Page 40 of The Mafia Assassin’s Redemption (Mafia Obsession #2)

MAFIA OBSESSION SERIES: BOOK THREE

CHAPTER ONE

Seamus

Something isn’t right.

It’s too quiet, too still in all the wrong ways.

The party inside the Romanov mansion here in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, is going strong. The wedding celebration, a union of power between the Assisi family and the Romanovs, went off without a hitch.

Occasionally, music drifts over to where I haunt and skulk the grounds.

My brother Torin’s reports flow into my earpiece along with the occasional joke from our youngest brother, Declan. He’s with the rest of our crew waiting just outside the party, just in case. It always pays to be prepared.

The head of the Murphy clan, our eldest brother Callahan, is inside the party, prowling around the guests and probably chain smoking, if I know him.

His interjections are few and far between.

We’re being paid to be here tonight. Some people might say that providing security is a bottom feeder job, but we’re Irish and we don’t give a fuck about bullshit hierarchies.

We care about empire building, making a shit ton of money, and creating strategic ties.

Cal has plans he wants to move on, things that can expand our power and establish deeper roots.

Things that have nothing to do with what happens tonight.

The Murphy clan has no skin in this game. The Russian gunrunner Dec got us involved with a year ago recommended us for straight up security.

But as I walk along the paths in the darkness, a weird sense of foreboding claws at my insides.

The pit of my stomach twists and coils. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something, like?—

“Holy shit,” I mutter.

A bullet whizzes by me from behind and my attention, which catches the figure climbing from the second floor, diverts.

I whip around, my heart lurching then steadying because Christ knows I’ve fucking been in this position more times than I can count.

I draw my gun, fast and smooth, and I shoot into the dark where the bullet came from.

I miss.

Whoever took the shot makes a leap at me.

I tackle him to the ground as he slams a fist into my side. He’s big, and he flips me onto my back. Perfect. I knee the fucker in the balls and grab his hair, giving him the Glasgow kiss and slamming my head into his. He grunts.

“Don’t fucking move,” I say. “I’m security?—”

The man doesn’t wait for me to finish. He slams a fist at my face, but I move and it hits the ground where I’m still lying because fucker is goddamn heavy.

I grip my gun in my right hand, jam it into his chest, right at his heart, and pull the trigger.

He slumps over, on top of me, dead. With a low grunt, I push him off and quickly roll to the other side, squinting in the darkness, but nothing else moves. No one else is here.

“Is everything okay?” Torin asks, his voice flooding my ear.

“Just a hitch. Hike up the alert a little.” I frown, looking around, not forgetting the figure I saw. But before I move on that, I look around some more. If anyone else is here, then they don’t give a shit about shooting me.

Yet.

I pat down the dead guy, pull out my flashlight, and check his hands and wrists for any telltale tattoos. They could be anywhere, but there’s usually something easily visible. But I don’t see anything.

Declan’s voice crackles into my earpiece. “Sounded like three shots.”

“And one of us isn’t breathing anymore,” I say. “Guess who?”

“You need back up?” Torin asks.

Normally I’d say yes. But for one guy? No one else? Something the fuck is up. “Not yet, Tor.”

Dec’s a little trigger happy. “Seamus, I can?—”

“Hold off. Got that, Dec?”

My little brother grumbles. But he knows we’re here for peace, not a war, and people have enemies. There are opportunists who’d like a war, who’d want to break up the uneasy new alliance between the Russian and the Italian families.

I can handle them. This is what I do.

Still… I get up and kick the corpse out of my path. “Told you I was security, dumbass…”

I glance back at the mansion. The figure’s gone. The grounds are big by New York standards and small by everyone else’s. It makes an invasion something we’d definitely see coming. But it also makes individual threats harder to pick.

Especially if it’s an invasion masquerading as an individual… I let the thought marinate for a minute.

What the fuck?

I pause and kneel down on the ground. Wire cutters? I move the flashlight. Abandoned gun. Some strips of wire.

Now my heart stutters.

I know what that shit means. I carried wire cutters and other tools back in the day for when a bomb might need dismantling. Or an adjustment.

Shite.

A fucking bomb? I hit mute on the call with my brothers. This time, I don’t search for movement. I stay low, moving from the trees to the bushes that line the sculpted yard.

What kind of bullshit mafia and bratva eejits decided to have no security for this wedding, other than a third party in a show of trust?

I mean, who really trust anyone these days, unless you’re family? It’s just some bullshit construct to woo people into a sense of false security.

I peer into the darkness. There. A footprint. A strip of red plastic from a wire. My flashlight picks up on something beneath a bush. If it’s remote controlled, I’m fucked. Everyone here is fucked, too.

I unmute myself.

“—and I’ll fuck the motherfuckers up the?—”

“Shut it, Dec,” I say quietly. “Cal?”

“Yeah?”

“Move everyone to the west side of the mansion.”

“Why?”

“It starts with a B and ends in one, too.” It might sound like I’m making light of the situation, but I’m deadly fucking serious.

He doesn’t ask what kind, he doesn’t tell me to leave it alone. He knows me.

“Be careful, now,” Cal says.

I go down on my knee to investigate when a twig snaps. I flip around, gun pointed into the night. Another bullet cracks, this one slicing the air near my temple.

Mother fucker. I hold up the flashlight. That’s when I see him. I line up the shot, aim, and pull the fucking trigger. I’m not at the skill level of Torin, my assassin brother, but I’m good. We all are.

The asswipe hits the ground with a thud.

“Torin, move Dec and the men in at your discretion,” I say. “West side first. Wait until this bomb is dead.”

Or me. But I don’t say that.

“But—”

“Shut it, Dec.” I study the bomb.

There’s a timer and enough Semtex to make a big impression and hole in the grounds and the side of the mansion. Everything in me closes in on the bomb. I check the wires, the cutters the dead moron used to set it up ready and waiting.

It’s simple…I think. There’s less than one minute left on the timer, the red numbers ticking down. My temples throb, sweat prickling on the back of my neck.

I choose the wire.

And if I’m wrong…

“Boom,” I whisper as I snap it with the cutters.

The clock stops and then I pull it apart. “Got it. Sweeping for more, but…” I check the other body. No tattoos, but this one has more weapons. “Get the perimeter swept again.”

He came looking for his buddy or to make sure the bomb was still set. And there might be one or two more assholes out here scoping the place out.

Above, the moon peeks out and I catch a glimpse of something, someone moving. Black streaking behind the figure, then a flash of white.

I take off.

Whoever it is moves quick and sure, darting around trees and bushes.

They know the grounds. I pull my gun and fire a shot to the left.

The person veers right, and I dart around a tree before coming face to face with her.

A woman.

Even in the dark cover of the trees, she’s fucking beautiful with long black hair and dark eyes. I feign a move to the right, and she races to the left, thinking she can fake me out. I come at her hard and hook a foot around hers, toppling her to the ground.

I don’t expect how fast she moves as she turns and grabs me, pulling me down on top of her.

I land on soft, sweet-smelling flesh. Night jasmine, musk and sandalwood, making the scent sensual, unforgettable, and for a single twisted moment, I’m mesmerized.

“Get off me,” she hisses.

“Fuck no,” I say, planting a knee between her thighs, up high, where heat and moisture tantalize the skin beneath my pants. “Who are you and why were you breaking into the Romanov mansion?”

“I wasn’t breaking in.” Dark eyes flare. “I just needed?—”

I grin. “To get some air, sweet thing?”

“There’s nothing sweet about me,” she growls as I sweep her hands above her head, pinning them there.

I nudge her soft hair away from her ear. “More like poisonous sweetness, am I right?”

“You’re Irish.” She says it with a twist of hate.

There’s something in her antagonistic tone that rubs me the right way.

“That I am, and we both know Romanov would love to have words with you.”

Her reaction isn’t something I expect. She goes still, breath caught, tits pushed up against my chest. She’s not terrified or upset.

She’s thinking, weighing options.

“I’m a guest.”

“Maybe, but…” I graze her thigh.

I only do it to see if I’m right about the figure who was climbing the window, to confirm it was her, but she speaks.

It’s a challenge, a plea, and I’m not a man who deliberately misunderstands.

“Do it.”

“Think I’ll get distracted?” I ask.

“I don’t think you have the balls.”

Panicked footsteps start running behind us and the pretty, sweet thing fucking bites me. Hard. The pain lances through me tangling with a throb of need. I lock eyes with her. I’m still on top of her, but as her knee starts to move, I pull a knife and hold it to her throat.

I plant my knee between those slender thighs and remove my sore hand from her mouth.

Her eyes spit pure hateful fire.

I move in close so our mouths almost touch. A beat of need pulsates in the air. Her eyes still spark with anger but there’s something else, too.

Desire.

I run my tongue along her bottom lip. Her entire body jerks. I adjust the knife, so I don’t slit her throat.

But I will if she does something stupid like screaming.

“You’ve got a choice, sweet thing. Keep quiet and live, or scream for help,” I whisper, “and bleed out in seconds.”