Page 5 of Dangerous

“I know you’re there!” I hissed, my voice sounding somewhat more steady than I felt.

The steps stopped right in the doorway to the kitchen, and then a cone of light momentarily blinded me as someone switched on a flashlight.

I squinted against it, not wanting to lose track of my would-be assailant—and realized my weapon of choice was a wooden spoon.

“Hello, Aignéis,” a cold, dreadfully familiar voice said from beyond the glare. “OrMira,I suppose you go by these days.”

A small whimper made its way through my throat, but I don’t know how, because every single muscle in my body spasmed and then froze as the man shone the flashlight onto his own face, casting it in an eerie glow.

They had found me.

Three

Blaine

“You what?” I stared at my father, a bottle of beer frozen halfway on its way to my mouth.

He shot me a cold look—the one that I’d learned to take as a warning early on in my life. “I’ve arranged a marriage for you. It’s a business deal with the Clery family from Belfast. They’ve been pushing for our help up north, and we unfortunately owe them. This is the best way to pay our debt without actually giving them anything of real value.”

Apart from one of his sons, of course. Not that William Steel had ever seen any of us as much more than business assets.

I slammed the bottle of beer down on the kitchen counter, unable to keep my infamous temper fully in check. “Why the fuckme? Do I really strike you as the best husband material around?”

My father raised an eyebrow at me. “You’re my oldest available son, so the task falls to you. Besides, married life might do you some good. There’s no reason to kick up a fuss about this, Blaine. You’re going to go to the church, you’re going to marry the girl and sit through the reception so the Clerys can show off their new connection, and then you can do whatever the hell you want, as long as you make sure your wife doesn’t get herself killed by any of our enemies along the way. Though it would suit you to breed a couple of heirs while you’re at it—it’s way past time one of you began expanding the bloodline.”

I bit back a snide remark about me being the oldestavailableson. If he hadn’t sent Jeremy to the U.S. to strengthen his business ties across the pond, and Isaac wasn’t in jail, then I would have been third down on the list of sons to get married off to improve thebusiness.Not to mention I had absolutely zero intention of “expanding the bloodline.” Ever. But I knew better than to challenge him. He would send every ounce of his considerable power to back me against any of the other crime families in town. Hell, he would even back me against the police if need be, but cross him… Cross him, and it no longer mattered that we were blood.

I’d learned that much from what happened to Isaac.

I took a swig from the beer bottle, suddenly itching for something stronger. “When?”

“Next Saturday.” My father got up from the barstool he’d been perched on without ever taking off his coat. Then again, it had taken him less than ten minutes from stepping through my doorway to completely and irrevocably fuck up my life, so why bother getting comfortable, right?

I gritted my teeth to stifle the black rage churning in my gut while he made his way out of my kitchen and to the front door. When his gloved hand touched the knob, he paused for a moment and looked at me over his shoulder, steel in his eyes and his jaw set in a way I recognized all too well from my youth. My hands clenched as if to brace for a beating, even though it’d been years since I’d grown too big for that particular brand of incentive.

“And Blaine… if you fuck this up, you’re going to be sorry.”

I stared mutely for several long minutes after he’d left, too stunned to move.

I guess it wasn’t a huge surprise that it was now my turn to get dragged to the sacrificial altar for “The Family,”but never in a million years would I have imagined it would be as a fuckinggroom.

The thought of being tied down and responsible for a bird had always filled me with cold dread, and the fact that my upcoming marriage was a sham didn’t make me feel any less shackled.

Finally, blessedly, anger drowned out the mixture of emotions coursing through me, its hot embrace allowing me to break free of the trance-like state my dear father had left me in.

Whoever the little cunt was, I wasn’t about to change my ways. If she had hopes of taming herself one of Steel’s sons, she was in for a nasty surprise.

I liked to drink, I liked to fight, and I liked to fuck every female that crossed my path, and if she wanted to be part of the Steel family, she was going to have to get used to that.

And maybe if I was lucky, she’d get fed up and get this fucking disaster of a marriage annulled.

I grabbed my leather coat and pulled out my phone, calling the twins as I slammed the front door shut behind me and headed down the stairs.

Time to get shitfaced and find a small-time gang dumb enough to challenge a Steel.

“You look like absolute shit.”For a man who’d kept me company during most of my weeklong bender, Liam’s voice was much too cheerful. I sent him an annoyed glare, which I immediately regretted as the sunlight caught my eyes and shot a bolt of pure agony directly into my brain.

Even his unruly, ginger hair looked offensively chipper.

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