Page 21 of Duncan (Irish Mob of Boston #1)

Duncan

“He fuckin’ shot me!”

I rolled my eyes at Ronan McGuire as he sat on the hospital bed while the doctor stitched him up.

“It was barely a graze. If he wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”

Ronan growled, and I reminded him, “You asked me to bring him.”

“I didn’t think he’d shoot me. Jesus Christ, it’s been five fuckin’ years. He needs to let that shit go.”

“Would you?” I asked as I leaned against the wall in the doctor’s office. Dr. Marks was a family friend who knew how to keep his mouth shut.

Still, I waited until he was done and had left the room before asking Ronan what I needed to know.

“Do we know if Kelley is here?”

“I have people out all over town. No one has seen him yet.” Ronan stood and grabbed his shirt. He winced as he slipped his arms into it.

As soon as we walked into his office, Liam had shot the fucker in the arm.

I got it. Liam was still pissed.

“How reliable is the intel?”

“Tyran thought Sean was dying. He didn’t think we’d get to him in time, so he talked freely in front of him.”

Tyran was a puzzle. The moves he’d made appeared smart and calculated. But we knew better. Tyran wasn’t smart by any means. He was muscle, not brains. That meant whoever was pulling his strings was a master puppeteer.

Tyran was easy to manipulate. And with his brawn, he made a good motivator to keep others, like Kelley, in line.

“If Kelley is here, my people will find him,” Ronan insisted.

We climbed into the SUV and made our way back to Ronan’s office.

“I was surprised Sal came with you.”

“Yea, he said he wanted out of the city, but he hates leaving the city. He wants to make sure he’s the one that ensures Kelley never leaves New Orleans alive.”

“After the way he did Caity dirty, I don’t blame him.”

The rest of the ride was quiet. Ronan’s driver pulled into the warehouse, and I shook my head.

“Really, Ro?”

“Fuck, yes. My little brother needs a reminder of who’s on the fuckin’ top,” he snarled as he stepped out of the vehicle.

“Ever thought about apologizing?”

“I don’t have anything to fuckin’ apologize for. His wife was a lying slut.”

He stormed ahead of me, and I held back for a moment when I saw Cian step outside.

“Sal’s letting this go on?”

Cian rolled his eyes. “He said they have to work it out. Ro won’t kill his brother.”

“You can’t say the same about Liam.” Cian looked back at the warehouse and winced when we heard the yell. I slapped him on the back. “Let’s go play referee before we lose two of our best men.”

It was hours later before Liam and Ronan called a truce. Neither got away unscathed, but they were both alive.

The two men might never be friends, but they would always be brothers, and despite the shit the woman who came between them had tried to do, family always came first.

Liam sat the end of the bar at O’Brian’s in the French Quarter, nursing a beer. Ronan was at a corner booth with Cian, Mac, Sal, and me, along with his younger brother Gavin, Ronan’s second-in-command. And Rian Rafferty, Ronan’s muscle.

“Do we have anything?” Sal asked, his patience wearing thin.

“We have confirmed Kelley is in New Orleans.”

“Has he been seen?” I asked, knowing that his name on a hotel register didn’t mean shit.

“Yes, we have someone in the hotel,” Ronan confirmed.

“Then why the fuck are we sitting here? Let’s go get him,” Mac said.

“We can’t,” Gavin added. “We don’t think he’s actually staying there.”

My eyes traveled between Gavin and Ronan. They were having a silent conversation between the two of them. Mac whistled, and Liam moved from his seat and joined us at the booth.

Liam narrowed his eyes at his brothers, as if he knew why Mac had called him over.

“Tell them,” he growled. “Or I will.”

Gavin released a loud sigh and looked at Sal. “Darby Collins works at the hotel. She checked him in. We think Kelley might have recognized her.”

“What the fuck is Darby doing down here? She’s supposed to be in college.”

Darby Collins was the daughter of Lillian O’Shea Collins. Darcy’s best friend when we were kids. After Darcy disappeared, Lillian shut us out. She married someone outside the family and had four boys and a daughter.

While she stayed in Boston, she wanted nothing to do with us. But we watched out for them anyway. Two of the boys had joined the family, much to Lillian’s dismay.

“She dropped out and came here. Lillian doesn’t know,” Ronan confessed. Then swept his eyes to Liam.

“All of it,” Liam snarled at his brothers.

Ronan rubbed his hands over his face. “Fuck.” Giving his focus to Sal, he said, “You have to understand, she insisted. And I knew it was better to have control over the situation rather than let her go off and do her own thing.”

Sal slammed his hand on the table and yelled, “What is she doing?”

“She’s working as a honey trap.”

My mouth hung open as I stared at Ronan. Until this moment, I had considered Ronan a smart man.

“What the fuck did you say?” Sal’s hands hit the tabletop, and he started to rise.

“Not here, boss,” I said as I grabbed his arm, pulling him back down.

“What the fuck were you thinking, Ro?” Cian asked. Mac glared at the head of the Louisiana branch of the organization like he wanted to rip his head off and to hell with who saw him do it.

“We knew you would be pissed, boss. But the girl grew up hearing stories. Two of her older brothers work for you. She knew you would never let her in, so she came here.” Gavin lowered his eyes to the table and quietly added, “After she had tried to work for Kelley.”

“Lillian will kill me when she finds out,” Sal whispered.

He was right. Lillian O’Shea, now Collins, grew up in this life. She knew how things went for women. I’d believed she knew what happened to Darcy when she left, but either she was telling the truth, or she was the best fucking actress I had ever met.

“You should have fuckin’ called me.”

“She’s only been here a few months. I was waiting to see how it worked out before I added to the shit that was piling up,” Ronan confessed.

“And how is she working out?” I asked, curious about Lillian’s daughter.

“She’s the best I’ve ever seen. She wraps men around her finger so fuckin’ fast that if you blink, you’ll miss it.” Ronan rubbed the back of his neck. “I would have sent her after Kelley if she hadn’t gone to him first.”

“You’re an asshole,” Liam told his brother.

“Liam, you interested in taking over down here?” Sal asked, and Ronan’s head snapped to gape at our boss. “’Cause once Lily finds out her only daughter is down here working as a fuckin’ honey trap, Ronan is dead.”

“No fuckin’ way, boss. Give it to Gavin.”

“Hey,” Ronan quipped. “I can handle Lillian Collins.”

We all stared at him, and Mac was the first to start laughing.

“No one can handle Lily. Not even her fuckin’ husband, and that dude is no joke. Piss him off and you would never see him coming,” Mac said.

“I want to speak to Darby tomorrow,” Sal said, sobering the moment of levity. “We need to find Kelley before Tyran, or whoever was sent here to kill him, does.”

“Alright, enough business. I need to get laid,” Sal said as he stood and moved around the room. There was a redhead sitting at the bar that had caught his eye.

I shook my head at him.

“I’m heading back,” I told Mac.

“I’ll go with you.”

I nodded and grabbed my suit jacket off the back of the chair. We left the others at the bar and stepped out into the stifling heat of the French Quarter. It was late at night, and the humidity was suffocating, but the streets of New Orleans rivaled New York City this time of year.

Mardi Gras was a monthlong festival of parties, culminating with Fat Tuesday. Months of excessive food, drink, sex, and mayhem were experienced, before Lent took over and everything that brought joy to life was given up for forty fucking days.

Mac and I pushed our way through the throngs of people. Keeping our wits about us. Not only were we looking for Kelley at every opportunity, but anytime a city had this many people in one place, you had to watch out for pickpockets.

I turned my head as someone brushed against me, and I saw a woman with long dark hair hurrying after someone.

Freyja?

I waited for the woman to turn around, but she never did. She disappeared among the people. I had only seen the back of her head, and the long flowing skirt that swished around her ankles.

Was it her?

Or was I imagining a vision of my desire coming to life?

“Hey, you see something?” Mac asked, grabbing my arm to get my attention.

“No.” I stared in the direction of where the woman went. I wanted to follow. Something floated in the air around me. The scent of something familiar.

Lavender, and something I couldn’t name. But I knew where it came from.

It was her.

She was here, in New Orleans.

A memory drifted through my mind, and I remembered what she had first said to me.

“In six weeks, I have a commitment that will change my life forever. So, all I could offer you would be a temporary fling.”

Six weeks had passed since my night with Freyja.

“There’s someone else.”

“Fuck,” I cursed. She was here with another fucking man. I stepped forward in the direction she disappeared. I needed to find her. The desire to kill someone raged within me, and when Mac stepped in front of me, that rage was directed at him.

“Move,” I hissed.

“What the fuck is going on? Where are you going?”

“To fuckin’ kill someone,” I muttered as I pushed past him. I shoved my way through crowds of people. I knew there was no hope of finding her among the mobs of people dancing in the streets. But I had to try.

I ignored the man behind me calling out my name. He could follow if he wanted, but nothing would stop me.

And then suddenly there she was. Her back to me. Talking to a large black man with dreads. He was shirtless, and when he reached for her, my hand went to the gun at my hip.

With my right hand on my hip, my left reached out for her arm. Grasping her bicep, I spun her around and whispered, “ Mo bandia .”

Only when she turned, green eyes stared back at me.

I thought for sure it was her. The man that now stood behind her growled, and she placed a hand on his chest.

“It’s ok, Juju. This is important.”

She turned back to me and smiled. “It’s you.” She nodded and stepped away. When I blinked, she was gone, and I spun around looking for her.

“Where the fuck did she go?” I asked out loud.

The man she called Juju glared at me.

“Where is she?” I asked, and my hand tightened on the butt of my gun.

Suddenly, a hand covered mine and a whispered hiss said, “What the fuck is wrong with you? There are thousands of people out here.”

I looked at Mac. He hadn’t seen what just happened.

I turned back to ask Juju again, and he was gone.

The woman looked at me as though she knew who I was. I hated this fucking city with its voodoo and spirits. We needed to find Kelley and go back to Boston.

To Hell with this shit.