Page 33 of Stolen Rival
Me: Yes.
Cillian: Ok. I’ll get the drinks in.
I smile, returning my phone to my pocket.
“Who’s that?” Sorcha demands. “Another ordered hit carried out?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“You’re smiling. Can’t think of another reason to make you smile other than bringing suffering and misery to more people who don’t deserve it.”
“Oh, your family deserved it,mo mhuirnín. Believe me.”
“I wasn’t talking about them.” She looks away, dashing the back of her hand over her cheek. “Da shouldn’t have donewhat he did to the O’Sullivans. I know how this business works. An eye for an eye. But Sean…” Her voice hitches. “He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
“He planned to take you from me. I couldn’t allow that to happen.”
“Because of Dylan?”
Somehow, I contain my surprise. How the fuck does she know about Dylan? Not that it matters if she’s figured out my motivations for marriage. I still hold the only card in the game; that of her special needs brother. And I will play that card over and over until I get what I want.
“Because no one takes what is mine. And make no mistake, Sorcha. You are mine.”
“I’ll never be yours,” she whispers. “Not in the true sense. Not where it matters.” She punches her chest to accentuate her point. “You can own my body. You can steal my freedom. But you are an empty vessel. A man without a soul. You will never know what it is like to love and be loved.”
She’s wrong. I know how to love those who matter. It’s just that she doesn’t matter beyond the purpose I need her for. A wife, a mother, a warm pussy to fuck whenever I feel like it.
The stooge that will bring me untold power and riches to make my family proud. Being a Mahoney is more than a name. It’s a legacy that my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents built over a century. One I intend to pass on to my children and their children and their children’s children.
Grow or die. Only one of those will be my destiny, and I don’t plan on expiring any time soon.
The car pulls up outside the VIP entrance to Drake Park. I exit the car and fasten my coat, waiting for Sorcha to join me. When she does, I capture her hand and squeeze.
“Smile,mo mhuirnín. You’re with Irishroyalty.”
The smile she gives me is loaded with that much fake sugar, I chuckle. “That will do.” I tow her inside, spotting Cillian standing at the bar talking to a couple in their fifties. He turns as we approach, his eyes gliding from me to Sorcha. Ignoring me, he turns his attention—and his charm—onto her.
“You must be Sorcha. I’m Cillian. Ricky-boy here told me you were a beauty, and he didn’t lie.”
I glowered at him using the nickname he’d bestowed on me in our teens, but he isn’t bothered. Cillian is like a brother to me, a man I’ve known since I was ten years old and who has stood by me through thick and thin. He’s seen me at my best, and my worst. After my parents died, he propped me up, did his best to convince me what happened wasn’t my fault. Not that it made any difference. Nothing will ever quash the guilt I carry with me, a crushing weight I don’t deserve to offload.
I’d have given anything to have Cillian join me in my business, especially in those early days when my father’s enemies closed in, sensing an opportunity, a weakness left behind by his untimely death, but Cillian isn’t built for my world. As a trauma surgeon, he saves lives, whereas I take them.
“Thank you.” Sorcha unzips her coat and unwinds the scarf from around her neck. She doesn’t mention the nickname, or react to it at all.
“Here, allow me.” Cillian slides her coat down her arms and places it over the back of a chair, laying her scarf on top. “I got you a beer, Sorcha.” Twisting, he grabs two bottles off the bar, pressing the alcoholic one into Sorcha’s hand and passing me the non-alcoholic one. Reaching back for his own drink, he brandishes his bottle in the air.
“To the happy couple.”
Sorcha looks about as miserable as one could, but she touches the neck of her bottle to his before taking a long pull.
“Now, shall we go and watch some rugby?” Cillian says.
“Can’t wait,” Sorcha mutters.
“You’re not a fan?”
“Of grown men running about after a weird shaped ball?” She shakes her head. “Can’t say that I am, no.”
