Page 5 of A Vocation of Violence
The door burst open as if those spilling past it had overflowed a crowded room rather than an empty hallway. Two men and two women strutted into the Shiloh room with the fanfare of a circus troupe—each one a character so vibrant they seemed to bleed color into the muted tones of the office.
One might have knocked me over with a feather for all their cheek.
Jorah had killed men for less. This was his sanctuary of solitude, as he had a separate office from which he conducted his more…people-facing business.
Only his inner circle ever ventured here.
And me, once, when I was brought here to convalesce after a rather brutal attack in the streets.
The first through the door glittered like a star plucked from the night sky, her gaze sweeping the room with the confidence of a queen surveying her court. She shimmered with an incandescent beauty that couldn’t be diminished were she wrapped in sack cloth and ashes.
She wasn’t. Her siren-scarlet gown cost more than my stately rowhouse on Tite Street, I was certain.
A mousy girl with dark gold curls hovered near her elbow, her admiration for the lovely woman as palpable as the heat from a fire.
They were followed by a garden rake of a man, whose eyes darted about with calculating shrewdness, taking in more than he would ever let on.
“Forgive the intrusion, Mr. Roth,” boomed a deep Irish brogue, thick and unapologetic. “We’ve urgent business that couldn’t wait until?—”
My. God.
I stood frozen, a blush creeping up my neck as I clumsily pulled the shawl closer, attempting to completely conceal the indecency of my partial undress.
But, as all eyes turned to me, every breath, every heartbeat, was suspended in the shock of revelation.
The room fell into a charged silence as the final player in this unexpected gathering moved closer to me, his heavy steps resounding against the plush carpets.
I swallowed hard, the words I intended to speak lodging in my throat, strangled by memories and emotions I hadn’t realized still clung to me like ivy to ancient stone.
His whispered name hung in the air, a ghostly chord struck upon the strings of our shared history, leaving the room in silent anticipation of what secrets lurked beneath the surface.
“Fi?” It escaped him like a prayer. One of many we’d been forced to say together upon a holy mass.
“No… I… I don’t believe it’s you! It’s impossible,” I exclaimed, taking two steps back in disbelief.
His laugh was deep and bittersweet.
“If I’ve learned one thing, Fiona Mahoney, it’s that the past will find us in the most unexpected places.”
Chapter Two
The chill of the Shiloh room did naught to cool the fire that danced in Darcy O’Dowd’s eyes, nor the sudden blaze it kindled within my own.
There he stood—“the Dublin Destroyer”—as if plucked from the girlhood memories I’d thought long interred with the rest of my past in Limerick, Ireland. A home I’d not seen in almost five years.
Our gazes latched on to each other, a silent communication thrumming between us, fraught with disbelief and the weight of so many years spent apart.
“Good heavens.” A silken and melodious voice cut through the moment like a blade, the lovely woman immediately commanding attention. Her beauty was not just observed but felt, like an enchantment that left one spellbound. Her gown clung to her curves in a shameless embrace, the color of blood and studded with stars, her golden hair coiffed high but for a few ringlets cascading over her shoulder.
“Forgive me,” she announced to the room at large, “my entrance seems to have interrupted…something quite intimate?” Her gaze swept between Jorah, Darcy, and me, her lips curved inthe smile of a Cheshire cat as she extended her hand with regal grace to accept a kiss on the proverbial ring.
From whom, I couldn’t tell.
Not me, surely.
I was still trying to collect my wits, first lost to Jorah’s kiss, then kicked under the rug by Night Horse’s arrival, now vanquished by the ghosts of the past.
The last thing I needed was a reminder that I’d been caught nearly naked with a notorious criminal to make my heart leap from its home in my chest to the acid in my belly.
