He wasn’t giving him a choice.
“Both,” Fedya demanded, mentally figuring out ways to get out of this later. “Give me both, and you have a deal.”
Cormac and his men laughed, the sound reverberating around them. Cormac’s teeth were exposed, pearly white, andstraight. They looked sharp, like they could sink into the wood of the table and break it.
“Greedy,” he laughed, leaning back in his chair. “Just like me.”
Then he stretched his hand towards Fedya. “You have a deal, Jonathan Riley.”
Tick.
Tock.
Chapter 2 - Maeve
Maeve’s throat burned with thirst as she snuck intoThe Grotto. It always happened like this whenever she slipped into her father’s bar without his permission, which was incredulous considering she was a fully grown twenty-four-year-old.
But she had never really lived a normal life. She hadn’t grown up in a sane, normal family. She was living, walking proof of parental neglect, and even though she was old enough to pack her things and leave, to become her own person, her father wouldn’t allow that.
Things worked differently in the mafia family. Especially when a man like Cormac fathered you.
There was nowhere in this world she could hide from her father.
She slipped through the back entrance of the bar, her fingers still cool from the graffiti cans she had just used on the walls of the building. Cormac wouldn’t let her paint?he wouldn’t let her do what she wanted to do. So, she channeled her love and craving for art into any outlet within her reach. Even if that meant vandalizing the walls of her father’s bar in the shadows.
Besides, he couldn’t care less. The bar was strategically placed, owned, not exactly in the area where the cops would patrol and arrest juvenile teens for vandalism. So, she did as she pleased.
The familiar warm, smoky air of the bar wrapped around her, the smell of whiskey and sweat and leather a trademark smell in her life. She kept her black hood up, her steps light as she weaved through the narrow hallways until she slippedinto the dim glow inside the bar, and found Margot behind the counter.
Margot was the only thing, the only person who allowed Maeve to remain sane under the glorified captivity of her father. She had been six years old when she lost her mother and had lived a dreary life devoid of her father’s warmth. Because Cormac cared too much about his business, reputation, and power to notice a grieving child who knew nothing of how to navigate the world without her mother by her side.
And when she was ten, Margot was Cormac’s newest staff member at the counter of one of his numerous bars. Maeve had snuck in just like now, and Margot had found her lingering by the door with wide green eyes, listening to sensitive information that was well beyond her years.
Margot had picked her up, and one look at the girl’s eyes told her whose child she was. She’d been standing in her mother’s gap since then, filling shoes she never asked for, but shoes she wanted to wear simply because she loved Maeve. She treated her like her own.
A sneaky smile tugged at Maeve’s lips as she approached the older woman who was polishing a glass, her eyes low on the counter.
Margot was a woman in her late forties with dark hair that was gradually starting to thin and grey at the corners. Frown lines were engraved on her forehead even when she wasn’t frowning, and her fingers were stubby, the ring finger on her left still wearing the gold band from her late husband sixteen years ago.
“I thought you weren’t coming tonight,” Margot murmured, keeping her eyes on the counter, but there was a smile in her voice.
“I could never bail on you, Margot,” Maeve whispered back, her gaze darting towards the main floor. “Who will keep you company if I do?”
Margot turned around and pressed a finger to her lips. It reminded Maeve of the times she used to do it to her as a kid, warning her to be silent so Cormac wouldn’t know she had snuck in.
Maeve rolled her eyes but lowered her voice anyway. From her hidden spot near the back, she had a clear view of the table where her father sat. His henchmen were seated around him?Liam, Donnacha, and Cillian—and there was one man across from them.
A stranger with unfamiliar brown eyes. He was bald, had a rough beard, and looked as average as possible. But there was a cold glint in his eyes that Maeve could spot even if she was standing a mile away. She recognized that look?that quiet, calculating gaze her father used to tame his men.
A slight frown touched her brows as she watched him. He was very composed, and there was nothing in his expression that gave his thoughts away. Her eyes moved from him to the body on the floor next to him: a man beaten and bruised, kneeling close to the table, his head bent low, his eyes cast to the floor.
Maeve’s heart clenched, sympathy touching every nerve in her body as her eyes reluctantly left him and darted to the package on the table. Guns, weapons, and a lethal grin on her father’s face.
It was the same sick cycle every time. The same sick deals she’d watched her father offer all her life. She couldn’t hear them from here, and frankly, she didn’t want to. She wasn’t interested. She had never been.
Margot followed her gaze just as Maeve took it away, and she sighed, setting down the tumbler she’d been cleaning. “Another night, another deal, another poor bastard who doesn’t know what he’s getting into,” she said, her voice a hushed whisper.
As much as Maeve wanted to agree, she returned her gaze to the strange arms dealer and wasn’t so sure. There was something in his eyes, in the way he sat, and in his posture that didn’t make him look clueless. He looked like he knew exactly what he was doing. He didn’t look like the usual rats that Cormac sweet-talked into his cage.
