Page 87 of The Mafia Assassin's Redemption-

Relief that she’s alive makes my legs almost buckle. I grab her, eyes silver and wild, her cheeks tear-stained, but in a move that I know to my bones, she shakes me off, staggering backward.

“I-I’m fine.”

I nod, gritting my teeth. “Seamus, take her to the rectory, get something strong in her. Just enough to take the edge off.”

He reaches for her, but she pushes him away. “I’m not a mouse, I’m not a child, and I’m not weak. I can do it myself. And where’s Father Luigi?”

Harry storms off, shaking, furious, sparking with fire.

“I’ll get something to cover this sacrilegious ass. Should we take him to the usual spot?” Seamus asks.

It takes everything I am to say the next part. “Find out what he knows first. Who hired him, what he wanted.”

I want to go. I need to go. But I need to be here more.

“Where’s the good priest?” Callahan asks. He knows. He knows what it takes for me not to go with Seamus and the guy.

They’ll torture the fuck who dared put a gun to my Harry’stemple. And knowing Cal, he’ll try to protect me by killing the guy off.

Because Callahan can’t stop protecting.

“Don’t kill this guy,” I mutter.” I want that chance.”

“And the Father?” his brother asks again.

“Someone, maybe this ass, attacked him on his morning walk. Mikey took him to get checked at the hospital.”

We both look at the guy.

“Let me know which one,” Callahan says, “and I’ll send a guard. Is that why you’re here?”

“Luigi told me he had something of hers, to come by later. I came by earlier and found him on the street corner. I entered through the rectory. It seemed like a better idea. Why are you here?”

“We followed her. Maybe she isn’t a mouse,” Callahan says. “More of a cat. I’ll get cleanup in.”

Seamus returns in a cassock and throws one on the injured man. “What do you think? Maybe I’ll make Mam happy and become a priest.”

“A bad one,” I mutter. “Don’t kill him until I join you.”

With that, I wait for them to leave, and then I close the church door.

Harry’s in the kitchen of the rectory, viciously lining up vases. She glares at me and pushes past, stalking back into the church, eyes averted from the mess where she’d just been held at gunpoint.

For the first time in a long time, I’m unsure what to do. The moment’s surreal, like ten-year-old Harry is suddenly here, and her anger and fear are searching for a place to aim.

Me.

But she takes a deep breath, and she’s now back to herself. She marches up to the back of the church, dragging a huge paper-wrapped bunch of flowers down the aislefrom a pew.

Fierce as fuck Harry, she’s the bravest person I think I’ve ever met.

Also the dumbest.

Taking three of the huge bunches, I follow her and say, “You deserve a beating.”

“Never realized I had to earn one.”

“No, you have to earn an erotic spanking. But you deserve to be beaten.”