Page 36 of The Mafia Assassin’s Redemption (Mafia Obsession #2)

TWENTY-EIGHT

harry

I gulp down oxygen to calm myself, but it’s hard with a gun pointed at my heart. I stare at Joan. But Torin looks at her, stone-faced, cold.

“Siobhan.”

For a moment nothing happens. The world hangs, unmoving.

Then she snarls, her face crumpling with pent-up fury. She swings her gun at Torin, who holds his steady in her direction.

“You fucking bastard,” she cries out. “This? You chose this? After me?”

I want to speak, but words don’t come. They catch in my constricted throat. How can I say a damn word? I’ve just gone and shattered the looking glass after being thrown through it. I’m trapped in a living nightmare.

Siobhan?

The woman he loved, who died? Supposedly died?

And she’s gorgeous.

Those comments to me in the church make a sudden, terrible sense.

“It’s been twelve years, Shiv, and to be fair, I was told you were dead.” Torin looks at her, not at me. At her. “I went to your funeral.”

Her eyes narrow and her ire burns flames around her, searing my senses. “With a love like ours?” she asks, mocking. Then she turns horribly, deadly serious. “You should’ve known I was alive.”

It’s like a knife to the heart because he just looks at her and nods. “I did love you.”

Those words cut into me, so deep I can feel the blood flooding my insides.

“Did?” she says. “Did?”

But Torin just sighs softly. “A long time ago, Shiv. Yeah, I did. As much as someone no more than a kid could. Jesus, we were young. And you… you died. I was told you died.”

“You didn’t wait before marrying her .” She waves the gun from me to him and me and then back to him again.

He takes a step closer to her and she snaps the gun to me again, and he stops.

“Shiv, you had years to make yourself known.”

“It took me a long time to recover. I was in a coma for seven months.” She shakes her head, and with her gun still pointed at me, her eyes are fixed on him.

It’s like she’s seeing him and not seeing him, like a part of her is in the past. “I died three times on the operating table and apparently, they had to revive me when I got to the hospital. After my so-called family dumped me at the emergency room and took off.”

“I told Donal and Gerry to take you to the hospital, to make sure they did everything to save you. I was told you were dead. You understand that, right?”

Part of me wants to curl up in a ball and huddle in a corner. This is his love, his life, back from the dead, like a bad soap opera, playing out in my living room.

Except …

Except Torin’s not being loving. He’s being kind, but that’s not the same.

And I recognize the difference now.

He’s trying to smooth out and soothe the situation, de-escalate her maniacal actions, but I don’t hear love in his tone, just long-ago connections he’s trying to graze.

Or maybe I’m being na?ve and it’s wishful thinking on my part.

“You all right there, Harry?” he asks me, like he can pick up my rioting thoughts through the ethos.

“I think so.”

“She thinks so, Shiv. Why don’t we let her go and have this out, you and me? She doesn’t need to be involved.”

Her gun snaps to him and then back to me. “No. I’m not stupid. I’ve been following you both. You care for her. You…” Her voice cracks. “If she leaves, it’ll be in a body bag.”

“Those are words that earn a death sentence, Shiv. For you.” Torin’s voice is flat and deadly, and I’m not sure the promise registers. Then he pauses. “Tell me about why you never reached out. I’m listening. Was it two months in a coma?”

“Seven months. Seven fucking months in a coma!” she bites out. “They moved me to the UK, to a facility for long-term coma patients. I was there as a Jane fucking Doe. Scared the shite out of the nurse when I woke up screaming.”

Her gun starts to shake again, and she can’t settle her gaze until Torin murmurs, “Look at me, Shiv.”

She does, but the gun stays trained on me. I don’t dare move.

“Couldn’t remember much,” she says, voice choked.

“but I was fucking angry. It took me a long time, too long to recover and piece it all together. Once I got my memory back, then I had to piece the events together. Things… some th ings don’t sit right.

I can’t… we called in the Serbs to make some cash. I think…”

My stomach turns to lead as acid burns up the sides of my throat. He?—

But he’s not moving.

And he’s homed in on her like a sniper.

An assassin.

Even before he says it, I know the truth now.

If anyone called in those men who stormed the farmhouse, it was her. Not Torin.

Because he risked his life for me.

Saved me.

And he’s the best bad man I know.

“You don’t remember, right? You followed me…” But his finger moves on the trigger, just the tiniest little bit. “You followed me because you called them in. And you didn’t want me shot.”

“I loved you. I still love you, Torin.” But her voice is laced with viciousness, and I don’t hear love in her tormented tone at all.

“You fucking called in monsters and pretended to taunt them with Molotov cocktails and gunfire. But you got caught. Fuck… no wonder Donal didn’t wait around and took off.” He stares right at her and nods. “The Serbs came looking, didn’t they? They were after you.”

“I needed money, and that family was shit. All I had to do was take them out, earn the money, kill the Serbs. Easy.” Her hand trembles with the gun on me a moment longer, then she swings it at him. And it takes me a moment to realize she means my family.

I want to rip her face off.

But all I can do is stand here .

“I didn’t… you should have come for me,” Siobhan growls. “Not the Serbs. Not the Raos.”

His gaze rakes over her. “You look like you did well for yourself without me.”

“I got into shit, and when I remembered everything, I was already stuck owing and working for them.”

I’m not sure who she means, but I don’t even know if it matters.

What matters is she’s here and had years to plan and plot and grow her twisted hate and resentment toward him.

“Prisons don’t always have bars, Torin. There are other types.

Some that shine bright with pretty things.

But when I could, I managed to escape mine and come looking for you. And here you fucking are.”

“Here I fucking am,” he says.

“I was going to surprise you, Tor, but then you married her.” She tosses me a dark look. “A fucking blood marriage. Had to look that shite up, too.”

“Shiv,” he says gently. “I didn’t know any of this. And I’m sorry, but we can talk. Okay? We’ll put the guns down and we’ll talk.”

“It’s too late for that.” Her gun shakes even more. She’s so far from the smooth, sophisticated woman I met in St. Jane’s that my heart hurts a little for her. “I remember how you looked at me, Torin. You don’t look at me that way now. You look at her like that.”

“No,” he says. “I looked at you the way I always did, and Harry, I look at her as I see her.”

It’s not an answer, or maybe it is, but she snarls, and it’s clear the answer’s not one she likes.

Then realization hits me like a crushing wave. He just told her I’m special. Whether he meant to or not, I can see in her face that’s what she believes he said.

I want to tell her I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for him to do that, but it strikes me that maybe she’s lost her mind a little, lost hold of some reality, because he doesn’t look at me like the love of his life as she claimed he did her.

I’m a burden, a thing, something he wants to rid himself of.

Torin wants me to run away because he’s as obsessed as me, but that’s not love, at least not for him. It will never be love, and I know that now.

“Harry, why don’t you go get some whiskey?” he asks me, his eyes never leaving Shiv.

It’s a tone I haven’t heard before, like he’s tiptoeing on eggshells that cover landmines, and if one shell breaks… kaboom.

I frown. “But?—”

“Or whatever you have.” He still doesn’t take his gaze off Siobhan.

I take a step back.

Siobhan’s hand relaxes and the gun stops shaking. Now centered on me. “No, stay here. I’m fine. I don’t want a drink.”

Now Torin takes a small step, closer to me, and the gun swings back at him. “Christ, Shiv. It’s been ten fucking years. Tell you what? Lower your gun, leave now without hurting Harry, and you’ll be good; you’ll have a future.”

“She can’t be allowed to live,” Siobhan says through clenched teeth. “You know that.”

“I know if you try to hurt or kill her, you’ll stop breathing. But right now, I’m giving you a choice. You can walk away and never cross my path again. You can live a good life. Have a life.”

My blood turns utterly cold and sticky in my veins. Breathing is a challenge with that damn gun in her hand. The truth of his words shines, naked and bright. He means it.

He’ll kill her.

The monster in him is showing .

And I have a horrible feeling even if she agrees, he’ll hunt her down and destroy her.

For me.

I choke down a sob.

“Donal’s lucky I only got him arrested for leaving me. I could have killed him. But this one?” she says, nodding at Harry.

“Harry,” Torin says. “Her name’s Harry. Just go. Do the smart thing and you live. Hate me, but not her, never her. She’s the good we couldn’t ever be.”

“You love her?” she asks, a tear in her voice.

“I don’t do love anymore, Shiv. And everything else is water under the bridge.” Torin stops. “Water, Shiv. Gone now with time. You live with being left for dead. I live with choosing to save you and getting other people killed.”

“What makes all this worse,” she snarls, “is the so-called love of your life accepting you’re just dead and gone when you aren’t.”

“Are you even listening to yourself, Shiv? You sound crazy. I told them to get you to the hospital, to save you. Donal told me you were dead. I mourned you. And life moved on. It always does. But we… we aren’t going to be a thing again.”

I shouldn’t be here. The thought screams in my head. I’m caught in an impossibly intimate moment that’s not mine, but one I inadvertently caused.

If he didn’t choose to go in and save me, then he’d have taken off with her, made sure she got to the hospital, under her name, and saved her years, saved her the doomed path she ended up on.

They might be happy now. Have children. And I… by him coming after me and saving me and leaving her fate to others, he sealed it.

I reel back and barely notice the gun as it moves to me.

“This is my fault,” I whisper.

I don’t think she hears, but Torin does because even through the roaring of blood and the haze of shock, his sudden gaze cuts through.

“You didn’t even mourn me a year,” she screams. “You were fucking that Niamh Roberston?—”

“This is the last time I’m saying it. You were dead as far as anyone knew. Dead, Shiv. I mourned. I ripped my heart out, all the rest, but it’s been over ten years. Do you think we’d be together now if you hadn’t been shot?”

She glares at him. “You disappoint me. I thought you’d be more than…

this. I thought you’d gone and married her for the Rao fortune.

Shit, Tor, I made more from her uncle than you’ve made from her.

More from every other prick who crossed me.

At first I wanted to taunt you, get you riled up like old times, wonder who was smart enough to play with you like that. ”

Her gun continues to waver between me and Torin.

“Then in that Irish bar uptown, when you chased me out, I thought you were back, but you decided to stop and play hero. Really, Torin?”

The thing is, I don’t think he plays hero. I think he does what is right more often over wrong, and if someone is hurt, he’ll help. And he’ll even walk though fire to save a little girl from burning to death.

Because I’d have stayed hidden until it was too late.

No. I stayed hidden until it was too late. And Torin had to save me.

“We can get her money, though, take on Manhattan, us against the world.”

“I’m not a kid. I’m not an ‘us against the world’ guy. I’m a Murphy. Not a Quinn. You have causes. I have my family and our organization. And we don’t want to rule everything. ”

“But you rule enough. I’m not good enough?” she spits at him.

“We’re not together Shiv, and I don’t think you’d be a good fit for me now.” He shrugs, even though his gun never moves, never lifts from her.

Then the utter coldness moves back in and there’s nothing else but that endless, uncaring darkness that lurks. “You tried to hurt Declan. Then you tried, twice, to have Harry killed. None of that’s going to fly with my family or me.”

Her eyes flash. “What?—?”

“I’m sorry you had a shit time, and I’m fucking sorry you got shot and your family left you for dead. I chose you and her parents died. And then I saved Harry and you died, or so I thought. And Harry…” He glances at me. “She is blaming herself for all of it.”

Then he looks back at Siobhan. “Yet you blame everyone but yourself, don’t you, Shiv? And the bottom line is, you tried to hurt her. She’s sweet. Good.”

“So… I’ll kill her.”

“Your own nail is in your coffin, Siobhan.”

Things happened fast. She points the gun at me when I lunge to grab a heavy book from the shelf next to me. I throw it, and in the sudden melee, Torin shoves me aside, stepping in front of me.

Right as both guns go off.

And I scream as he crashes down to the floor.

“Torin!”