Page 3 of Beautiful Dark Temptation

Understanding flashed in Maddox’s eyes. AndI pulled the trigger.

Click.

Times up. I shut my eyes and waited.

I knew Maddox hadn’t been alone. TristanBrennan, the oldest, always had a protection detail on hisbrothers. The idiots had stopped by the coffee shop to get a cupthinking Maddox wouldn’t need protection right now. It would’vetaken them twelve seconds to park, get out of the car, and identifythe threat. Me. And a second after that my head would explode. Ionly prayed that it would go quick.

And it did.

I felt a battering ram slam against my body.I heard the snip, felt the pain, saw the blood, and thennothing.

Chapter Two

Kieran

Present Day.

My eyes picked up little in the dark space,but my nose picked up enough. The scent of blood in the air. Oldblood that’d already coagulated. My grandmother worked at a meatplant, and she always had that smell on her clothes. A metallictinge with a touch of rot. Whoever died in here had been cookingfor a while.

Sweat beaded my hairline. The late springtemperature in this part of the world already in the low eighties.My skin prickled against the soft wool suit I wore doing little tostem the toxic feeling raging just on the edge of my skin. I had tocalm down. I’d cut my hair yesterday. Short on the side, longer ontop, and smoothed back away from my face. The idea was to showelegance while being ready for violence. Cillian had taught methat, like he’d taught me how to fight, how to handle knives,batons, guns. Cillian Liam Brennan, my grandfather, had shown mehow to be a man so that I would one day topple over my deadbeatbiological father’s throne. Although I didn’t carry his name, Icarried his blood. The reason Cillian had plucked me from mygrandmother’s house when I was ten. I had kicked and screamed. Ihad cried, but Grandma had done nothing to stop them. She’d watchedthem take me out of the only home I’d ever known. She had known mybloodline and hadn’t prepared me.

I hated her for it.

I never saw her again. The memory of her acollage of scattered images. Brown eyes, wrinkled at the edges. Abland face that could’ve been the countless other caretakers who’dcome and gone over the years. But I remembered her smell. Iron androt.

Without hesitating, I approached the end ofthe warehouse. I’d always been summoned to a house in the woods, acabin, a warehouse throughout the world. Cillian was aninternational torturer. I was his plaything to mold as he saw fit.It felt like an anchor around my neck. Except for the little darkswirl inside of me reserved for things I wanted which includedbringing this family down, taking away their billions, sending mygrandfather to hell. That mission kept the threads of my soulpieced together under the Kiton wool suit I wore with the cufflinksby Cartier and a Patek Phillip wristwatch. Over forty grand of shiton my body and I still felt like the mud in his fucking shoes.

I’d worn a Kevlar vest under it. I wasn’t atotal idiot.

The beats of my Berlutis on the concretefloor were the only sound in the eerily dark space. The momentCillian had contacted me with the coordinates to this place I knewit’d involve a kill. Not that he couldn’t have done it his damnself. He always tested me, as if he expected me to fail, to refuse.I hadn’t yet. At least not in his eyes. My father was a differentstory. I hadn’t seen him in years and didn’t want to think abouthim when faced with the shit I had to do for his father.

The source of the smell made an appearanceto the left of an old table where a man sat, hooded, and breathingfast. He’d been chained to the base of the table and sat naked. Thesmell of sweat and something sour overpowered the smell of bloodhere.

Cillian leaned against the wall, illuminatedby the dim light above him. A tableau of a noir scene. He stoodover six feet. Still very much powerful with a physique thatcontradicted his age. He had salt and pepper hair and beard, andstunning green eyes. My father’s eyes. My eyes.

“Grandfather,” I said in a dry tone. Hehated when I used his name or used sir. For him, it had to beGrandfather. I learned that early on with a few bruises to remindme.

“Kieran,” he said back with that same tone.“It took you long enough.”

Telling him my flight had been delayed wouldbe seen as my error in judgement. I should’ve put a gun in thepilot’s face and demand he take off against the flight controltower’s instructions. It didn’t matter that it’d be impossible todo. “My apologies,” I said with a hand to the chest and a slightbow. My stomach knotted at the blood-stained floor and the rottingcorpse who no longer looked even human. If this man had family,they’d have to have a closed casket funeral.

The other man started to struggle againsthis binds. The sawing in and out of his breath pulled the bag inand out. He grunted, suggesting he’d been gagged. Or his tongue hadbeen ripped out. I preferred to visualize the gag.

“You do remember the greedy bastards tappinginto my shipment of merchandise, yes?”

I remembered his rage a few months ago andsomething about his shipping lines being compromised. WheneverGrandfather was pissed, I’d feel it for days. “Yes,” I said,keeping every part of me behind a thick wall.

Standing before my grandfather, I wasn’tKieran Romano, son of Victoria Romano. I wasn’t a nineteen-year-oldstudent getting ready to start his second year of college. I wasn’tthe guy who ruled Arcadia University. I wasn’t an A student. Iwasn’t the guy wanting to study law to do something with my lifethat wasmine. Something that didn’t belong to theBrennans.

That person I pushed behind a steelwall.

The person that came when summoned byCillian Brennan was an aged, ruthless, killer by the name of KieranX. I had learned the design of the drug trade that made theBrennans millions and reputable across continents. I’d also learnedabout their legitimate business. For the past two years, I hadbecome cold with one goal in mind.

Make my father pay.

Tristan Brennan, the eldest and heir to theBrennan family’s businesses, would suffer as I ripped his wealth,power, and legitimate heir out of his hands. I’d watch as hisperfect world crumbled, and he would beg for mercy. Perhaps I’d lethis son live. My younger half-brother was nine and in line ofsuccession only because I was the bastard secret.

I clenched my fists letting those thoughtsfuel the killer inside of me. Cillian lifted his chin to the manstruggling in the chair. He didn’t have to speak. I saw the gun onthe edge of the table, lifted my eyes briefly to the mirror behindthe guy as I moved to pick up the gun. The weapon felt good in mygloved hand. Perfect. I aimed it at the bag, imagined my father’stight face behind it, dark hair, strong features, and eyes likemine, and I pulled the trigger. The report echoed in the room, leftmy ears ringing for a few seconds. The man’s head jerked back onimpact, and he slumped in the chair, blood saturating the bag, hisshoulders, the floor under him. Everything fell silent.

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