Page 1

Chapter 1
Darragh
It’s raining in Dublin.
Fat drops pelt my suit jacket on the tarmac of the private airstrip. It’s the same suit I was wearing last night in Toronto. The same one I was wearing when I was with her.
When I danced with her. When I fucked her.
When I shoved my ring into her hands and told her I’d be back for her.
I haven’t showered. Haven’t slept. Haven’t done shit but get on a private plane and fling myself across an ocean since then.
I hated every minute of that goddamn flight.
If I could kill a kilometre, I would.
I’d strangle every single one that’s opened up between us. All five thousand two hundred fifty of them.
Even though I’m the one who put them there.
But I had to come here. Back to Dublin. My grandda is dead and someone has to clean up the mess.
And then?
Someone has to pay.
I tilt my head back, letting water spill across my burning eyes.
“Boss?” Rowan calls to me. “Car’s ready.”
I pull my head back down to squint at him through the rain.
Rowan is dressed much less formally than I am. Of course, he didn’t come straight from a fancy-ass masquerade ball where he unceremoniously presented an engagement ring to his beautiful, horrified fiancée. He’s got on a pair of old, worn blue jeans and a white T-shirt that’s already soaked-through from the rain. The water has turned his red ponytail to a darker colour much closer to mine. He carries two bags – one for each of us. He packed them both.
“Let’s go,” I say, already striding towards the waiting black vehicle.
The sooner I deal with all this shit…
The sooner I’ll get back to her.
And make her mine for good.
“Go over it all. Again,” I command Rowan once we’re in the car. He slips easily into left-lane driving. The windshield wipers slam back and forth, smearing the glass.
“Callum’s body was found in the River Liffey,” he says. “Gardaí are saying the cause of death is drowning, compounded by blunt force trauma to the head. They think he fell and hit his head on the way down.”
Rowan’s already told me all of this. But I need to hear it again. And again. I need to make it real. Because the realest thing clinging to me right now is the feeling of Valentina’s bleeding cunt clamping down on my cock while she came. The sound of her moans. The hate and the horror and the desire in her heart-shaped face.
She’s all I can fucking think about.
This is exactly the problem. This is what he warned you about.
The very man who warned me about this sort of obsession was the one whose body got pulled from The Liffey yesterday. Feels like a fucking omen.
Feels like fucking pain. Or it would, if a blanketing fog of sleep-deprivation and curdling lust for the woman I just left behind weren’t dulling every other sensation.
So wrapped up in her I can’t even fucking grieve him yet.