“It will,” my brother said as he made his way onto the elevator. “Stay with me. Don’t let any of those punks lure either one of you off.” Lucian turned his dead-eye, in-the-zone, man-hunter eyes on me. “Did you put on the extra layer of your suit?”
“You know I did.” The extra layer was a bullet proof material that was deceptively thin and easily concealed beneath clothing.
It was something new that our research and development team picked up and perfected based on the Diamene material that some collegiate knuckleheads theorized at a local college. We all invested in it to make it real. MadShield was the product. It was a combination of Graphene layers, some special, super-secret added scientific shit that I didn’t even understand, and it all boiled down to light-weight, second-skin armor that hardened to the strength of a fucking diamond when impacted by a bullet traveling at velocity.
“Good thing they already ran the real world trials on it,” Miles said as he adjusted his tie again. It was the one tell that my best friend was nervous to be one of the few humans to go into a situation where our new body armor might be necessary. “We should probably look into lining ball caps with it or something. These fancy undershirts aren’t going to keep us from the finality of a bullet to the head.”
“Noted,” I agreed as we made our way out of the elevator, our building, and into the waiting car that would take us to the one place where the woman I’d been dreaming about since I was six fucking years old would be. After twelve, long fucking years of not seeing her, the possibilities of how the night could go were endless.
Lucian handed me a Glock10 with a suppressor on it. “Just in case.” I gave a nod and replaced the one I had holstered, knowing that the one my brother handed off wouldn’t be traceable. “Remember, you can’t put a hole in her father if he’s there.”
“Why the fuck not? He’s the reason I lost her.”Lucian cocked his brow up as if to challenge that. “If he hadn’t mandated that she had to marry a goon of his choosing, she would have never ran. We would have been able to fix my fuck ups.”
“You don’t know that.”
“She wouldn’t have run,” I doubled down. “Even if we couldn’t fix everything, she wouldn’t have run. There was always a chance that we could fix things if she was here to do that.”
“No matter what, you can’t kill the fucker. Not yet.”
“Why?” It was Miles who asked for the explanation that time.
“He doesn’t have an heir, specifically, he doesn’t have a male heir to take over. When there’s no male heir, whoever marries the female inherits the position as head of the family. That’s how the Sweeney Gang has always worked. It’s why he was very adamant about who his daughter would marry. If we take him out, it will create a power vacuum of assholes who want to be the man on top and it will create a world of chaos for us.”
“Because whoever takes over has to get revenge,” Miles muttered.
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Lucian informed us.
Fucking hell.
There was no way Aoife would trust me if her father was still out there able to call the shots. I didn’t have time to come up with a foolproof plan, though. We had arrived and it was go time.
“Let’s go. If shots are fired, stay low, find cover, and don’t be afraid to return fire.”
ELEVEN
Whiplash
AOIFE
“I thoughtwe were just going to meet your mother,” I said to Drew as he pulled me into what looked like one of the formal parties that my father used to host. He smirked back at me as he looked over his shoulder and took hold of my hand.
“We will see my mother inside, but there may be an engagement party waiting for us.”
I dug my heels in and refused to move, though Drew ignored my efforts and continued to pull me along behind him. “Remember when I said I didn’t want a party?” I asked.
“Sure, but Mom didn’t want to take no for an answer. I understand you don’t have any family,” he paused for a moment and that knowing smirk was back as he spoke, “but Mom expects it.”
“It’s not about her. This isourengagement,” I argued.
“Fine. I expect it, too. It’s something that is going to happen.”
“Excuse me?” Drew had never argued with me like this before. The smirk had never been a thing in California either. It was like he transformed into a totally different person during our flight east.
“Listen, we’re both dressed up, Mom’s waiting. What’s the harm?”
“Who else is here?”
He shrugged his shoulders and tugged on my hand again. “Humor me. This is something I need you to do. I put up with you wanting to stay in the dark for far too long. The least you can do is give my family this.”
