Nightshade

  Head up.

  Shoulders back.

  Lips twisted.

  Eyes laughing.

  Give them what they want. Give them what they’ve come to expect from you. Give them the beauty and the crazy. Give them you.

  Like any of them had ever actually had me . . .

  A sharp, melodic laugh suddenly burst from my chest, and the couple walking in my direction stopped then went out of their way to avoid getting too close. But the man’s eyes devoured me, spilling secrets I knew well.

  Lust. Shame. Need. Disgust. Intrigue.

  That’s right. Steer your pretty little wife away from the crazy girl walking alone. But the next time you see me without her, you’ll be asking me to get into your car, begging to get off on that crazed laughter.

  You aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last.

  I already hate you . . . just as I’ve hated all the others.

  Just as I’ve hated myself for six years . . .

  Pain stabbed at my chest as Beck’s words played through my mind, unwanted and incessant. “You think I’d touch a whore as fucked up in the head as you?”

  His words didn’t hurt for the fact that he didn’t want me anymore—because I’d never wanted his touch. They hurt because, for the rest of my life, men would only come looking for the girl Beck had described.

  No one looked for the girl buried deep inside, screaming to be freed. Begging to be touched. Begging to be loved.

  No . . . because she was weak.

  And weakness was a word that couldn’t exist for me. Love was another.

  Beck had waited until the day I turned eighteen before he said a word to me about his feelings. And then they were there. Words he’d held back for years and was finally laying bare.

  He wanted to take care of me.

  He wanted to be with me and take me away from the fucked-up world I’d grown up in.

  He loved me . . .

  The terrifyingly huge drug dealer—the sweetheart mobster—wanted me.

  I hadn’t considered his offer for even a second.

  Sure, Beck was attractive. There was something about his bear-like build, kind eyes, and bearded face. But he’d already been ruining my mom’s and my life for four years. In that time, bitterness had formed in my heart and turned to hate. There was no getting past that.

  To pay him for everything my mom took, I’d had to find random jobs. But whether it was dropping out of school to have more time to work, my other jobs overlapping, or that my mom came in high too often . . . it proved difficult to keep a job for long. When my debts grew to the thousands and nowhere else would hire me, I began begging for money on street corners. Soon after, I started getting propositioned by men.

  The worst kind of men.

  So when Beck told me about his feelings that first night, I shut him down as soon as I heard the word love.

  The second night, he promised to get me away from my life—the trailer I’d grown up in, my mom, and the people that hung around her. I told him he didn’t love me if he thought leaving my mom was something I’d ever choose.

  The next night, one of the men who’d been regularly propositioning me tried to force himself on me when I’d been on my way home. But Beck had been there, waiting for me as he did every night, and had heard my screams.

  It hadn’t been the first time a man had tried to force himself on me. There had been friends of my mom and other dealers when I was younger, but I always managed to slip away. I was as good at getting away as I was sneaking into places.

  Still, it had been years since the last time anyone tried. And it had never been that man.

  The encounter and his words that night had shaken me to my core. But I needed to stay strong. I’d always been strong. After he’d torn the man off me, I tried to assure Beck that it hadn’t affected me. Even though on the inside, I had silently begged him to make it go away.

  All of it.

  The men who came after me. My mother’s addiction. The madness inside.

  Weak. So, so weak.

  And then it was there . . . his offer.

  That night . . . that night I might have agreed to anything—accepted anything Beck offered. All for the chance to get both my mother and me away from a life she’d surrendered us to long ago. A life I’d been struggling to keep us breathing in.

  When he begged me to give him a chance—begged me to let him take care of me for the rest of my life—I gave in. On the sole condition he stopped giving my mom drugs.

  In return, he shook his head subtly and told me how much I owed him.

  Beck’s reaction was the cruel reminder I needed. I hadn’t kept us alive this long by being weak. By needing someone.

  I laughed like a girl who lost her mind as I grabbed what cash I had on me and threw it at him. Unable to stop myself, I started doing what I always did when I felt weak and vulnerable: rambled and taunted Beck and watched his anger grow.

  Make it go away, Beck.

  My own sickness. My own destructive craving. No better than my mother’s.

  Make it go away . . .

  Beck snapped, unleashing a terrifying rage on the man he’d been holding in his unyielding grip. Beating him until his face was unrecognizable and promising worse when he least expected it. And though I never asked Beck what the worse was, I knew it was what I’d been protecting my mom from all these years.

  I forced myself to watch until I no longer felt like I needed another human being to help me make it through this fucked-up world. When it was over, I shut up that weak, pleading voice in my head and left before Beck could say another word.

  But that night, the man returned, making my dreamless night a nightmare.

  My weighted eyelids and limbs. His heavy body. His hot, disgusting breath on the back of my neck as he ripped my clothes. “You’re mine, whore.”

  I vowed no man would have control over me again. And if a whore was how they saw me, then that was how they were going to get me.

  I started selling myself the next night.

  Beck found out three days later. If it was possible to destroy the world, he would have done it that night.

  He never looked at me the same way. He never told me he loved me—or offered to take me away—again. And he never attempted to stop selling to my mom.

  As he said earlier, he didn’t have a choice. I doubted someone in the mob could decide to stop selling drugs.

  But condition met or not, I would’ve never belonged to Beck.

  I belonged to no man.

  I went through the four names. Then again.

  Both times slowly, silently. Thinking of each face that belonged to the names of the men who had ruined my life, and what it would be like to watch the life drain from their eyes. What it had been like to watch the first two.

  Tried to make myself believe that the emptiness would subside once I was finally done.

  Four names.

  Four men.

  I could’ve been done with them all within a night. But when they all played a part in destroying your life, they deserved more than a death they never saw coming. And I could be a patient man.

  Finn and Bailey had tried to set up the death of the only person who would ever mean anything to me.

  I’d unknowingly lost her long before that because of the man now standing six feet away from me. Oblivious to the fact that I’d entered his downtown Raleigh office with him.

  The third person on my list.

  Mickey O’Sullivan.

  Boss of the Holloway gang.

  The goddamn devil.

  It’d been nearly three weeks since he’d gone to trial for attempting to start a human trafficking ring, only for his case to be dropped and all charges dismissed. It’d been just as long since anyone had seen or heard from him.

  And I’d been thinking of the many cruel and sadistic ways I wanted to steal his last breath every minute of those three weeks.

  I wanted him to feel the constant ache I’d felt the last six mo
nths. I wanted him to suffer.

  He’d been held without bail for almost six months because they’d claimed he was a flight risk. And then he’d vanished the second he’d been released. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he left just to show them he could. Billionaires did that.

  But I did know better.

  Mickey wasn’t the kind of man to hide from anyone. He was proud of the mountain of corrupt deeds he’d built his empire upon and rarely left it. He spent his days laundering money into O’Sullivan Financial so even more could filter back out to Holloway and the cocaine we supplied.

  So, if he disappeared, there was a reason. One we all needed to be worried about if he was keeping his twisted schemes to himself.

  I rapped my knuckles on the wall and forced a neutral expression when he turned.

  “Kieran,” Mickey called out. His signature bright smile was covering his face when he turned and found me standing there. “It’s been a long time.”

  I didn’t comment on the fact that it was about to be a hell of a lot longer. “Security tripped when you walked in here,” I murmured, circling a finger to indicate the office we were standing in. “Didn’t know you were coming back.”

  The smile shifted into a taunting smirk. “Well . . . would you?”

  “To my family?” I asked, my tone only holding the slightest hint of a challenge. “To the world I rule?” I let the lift of my brow answer for me.

  He laughed. A daunting sound he usually reserved for those he was planning to unleash hell on.

  To unleash me on.

  “To the house full of traitors, you mean?” He sat on his desk, crossing his arms over his chest as he did. “There’s something I can’t figure out, Kieran. Something I kept turning over in my head day and night while they held me in that cell. How did Demitri Borello know all he did? Sure, he has that hacker bitch. But the amount of information—the details he had . . . I only entrusted a select few with that information. And somehow it ended up in my enemy’s hands.”

  “Bailey and Finn wanted our positions. That wasn’t a secret. I took care of them a few months ago.”

  He barked out a laugh, but it turned mocking as he slanted me a glare. “You and I both know those pieces of shit weren’t smart enough to figure out what the Borellos knew.”

  I didn’t move, but I wasn’t so still he would notice a difference in my stance.

  I was calm.

  I was unmoved by his comments.

  I had to be.

  Demitri Borello—Dare, as those of us closest to him knew him by—had been the leader of the Borello gang before he’d dissolved it. His family had been Holloway’s greatest rivals for generations. He’d been my enemy until we’d called a truce to take down the man in front of me . . . and then he betrayed me at the last hour.

  And while I had no doubt Dare’s crew could’ve found out most, if not all, of what Mickey had been doing and planning, they’d found it out with help from a few of us within Holloway.

  Mickey’s son, Aric, before he was killed. My closest friend, Beck. And me.

  “I’ve heard nothing.” I lifted my shoulder in a relaxed shrug. “The men went back to business as usual. The only whispers going around the property are questions of when and if you’re coming back since Tommy skipped out a few weeks ago. Nice choice in an advisor.”

  He nodded slowly and grabbed a small stack of papers off the desk beside him as his mouth curled into a smile. “Well, they can’t all be as good as your old man.” He sifted through the first few papers, his eyes lingering on the next as he murmured, “No whispers about you taking over?”

  My brow pinched at his tone. It was too curious. Too casual.

  Not at all like the loud, demanding, confident man I knew he was. In everything.

  “None. They know I don’t want it.”

  “Or they don’t think you deserve it,” he said flatly. “You and my daughter were supposed to be a package deal. The two of you were supposed to take over Holloway together. And you couldn’t keep her happy and by your side. Shit, you couldn’t even keep her in Holloway. She ran from you into the enemy’s arms.”

  My jaw clenched, but my outward expression was blank.

  “You had one job, Kieran.”

  I had one mission.

  “Keep Lily safe.”

  Keep Lily safe. Love Lily.

  “And you fucking failed.”

  And I failed.

  “Why should any of us trust you after that?”

  I forced myself to breathe.

  Tried to force her face from my mind, but it felt impossible. She was all I could see.

  The hollowness in my chest was all I felt.

  “You think I don’t love you?” I asked, confused and staggered at what was happening between me and the girl I’d spent a lifetime loving.

  “I know you do, but I think you’ve forgotten how.”

  “Do you still love me?”

  “I don’t know.” Her face fell as she rushed to try to make me understand, “You’ve been gone.”

  For her. Everything, always, had been for her.

  And it had ended because of the man in front of me.

  I took unhurried steps toward Mickey until I was a foot away. My fingers twitched with the need to reach for one of my blades, but I forced the urge and the monster back and just stared at him until I knew I was in control of myself.

  Mickey looked amused, but the thundering of his pulse at his throat always gave him away.

  “Lily told me our relationship ended because I was always gone. Because I was always working jobs for you.” I tilted my head mockingly. “You know what I’ve wondered in the months you’ve been gone? If you didn’t have me away all but a few hours each week so it would ruin us. So something like this would happen. If this isn’t part of your fucked-up plan.” My gaze fell and lingered on his throat. My mouth lifted into a smirk. “But it’s me you don’t trust.”

  I watched his pulse point for another few seconds before looking into ice-blue eyes identical to Lily’s. But where Lily’s were soft and filled with warmth, Mickey’s were cold and held a lethal edge.

  My smirk widened as I turned to leave.

  I was at the door of his office when he said, “Tommy didn’t skip out . . . I had him killed before he had the chance. I’ve been having everyone watched. I have my suspicions on who was feeding information, and whoever put a knife in my back will get an order with their name on it. My guy is simply waiting for me to give him the go ahead.”

  Letting my blank expression fall over my face again, I looked over my shoulder. “Since when is it not my job to keep your hands clean?”

  A knowing smirk pulled at Mickey’s mouth. “Since you were one of the few who knew the information the Borellos got their hands on. And, as you said, I can’t trust you.”

  He must have seen the way my eyes narrowed—the hatred and anger that slipped through for just a second—because he laughed long and loud.

  “I wouldn’t go getting ideas, Nightshade. If anything happens to me, there’s a man with orders to kill someone I really don’t think you want in the ground.”

  I doubted that.

  I turned and reached for the door.

  “Although . . . I think Conor might deserve it anyway since he was always on guard when the Borellos got through.”

  My hand missed the handle and something heavy settled in my stomach.

  Fuck.

  Conor never had anything to do with the information passed back and forth because Beck had tried to keep his younger brother as far from the bad shit as possible. Because he wasn’t meant for life in the mob—should’ve never seen it. Tasted it. It’s why I’d put him on Lily’s guard.

  Those brothers were the only ones I’d trusted with her life, and Conor had almost died to save her.

  But this . . .

  I repeated the four names and forced myself to relax as I opened the door.

  For Lily, I would make Mickey’s death excruciating.
For having Conor as his safeguard, I would make it slow.

  Without looking back, I said, “Then I suggest you don’t accidentally get yourself killed.”

  I knew before I entered the trailer that home was somewhere I didn’t want to be that night.

  I also had a feeling the extra deal with Beck this week hadn’t been my mom’s idea.

  I threw the door open and stormed in, my eyes already narrowed and my gaze darting around the cramped space, though it probably looked like I was simply searching for my mom.

  Two men I’d never seen before were sitting in the living area. I was sure one was new to the game from the look of him. The other I’d bet had been in on it as long as Momma had. And he was looking at me like he wanted to throw me on the coke-lined table and have his way with me. The first looked like he was going down in three . . . two . . . one.

  A second passed.

  Another.

  His eyes rolled back and he hit the floor face first.

  Hm. My timing’s off tonight.

  I took in a deep breath and let my stare slowly move to the man still looking at me, mentally undressing me as he scraped a finger through one of the last remaining lines and rubbed it across his gums.

  I had a pretty good hunch I’d been forced to pay for that cocaine.

  Not like it was the first time Momma shared her drugs with the random friends she brought home. Not like it would be the last.

  “My, my, my, my, my . . . what do we have here? A party for little ol’ me?” I let my mouth stretch into a wicked grin and relaxed against the wall as I listened for anything else in the trailer. Anyone else.

  Nothing.

  “If I would’ve known, I wouldn’t have kept you waiting.”

  The man grabbed his crotch and leaned back on the dirty couch. “Then come over here and say you’re sorry, baby.”

  I dropped my purse on the counter beside me as I pushed from the wall and walked slowly toward the man, hips swaying exaggeratedly as I did. My eyes never once left his, but I knew without turning my head that unless she was passed out in one of the bedrooms, my mom wasn’t in this trailer.

  I ran my fingers through my hair and down my body just as slowly as I moved, twisting my lips sensually as I neared him. When his hazy gaze landed on my chest, I continued trailing my hands over my waist and hips to pause on what I’d been aiming for.