Page 125 of The Mafia Assassin's Redemption
My blood turns utterly cold and sticky in my veins. Breathing is a challenge with that damn gun in her hand. The truth of his words shines, naked and bright. He means it.
He’ll kill her.
The monster in him is showing.
And I have a horrible feeling even if she agrees, he’ll hunt her down and destroy her.
For me.
I choke down a sob.
“Donal’s lucky I only got him arrested for leaving me. I could have killed him. But this one?” she says, nodding at Harry.
“Harry,” Torin says. “Her name’s Harry. Just go. Do the smart thing and you live. Hate me, but not her, never her. She’s the good we couldn’t ever be.”
“You love her?” she asks, a tear in her voice.
“I don’t do love anymore, Shiv. And everything else is water under the bridge.” Torin stops. “Water, Shiv. Gone now with time. You live with being left for dead. I live with choosing to save you and getting other people killed.”
“What makes all this worse,” she snarls, “is the so-called love of your life accepting you’re just dead and gone when you aren’t.”
“Are you even listening to yourself, Shiv? You sound crazy. I told them to get you to the hospital, to save you. Donal told me you were dead. I mourned you. And life moved on. It always does. But we… we aren’t going to be a thing again.”
I shouldn’t be here. The thought screams in my head. I’m caught in an impossibly intimate moment that’s not mine, but one I inadvertently caused.
If he didn’t choose to go in and save me, then he’d have taken off with her, made sure she got to the hospital, under her name, and saved her years, saved her the doomed path she ended up on.
They might be happy now. Have children. And I… by him coming after me and saving me and leaving her fate to others, he sealed it.
I reel back and barely notice the gun asit moves to me.
“This is my fault,” I whisper.
I don’t think she hears, but Torin does because even through the roaring of blood and the haze of shock, his sudden gaze cuts through.
“You didn’t even mourn me a year,” she screams. “You were fucking that Niamh Roberston?—”
“This is the last time I’m saying it. You were dead as far as anyone knew. Dead, Shiv. I mourned. I ripped my heart out, all the rest, but it’s been over ten years. Do you think we’d be together now if you hadn’t been shot?”
She glares at him. “You disappoint me. I thought you’d be more than… this. I thought you’d gone and married her for the Rao fortune. Shit, Tor, I made more from her uncle than you’ve made from her. More from every other prick who crossed me. At first I wanted to taunt you, get you riled up like old times, wonder who was smart enough to play with you like that.”
Her gun continues to waver between me and Torin.
“Then in that Irish bar uptown, when you chased me out, I thought you were back, but you decided to stop and play hero. Really, Torin?”
The thing is, I don’t think he plays hero. I think he does what is right more often over wrong, and if someone is hurt, he’ll help. And he’ll even walk though fire to save a little girl from burning to death.
Because I’d have stayed hidden until it was too late.
No. I stayed hidden until it was too late. And Torin had to save me.
“We can get her money, though, take on Manhattan, us against the world.”
“I’m not a kid. I’m not an ‘us against the world’ guy. I’m a Murphy. Not a Quinn. You have causes. I have my family and our organization. And we don’t want to rule everything.”
“But you rule enough. I’m not good enough?” she spits at him.
“We’re not together Shiv, and I don’t think you’d be a good fit for me now.” He shrugs, even though his gun never moves, never lifts from her.
