Illicit Temptation (Astoria Royals #3)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Trace - February - Six Months Later

“ Q uinlan. Trace,” I announce to the shady cop guarding the gate to the O’Rourke black site on Astoria Harbor.

I’ve been guarding Balor O’Rourke, but this is the first time Lachlan O’Rourke requested a private audience with me.

I’ve not seen Shea-Lynne since she sent me away in August. It’s not easy to stalk a woman with a bodyguard. So, I put this plan into motion to get Soren booted.

Looks like it worked. Thanks to a little text tampering, a certain princess’s guard is being removed. Balor, who thinks of his sister first, of course, offered me as a replacement.

Driving past the gate up the narrow lane, a two-story warehouse with a cement facade comes into view. From a steel door, a man with auburn hair emerges and my senses take in the long coat, wide shoulders, and a powerful gait.

My cousin, Griffin, waves me to a parking spot and stomps out a blunt. Smoke and steam leave his lips from the frigid temperature. I’m impressed with how he’s keeping it together, considering the visitor he got on New Year’s Day.

Griffin called a meeting at his family mansion in Astoria after the head of the Greek mafia gave him an ultimatum.

For now, we’re all still loyal O’Rourke soldiers.

I guess it doesn’t matter that I spent eight years in the Irish Defence Forces, three of them neck deep in Syria’s Golan Heights under the UN banner, and seven years as a private security contractor.

I still have to prove myself to Lachlan.

Griffin clasps the nape of my neck before my mind wanders any further. “Thanks for coming,” he says, his voice raspy.

We step inside and strut down a long dark tunnel with pin lights at the baseboards. Griffin pounds on a steel door. A tiny window opens and then the door.

The scent of blood hits me immediately, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up, remembering being locked in that container, but I push through it. In the wide room with tall ceilings lined with pipes, men I don’t know stand around with long guns, some with knives.

The Enforcer participates in the torture and killing that goes on here. A limp body lies on a table, but Griffin marches right up to Lachlan.

The brotherly love between Griffin and Lachlan rings loudly. They walk shoulder to shoulder even though Griffin is O’Rourke’s second-in-command. My Quinlan cousins have long been loyal to the O’Rourkes, even before they all moved to the States. Their partnership started in Waterford between their fathers, Fergus O’Rourke and my Uncle Aiden Quinlan.

Lachlan hovers over a metal sink and washes his hands, scrubbing them with chemicals that irritate my nose.

“Boss, Trace is here to meet with you,” Griffin announces me.

“In the office,” Lachlan says, his voice deep, his arms crawling with scars not unlike my own.

Lachlan the Legend O’Rourke has not come down from the high of the kill. I won’t lie, my stomach twists. Kieran O’Rourke is the head of the snake, but Lachlan is the venomous fangs.

Griffin shows me into the office, and I’m surprised at its posh and stylish décor considering the cold, brutal appearance of the main torture room.

Before I get a chance to ask Griffin a question, Lachlan struts in and sits down. His dark gray eyes lift to me, and I straighten my back as a sign of strength .

“What can I do for you, Mr. O’Rourke?” I ask, playing dumb.

He leans back in his chair. “Don’t call me Mr. O’Rourke. That’s my da.”

“Lachlan,” I adhere to his wishes.

“I need you to guard my sister,” he says without a huge lead-up.

My heart goes into a freefall, that my sabotage of her guard Soren worked. “Aye. Are there any active threats against her?” I ask, sitting back, crossing my legs like a gentleman. I’m in a designer suit and he’s shirtless in black blood-stained trousers.

“She has our name. We protect what’s ours.” The brutal psycho leans forward. “We also have a particular interest in Archer Crest.”

I go still. Does he know about the incident I had with him last August? Should I have reported that I stopped him from striking her? “I took care of the dosser.”

“Indeed, you did.” He peers at me.

I don’t start blabbering excuses. That will make me look weak. “I roughed up him. Honestly, I lost control with the way he was speaking to my... Your sister.” I take a breath. “After, I worried there would be repercussions. I made a deal with him to keep quiet and away from her.”

Lachlan picks up a long, serrated knife and plays with it. He lives in a world of dubious guilt. Not reporting a danger that Shea faced could be seen as a betrayal, and punished harsher than the person who tried to hurt her. Guards are held to an impossible standard. But I’m not just a guard, I’m a Quinlan and Archer Crest isn’t just some slimeball billionaire who got nasty with his sister. He’s dangerous.

“Has he contacted her?” I ask, calming myself.

Balor would have said something while I drove him around for months .

“No.” Lachlan’s jaw ticks. “Not that we know of.”

They must not be one hundred percent confident in Balor’s ability to track everything she does. The guy’s got an insane amount on his plate, not to mention he’s falling for a woman whose father is some kind of cyber-criminal.

I lean forward, my blood pressure ticking up to stroke level. “Is Crest planning on...hurting her?”

“I don’t think he wants to hurt her. He’s kept tabs on her, though. Talked to the wrong people about her whereabouts. I think he’s an obsessed maniac who isn’t above abducting her and keeping her tied up in a basement somewhere.”

Hiding my rage, I ask, “Does Shea know he may be planning something?”

“No.”

“I think she should know, sir.” I don’t mention all the trips she takes to Manhattan.

Lachlan might put her on lockdown and she’ll absolutely contact Archer herself to try to smooth this over.

“Even if told her, she thinks she knows him and won’t see him as that kind of threat.” Lachlan sounds frustrated.

I nod, because I see her trusting her judgment and won’t accept that he has trained killers who will hurt her. She wants nothing more than to avoid being any trouble for her family.

Lachlan puts down the knife. “Doesn’t matter. We’ve deemed him to be a threat. He’s cagey with his communication, and I’ve done this long enough to know when someone is planning something. But I can’t just go slit the throat of a guy with ties to African crime lords he pays off for his diamond mines.”

Crime lords have something to lose, nice houses that can be burned to the ground. Crest has mercenaries in his blood diamond world. Ruthless killers who board cargo ships in the middle of the ocean to sneak in and out of the country undetected.

I meet Lachlan’s eyes. “ I’ll slit his throat.”

Although, I’ll be putting Griffin’s new house at risk. Fuck it. She’s my wife, damn it, they’ll understand. And help.

Lachlan smiles. “When we have enough on Crest that even his brothers will want him dead, you got the kill shot, Quinlan.”

I shudder, thinking I should just drive to Manhattan right now and run him over. People die every day. But it will be too much of a coincidence, and I don’t have enough game pieces in place now to fully cover my tracks.

For all we know, there may be a standing order if he dies suspiciously, and a strike will be launched.

“Without knowing this intel, Shea thinks she doesn’t need a bodyguard,” Lachlan says with a growl. “She’ll...be difficult.”

Especially to a bodyguard who is her secret husband. I’d checked all the filings in New York and Nevada. She hasn’t petitioned to divorce me. Given Balor has hooks into all those systems, he’d have said something to me. Shea’s more afraid of her brothers finding out she got married without telling them than breaking the chains of matrimony that bind us for life.

“How do I protect a princess who doesn’t want to be guarded?” I ask to get out of my head.

“If you want to survive this job, don’t call her princess.” Lachlan smiles.

“Noted.” Even though I recall she liked me calling her princess while she sucked my cock.

“Shea’s your client, Quinlan, but you work for me. You do what she tells you, but remember, I’m your boss.” He stares into my eyes looking for a crack in my armor. “Instead of taking out Crest right now, we’ve come up with another solution.”

My throat tightens. “In addition to my protection?”

Lachlan studies me, those cold gray eyes make lesser men cry. Any other bodyguard asking for details might get a bullet in his head as an answer. But I’m not just a bodyguard. I’m a Quinlan.

After a moment while his brain processes if he can truly trust me, Lachlan says with no emotion, “Shea-Lynne is to be married this summer to a man Crest won’t dare cross.”

The words fall on my head like a piano. As much as I’m utterly crushed, I shouldn’t be surprised. Only that they didn’t marry her off sooner. Then again, Fergus O’Rourke had five ruthless sons working for him when he was king. If the O’Rourkes wanted something, they had enough power to take it. Didn’t need to marry off Shea.

That means the Crest threat is even more terrifying than Lachlan is telling me. So much so that he doesn’t think his family can adequately protect her.

“To who, sir?” That is a reasonable thing for a bodyguard to ask, all while I’m burning up with fury.

Lachlan’s assessment reaches an unbearable level of palpable tension. Exhaling, he says, “Nico Scava. The Cosa Nostra don in Las Vegas.”

Vegas. Where she and I were married. Is it possible a Cosa Nostra boss didn’t investigate his intended bride? Maybe he’d never think she was already married.

“May I ask why? I’ve spent...time with her. I don’t think she’ll see this coming.” I want to say, if you think she doesn’t want a bodyguard forced on her, how in the world do they think she’ll react to a husband?

“That whole incident with Crest sparked this. Finding out she’d been seeing him behind our backs and how it put her in danger woke us the fuck up. Enough is enough. She doesn’t need less protection, she needs more. And a fleet of bodyguards isn’t enough.” He looks up at me. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Because once Griffin gives the signal, I will belong to Quinlan Empire as their enforcer. Like the brutal man in front of me, I will take care of my wife.

She’s not marrying anyone else.

“Shea will be safer as a mafia boss’s wife,” Lachlan says, his voice gruff.

And not an enforcer’s. Ouch.

“When do you plan to tell her?” I ask, every detail stabbing my heart like a knife. My head is spinning, ready to fall off, but I keep it together.

“When the time is right.” He locks eyes with me. “She’ll be called into Astoria and told by Kieran. Her king.”

Thanks for the heads-up.

I nod and stand when he stands. With a trustful gaze, he shakes my hand. “I’ll sleep better at night knowing she’s being guarded by a Quinlan until she moves to Vegas.”

I both love and hate that, because I don’t intend to let Shea sleep soundly at night. I intend to fuck her and convince her to stay my wife. I’m up against an invisible marriage deal clock and need to show the O’Rourkes that I am worthy of marrying her.

For reinforcement, while I’m her bodyguard this time around, I’ll make sure she’s pregnant with my child.