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Page 1 of A Trap So Flawless (Titans and Tyrants #4)

Darragh

I t’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.

“Preliminary reports say there was a lot of alcohol in his system.”

“Bullshit,” I shoot back. Not bullshit that my grandda was drinking, but bullshit that it would have contributed to his drowning.

He could hold his liquor better than anyone.

The man could have walked a tightrope over that goddamn river after drinking all night.

There isn’t enough alcohol in all of Dublin that would have caused Callum Gowan to…

what? Just fall over a guardrail, hit his head, and sink into the water?

It reeks. And it reminds me of the drowning on Georgian Bay. Connor McNair, wannabe rapist. He was drunk, too. He had blunt force trauma, too. He drowned, too.

And none of that shit was by mistake.

It was fucking by design.

Now I just need to know who had similar designs on Callum Gowan. Not an easy task to narrow it down. A man like him probably has dozens of names on that list.

Had. Had dozens of names.

Shit.

“Gardaí will be no fucking help,” I mutter. “Either some dirty son of a bitch working for one of grandda’s enemies is helping cover something up, or they’re so eager to celebrate the death of a crime lord that they don’t give two flying fucks who did it.”

Rowan gives a grunt of agreement. He knows what I know. Callum Gowan didn’t fucking drown. Or if he did, it’s because somebody smashed his bloody brains in first.

Outside, grey clamps down on green. Clouds as thick as wool press downwards from above and buildings punch up to meet them as we leave behind the rolling rural grass for Dublin streets.

Before I know it, we’re in Ballymun in North Dublin.

Blocks of flats just like the one I lived in – and my parents died in – line the streets like gravestones.

There’s a paralyzing sort of nostalgia, being back here. Ireland is in me so deep I couldn’t cut it out even if I tried. Those years, those fights, the blood. The streets that made me.

It’s all here.

Except for Callum Gowan.

It’s fucking jarring, the way the buildings still stand, the cars still drive, and the rain still pisses down without him. Feels like all of Dublin should have ground to a halt in the vacuum of his absence. Everything collapsing in on itself.

But the city survived. And so did I.

I yank out my phone and stab my finger at the screen, navigating to my contacts and scrolling down to the single word the makes me feel like my blood is acid inside my own veins. Pet.

I’ve had Valentina’s number for quite a while now.

Never used it.

Fucking hell. I want to. Want to hear the perfect poison of her voice.

She’d probably hang up the moment she knew it was me. Or maybe take just long enough on the line to repeat the words she said to me last night.

I hate you.

My lips curl at the memory. I’ll take her hate. Drink it down like the finest whiskey.

She’s mine whether she likes it – likes me – or not.