Page 96 of Carnal Wagers

“Then, to dig the knife in, he divorced her and kicked her out onto the street.” Six fingers. “No money to her name. No family to support her. And pregnant, apparently.”

That made nine plausible reasons for Fiona to hate the world. Six specific to our father.

“We sure she’s dead?” Liam questioned. “I mean, think about it. It’s bleeding convenient. If the records can be modified, why not fake her death? The three-month delay before Jessica’s death could be her recovery period from whatever happened during her labor. She could be LK.”

I grunted and watched a rivulet run down the windshield. It skittered down the glass and curved around a new raindrop, shifted direction slightly before absorbing more water, then scuttled down into the cowl.

His deduction made sense, yet it didn’t. Liam and Brody were too young when Da married Fiona to remember her, but at age six, I did. Better than my own mam. We played puzzles and board games together. She gave me my first baking lesson that ended up in a flour fight with Brody. She planted a handmade wooden cross in the yard so we could grieve our mother, whose grave was an ocean away. The day she left, the three of us ran in tears into her arms and begged her to stay. She held us so tight and cried with us before Da’s guards separated us. People changed, but she had no reason to hold a grudge against us. Da, sure, but us? I couldn’t see it.

“He sent over an old photo of her he got from a contact in Ireland. Brody’s running it through aging software. You get what this means? We could have finally found her. No more Love Knot Killer.”

The window rolled down. He stuck his head out and hollered into the night, causing the car to swerve. I muffled my amusement under my misgivings. When he came back inside, he shook out his wet hair. Droplets rained everywhere, and I growled a promise to strangle him.

“Your growl hasn’t scared me since the first time you lost a wrestling match to Brody.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t whip you.”

He took his hands off the wheel for a quick second, all innocent and playful. No sign of the baby brother who’d hit me in the heart earlier.

“We’ll see what Cranwell can come up with,” I said. “See if maybe we can have her remains exhumed to confirm our theory.”

A text chirped from Paulie. Alice had left the club and returned to her hotel.

“Take me to the airport.”

Liam arched a brow. “So you can what? Rage at this woman? Lose any real shot you might have, looking like you went for a bath in your clothes? Or is it the narcotic-detection dogs at the airport you want to risk after the heist we just pulled off?”

I gave him my most unamused glare.

“Nah, you’re staying with me tonight. Don’t worry, Romeo, you can always head over and court your lady tomorrow.”

Chapter 26

Ever since Paulie called to say he delivered my package from New York to the O’Leary gym early this morning, a maelstrom of rage pulsed inside me. It was something I hadn’t felt in decades. It combusted and burned, spitting fire in all directions.

Sleeves rolled to my elbows, I pummeled this fucker’s face in, brass knuckles off. He shouldn’t have tried drugging my woman.

In the last three days, we caught five of Sosa’s men. They each got a beating and lost a finger before we sent them packing. This asshole wasn’t getting that courtesy. No, he was getting the all-inclusive package. Every time I laid eyes on his ugly mug, I imagined exactly what could have happened to Alice had Paulie not been there to stop it.

Each hit to his face and gut and every crack of his bones expelled a little of my rage. Then thoughts of her in the arms of other men, kissing other men, smiling at other men shoved their way back to the forefront of my mind, and a gale swirled the tornado of anger, suspicion, envy, and resentment back into full force.

“Killy, he’s had enough,” Liam said, his voice not half as pleasing as this asshole’s grunts and howls of pain. “Anymore, and you’ll kill him too quickly.”

His voice echoed in the empty room covered from floor to ceiling in easy-to-wash stone and ceramic tiles.

“Stay back.”

The entire crew could watch me lose my cool for all I damn well cared. I was usually the one who stood back. Never got riled, never aggravated, never angered. I was the one who said when it was enough. I hadn’t been on the other side of that stick in as long as I could remember, and it felt bleeding fantastic and fecking awful at the same time. It was too much and not enough.

I didn’t feel the ache in my cracked, bleeding knuckles as another one of the sexual predator’s ribs broke under my fists. Every hit was cathartic. Every punch got me closer to the highs she gave me before she fucked off to New York the moment my door closed, and she started kissing cheeks and hugging the whole damn population.

The door vaguely groaned, opened, then shut. Bickering roared in the background, but I was engulfed in my anger.

So far, this hadn’t been enough to bleed me dry of the insistent crawling and squirming in my veins. I felt too damn much. It jabbed and punched through my control, overwhelming me in a red haze that didn’t dissipate.

The piece of shit was barely breathing at this point, one eye swollen shut, jaw crooked, nose bleeding, and his torso a mass of swollen bumps, welts, and shallow slashes from different blades. I wrestled him close by the remains of his minced shirt and raised my fist.

Before my fist came down, a knife struck. It hit straight into his ear canal and volleyed his body from my grip to the floor. The room went pin-drop silent. Only the throbbing in my knuckles remained. My demons halted their war path, with my hands hanging over empty air at a sudden loss of what to do.