Page 24 of The Irish Redemption

If she ran, I will hunt her down and drag her back for leaving here without my permission. And if the cops have her, then I will make them regret ever sticking their nose in my business. Pigs should know their place, and if they don’t have helpful information for me, then I don’t have the patience to deal with them.

Hank follows hot on my heels as we sprint through the motel searching for Evelyn. I don’t care if the cameras pick me up or if someone sees me. All I care about is finding Evelyn. My lack of knowledge about this place gives me a small area to search, but as I sprint down one of the hallways, Hank barks out a noise. Turning, I watch him point out the window to a small side parking lot.

Evelyn.

She stands pressed against one of the cars with a tall man leering over her. He has both arms on either side of her shoulders, trapping her between him and the car, and they look close. Too close for my fucking liking.

My blood boils and I begin to suffocate in the heat. Is it anger that she didn’t come right back to me or jealousy that there is someone as close to her as I desire to be?

Suddenly, the strange man whips his hand and slaps Evelyn right across the face. Her head snaps to the side and my blood turns red hot in the blink of an eye.

“Cormac!” Hank yells as I charge out the door, but I don’t listen to him. Rage consumes me, pouring like lava through my veins. Evelyn and the stranger are blind to me as he grabs her by the throat and shakes her. Evelyn’s hand flies out and she slaps the stranger, but it barely affects him.

“You!” I bellow as I charge toward them like a bull.

Evelyn’s head turns and she looks at me with wide, tear-filled eyes. The strange man follows, but like every arrogant prick I’ve had the displeasure of facing, he doesn’t back down. He immediately squares up to me with a roll of his shoulders.

“Who’s this fucking cunt?” The man snorts.

“Dillon, don’t—” Evelyn gasps, and it’s the last thing I hear as I slam my shoulder into Dillon’s chest and tackle him to the ground.

He has nothing on me, not in size or in strength, so he crumples like a wet paper bag. We hit the ground hard with Dillon taking the brunt of the impact. I ball up my fist and punch him hard in the face, and once I start, I don’t stop. Fury consumes me. I punch him again. And again. His nose breaks under my fist, his jaw slams to the side, and hot blood sprays against my knuckles. My other hand locks onto the collar of his T-shirt, and I haul him upwards only to punch him back down into the ground again and again and again.

Finally, I have release. All the pain and wrath that’s churned inside me since I got the call about Brenden finally has somewhere to go, and the outpour of rage is impossible to stop. A few more slams of my brick-hard fist into Dillon’s face and his eye swells shut. He chokes and gargles on blood, but I hear nothing other than the rapid, fierce drum of my blood pumping in my ears.

I want to kill him. I want to feel his skull cave under my fist. I want to hear his dying gurgles and soak up his last tearful moment of regret.

“Don’t you ever dare put your hands on her again. Do you understand me, you fucking sack of shit?” I roar, pulling my punches enough to haul Dillon up toward my chest. “You touch her, hell, you even breathe the same fucking air as her ever again, and I will rip your spine out through your asshole and make you wear it as a leash until your pathetic excuse for existence finally fails you!”

I punch him repeatedly until my shoulder aches from the repetition.

Dillon doesn’t reply. By the time the cloud of anger finally dissipates, the man is a bloody, unconscious pulp and my knuckles throb from the impact. A white handkerchief appears at the corner of my eye from Hank, and I accept it while slowly climbing to my feet.

Breathing heavily, I begin to clean the blood from my fists. I lift my head and slowly turn to Evelyn, growing aware of how much I’ve likely terrified her even more. I have no explanation—none that I’m willing to share, at least—but when our eyes meet, it’s not terror that I see in her warm brown eyes.

It’s something else.

Curiosity? No, gratefulness?

Not quite.

“Evelyn, I?—”

My apology that she had to see that, as weak as it would have been, dies because Evelyn throws herself forward and her plush red lips crash into mine in a desperate, heated kiss.

10

EVELYN

Never in my life has someone protected me. Not from the bullies at school who would make fun of my clothes, my shyness, or my good grades, not from the neighbor who would hug me for too long or make horrible comments even in front of my parents, not even from my sleazy boss who always felt one step away from forcing me to suck his dick to keep my job.

No one has ever deemed me important enough to protect.

Except Cormac.

In half a second, he had Dillon on the ground, beating him to a bloody—and deserving—pulp while Hank held me back at a safe distance. I expected Cormac to know Dillon from somewhere, considering how savagely he was beating him into the ground, but then Cormac spoke. He threatened Dillon to stay away from me, and my heart soared higher than it ever has before. The pain from Dillon’s slap was instantly forgotten and Cormac morphed right before my eyes.

Gone was the terrifying Mob Boss with only revenge on his mind. Suddenly, he was a man who was protecting me, fighting for myhonor and warning away the scumbag who couldn’t take no for an answer.

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