Bastard or no, he’d taken me in when I was fourteen and had made me one of his family. I’d gone from being his kids’ friend, the son of one of his runners, to suddenly being welcome in the main house.
All because Aidan Sr.—though I was sure he was certifiable—believed in family.
I shot Aidan Jr. a look. “Was it that blonde over on Canal Street?”
He rubbed his chin. “Yeah.”
Snorting, I told him, “Hope you wore a rubber. I swear that woman has so many men going in and out of her door, it should be on double-action hinges.”
He scowled at me. “Are you trying to piss me off?”
“Why? Didn’t wear a jimmy?” I grinned at him, my mood soaring in the face of his irritation. “Better get to the clinic before it drops off.”
Though he flipped me the bird as easily as I’d done to him—I was his brother, after all—he grumbled, “What are you going to do about little Aoife?”
I squinted at him. “She’s not little.”
That seemed to restore his humor. “I know. Just how you like them.” He shook his head. “You and Conor, I swear. What do you do with them? Drown yourself in their tits?”
Heaving a sigh, I informed him, “My predilection for large tits is none of your business.”
“And whether or not I wore a jimmy last night is none of yours.”
“If it turns green and looks like a moldy corn on the cob, who you gonna call?”
“Ghostbusters?” he tried.
I shook my head, then pointed a finger at him and back at myself. “No. Me.”
Grunting, he got to his feet and pressed his fists to the desk. “We need that building, Finn.”
“The business development plan was mine, Aid. I know we need it. Don’t worry, I won’t do anything stupid.”
He snorted. “Your kind of stupid could go one of two ways.”
That had me narrowing my eyes at him, but he held up his hands in surrender.
“Fuck her out of your system quickly, and then get started on the deal,” he advised. “Best way.”
It probably was the best way, but—
He sighed. “That fucking honor of yours.”
I had to laugh. Only in the O'Donnelly family would my thoughts be considered honorable.
“If I’m fucking someone over, I want them to know it,” was all I said.
“That makes no sense.”
“Makes for epic sex, though,” I jibed, and he shot me a grin.
“Angry sex is always good.” He rubbed his chin, then he reached over again and flipped through the photos. “Who’s the old guy to her?”
“To her? Not sure. Sugar daddy?” The thought alone made the beast inside rage. I cleared my throat to get rid of the rasp there. “To us? He’s our meal ticket.”
Aidan’s eyes widened. “He is?”
I nodded. “Just leave it to me.”
“I was always going to, deartháir.” He tilted his chin at me, honoring me with the Gaelic word for brother. “Be careful out there.”
“You, too, brother.”
Aidan winked at me and, with a far too cheerful whistle for someone whose dick might soon be ‘ribbed for her pleasure’ without the need for a condom, walked out of my office leaving me to brood.
The instant his back was to me, I stared at the photos again. Flipping through them, I glowered at the innocent face staring back at me through the photo paper—if only she knew.
Hers was a building in Hell’s Kitchen. Five Points Territory. One of many on my hit list.
Back in the 70s, Aidan Sr., following in his father’s footsteps, had bought up a shit-ton of property, pre-gentrification, and it was my job to either sell off the portfolio, reconstruct, or ‘improve’ the current aesthetics of the buildings the Points owned.
This particular one was something I’d taken a personal interest in.
See, I was technically a legitimate businessman.
This office?
I had views of the Hudson. I could see the Empire State Building, and in the evening, I had an epic view of the sunset setting over Manhattan. This office building, also Points’ property, was worth a cool hundred million, and I was, again technically, the CEO of it.
On paper?
I looked seamless.
The businessman who sported hundred thousand dollar watches and had a house in the Hamptons. No one save the Points and my CPA knew where the money came from. I liked that because, fuck, I had no intention of switching this pad for a lock-up in Riker’s Island.
Still, this project cut close to home, and the reasoning was fucking pathetic.
I’d never admit it to any of the O'Donnellys. The bastards were like family to me, and if I admitted to this, they’d never let me hear the end of it.
Extortion?
I usually doled that out to someone else’s to do list. Someone with a far lower paygrade than me, someone expendable. But the minute I’d heard of the troublesome tenant who was refusing to sell her lot to us? After not one, not two, not even three attempts with higher prices?
Five outright refusals?
The challenge to convince her otherwise had overtaken me.
See, I liked stubborn in women.
I liked fucking it out of them.
Throw in the fact the woman’s name was Aoife? It had been enough to get me sending someone out to follow her.
If she’d been fifty with as many chins as she had grandchildren, she’d have been safe from me.
But she wasn’t.
She was, as Aidan had correctly stated, my kryptonite. All milky flesh with gleaming auburn hair that I wanted to tie around my clenched fist. Her soft features with those delicate green eyes that sparkled when she smiled and were like wet grass when she was mad, acted like a punch to my gut.
Now?
My interest hadn’t just been piqued.
It had fucking imploded.
Yeah, I was thinking with my cock, but what man, at the end of the day, didn’t?
I’d just have to be careful. Just have to make sure I put pressure on the right places, make sure she’d bend and not break, and the old bastard in the pictures was my key to just that.
See, every third Tuesday of the month, Aoife Keegan had a habit of traipsing across Manhattan to the Upper East Side. There, at three PM on the dot, she’d enter a discreet little boutique hotel and wouldn’t leave until nine PM that night.
Five minutes after she arrived and left, the same man would leave, too.
At first, when Jimmy O’Leary had told me that Senator Alan Davidson was at the hotel, I hadn’t thought anything of it.
Why would I?
Senators trawled for donations in fancy hotels every fucking day of the week. It was the true luxury of politics. Sure, they made it look real good for the press. Posing in derelict neighborhoods and shaking hands with people who did the fucking work . . . all while they lived it up large with women half their age in two thousand dollar a night suites.
My mouth firmed at that.
Was Aoife selling herself to the Senator?
The thought pissed me off.
I couldn’t see why she’d do such a thing. Not when I’d looked into her finances, had seen just how secure she was. But maybe that was why. Maybe the Senator was funneling money to her.
The only problem was that the lot Aoife owned—did I mention it was owned outright? Yeah, that was enough to chafe my suspicions, too, considering she was only twenty-fucking-five years old—was a teashop in a small building in a questionable area of HK.