Page 15 of The Mafia Assassin’s Redemption (Mafia Obsession #2)

TWELVE

harry

I need the church.

It’s Monday morning. I’m always at St. Jane’s on a Monday morning. So I snuck out of the house. I crept past the sleeping cat on the bed, who cracked one eye at me, and then the dog who followed me to the front door, biting my coat.

He couldn’t hold me back, though. I rushed out five minutes after the family don, or whatever the hell the Irish version is called, left in running clothes at five o’clock.

All I did was walk around for a while, trying to wake myself up, but the nightmare of my reality is pretty much near impossible to escape. As I navigate the streets in the area, I try to keep putting more distance between me and the brownstone so that Torin won’t be able to find me.

Fucking Torin.

I know it’s stupid running off in the dark of the morning, the cold so bitter as it blasts through my coat and dress.

But… fucking Torin.

Everything aches and I just… I just… I hate myself for letting him touch me. No, not even that. To get out of the situation aliv e, we had to go through with it. I had to. He’d be fine either way. Me, not so much.

But I didn’t have to like it. I didn’t have to want it. Or beg for more. Or come so much it’s hard to walk straight.

I gulp in the stinging air. Dammit. I betrayed myself last night.

I need to get out of here, get far away from this mess I willingly entered into. No, I need a gun to shoot Torin.

The hatred burns higher and brighter with every step I take down the cracked sidewalk.

My fingers are balled up tight and stuffed into my coat pockets. There’s not even room to forgive him in this. Not for the past and not for saving me. After all, how can I say he saved me when he’s the one who killed Bernardo and got me in this mess in the first place?

I shiver. And this time it has nothing to do with the frigid air.

It does have everything to do with a long-ago past I don’t understand. Like why he wanted us dead. What my parents did and…

I turn left on the street that’s waking up and the familiar sight of St. Jane’s welcomes me.

Looking up at the tall spires, I can see why it was used as a smuggling base. And why it’s perfect for both a meeting place and hiding place for women seeking sanctuary and a new life.

Even though Father Luigi married me to Torin last night, he did it because he was forced to. And he’ll know what to do for me now. Maybe he’ll hide me.

Maybe…

I hurry up the stone steps and pull open the heavy wooden door. I step into the foyer and rest my back against it as I choke down the sacred air and let some semblance of peace roll through me .

But only nausea makes my gut clench.

I move down the aisle, my shoulders hunched over, ignoring the growing sense of foreboding as I walk through the sacristy. I turn right into the house and left into the kitchen. I stop short in the doorway, the breath all but sucked from my lungs.

“You.” I spit out the word like it’s poison.

Torin blows steam from a mug, then takes a sip.

He flashes a half grin at the good father.

My pulse hammers hard and I slam a frustrated fist on the countertop.

Torin looks tired, and still, he’s the most delicious man I’ve laid eyes on.

I want to channel his cat and growl and claw his pretty blue eyes out of his skull.

The asshole doesn’t even bother to look at me.

He just says to Father Luigi, whose back is to me, “Seems like you owe me twenty bucks, Father.”

Father Luigi rises from his chair and turns toward me, guilt etched into his expression.

“You—you stalker,” I hiss, heat flaring in my cheeks.

“You’re a stalker, Father?” Torin asks lightly. “Kinky, but then again, that’s the Catholic church for you.”

I gasp.

Father Luigi blushes. “I don’t wish to interfere with your first day as a married couple.” He scuttles up to me and whispers, “Be good, kid. Torin is…” He presses his lips together, seeming to think carefully about his next words. “The Murphys are a scary family. And he saved you from the Riccis.”

I open my mouth and then snap it closed again.

Because honestly, I don’t even know what to say.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be back to business as usual.” Then he raises his voice and clears his throat. “After your honeymoon.”

And I’m left alone with the man who used me last night—the unwelcome memories of our torrid, yet so erotic wedding night crashing over me like an all-consuming wave.

The roomy kitchen suddenly shrinks and I immediately become claustrophobic.

“It’s a good Irish whiskey,” Torin says, holding out the mug to me.

I glare at him, my lips twisting with disgust. “It’s not even six.”

“And?” He takes another sip, puts down the mug, and walks over to me. “What do you expect from me, Harry? I’m a dirty, filthy Irish killer. Of course I drink whiskey at the crack of dawn.”

We’re too close but not close enough. I want to bury my face in his chest to breathe in his scent and lose myself in his warmth, right before I slide a blade between his ribs and watch him bleed out.

Holy fuck.

When did I become so utterly bloodthirsty?

Again?

When I was aged ten through sixteen, the thought of finding him and bringing him back to life so I could kill him again comforted me at night. It was only during my sixteenth year that I actually researched what happened that night in Dublin.

A tragic fire. That’s what the article said. An entire family perished. Father, mother, child.

I couldn’t find anything about him, so I figured I’d killed him in Dublin.

It was around then I thought I saw him near the school, talking to Father Dermott.

And it struck me that if the world thought I was dead, but I wasn’t, then maybe it was the same for him. I just assumed he was dead.

The possibility that he wasn’t gave me night terrors and I woke up screaming for a month afterward .

But finally, I decided since he hadn’t already killed me or come for me, then Father Dermott must not have given me up.

And my fantasy of resurrecting him to kill him, like some kind of psycho version of the resurrection of Christ, died along with my fear of him finding me.

I’m not sure why. I guess seeing him in the flesh somehow turned my bloodthirsty fantasies into something lewd and tasteless. Yes, he was a monster, but I was still fantasizing about murdering a living man.

Of course, now I don’t mind those thoughts.

“And just what are you thinking, Harry?” he asks, his nose pushing my hair away from my ear so he’s now nestled against it.

The aroma of coffee and sugar and whiskey winds around me like a strange magic dust. It has the power to make me sway against him.

“My blood on your hands, staining your clothes? Dripping from the hole in my chest where you ripped my heart out?”

“You’re sick.”

He moves closer so his mouth is over mine, not quite touching it, and my entire body clenches with unwanted desire. “Hate to break it to you, but I don’t have one.”

I lean up, mouth brushing his, and I’m rewarded with his breath like a kiss on me. “Because monsters… vicious, brutal things… don’t have hearts.”

He runs his tongue over my lips, and I whimper as he sucks my bottom lip in between his teeth and bites softly down. He lets go.

“No, but they know how to fuck and please and stoke your particular fires. Right?”

My eyes flutter shut, my core now throbbing with sexual need. My panties cling to my pussy, soaked with desire that paints the top of my thighs as I try to press my legs together.

He shoves his thigh between my legs so my pussy grinds against his jeans. I know he feels the wetness because he laughs and whispers, “I’m not kissing you in this literal house of God.”

My eyes snap open as I realize I was waiting for those kisses.

“Been there, done that.”

He starts to mash his thigh up on my pussy and I can’t but rock against him, a small moan breaking free.

“Fuck, Harry, you’d test the patience of a saint. Lucky I’m not that.”

“You’re the devil.”

He stops his leg and steps back, his eyes dark. “Remember that.”

“How could I forget?”

“Remember who and what I am. I might seem charming”—he ignores my spurt of bitter laughter—“but I’m not someone you want to mess with. I’ve killed a lot of people and not lost sleep over a single one.”

“Like my parents.”

“I’ve killed, just like your parents,” he grinds out. “Don’t be another addition.”

Shit. I shake, fear pinching at my skin, hate making it hard to see. I press into the wall as much as I can as he steps back and sips his drink like we’ve been discussing the weather.

“So, are you about ready to go, or do you have jobs to do around here?”

He asks this so pleasantly that my stomach roils. Did Luigi tell him about the network I run?

“Now that’s interesting,” he murmurs over the top of the mug. “Your face. What are you hiding from me?”

“My affair with Father Luigi?”

“I know about that.” His light tone is at odds with the savagery that lights up those midnight-blue eyes, and he downs the rest of his whiskey.

“It’s over, of course. The only cock you’ll be sucking or taking up your pretty, spankable ass is mine.

Although now that I know about you and your stud of a priest, I’ll be fucking your ass sooner rather than later.

I don’t have to be gentle, do I? Since you’re already experienced in that. ”

“What?” My mouth drops open as my pulse goes haywire. “The fuck ?”

“Or maybe you want to flip your skirt up right now so we can try out this dining table.”

“You’re repulsive.”

“Really? Didn’t seem like you thought that last night when you were all ‘More, Torin, give me more.’”

I wrap my fingers tight around the molding on the wall, not knowing what to do. My heart’s hammering so hard it might crack all my ribs.

He sets the mug down and all humor vanishes. “Get moving. Now. We’re going home. And Harry?”

“What?”

“Don’t fucking try to sneak out again.”