Page 74 of Dirty Heirs

I would never see Sonny as just a friend. But he was right about our futures being intertwined.

So I shook his hand, reveling in the feel of his soft skin against mine, hating how much I wanted to continue touching him.

“Friends, don’t fuck,” I said to clarify the terms of our new relationship. “No more nicknames. No more fucking. No nothing. You got it?”

Besides, it didn’t feel right without Ella. It was all or nothing with us. That was the deal from the start.

“Yeah, sure.” Sonny winked. “Just friends.”

Part Two

8 YEARS LATER

Chapter Thirty-Four

SONNY

Ella fucking Doyle.

My jaw dropped as I looked at the beautiful woman curled into a ball on the floor of a Mac Corp shipping container. She lifted her head to glance at me, mascara streaking down her cheeks, knees bent into her chest.

I entered the container, expecting to see cartons of AK-47s—not the daughter of my uncle’s enemy.

My enemy.

Ella broke Aiden’s heart when she moved to Ireland without saying goodbye. For the rest of the year, I watched him fall to pieces. Throughout lunch, he stared at their old table as if she would magically appear. Aiden simply existed until he left for RISD with his sister. And by the time we said goodbye that August, he looked relieved to escape Devil’s Creek.

Losing Ella fucked him up because… he loved her. All the while, I secretly loved him, hating we were just friends when all we wanted to do was fuck.

I hunched before Ella, sliding my fingers beneath her chin, grinning like a maniac. “Miss me, El?”

She wrapped her arms around her middle and sat back so my hand slipped away. “What do you want, Sonny?”

I shook my head and laughed. “Really? That’s the first question you ask me. How about we start with why you’re in my shipping container when there’s supposed to be AK-47s?”

“What?” Ella choked out. “I don’t fucking know.”

“Your pussy is tight, and I love fucking you, but it’s not worth thirty million dollars.” I pressed my forehead against hers, and her body trembled. “Where are my guns? And don’t play games with me. I know your piece of shit father put you up to this.”

“He didn’t,” she whispered, a tear streaming down her cheek.

“Tell me who did.”

She stared at her feet and sighed. “I don’t know.”

Cian Doyle was one of two Irish Mob bosses from Beacon Bay and a competitor to the O’Sheas. My mother was born an O’Shea and the only sister of my uncle Declan. Ella and I never had a future, which ruined my chance with Aiden. Eight years later, I still thought about the night we fucked.

I wanted that again.

I wanted him.

Before I could question Ella, my cell phone rang. I reached into my pocket and rose to my full height, holding the phone to my ear. “What’s up, Cole?”

Cole Marshall was the youngest of The Devil’s Knights at only twenty-two. He lived down the street from Aiden and me on Founders Way on a big-ass compound everyone called Fort Marshall.

“Sonny,” he shouted into the phone, breathing so hard it sounded like he’d run a hundred miles. “Drake… He’s gone.”

A chill spread down my arms and back. For months, Drake Battle had warned us that The Lucaya Group wanted his tech. Drake developed an artificial software that could deploy weapons from anywhere in the world. The U.S. and foreign governments wanted to get their hands on his AI. But so did terrorist groups and criminal empires.

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