Page 13 of Twisted Secrets
“Don’t go getting all mushy on me.” He jerked his chin at the boxes. “Take those out back before you lock up.”
This was more like the Benji she was used to. She’d never have thought it when she walked inhere, determined to argue her way into a job, and saw the hulking owner behind the bar nearly making some poor guy piss his pants in fear, but she really liked working here with him. She grabbed the boxes and headed out back.Attachments are dangerous, and you damn well know it. Yeah, she did. Any relationship she formed was one that could be used against her if Dmitri ever decided to come calling.
Which is exactly what he’s apparently decided to do.
It was enough to make her want to pack Hadley and their few important items and catch the first train out of town.I can’t live my life in fear. Though some days, it seemed the smartest thing to do. If she kept moving, maybe she could outrun the shadow of his influence. The only thing that stopped her was the fact that it was no kind of life for Hadley. Her daughter was barely fourteen months old, and Olivia could see the strain their abrupt move from NYC had caused her, even though she’d been eight months old at the time. She wouldn’t do that any more than necessary.
The money…
He should be goddamnpleasedthat she didn’t want it. She grabbed a box cutter and started collapsing the boxes, putting a little more violence into it than strictly necessary. Dmitri didn’t want her to have the money his father had put aside for her any more than she wanted to have it. But if he didn’t get her to take it and return to the Romanov fold, he’d be going against Andrei’s dying wishes. As Andrei had been so fond of saying when he was alive, a man didn’t get by in their kind of life without having his own code of honor. While that didn’t require him to be faithful to his wife or keep him from murdering the opposition or delving into the kind of illegal things that kept Olivia up at night, itdidmean that his word was something he’d never break.
And that code was one Dmitri had inherited from their father.
So far Dmitri hadn’t moved to force the issue, but if Sergei showing up last night was any indication, it was only a matter of time before he truly insisted she return to the family.
The boxes thoroughly demolished, she stuck the box cutter into her back pocket and gathered up the cardboard. It would take all of fifteen minutes to get rid of these and finish closing up, and then she’d be headed home to cuddle her daughter. Shutting a door between themselves and the rest of the world sounded like heaven right now.
But when she took the boxes into the back alley, she froze. There were three men in the alley.Couldn’t they find another damn place to do a drug deal?She started to back into the pub, but raised voices caught her attention. Two of them backed the third into the brick wall, their stance aggressive and reeking of promised pain.Go back inside, Olivia. This isn’t your fight. Just call 911 and lock the damn door.
One of the men punched the third, sending him spinning to the ground. She gripped the doorframe, torn between the need to run and the need to intervene. The second man stepped forward, his intention to kick the guy while he was down in every line of his body.Damn it. A boot could do fatal damage to the soft parts of a stomach. “Stop!”
“Stay out of this, bitch.”
I wish I could. But she was already moving, ducking back through the door to grab the shotgun Benji kept hidden in the gap between counters. The first night she’d closed alone, he’d shown it to her and walked her through using it until he was satisfied she wouldn’t shoother foot off trying to defend herself. She could have told him that she was no stranger to using guns, but it was just easier to go along with it.
Olivia walked through the door, cracked the barrel to make sure it was loaded, and snapped it shut in a sound that only a fool wouldn’t recognize. She lifted it, bracing the stock against her shoulder so it wouldn’t knock her on her ass if she had to pull the trigger. “I said stop.”
The two standing men exchanged a look, clearly weighing their options. She waited, though the shotgun was already getting heavy, the stock slick in her clammy hands.Are they O’Malley men collecting payment?A part of her didn’t want to believe it. The rest of her knew exactly how families like that—like the Romanovs—functioned. She widened her stance, ready to do whatever it took to get them away from the guy on the ground.“I already called 911. They should be here any second.”
The man on the left cursed long and hard and turned to the one on the ground. “Don’t think that we’ll forget Ricky, you piece of shit.” Then he grabbed the other guy’s arm and hauled him away.
Olivia waited for them to turn the corner…and then waited another twenty seconds to make sure they weren’t going to change their minds. Only when the coast was a hundred percent clear did she rush to the fallen man’s side. “Are you okay?”
“Aw, sweetheart, I didn’t know you cared.”
Cillian.
Chapter Five
Cillian had taken a beating a time or two. He’d always had a mouth on him, and sometimes it talked him into more trouble than it talked him out of—and that wasn’t even taking into consideration his upbringing and all that other shit. There was an ongoing threat of violence that existed in the background of all their lives from the time they were old enough to understand what their father really did to provide the lifestyle they enjoyed. For all that, he hadn’t understood why two strangers chose tonight of all nights to jump him.
Not until they’d let slip Ricky Halloran’s name.
The sins of the past keep coming back to bite us in the ass over and over again, like a snake that’s eating its own tail. We hate them for Devlin. They hate us for Ricky. And on and on it goes.
He concentrated on breathing while he took inventory of his injuries. He’d have a black eye for sure tomorrow—Mother would love that—and more bruisesthan he cared to count, but nothing seemed to be broken. Thank Christ for small mercies.Does James know his people are slipping his hold? Does Carrigan?
A worry for another day. He braced himself and sat up.
“You shouldn’t be moving.” Olivia, his unexpected avenging angel, hovered nearly close enough to touch, but made no move to help him other than checking over her shoulder, presumably to make sure the Halloran men hadn’t changed their minds and come back for round two.
“I’m fine.” Mostly fine. The alley was spinning a little in a way that sure as hell wasn’t natural. He touched the back of his head and winced when his hand came away bloody. “Shit.”
She sat back on her heels, the shotgun carefully pointed at the ground away from him. “Let’s get you into the bar.”
The order surprised him. She obviously didn’t like him that much, sex aside, but if she was the type of woman to charge into an alley to defend a man she barely knew, it stood to reason she’d want to make sure he didn’t lie back down and die in that same alley.
His pride reared up and took control of his mouth. “I’m okay.” It was only a few blocks back to the house. He should be able to make it there and convince one of the men to patch him up without telling anyone how bad he must look right now. They did this sort of thing all the time.
