Illicit Temptation (Astoria Royals #3)

CHAPTER FIFTY

Shea

“ C ome here, Shea-Lynne,” Darragh says to me, after exchanging a look with Lachlan.

It takes all of ten seconds on the phone with Kieran and then...

Pop pop pop.

Lachlan murders our father in cold blood.

Trace runs into the living room, gun drawn. I leave Darragh, and dive into his arms.

I’m rattled to the core. Da is lying dead on the floor. Dead! I don’t know how I feel. Da was being unreasonable. Still, I didn’t want him dead. I didn’t want this, any of this.

When I push down all the bile in my throat, I turn around and face my brothers. “I’m not marrying Malone or Nico Scava.”

It sits on the tip of my tongue to bring up my faulty uterus. I assume Nico Scava wants kids. Even if he doesn’t, he can find someone else. But the real reason I can’t marry Nico is right in front of everyone. “I’m already married—to Trace.”

Lachlan’s still smoking gun points our way. “Come again?”

I jump in front of Trace. “Three and a half years ago in Vegas. I got...” When he squeezes my waist, I correct myself, “We got drunk. Hooked up. And...got married.”

“Oh shit,” Darragh mutters, holding his head.

My father being gunned down just turned into problem number two.

“Why am I only finding out about this now?” Lachlan glares at Trace, still waving his gun. “Especially when I told you in February we planned for her to marry Nico Scava. ”

“What?” My stomach twists, and I nearly vomit. Wrenching away from Trace, I seethe at him, “You knew? Since February? ”

“Shea...”

“You shut the fuck up,” Lachlan yells at Trace. “You planned to keep my sister as your wife when you start gunning down Brandon Keller’s psychopathic allies in Manhattan?”

Trace’s jaw tenses, but Lachlan’s words mean nothing to me. Another language. Trace understood every word with brutal clarity.

“It’s no different from what you do, brother.” He boldly lays that claim to Lachlan since we are technically married. “You keep your wife safe. Do you doubt my ability to keep the woman I love safe?”

Love... He loves me?

Rage fills my lungs. I don’t know where to direct my anger first or harder. Lachlan and Trace knew of Kieran’s plan to marry me to Nico Scava. A specific person, not just an idea.

“If I can interrupt this talk of secrets, marriage, and love.” Darragh stands over our father’s dead body. “We have to deal with this and our mother since the nurses left.”

“Malone said he’s coming back tomorrow,” Trace says with no emotion. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. Get your plane ready.”

“ Ma can’t fly , Lachlan,” Darragh snaps. “Not in the condition she’s in. Not until I’ve examined her more. We can’t leave her here all alone.”

Lachlan paces. “What the hell do I do with Balor and Ella? They’re almost fifty miles away. Those roads are treacherous in the dark.”

The tension grows, and I’m sick from the trouble we’re in because of me. Because my father promised me to some man to further his needs to get his throne back here in Waterford.

“We can’t leave Da’s body here, either. Someone will show up in Astoria for you.” I’m piling on the excuses why we can’t leave when Trace looks like he’s ready to drag me out of here by my hair.

I’ve not seen Trace this shaken. Until now. But what the hell can we do? We’re trapped here.

“Problem one.” Lachlan points to our father. “If I know this piece of shite, he’s got body bags lying around. I’ll pack him up. Wherever the hell we go, we’ll bring his body. I’ll bury him upstate where he made Eoghan and me bury bodies in the brutal cold. Two. I’ll call Denton and tell him to put Balor and Ella on lockdown. I trust him. Da didn’t ask for a fucking manifest and probably doesn’t know they’re here, so I doubt that Malone scumbag knows.”

“Balor can ghost his calls, too,” Trace points out. “They can get on the road in the morning and find another airport, even fly under different names.”

My heart pounding, I wait for Lachlan to get to the next problem. Me.

“All well and good on your end,” Trace says with a shaky voice. “Malone is coming here tomorrow. With armed men to take my wife .”

“In case you just met me, I don’t run away from a fight,” Lachlan sneers. “Plus, I’m not leaving Cormac to suffer any retaliation. I will tear this house apart and find whatever the hell weapons Da stockpiled here.”

Darragh exhales, a warrior rising within him after years of living on his own, like me. “You all go, I’ll stay with Ma.”

My heart lands in my throat as I see the bloodbath happening in my mind. Darragh has a wife and two children. He’s loved and needed. If Malone gets here tomorrow and I’m not here, he’ll kill whoever answers that door, then return to the prison and kill Cormac.

What an absolute mess. I’m stuck. I have no choice. All the casualties will be on my conscience for the rest of my life. No. I can’t let this go any further. This is my chance to be a warrior. I have the least to lose.

“Stop this. All of it. I’ll... I’ll agree to marry him,” I say ready to cry.

“What?” Trace snaps. “No fucking way.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Lachlan says to me then stomps up to Trace. “I still need to deal with you.”

“You won’t deal with him, you will deal with me,” I say, slapping my chest. “I’m an adult. We had a fling, one night in Vegas. I don’t regret it.”

“Shea, you’re not marrying that animal,” Lachlan says and looks at Trace. “Tell me about Malone. How can I fight him?”

“You can’t.” Trace pushes a hand through his hair. “Not here. Not like this.”

“I don’t want to sound like a broken record,” Darragh chimes in. “But we can’t use this house as some kind of stronghold and shoot ammo out the windows. Our fucking mother is here.”

“Exactly,” I point out and start to pace. “I don’t see what choice we have. There’s too much at stake. It’s just a stalling tactic. I agree to marry him. You all go home and put a rescue plan in place. Trace, you call your military contacts, and Lachlan brings back more people here to get me. Balor can level that place with his drones and starve communications with jamming devices.” Looking up, I stare at three pairs of furious eyes.

“No fucking way,” Lachlan blurts.

“Let me finish.” I put my hands on my hips. “It’s not like he’s going to kill me.”

“I also believe he won’t kill you,” Trace says, his voice low and dead. “But he boasted about what he plans to do to you in his bed. Shea, you will pray for death.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Lachlan roars.

“It won’t get to that. Lachlan, when you drop me off, you tell him that you expect him to be a gentleman. That I’m already married, but I’m in the process of getting a divorce. That will take time to get finalized. I’ll call Eoghan in a few hours and tell him to start the paperwork.” My eyes stray to Trace, who looks wrecked. “I expect you to sign those papers.”

“You think waiting for a divorce is going to stop him from locking you in his basement?” Trace sneers at me. “And what happens when we come back here with an army and find out he’s got you hidden somewhere in the world unknown to us?” Trace kicks a chair.

The room goes quiet, tears leak from my eyes, but I wipe them away. I’m so mad at Trace. He kept a massive secret from me. His betrayal hits me like a blow.

If this didn’t happen here, it would have happened at home. I’d be in even less of a position to stop it since my brothers support the marriage to Nico Scava.

“If I can weigh in,” Darragh says, his voice shaky. “I think Shea’s plan is solid. I fucking hate it. I’ve never been close with Da, but I don’t think he would have made the deal if he thought Malone would hurt her. He planned to give Da an army. Killers who Da could have ordered to kill Malone on his command if he hurt her.”

“Nice speech, Dar. And the fact that you agreed to stay with Ma...” Lachlan hugs him but stops when his phone beeps. “That was Griffin. He’s calling around Waterford to find us men with weapons who will help us. I’m in charge here now. Tomorrow, at first light, I'll go talk to Malone. That’s the plan. And that’s final.”

AN HOUR LATER, LACHLAN and Trace have moved my father’s body somewhere out of sight. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I sit at Ma’s bedside while Darragh scours through her records on a medical tablet he refused to let the nurses take.

With nothing else to do, I say prayers for her using Lachlan’s rosary.

“What in the fuck’s sake was Da doing to her,” Darragh says, stressing over the medical records. “None of this makes sense.”

“How long does she really have, Dar?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “These meds she’s on don’t look right.”

“What are you saying?” I ask him, and I’m so glad he’s here. There is something wrong with my mother. MS should not have ravaged her down to skin and bones with no ability to breathe on her own.

“I think Da was trying to kill her,” he whispers.

I jump up. “What?”

“I’m turning down the morphine and then taking her off the ventilator,” Darragh says, looking at me. “She may start convulsing. You don’t want to watch this, Shea.”

“Will she die?” I hold my chest.

“It’s possible,” Darragh says, a catch in his voice. “From the trauma. She’s so damn weak.”

Nodding, I kiss her on the forehead. “I love you, Ma.”

I stumble from the room, tired and wrung out. Wandering through the hallway maze, I find Trace in the butler’s pantry. I spin around to leave, but he pins me to the wall.

“Let me go,” I say through clenched teeth.

“No. Let me explain why I didn’t tell you about Nico Scava.” He pushes his thigh between my legs. “Scava sent a guy to spy on you, a guy I beat the crap out of. Scava also held a gun to my head when we were in Vegas because he knew we were fucking. And now he’s down two men because I killed them.”

I suck in a breath. He killed two men in Las Vegas. “And you didn’t tell me any of that either?”

“I didn’t tell you any of that for your own good. It’s part of being a bodyguard to deal with threats and keep the client safe.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that on a count of me, your client .”

“I’d go through hell for you, wife .” He tries to touch my face, but I pull away. “Truth? Part of me worried that you’d see Scava as some kind of good option. All you did was tell me how you wanted to divorce me.”

“Because I can’t have kids,” I spit out.

“And I told you, I don’t care.”

Shaking my head, I wave him off. “You should have told me. We had enough time. You were too busy screwing me.”

He smiles. “And you loved every second of it.”

I consider all the lives at stake right now. How we were caught so off guard. “I know Lachlan is in charge. But he’s putting us all at risk. Don’t make him approach that guy alone. Right now, drive me there. How am I supposed to live with myself if you all die because of me?”

“With all due respect, I don’t care if we all die, except you.” Trace grips me by the throat, no longer worried about what anyone will think of him touching me. “How am I supposed to live without you? You are mine.”

“Do you have a better plan?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”