Page 26 of The Mafia Assassin’s Redemption (Mafia Obsession #2)

NINETEEN

torin

I don’t believe in higher powers, and I certainly don’t believe in divine intervention.

But in the quiet of St. Jane’s, the low threat carries right through to the confessional where I happen to be hiding.

I ease the door open, drawing my gun, my heart thudding so fucking loud I can barely hear myself think.

My stomach clenches when my worst fears flash bright behind my eyes.

There’s a fucking guy in a baseball hat with a gun pressed against Harry’s temple.

In church.

Fucking church.

My hand sweats, my grip sure on my gun as I slide off my shoes and make my way silently to them.

My chest squeezes tighter with every step, and I force myself not to rush. One wrong move and the fucker might shoot her.

I can deal with another death on my soul. Another ten. A fucking thousand.

As long as not one of those deaths is Harry .

Not her.

Never her.

“Where is it, bitch?” the man asks, his Belfast accent thick. He jams the gun harder against her head. “Because if I squeeze this trigger?—”

“You squeeze that fucking trigger,” I say, my weapon touching the back of his head, “you fucking hurt so much as an eyelash on her, and I’ll skin you the fuck alive. I’ll slice you to pieces.”

“Not your payout,” he growls. “Not your fight.”

“Mine completely. Let her go.” I stare at his skull. We have to question him. Chances are he’s a for hire who knows nothing, but maybe he might have something to give up if the right buttons are pressed. The urge to blow his brains out is almost overwhelming.

This is Harry he’s threatening.

Harry.

No one gets to do that but me. Ever.

“Maybe,” I say, “I’ll inject you with something so you can’t move, and I’ll torture you. And first? I’ll make you watch me torture and kill every fucking person you care about, so drop the fucking gun and step the fuck away. Now.”

There’s a moment where time stops. Harry doesn’t make a sound. She’s so fucking still.

And the Irish fuck with a gun to her, the one who signed his own death warrant by touching her, shifts. The gun jerks.

Then the world shatters.

It happens so fast. So slow every moment stretches into agonizing hours.

Harry kicks the man. He jerks up with the gun pointed straight up. Then the gun comes back down. His finger presses the trigger. Harry drops to the floor.

The gun goes off.

It’s a reflex, shooting him.

Shooting his hand and not his head is cold, hard skill.

I do it once, twice, and then a third time.

He howls, falling to the ground, the hand useless, a mess of bone fragment and blood and flesh.

“What the fuck, Harry?” I yell, kicking the screaming gobshite and shooting him in the leg.

The door bursts open and Callahan runs in with Seamus. The bleeding guy staggers toward the door, thinking he might actually get away. Cal slams his head into the floor, stomping down on the back of his neck. “We heard the shots. Is she all right?”

“Yes,” Harry says, and I know I’m going to fucking whip her and make her like it.

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’s temple. 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 aisle from 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.”

“With a paddle?” The sarcasm is stark, and it takes me moments to realize her voice is shaking.

“You could have been shot, Harriet.”

She puts the flowers on the table. I follow suit.

“Where’s Luigi?” she asks quietly. “Why was his name on that notepad? Why?—?”

I stop her with a kiss. I can’t help it, I drag her into my arms and kiss her, needing to taste the life that sparks in her, the sweetness that’s pure Harry, and her fire that’s her core.

She kisses me back. As our tongues dance and the soft waves of desire play over us, pulling me down into the deeper currents, time stops once more, for better, different reasons.

I end the kiss and hold her, letting her melt into me and give me some of her fear so I can try to soothe her.

Until she remembers she’s fighting me.

“Let me go. This is all because of you.”

Her facts might be wrong, but her reasoning is right. I’m a killer. I know it. I’d happily pick up my gun and go back to being an assassin just to keep her safe.

She deserves better.

I know for sure now that when the times comes, I won’t be able to let her go.

She’s impossible and mine. It doesn’t even matter she was forced to be mine; it just matters that she is.

And she has been ever since I rescued her .

But it’s shifted from her life being mine to protect, to allow to prosper from a distance, to an obsession with her now that I’ve met the fully formed spitfire version of her.

“Luigi’s okay. He’ll be back soon,” I say, picking my words carefully. “He told me to wait so we could discuss you.”

“So your friend tried to kill me?”

Anger slashes through me because I know I almost failed her. Again. But I push her into the wall, hand holding her chin. She could get away, I’m not using force, but she doesn’t move. It’s like a part of her needs that touch.

“Not my friend. And I’m going to need that paddle.”

She shudders. “Torin… I…”

I lean in to kiss her again. I want her. Desperately. But the cleaning crew’s going to be here soon. And I honestly don’t know if I want to punish or taunt her or just lose myself in the one person I never should.

So I walk out into the church, away from her, trying to get my head in the game. I make arrangements for a guard to be placed here in the church. And when the crew turns up, along with the guard, I figure it’s time to leave.

But she’s selecting flowers like it’s a religion, making creations that fit the church décor. We’re heading into winter and she’s creating mini oases of spring. I’m mesmerized. When she finishes the first one, I ask where she wants it.

It’s not until an hour later that I realize she’s calm and, as I hand her the last flower for the last vase, that I actually had fun.

Harry might be a brat and a natural submissive, but she’s innocent, too. It imbues her soul and touches others. Even someone like me felt it. Fuck. I liked playing with flowers. With her.

I push a hand through my hair as I stare up at Christ on the cross. Torture, I understand. Anguish, too. But unlike this figure, I’m not sure I’ve ever been innocent. Most people aren’t, and I’m so far from that, it’s a wonder I’m not singeing the fucking floor.

“Finding religion?” Harry’s voice is soft as she comes up and slips her hand in mine.

I stare down a moment. “Wondering why I haven’t burned to a crisp.”

“Maybe you’re just a man. A bad one, but a man.”

“One being saved by you?” Our gazes meet and the air throbs.

“I don’t think I have that power, Torin. And if I did, I…”

“You don’t think you should,” I finish, letting go of her hand. “I’ve figured out your punishment for today, for nearly getting yourself killed.”

“And what’s that?”

“Sex club.”

Her mouth drops, and I think we’re past the near miss at the door. The crew is done, and the guard is in place, just inside the church.

The door to the church opens and her face lights up more than it has for me as Father Luigi comes in, followed by Arnold and Dec, who is wearing the cat backpack. My brother has a bandage on one hand, and I don’t even need to see the smugness in Clawzilla’s eyes at getting his way.

Harry rushes to fuss over the priest, and he pats my abs as I pass, mouthing “Later” at me.

Whatever it is can wait because I know the look in Dec’s eyes. I ruffle Arnold’s fur, then head to one of our sex clubs, Silk, in the Lower East Side. We now own the building next door, and that’s where we conduct more unsavory business.

Right now, my big computer at home is running the photos of the dead man and his tattoos. I think they’re Russian… But considering none of these pieces fi t together, who the fuck knows if we were in the wrong place at the wrong time or if it was some kind of setup.

If it was a setup for us, then it was convoluted and complicated, because if I didn’t notice the gun or if…

Or if someone was meant to turn up, and because it was us, it triggered the cops being called.

No one’s leaving that much cocaine—no one.

I finally get to Silk and go into the building next door, punch in the code for the reinforced basement, and breathe a small sigh of relief to see the asshole from the church still breathing, though worse for wear.

“Anything?” I ask Seamus.

“Not overly talkative. Claiming he was hired in the Bronx, blah fucking blah.”

I go to the man chained to the wall, face brutalized, swollen, his cheekbone broken and one eye taken over by bruised flesh.

“Why did you go after the girl?”

“I got paid to.” At least that’s what I think he says. That accent is damn thick. “Or maybe I got paid to hurt you.”

I kick him in the balls, and then as he screams, I punch him in the stomach. As I turn, I can see the knife on a tray of torture instruments as well as an array of teeth.

Seamus has been busy. Callahan leans back against the opposite wall.

“Thanks for not killing him,” I say.

“He’s a gobshite , being smug, telling tall tales about nothing.” Cal grins at me. But there’s zero humor there. “I’d be more forgiving if it was interesting.”

“Boring shite ,” Seamus adds. “The same old crap of ‘someone paid me, no name, just numbers.’ But he knows her name, and he says he was told if he found this special thing?— ”

“Doesn’t know what that is,” Cal interjects. “Said it was above his paygrade. Maybe he’ll talk to you, Torin.”

Suddenly the guy whines like a mortally injured animal. “Torin Murphy? It’s your fault. It should’ve gone down, but instead…” He’s fading, his voice thready, and I lean in. “…Quinn killed… you took it… Bianco… danger.” Then he rallies a moment and spits out, “The girl’s worthless?—”

I grab the scalpel and punch it into his chest and then, the fury consuming me, eating me in giant red flames, I snap his neck.

My breath comes in hard as I try to get myself together. “What he said didn’t make sense.”

“None of it made sense. He was like that since we got here, not the names, but trying to sell us crap. Stories.” Callahan pushes back from the wall and comes to me, grabbing me by the back of the head and holding me close. “Stories.”

“It’s my fault about Shiv. Donal’s rotting in prison.” My mind moves frantically over the words the man said. “Took what? How can Harry be something I took and worthless? He mentioned Bianco… I’m killing him, I’m?—”

“Shiv got herself killed, and Donal robbed and beat that politician. Mentioning her uncle? No, that was odd. Don’t you think it might be a little… neat?” Callahan asks.

This time, Seamus joins in. “We’ll visit Bianco. Look into him.”

“I will.” I try to rip free from my brother, but he won’t let me.

“No, and that’s a fucking order, Tor. An order,” Cal growls. “Think about the words. Garbled, trying to get us riled, chasing phantoms and triggers. Chances are this has to do with either her background or with us. You see what I’m saying?”

This time I pull free, and he lets me go .

Seamus looks at me, his face full of anger. Not at me, but over the fact we’re being messed with.

“This started with the hit, but it’s more than that, and I can’t work it out. The body and the drugs?—”

“Coulda just been there to get someone else and we walked into it,” Seamus mutters. “Stranger things have happened.”

“I’m going to Bianco?—”

“No.” Cal shakes his head. “We’ll do that. Because this dead fuck’s final words were either too neat or he threw out things to rile you. You have one job. Protect your wife. Keep her safe.”

He’s right. She is the number one thing. But the truth? I need that to protect her. And I’m going to find out. One way or another.