Hit

by Mallory Hart

“He wanted to get back at my father. They invited him over for a meeting between the familgias.

“Your first option is you live here and bide your time. You pay your rent by running the house. No harm will come to you as long as you stay quiet and do your job.

You complete the hit, and at the end, you come clean about who you are and marry me.”

“Because it’s my father you’re going to kill.”

“Sean is slipping. His bloodbath with the Italians proves that enough. Our men believe him less each day. There is no place for weakness in our family.”

And now that man was dead. Because of me. He was only trying to save my life.

Marriage and honor would make us family. They’d have no choice. The familgias in Chicago and Boston will hold them to that standard whether they want to or not.”

A wife who could survive and provide me an alliance. A two for one deal.

Nobody will buy into the alliance if we don’t act like a real married couple.”

It felt strange to go back to this. The past few weeks were spent close.

It was both a blessing and a curse here, because I fecking hated breathing the same air as the bastard but he was perfect for what I needed done.

I needed that level of sway to get Pina and I off the watch lists once and for all. The sooner we were off the feds radar, the better. So far Sean had done next to nothing to get our faces cleared. If you want something done right, do it yourself.

Pina fell through the ice. The thought tripped like a broken record in my brain.

Because I cared about her. I cared about my fiery, temperamental, talkative, stubborn, overly emotional and absolutely impossible wife.

the last thing I remembered was being colder than death.

I hadn’t been able to figure him out. Not in the months we’ve known each other now, and probably not in the years we had to come.

I said one thing, but I really meant another. He saved me, he kept me alive and he carried me five miles through deep snow back home.

There was so much in his eyes I didn’t even know where to begin: fury, relief, desire, worry . . . they flickered across his face with frightening speed.

but just like our lessons, he was out to torture me.

But something changed along the way, and my body craved him in a way I didn’t expect.

I couldn’t tell him yet. I trusted Rory. He was the only person on this whole goddamn planet I could trust, but when it came to this, the less he knew the better. For everyone’s safety.

I knew there were still secrets between us, but I didn’t know just how deep it went.

He didn’t fully trust me, and no amount of arguing would change that.

“When you’re feeling better, you can make it up to me in all kinds of ways.” It boggled me how that sentence sounded like both a threat and a tempting promise.

Fear, real fear, crossed his face. It was the first time I’d ever seen it. Maybe he was human, after all.

She was sold off to Sean to give the IRA some foothold in the states. And she suffered, a lot. She had three children she watched get molded and tortured by Sean. Then, she got pregnant with her fourth, and she made a choice.”

“And for the second part, promise me this is a real marriage, that you’re really my wife. That you’ll never leave, and I get to do this to you every day for the rest of my life.”

See those dirty little words form on the lips I couldn’t stop thinking about.

If Darragh was a closed book before, now he was an open page, spilling words into every nook and cranny of our life.

I didn’t like this serious Rory. The scared one.

“Our family is dead because of you. All because you couldn’t suck it up and do as you were told. We’ve all lived and died by honoring this family. You’ve done nothing but destroy us.”

I was going to lose her. The only woman I’ve ever wanted to be with. The only woman I’ve ever cared about. Pina wasn’t bad. She didn’t deserve this. She deserved life, and

“He approached me for the first time in October, actually. Right after his bride went missing.” I swallowed, feigning confusion. “His bride?”

A look of surprise flashed over his face as he brought my left hand in front of his face. “He gave you his mother’s ring.”

They still wore there mocking smiles when I raised my gun and put a bullet between Sean O’Callaghan’s eyes.

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