling up, nice and high, as I tried to piece together how this meek, innocent woman, who was doing her residency at Brigham Hospital as an OB-GYN, knew about a place like this, let alone had easy access to it.
“What the hell is this place?” I hissed, not accustomed to being kept in the dark. Especially as I’d always thought I knew everything there was to know about the youngest Fitzpatrick.
“A friend of mine owns it. He treats people without insurance here. People who cannot afford urgent care,” she explained primly, signaling me with her chin to the spot where she wanted me to dispose Becker. So I did.
“Are you helping him do this? It’s fucking illegal, Aisling. I can’t let you do this.”
This made her bark out a laugh. “I’ve seen you shoot someone in the head and you are here so I can patch up your hitmen. Oh, the hypocrisy. Dare I say, Sam, this is so deliciously rich I think your statement alone should be in a higher tax bracket than my family.”
“You and I are not the same.”
“According to you …” She shrugged. “You’re nothing to me.”
“I am your father’s right-hand man. My job is to keep his kids out of trouble. I will do whatever the fuck I need to to stop you from getting thrown in jail.”
“You will keep well away from me, Brennan, and let me do my job, or I will never help you again.”
She went to a nearby sink, dumped her elastic gloves, and scrubbed her hands with soap before putting on a new pair as I glared at her. She had a point. Her access to this place could be beneficial to me. There was no reason why old Gerry needed to know his daughter was being an idiot as long as it worked in my favor.
“Can I see your ticket?” she asked, her back to me.
“What the fuck do you mean?” I frowned.
“To the show you are apparently watching. Get out, Sam. I’m working here.”
Concealing my surprise (and delight at discovering this bossy side of her), I leaned against the door, giving zero fucks about Angus, who was still in the reception with his dangling arm and porn star moans.
“I think I’ll stay and see you in action, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind.”
“Allow me to correct my statement—I don’t care if you mind. I’m staying.”
“I won’t treat him,” she threatened but was already getting to work cutting his shirt vertically with a pair of scissors.
“Yes, you will. Your need to be helpful overpowers your hatred toward me.”
“Don’t be so sure,” she muttered, working quickly and efficiently, removing the bullet from Becker’s lungs without breaking a fucking sweat.
“Your Hippocratic Oath, then.”
It was beautiful. Watching Aisling, the girl I knew since she was seventeen, withdrawing a bullet from a man’s lungs with the steadiest of hands while he was writhing in pain, twisting underneath her. I could tell the bullet didn’t pierce through the lung, but it was still damn impressive.
“Any news?” she asked as she began stitching him up.
“About?”
“My father and the media circus around him.”
You mean the one I created by hacking into that poor woman’s cloud just to satisfy my bloodthirsty tendencies?
It only mildly satisfied me to see Gerald shitting bricks in front of his entire family while he tried to explain that headline. I had much bigger plans for him, and I was going to execute them. Soon.
“Still working on it.”
“A bit slow, aren’t you?” Her delicate brows pinched together as she wove the needle in and out of Becker, who at this point was passed out. She looked like an English rose working on a quilted dress, not like a doctor stitching up a B-grade mobster.
“You got a problem, speak to my manager.”
“You are your own manager,” she pointed out.
“That’s right…” I paused for effect “…and I don’t care what you think about my services, so tough fucking luck, Nix.”
“So taciturn,” she tsked, treating me like I was no more than a boy, like Sparrow would when I had preteen meltdowns and didn’t know what to do with my energy. “Almost like you have something to hide.”
“Looks to me like you’re the one with the juicy secrets. Tell me about this friend of yours who is operating this place.” I motioned with my hand around us. Maybe it was time to replace Dr. Holmberg. This place looked legit, and the equipment was much better.
“I will do no such thing. I respect his privacy.”
Interesting.
I scanned the back of her head, her raven-blue locks twisted together into a braid, flung over one side of her shoulder. The contrast of her dark hair with her pale everything—eyes, skin, features—made her delectable and forbidden, much younger than her twenty-seven years.
“You know I’ll find out either way. Do yourself a favor and give me the information now,” I hissed, not used to people talking back to me.
Another first for me, sponsored by the unlikely Aisling Fitzpatrick and her newly found spunk.
She turned around, a hint of a smile on her lips.
“I’d like to see you try. Now please help me return Dumb to the reception, and fetch me Dumber. Go on, now.” She waved me off with a huff.
Nix went on to put Angus’ arm in a makeshift cast then proceeded to tell him how to tend to his injury, talking to him like she was a teacher and he was a schoolboy who had just crapped his pants in the middle of morning assembly.
As I watched her, I reminded myself that my need to fuck her was really about my desire to fuck Gerald Fitzpatrick over. Nothing more. She was a great fuck, sure, and a fairly harmless girl who’d been chasing me around for a decade. Of course I wanted in her pants. What man wouldn’t?
I just wanted to ruin another thing that was precious to Gerald.
Only in Aisling’s case, I was going to spare her. Or spite her by not giving her what she wanted. I really wasn’t sure which of the two had driven me to not touch her. All I knew was I had healthy instincts, and my instincts told me to stay the fuck away from this woman—far away.
When she was done, and both soldiers were waiting for me at the reception, she sauntered back to the small sink for another vigorous scrub of her hands and arms, still ignoring me like her life depended on it.
“What do I owe you?” I took out my wallet, plucking out a wad of cash.
“Nine grand, plus supplies, so let’s round it to eleven. Cash only.” She plucked a paper towel off the stand, wiping her hands then slam-dunking the wad of paper into a trash can.
I stared at her, waiting for the punchline. When it didn’t arrive, I narrowed my eyes.
“You’re kidding me.”
“Heavens, Brennan. I’m a highborn woman. I lack anything resembling a good sense of humor. Goes against everything I’ve been taught in Catholic school,” Ash said gravely. “Do you think it would be less pricey if you took them to the hospital?”
“I think if I took them to the hospital, they wouldn’t have been treated in some frat boy’s fucking basement.”
She poked her lip with a finger as she considered my words, unaffected. The only thing reminding me I was the one in control of the situation was her bottomless eyes. They held a promise to always want what I had to offer.
“They’re alive and well. Same result as you’d get at the hospital. I’m sorry, I assumed you’d have this kind of money handy. Would you like me to let you know about our payment options, Mr. Brennan?”
The little shi—
I stepped forward, eating up all of the distance between us in one go, baring my teeth as I boxed her in with my arms on either side of her shoulders, against the wall.
“What are you playing at, Nix?”
“Nothing.” Her eyes widened innocently. Blue, so terribly blue, and every shade of the color under the sun: ocean, sky, crayon, you name it. “You asked for my services. I assumed you were prepared to pay for them.”
“You don’t need the money.” I was chest-to-chest with her now, and here it was again, that faint ginger smell mixed with flowers and honey that gave me déjà vu of things and places I’d never experienced.
I’ll do things to you you will never forget.
“Neither do you. So pay up. I’ll be seeing you at Thanksgiving dinner. You can pay me then.” Ash smoothed her dress, which was now stained in Becker’s blood.
Right.
The world still turned on its axis, and our families continued to play nice with one another, oblivious to my vendetta. Other than Troy, who knew better than to ever let it slip.
The Fitzpatricks were hosting a Thanksgiving dinner next week. I wouldn’t miss it for the world, but for all the wrong reasons, and none of them had anything to do with their cook’s stuffed turkey.
“Now if you excuse me …” Nix ducked under my shoulder, trying to slip away. I pushed forward, pinning her in place against the wall. If it wasn’t for the slight quivering of her chin, I could have sworn she was cool as a cucumber. But that small shake betrayed her, and I seized the opportunity to tilt said chin upward, forcing her to look at me.
“How about a kiss?” I coaxed, my palm sliding from her wrist to her waist, down the curve of her firm ass, squeezing as I pulled her closer to me. I didn’t like the power shift between us and wanted to remind her who was the boss. I felt her thighs shaking against my sprawled fingers, ready and wanting, shivered into me as I gathered her close. Her body was soft, smooth, feminine. With hidden curves I had no business thinking about and was paid to ignore.
Her heat radiated between our clothes, and I stifled a groan, yanking her braid, extending her neck and forcing her to look at me.
“Would a kiss be a sufficient form of payment?” I murmured, my lips gliding down the side of her neck.
She said nothing, her heart slamming against mine erratically, begging for more.
Rearing my head back, I crashed my mouth against hers punishingly, resenting her for my need to taste her—and myself for yielding to temptation.
It was a brutal kiss, with teeth and claws and tongue, designed to humiliate her, to remind her which one of us was in control.
Aisling’s lips molded over mine immediately, compliant and soft. She moaned gently, her tongue meeting mine thrust for thrust, like we were fucking each other, her fingers curling around the collar of my shirt, drawing me closer. I bit her lower lip until I split it open, her warm, metallic blood trickling into my mouth. She tensed but didn’t break the kiss.
Break the fucking kiss, Aisling.
Show me I’m too much for you.
I sucked on her blood, pulling her entire lip into my mouth, and she let me, the little monster that she was.
“You taste like an ashtray,” she purred into my mouth. Viper-like, her words dripped venom while she still devoured me hungrily, not letting go.
“Maybe so, but you taste like an easy lay, my least favorite flavor of woman.” I chuckled darkly, putting more pressure on her lips, kissing her harder, tasting her blood and her tears and her anguish and enjoying all of them because they were mine.
So fucking salty. So fucking sweet.
I was hard. So hard, I knew I was in real danger of taking her on the surgical table she had used just minutes ago to stitch up the two morons on my payroll. I tore my mouth from hers, brushing my thumb over her cheekbone. She stumbled forward, losing balance. I let her fall on my chest but didn’t help her right herself.
“Now we’re even.” I shoved the wallet back into my pocket, surprised to see that despite feeling her tears earlier, her face was dry and calm.
“Oh, you thought a kiss would be your payment as opposed to the eleven grand you owe me? Oh my…” she clutched the pearls on her neck, twisting them exaggeratedly, like her mother would “…my apologies, Mr. Brennan. I don’t accept sexual favors as payment. That would be my father’s specialty, and I very much doubt he’d be interested in what you have to offer. I would still like the money at Thanksgiving. What’s the common interest your loan sharks use? Forty-five percent? That suits me. Now, have a good rest of the day, Mr. Brennan, and do take care.”
