Page 4 of Heated Rivals
He hesitated, and she thought he might refuse. “You still have that Taser that Aiden gave you?”
“I don’t leave the house without it anymore.” It wouldn’t have made a difference that night when James threw her in the trunk because she hadn’t had her purse, but she didn’t go anywhere without it now. What had started as almost a joke was now a reassurance that she had a way to defend herself.
“Good.” Cillian shrugged out of his coat and draped it over her shoulders. “You know, itisDecember. There’s even snowon the ground.”
“I didn’t want to have to check a coat.” She clutched the fabric more firmly around her. He was hardly underdressed in a three-piece suit, but it wouldn’t be long before he started to feel the cold.
They made their way down the block, her heels clicking in the darkness. With the snow covering the grass and decorating the trees, it looked like something out of a fairy tale. Like if she just walked a little farther, she might find a stray streetlamp that would signify she’d stepped into a different world.
Except that kind of thing only happened in storybooks.
She slipped her arm through her brother’s. There was so much to say, and nothing at all. What could she say that would make anything okay? It wasn’t okay.
“I thought you were at Our Lady of Victories.”
It wasn’t really a question, but she answered anyway. “Sometimes I need a break.” A break that no church could give her, despite what her father believed. She’d tried when she was still in high school. They attended every single Sunday morning Mass, and she’d thought that maybe the salvation she was looking for could be found inside those four walls. So she’d spent hours on end there, praying with every ounce of will her sixteen-year-old heart could muster up. Praying for someone to save her.
Silence had been her only reply.
So she’d gone looking for salvation in other places.
In all the years since, the closest she’d come to salvation was what she felt that night in James’s arms.
CHAPTER TWO
James cruised through Boston, letting his mind wander even as his route did. Finally, a few hours before dawn, he had to admit that he was stalling. It was time to go back to the house. At some point in the past, it might have actually been a sanctuary, but it’d been a long time since he thought of the house where his old man had reigned like that. In reality it was more like a prison… but less cheery. With a curse, he turned on the next street and started for Southie.
Everything was so fucking complicated since he took over. The initial transition hadn’t been tough—not when the feds swooped in and took his old man away. Unforgivable as it was, James wasn’t sorry to see him go. Victor Halloran would have killed Carrigan and put them in a position where none of them would walk away alive. Hell, he’dplannedon it. Going out in a blaze of glory andall that shit.
He hadn’t asked anyone else if that’s whattheywanted. He hadn’t given a fuck.
So, yeah, James wasn’t exactly crying a river that his old man was locked up for the rest of his days. The part he wasn’t thrilled with was being thrust into a position of leadership that he’d never wanted.
It was all so wrong. Brendan was the heir—the one who’d been trained for this shit, the one who the mantle of responsibility was supposed to fall on, the one who’d step up and take over. But Brendan was dead and, in the quiet moments when James was actually alone, he couldn’t help but think it was a blessing in disguise. Because, in pretty much every way that counted, Brendan was worse than their old man. Worse by a long shot.
So James did the best he could, and some days he actually fooled his ass into believing it would be enough. Today wasn’t one of those days, not when he still had Carrigan’s look of fear tattooed across his brain. Fear he fucking deserved.
Goddamn it, what had he been thinking, going back to that club over and over again? That she’d eventually show up and throw herself into his arms for a repeat of the first time? He knew damn well that some things couldn’t be taken back—and with good reason.
But a stupid, idiotic part of him had dared to hope otherwise.
He shook his head and pulled into the garage, lifting his hand in greeting to Michael. The man nodded in response, but he didn’t relax, which was enough to kick James’s instincts into high gear. Something was wrong. He shut off the Chevelle and climbed out. “What’sup?”
“Trouble, boss.”
There weren’t any of his men he’d trust beyond a shadow of a doubt, not with Brendan’s specter hanging over them, and his little brother, Ricky, thinking he was hot shit now. Too many of his men didn’t like the slow and steady way James preferred to do business. They thought that he should have taken up the banner of war that his old man had dropped, and run with it. Those damn fools only saw the potential profit of war—not the cost.
Even if James was as bloodthirsty as they wanted him to be, he knew how to look around him and see that the odds weren’t in the Hallorans’ favor. The marriage of Teague O’Malley and Callista Sheridan had allied their two families into a powerful position. Too powerful to fuck with and think he’d come out on top. But these idiots weren’t thinking like that. They didn’t care that the other two families combined had superior numbers and firepower.
And they sure as fuck hadn’t stopped to think about how convenient it was that the feds had shown up right in time to save the day. Someone on the other side was a rat, and a rat high enough up the ladder that the feds felt invested enough to interfere.
It could be Carrigan.
He brushed the thought away and focused on Michael. “Tell me.”
The man shifted. He was always doing that, as if he had run naked through some poison oak or was jonesing for a hit of something. It didn’t help that he looked a whole hell of a lot like a weasel with his narrow face and beady dark eyes. For all that, he was as trustworthy as they come, and he’d never played James false. Yet.
Michael looked away. “It’s Ricky.”
