“Take my check, and my other offer, before you or the people you care about are threatened.” I got to my feet and straightened my jacket out. “This suit? These shoes? That briefcase and this watch? I own them because I’m damn good at what I do. I’m a financial advisor, Aoife. Take my word for it. You’re getting the best deal out of this.”
She staggered back, the counter stopping her from crumpling to the floor. “You’d hurt me?”
“Not me,” I repudiated. Not in the way she thought, anyway. “But the men I work for?”
Her gaze dropped to the one thing she’d retained in her hand—my card. “Acuig,” she whispered. “Five in Gaelic.”
My brows twitched in surprise. She knew Gaelic?
“The Five Points.” Her eyes flared wide with terror. “They’re behind this deal.”
I hadn’t expected her to put one and one together, but now that she had? It worked to my advantage.
Nodding, I told her, “Any minute now, there’ll be a team of housekeepers coming in here to clear up for the night.” When she gaped at me, I retrieved the contract from my briefcase, slapped it on the table, and handed her a pen as I carried on, “I suggest you let tonight be your last night of business.”
What I didn’t tell her, was that my suggestions weren’t wasted words. They were like the law.
You didn’t break them, and, like any lawmaker, I expected immediate obeisance.
***
Aoife
So, the beautiful man just happened to be an absolute cocksucker of a bastard.
Still, this couldn’t be real, could it?
The dick could have anyone he wanted. Jesus, Jenny was panting after him like a dog in heat. She would have gone out with him if he’d so much as clicked his fingers at her.
But he’d had eyes for me.
Like he wanted me.
He thought he’d bought me. Or, at least, bought my silence, and yeah, to some extent he had. But . . . why buy me, why not just drop the price on the building if he wanted me to pay for the time he’d wasted on me?
The arrogance imbued in those words was enough to make me pull my hair out, but that was inwardly. I was a redhead. I had a temper. But that temper was mostly overshadowed by fear.
Senator Alan Davidson wasn’t my boyfriend, my lover, as this dick seemed to believe. He was my father, and as Finn O’Grady had correctly surmised, he was aiming for the White House.
How could I put that in jeopardy?
My dad was a good man. He’d made a mistake one summer when he’d come home from college, one that only some careful digging by his campaign manager had uncovered. Dad himself hadn’t known of my existence, not until his CM had gone hunting for any nasty secrets that could come out and bite him in the ass.
This had been five years ago when he’d run for Senator. Now, Dad’s goal was the presidential seat, and I wasn’t going to be the one who put a wrench in the works.
When Garry Smythe had approached me back then, I’d thought he was joking. I was out on the street, heading home from work. At the side of me, a black car had driven in from the lane of traffic, just to park, or so I’d thought. As he’d held out his hand with a card, one of the car doors had opened up, and I’d been ‘invited’ inside.
Had I been scared?
At first.
But when Garry had told me my country needed me, I hadn’t been sure whether to laugh or tell him to fuck off. He hadn’t shuffled me into the car, though, hadn’t tried to coerce me. He’d just asked if I’d voted for Senator Alan Davidson in the elections, and because he was one of the only politicians out there who wasn’t a complete douche, and that was the name printed on the card in my hand, I’d shuffled into the back of the car.
Where the Senator himself had been sitting.
Now, when I thought about that day, I realized how fucking naive I’d been to get into the back of a limo for such a vague reason. But I’d been fortunate. Alan had been waiting for me. Waiting to tell me a story that still shook me to my core.
I’d made a promise to my dad that I wouldn’t tell anyone. He’d offered me money, and I hadn’t accepted it. I guess I should have, but back then, I’d been haughty and proud, and because the good guy I’d thought him to be hadn’t been so good when he tried to buy my silence, I’d told him to fuck off. I’d been disappointed in him, frightened by the lifelong lie I’d been living, and equally hurt that the man who’d sired me was just concerned that I was a threat to his campaign.
I’d walked out of that car never expecting to see my dear old Dad ever again.
Then, the day after he’d been elected, he’d been sitting in the booth of the cafe where I worked part-time to get me through culinary school.
Seeing him, I’d almost handed that table off to one of the other waitresses, but I hadn’t. Not when every time I’d passed the table, he’d caught my eye, a patient smile on his lips, one that said he’d wait for me all day if he had to.
Ever since that second meeting, I’d been catching up with him every three weeks.
And this bastard thought he could use our limited time together against my father? The one politician who could make a difference in the White House? One who didn’t have Big Oil up his ass, a pharmaceutical company sucking his dick, or any other kind of corporation so far up his rectum that he was a walking, talking lie?
No.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Which meant I was going to have to sleep with this stranger.
Before this conversation, hell, that hadn’t been too disturbing a prospect. Because, dayum, what woman wouldn’t want to sleep with this guy?
Even with an ego as big as his, he was delicious. Better than any cake I could bake, that was for fucking sure.
More than that, I knew him.
And I now knew that the life Fiona would never have wanted for her son was one he’d been drawn into.
The Mob.
The Five Points were notorious in these parts. Everyone was scared of them. I paid protection money to them, for God’s sake. I knew to be scared of them, and having been raised in their territory, it was the height of stupidity to think paying them wasn’t just a part of business.
Still, Fiona had never wanted that for Finn, and her Finn was the same as the one standing before me here today. In my tea room, which looked far too small to contain the might of this man.
She’d be so disappointed. So heart-sore to know that he was up to his neck in dirty dealings with the Five Points, and as he’d pointed out, the cost of his shoes, his clothes, and his jewelry, was enough to speak for itself.
If he wasn’t high up the ladder in the gang, then I wasn’t one of the best bakers of scones in the district.
Like Jenny had said, I had five star ratings across most social media platforms for a reason. I was good. But apparently, this man wasn’t.
Before I could utter a word, before I could even cringe at how utterly sorrowful Fiona would be about this turn of events—not just about the Five Points but what her son was making me do—the door clattered open.
Like he’d predicted, a team of people swarmed in.
Finn motioned to the floor. “Want anyone to see those?”
With a gasp, I dropped to my knees and collected the shots, stuffing them back into the envelope with a haste that wasn’t exactly practical.