Filthy Rich (The Five Points' Mob Collection, #2)

by Serena Akeroyd

EOGHAN - Owen INESSA - Ih-nessa AOIFE - EE-Fah

I thought I’d loathe her. She was fucking Bratva, and the Russians were pigs. Violent, trigger-happy dumbasses who wouldn’t know if they were swinging their dicks or someone else’s.

I figured that was down to the leadership. Vasov was a prick, and his sovietnik and obschak, the money man and head of security and enforcement, weren’t much better, but Inessa Vasov?

The leader’s daughter? A kid who’d been promised to my brother to seal ties between the Bratva and the Iris...

She was delicate and beautiful. He was a fat fucker with beady eyes. She had the grace of a ballet dancer and spoke...

He stomped around, flat-footed, and the only grace he had was what he said over dinner before we ate. His voice? Fuck me, it grated. All guttural and snappy, none of the...

I wasn’t supposed to be here tonight. Eoghan was. This was supposed to be the first time he met his future bride, a year or so after the contracts had been signed, but I was here instead because he’d taken a job, at half pric...

Only there was no avoiding this future. What Da wanted, Da got, and that was what went down when you were psychotic, but also when you were t...

The Irish Mob wasn’t a democracy, and Aidan O’Donnelly Sr. h...

Eoghan was to marry the sixteen-year-old daughter of Antoni Vasov the se...

And when I said ‘second,’ I meant it. The poor bitch wasn’t even going to get a birthday party. She was going to be getting married on her ei...

I’d watched her dance down the stairs in a dress that made her look eighteen, nothing flashy or trashy, if anything, she looked like a...

I knew Eoghan would get a hard-on for her. Sure, it was creepy to say that when she wasn’t eighteen, and I was no kid fucker—I’d slay a...

But I could see the roots of the woman in the girl, and knew she...

He was particular—so was she. Just watching her eat, especially after viewing her father’s charming eating habits, was enough to see that. The precise way she snapped out ...

Then, there was how she got to her feet, like a lady. The way she moved, like a lady. I bet she’d taken ballet...

Without even moving a muscle, I knew her room would be pristine, and she’d be like living with a doll. Eoghan thought he needed that, and while he did to a certain extent, he liked to t...

Although, Inessa had the kind of beauty any man would worship. And she was smart. Fuck, she was so smart that I alm...

I’d seen her entire being drop when she’d been introduced to me and she’d realized I wasn’t Eoghan. She’d hidden it well though. Again, more of that grace my brother would get a boner for. She’d been polite, kind, and well-spoken. Everything her father wasn’t.

Eoghan was definitely a lucky man.

Ma had kept Da contained for the most part, but when Vasov began grace in Russian, the Catholic in my father had bristled. It had reminded me of that scene in The Devil’s Advocate. Where Al Pacino, as the devil, went into church and approached the holy water which fizzed and bubbled at his presence. Yeah, that had been Da right about then.

And Inessa? Oddly enough, she suited the place. She was like a crystal figurine in a crystal palace. Untouchable.

It was weird. Unnerving. She had none of the recklessness I’d expected, nothing that told me she was actually sixteen.

With her tailored dress in a creamy peach color that offset her beautiful hair, and made the green of her eyes pop, she was so fucking still, it creeped me out.

When I was closer, taking the stool at her side and stacking my elbows on my knees, leaning over as I did so, I stared at her shoes, knowing full well that no sixteen-year-old would pick them. They were tall with a small platform. Nude.

Fucking nude. Who wore that shit unless you were...

A couple of my crew had kids her age, and they were into neon shit and fucking Snapchat… It made me wonder what they were hiding, and if she was so quiet because her pare...

She couldn’t be happy about the wedding, could she? No kid wanted to be forced to mar...

But when I finally shot her a look—maybe it was the light from the fire that did it—I saw something on her arm. Something that, when she saw where I was looking, had her rea...

I sighed heavily. “Oh, girl.” She swallowed. “Please, don’t say anything.” What could I say? “I’m sorry.” ...

The wooden words had me flinching. I knew another kid who’d said that to me once upon a time… It had made me do some stuff I regretted. Had made me want to be a protector when that wasn’t in my nature, and...

For a second, I felt tongue-tied. Violence was a part of my life, and Inessa’s too, it seemed. But we tended to shield our kids, at least the men did in front of Da. He’d kneecap them if he found out t...

Kids in the Five Points didn’t need the authorities to protect them. Not when they had their very own boogeyman protecting their asses.

“Not much consolation, but Eoghan’s a good man. He won’t treat you that way.”

“Eoghan’s like him—just not in the psychotic way.” “Good to know,” she murmured, her tone rueful. “He’d never hurt you.” “Wouldn’t he?” Her smile was pained. “Isn’t that par for the course?” “No. And not with Eoghan.”

I really shouldn’t have to be doing this—warming up my brother’s bride-to-be for his sake, but fuck, Eoghan deserved a good woman, and Inessa was young enough for her Bratva roots not to have poisoned her. A thought that was confirmed every time she looked at her father. It was hidden well, but she loathed him. That much was clear. Even if it wasn’t clear to Antoni.

Anyone with that level of acting skills might have appeared untrustworthy, but sue me. She gave off good vibes, and I was will...

“If it was Conor or Aidan, I’d say I could promise you and I wouldn’t break that promise, but Eoghan, he’s…” “Difficult?” Wincing, I shook my head. “Different. Not bad, not good. Just different. The war fucked him up some, but he’s not bad, just likes things done a certain way, you know?”

She twisted in her seat, eying me in a way that would have put my back up if I didn’t know she was my brother’s. “He’s particular?” There was a zealousness to her tone that should have taken me aback, but didn’t. Inessa was shrewd.

She wanted to know her husband, not so that she’d ‘know the man she was tying herself to for a lifetime,’ but so that she could learn him. His faults. ...

That she wanted out of the Bratva was clear to me, that she wanted a life that was different than the one...

And because I wanted the best for my dick of a brother, I could see that and was ...

“Very. Loves home cooking, is addicted to the Yankees, and irons his socks.” Well, paid that old bat, Winnie, to iron them for him. Her head tipped ...

And that was the start of an odd but unusual friendship. Okay, friendship was too strong a term. We were more like acquaintances with a mutual desire for a particular end goal. Winning Eoghan over....

I hated church. And that wasn’t something I said lightly. I hated it with a passion, and as a Five Pointer, that sucked, because part of the position of being in our exalted brotherhood was that we attend church and confessed our sins. Of which there were many. On a daily basis.

Really, we should have had a hotline to the confessional with how much sin we perpetrated, but as much as my father, the head of the Five Points—the biggest Irish Mob family in the United States—donated to St. Patrick’s, it wasn’t enough for his entire crew to be outfitted with their own personal priests to service them.

The day my father died was the day when this old fuck was being sent to wherever they sent old priests off to. And yeah, I saw him outliving my father, mostly because of the life Aidan O’Donnelly led.

That Da had hit the grand old age of sixty-six was pretty much a fucking miracle.

The enmity between the Russians and the Irish wasn’t as bad as it was with the Italians—fucking hated that scum.

Jesus, everyone did. They were cocksuckers who made the Albanians look trustworthy, and let’s put it this way, I wouldn’t trust an Albanian to look after a sandwich from Subway, never mind my territory—but the hostility between us was still bad.