Shattered Hearts (Irish Kings #1)

12. Finn

Chapter 12

Finn

“Pleasure doing business with you.” Owen McGrath tips his hat as the boys heft the last crate of chrysanthemums from the truck onto the warehouse floor.

“Likewise.” I yank the truck door closed. “Shane sends his regards.”

Owen is a top client, one my father personally assigned me to handle scheduled product deliveries to. Owen is a reserved, stylish man, until set loose in a nightclub. In the light, McGrath designs spaces for the rich and famous. In the shadows, he’s a fence. He and I both know, potted beneath the plants we’ve delivered are thousands of dollars’ worth of synthetic contraband.

“You four. Get going.” I throw my chin toward the truck, and the fledgling foot soldiers loitering around us disperse. They’re assigned to one more delivery today. Rory will oversee the second drop.

They’re headed your way.

As soon as I send that text, my phone rings.

Riley.

I ignore the tingle at the back of my neck when I see her name.

We already agreed to a schedule for the week, so what can she be calling about? Has she found Harper? Is our charade over?

Angst and trepidation course through me at the prospect. Beneath all the other crap vying for space in my brain, my inability to marry Harper Brennan is still there, all the way at the bottom, glaring at me.

If my stay of execution ends today…or tomorrow…what then?

And why, instead of the horror of legally binding myself to Harper, does my brain keep trying and failing to imagine a final goodbye with Riley?

Before my brain fractures any further into hypothetical scenarios, I answer the call. “Hey?—”

“Finn.” Riley’s terrified whimper is unmistakable.

Her voice, so small and broken, destroys me. She doesn’t have to say it. I already know something is very wrong.

Fear squeezes my chest.

“Where are you?” I sprint for my motorcycle parked by the warehouse exit. I’m out of there so fast, I don’t even remember how I came to be ripping through the New York City streets.

I violate every road rule in the book as I tear through the city toward Chinatown, my body smoldering with rage and fear.

Not again. Don’t let me be too late a second time.

By the time I whip onto Riley’s street, I’m so amped up, I almost cut the turn too tight and tip over. My bike roars into the alleyway behind the flower shop, and I sprint toward the staircase that leads up to her apartment.

“I just want a fucking answer.”

The slurred, angry voice fuels my fury as I race up the stairs.

Inside, the fucker in question slumps against her bedroom door, wielding a gun. I can’t see his face, only his brown hair. He’s thicker and taller than I am, but I’ve killed bigger men than him in my sleep.

“What was wrong with me ?” He puts a bullet through Riley’s door.

The world stops spinning. My stomach hangs suspended in the air.

Is she…alive?

The millisecond I hear Riley’s quaking sobs on the other side, I lose my shit.

No one makes her cry like that.

The chemical reaction of my fury and relief fuse into a rage so hot, I’m combustible.

I slam the back of her attacker’s head into the doorjamb. He collapses with a grunt.

Rage paints my vision red as my typical restraint throttles down to zero. This fucker is going to get all of me today, the full and complete Painful Death by Finn Gallagher experience.

I curb-stomp his wrist with vengeance, enjoying the tender snap of his bones beneath the steel-reinforced heel of my combat boots. A feral shriek of pain bounces off Riley’s ceiling. His hand releases the gun, sending it clattering to the floor.

Time to pull out the boys.

My father gifted me my first set of brass knuckles the day I became an enforcer. The boys, as I call them, are spiked, made of iron, and weigh almost as much as my guns. Killing someone with them is too easy.

On a normal day, I leave them alone. Unless I’m livid or I’ve found myself an occasion where I want to see some fucking teeth on the floor.

Like tonight.

The asshole mutters and stumbles back to his feet, head lolling to one side. I slide on the knuckles.

Damage his internal organs or disfigure that face first? Decisions, decisions…

But when he gets his bearings enough to face me, a commercial break interrupts my frenzy. For a moment, surprise washes my mind clean.

I recognize this drunk dipshit. He’s one of the guys who mugged me last Sunday, the one who didn’t get to taste my butterfly knife, the only one left standing after his living friends ran off, wounded.

On his neck, I spy the same tattoo the big guy had on his arm. The Celtic cross.

“You again.” He recognizes me too.

As I stride toward him, my fury returns, erupting at a higher octave than before. I haven’t been this angry in a very long time.

Following me? Fine. Comes with the territory. Attacking me? His mistake, and his funeral. Following me, attacking me, and then doing the same to Riley to get to me?

By the time I’m done with him, hell’s going to look like a trip to the Bahamas.

I slug him in the jaw. Blood and spittle spray the windowpane as I follow up with a gut-check. Now, thanks to the spikes, there are four holes in his face and abdomen.

My fingers close around the spindles of a wooden chair in Riley’s den.

I crown him so hard, the whole chair comes apart. Goatee crumbles to the ground, gasping and sputtering.

He coughs up blood.

“You attacked my wife.” I brandish one of the fallen chair legs like a bat and bring it down hard on his spine. “Must be fucking suicidal.”

Prostate at my feet, he groans. I take the opportunity to kick the shit out of his face.

Tap-tap. Molars hitting Riley’s hardwood floor? Music to my ears.

“So cocky.” The slurred words eke out of Goatee’s bloody mouth as he gathers himself to his knees. “Just because…she’s your…whore.”

The piece of shit hocks a bloody spitball at my feet, his discolored saliva soon dripping off the toe guard of my favorite combat boots. A little puddle collects on the floor as silence falls between us.

“You’re right about one thing. She’s mine.” I crouch down so we’re eye level. “But she’s nobody’s whore.”

I plunge my fist into his abdomen, the biting edge of the brass knuckles puncturing his flesh. Warm blood coats my fist. Goatee doubles over, mouth dispensing gibberish at the new holes in his chest. I fist the back of his collar and force him toward Riley’s kitchen.

Morbid anticipation mounts inside me. My bone-deep rage is the cake, and the pleasure of harming him is the frosting smeared all over the top.

I dunk this dipshit’s face into Riley’s dirty dishwater. The aqueous clang that follows is either his head colliding with a saucepan beneath the surface or the sound of his hollow skull smacking against the drain. I hold his head down with my left hand and grope around her kitchen counter with my right.

My fingers connect with the handle of an iron skillet. Excitement mixes in with deadly, crackling anticipation, changing the color of the flames inside me. I release the struggling brute and watch his head fly back out of the water, just in time to catch a mouthful of cast iron.

I swing the pan at his ugly mug like a Hall of Fame hitter.

He goes down hard.

The weight of his giant body hitting the floor shakes the room. A few more of his teeth pitter-patter to the floor.

Sick satisfaction spreads over me.

Digging my hand under his head, I clutch his collar once again and drag him back out into Riley’s den. Letting off some steam did me good. I didn’t realize how much tension was in my muscles until I let all of it out on him.

I almost want to thank him.

After I re-deposit him on the carpet, I grip a fistful of his hair and yank his head up from the ground.

“No one hurts my wife.” I shove the barrel of my gun into his disgusting mouth and cock it. “Ready to die?” Fear ignites his glassy, half-conscious eyes. “Because I will fucking kill you.”

Behind me, a floorboard creaks. There’s another one?

My head whips around to assess the threat.

It’s…Riley.

She emerges from her bedroom, face wet with tears and pale with fright. Dust, wood splinters, and specks of fractured glass dot her black dress slacks and violet top.

Seeing her there, free of bullet holes and unharmed, plucks me right out of my violent rampage.

But as soon as I register her horrified face, I realize what Riley’s just walked in on. I’m tossed back in time to that day…the day Brianne walked in on me in a similar situation.

A half-dead foe at my fingertips, who I’d beaten unrecognizable only minutes before. His blood dripping from my brass knuckles and spattered on my face, along with various other surfaces in that place. Bri’s terrified expression as she beheld me in all my gruesome glory signified the beginning of the end for us.

There’s a line. Bri stood on one side, and I on the other. Her job was to save lives.

Mine was to end them.

Riley’s panicked expression reminds me of all the reasons I don’t deserve to be married again, why another relationship with someone new would never work.

Who could ever accept me for what I really am? A brutal murderer.

I’m the villain of the story. And villains don’t get the girl.

I re-holster my gun and release his hair. Now unconscious, his skull thunks against Riley’s hardwood floor as I stand to my full height and remove the brass knuckles still dripping with this guy’s blood.

The adrenaline gushing through my system doesn’t slow, even after I’ve ended my rampage. Sweat clings to my forehead. God only knows what I look like .

A vicious, killing beast.

With so much force she nearly knocks both of us over, Riley launches herself at me. My arms encircle her just to steady us. I have no idea what’s happening. She locks her arms around my neck, crushing our bodies together while my heart threatens to beat out of my chest.

She tucks her head tight against my shoulder, uneven breaths hot against my skin. “Finn, you…thank you.”

Like fresh spring water bursting through concrete, my brain clears for the second time tonight.

Thank you? I don’t have time to process her words.

Riley places her gentle hands on my face, drawing back to meet my astonished gaze. Instead of hatred or disgust or fear, her blue eyes are full of tears.

She holds my face like she cherishes it, even as specks of her assailant’s blood smear beneath my fingertips.

Against all reason, Riley Brennan fastens her lips to mine.

Nothing could have prepared me for this. Though I’ve kissed Riley before, this time isn’t like the others.

For one simple reason. Riley kissed me first.

Riley wants me.

At first, I just stand there in silent paralysis. Her soft lips blunt the sharp edges of my broken brain until all that remains are smooth, breaking waves of desire and arousal.

Despite my lack of encouragement, Riley’s arms tighten around my neck. She applies her hot body to mine, thawing out my frostbitten system one kiss at a time. Synapses firing, hormones releasing, I feel carbonated on the inside.

Lust reawakens inside me like a volcano turning active after decades of dormancy.

Longing inflates my lungs and prompts my sluggish limbs into action.

My hands land hard on the small of Riley’s back, and she gasps against my lips. She wraps her legs around me, and I walk us right into the wall, my right hand climbing up into her soft blond hair. God, I want to lose my hands in her wavy tresses.

Her tongue darts out and slips between my lips, and I groan against her mouth. Her urgency is so powerful, I can’t deny her…even if I wanted to. Even though I know what a bad idea this is.

Fuck bad ideas.

I can’t resist this woman.

My cock hardens as Riley’s tongue teases mine.

Her kiss somehow cancels out everything wrong with this moment. Our shitty predicament, another man’s blood on my clothes, her near-death experience.

The stress and horror and violence of this situation aren’t exactly romantic. But Riley didn’t get that memo.

Wild noises rumble up from my chest. Against her lips, a growl escapes as I ram us into the corner between the window and the adjoining wall. Metal clangs as I shove over a lamp in my way. Our foreheads rock together as we stumble through the mayhem of her den.

In her kiss, I taste the same emotions racing through me. Relief, deprivation, greed, pleasure. My fingertips rake down her back and over her hip, tracing the line of her ass. I lean into her, and when I straighten up, she comes with me, legs folding around my waist.

Riley wanting me right now gets me so hot for her, I can hardly breathe. If she keeps kissing me like this, I…

There’s not a word for what I’m going to do to her yet, but I’ll create one after we emerge from the sexual coma I’m aching to fuck us into.

Riley Brennan is damn dangerous, and I’m already in over my head.