THE CALLAHANS (A Mafia Romance): The Complete 5 Books Series (30 page)

Killian

I woke early the next morning and went for a long run, feeling the weight of guilt on my shoulders. I should tell Stacy the truth, that the man who tried to kill me was the same man who’d killed Davis. But I had no proof, and I didn’t want to tell her anything until I had all the information in hand. What if we were wrong? What if it was some sort of weird coincidence?

I knew it wasn’t, but I couldn’t take that chance.

I talked with Jack last night. He was surprised to learn that Stacy and I had gotten married. I guess Pops had forgotten to tell him

“She was engaged to that other fellow, the professor, right?”

“She was.”

“Did they ever find the guy who killed him?”

“No, sir.”

“I don’t imagine they will. Cops are too restrained by their own laws.” He rested his hand heavily on my shoulder. “You tell Stacy to come by and see me one afternoon when she has a little time. I’d like to give her a little gift.”

“I will.”

I hadn’t had a chance to tell Stacy about Jack’s offer yet, but I didn’t suppose she would be too excited to see Jack. She’d had the same opinion my mom had had. She didn’t like him.

Maybe it was time for me to get out of this business. I’d been thinking about it a lot since Stacy and I got married. She was unhappy when I left the house late at night, going off with Pops and the boys to guard some shipment or to help one of Jack’s men at one of the many clandestine meetings they often found themselves chairing. I thought she’d get used to it, but she didn’t. Granted it’d only been a short time, but I’d hoped things would change sooner rather than later.

I just…if I broke with the business, I’d have to break with the family. And it was my family.

I pushed myself harder, running faster than I probably should have. My lungs burned, and the muscles in my legs were crying out for blood. But I pushed myself harder and harder, loving the endorphins that the exercise released. I was just turning the corner that would take me back the two miles to the gated community when someone clocked me on the back of the head. I didn’t go down, but I saw stars for a second.

“What the fuck?”

It was him.

Dark hair, dark eyes. Even the same leather jacket.

“I forgot to tell you the last time. This is a gift from your beautiful wife.”

He raised his gun and pointed it right in the center of my chest. I acted on instinct, bringing a hand down on his wrist as I grabbed for the gun. He’d been expecting it, but he still cried out as his wrist bent in an odd direction. He held onto the gun and fired, but the bullet went wild. I grabbed for his wrist again, snagging it and twisting the arm behind his back. But he was prepared for that, too. He raised his leg and caught me in the calf. Then he twisted and landed a punch in the center of my chest. I grabbed for the gun again, but he dropped it before I could get it. Then he raised his fists, and we faced each other, man to man.

My brothers and I took boxing lessons when we were kids. It was Pops dream that one of his boys would be a star in ring, but only Sean had ever shown any promise. Sean, however, had other dreams. He quit boxing in college and then chose to go to law school.

I might not have boxed in college, but I knew what I was doing.

I took a couple of jabs and then landed a right hook to the guy’s left jaw. Then another landed on his shoulder, bringing a gasp from between his lips. His blows were hard, but nothing fatal. Mine…I had a strong punch.

He dove for the gun when he’d had enough, but I managed to kick it away.

Then he pulled a knife.

I danced out of his way, wishing I’d waited until later in the morning to go for my run. As it was, it was only six on a Sunday morning. Most people wouldn’t be up for church for another hour.

We dodged each other for a few minutes. He caught my forearm, a sting, but nothing serious. And then he went for my chest. I managed to dodge that one and land another blow to his jaw. Unfortunately, he saw it coming. He grabbed my wrist and twisted my arm behind my back, slicing that knife across my side as he slammed me down onto the asphalt. If he’d been able to reach his gun, I might have been killed right there and then. But he wasn’t, and I twisted, breaking his nose with the heel of my hand. Blood burst over the front of my sweatshirt. He was stunned long enough for me to slide out from under him. I dove for his gun and turned, aiming as I moved, but he was already running down the street, too far away for the shot to be accurate with the silencer on the gun.

I lay there a long moment, trying to catch my breath. My wounds were superficial, but I looked like I’d been the perpetrator in an assassination. I climbed to my feet and tugged my jacket over my chest, hiding the blood. Then I ran, tucking the gun into the back of my pants as I made my way back to the house.

And straight up to the master bedroom.

What the hell had he meant when he said it was a gift from my wife?

“Stacy!”

She rolled over, her hair falling into her eyes as she took me in.

“Did you go for a run?”

“Yeah. And I ran into our friend.”

“What friend?”

I unzipped my jacket, and she was suddenly wide awake, sitting up so quickly that her pillow fell to the floor.

“What happened?” she asked, touching the front of my shirt where it was still wet with his blood.

I grabbed her wrists, pulling her hands away from me.

“Did you hire him?”

Everything rested on her next words. And I was afraid they wouldn’t be the ones I wanted to hear.

Stacy

He was covered in blood.

I touched him and some of the blood came away on my fingers. I stared at it, so confused that it didn’t really register what it was. And then he blew everything else out of my head when he asked the question I’d been dreading.

“Did you hire him?”

“Killian,” I said softly, my eyes falling to the blood on my fingers again, “I…”

“Tell me the truth. Please.”

What was I supposed to do?

No secrets.

“When I thought…I know you’re the one who killed Davis. And I was so heartbroken that I wanted to set you up, make you fall in love, and then take everything away from you as you’d done to me. But then you slept with Sara and she told me you were in love with me…I thought I could do it, but I fell in love with you.”

The words tumbled out of my mouth like a landslide. He stared at me, his eyes only growing wider and wider as he listened.

“But I changed my mind. I called it off.”

“You hired this man?”

“I wanted to hurt you and Brian for everything you’d done. But then I realized that you were only doing what you were told. It wasn’t your fault.”

His eyes narrowed. “What makes you think I had anything to do with Davis’ murder?”

“I got the call, and I went to the window. You weren’t there. For a week, you were always there, but then you weren’t.”

“Stacy…”

“Why else would you have left?”

“Because I was in love with you,” he said, his voice little more than a growl. “You were getting married the next day, and I had to stand back and watch the whole thing happen. Do you think that was easy for me?”

“You killed him.”

“No, Stacy. I was in a bar getting drunk.”

I shook my head. “No, you never left until that night. Why would you…”

“Because you were in your apartment, safe and sound. What did I need to be there for?”

“You were always there.”

“You put on your wedding dress. You were standing in front of the mirror, smiling this smile like nothing I’d ever seen before. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t just stand there and know you were going to be someone else’s wife. I had to go.”

“You were in a bar?”

“I was. I didn’t know about Davis until Ian called me.”

“No…”

I couldn’t…that couldn’t be right. I did this because I believed he’d killed Davis. If he didn’t, then everything I’d believed all these months was wrong. And it meant that someone else…

“But who would have something against Davis? He was a college professor, a math teacher! He’d never hurt anyone!”

Something about the look in Killian’s eyes made my blood freeze.

“You know something.”

He turned his back on me, walked to the bathroom, and stripped out of his shirt. The blood stained his chest, but the only wound I saw was on his side. I walked up behind him, as he twisted to see it in the mirror. There was another cut on his arm, but it was already clotting.

“Let me.”

He met my eyes in the mirror, anger jumping in his own.

“You hired someone to kill me.”

“I thought you killed my fiancé.”

“Then it was all a lie?”

“No, of course not!” I touched his back, but he stiffened and tried to pull away. “It wasn’t a lie. None of it was.”

“You said yourself, you wanted me to fall in love so you could take it all away.”

“I did. And I thought Sara would be the perfect candidate. You seemed to like her, and she definitely liked you. But when I saw her coming out of your building, I was so jealous I couldn’t see straight.” I touched his arm. “Killian, you have to believe me. None of this was a lie, except for the lies I told myself.”

“I wouldn’t have done that to you.”

“I know that. Now, I know that. I just…I let my anger and my grief get in the way of the truth.”

He didn’t touch me; he didn’t acknowledge what I’d just said. But he let me dampen a cloth and clean the blood from his chest and his wounds. His shoulder was still bright red and puffy, still healing. And now this.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I tried to call it off.”

“What exactly did he say when you called it off?”

“That you were a popular guy because someone else had hired him at twice my price to continue on the contract when I changed my mind. He said this other guy knew that I would change my mind.”

“He said it was a man?”

I nodded. “He was pretty clear about it.”

“I’m going to have to call Ian and get the family involved in this.”

I nodded. “I’m sorry.”

He touched me, his hand just as gentle as ever on my face. “You were hurting.”

“I was stupid.”

“How did you know how to contact this guy?”

I shrugged. “I called Kevin. He said he got the guy’s number from Jack.”

“Kevin? How would he know how to get that sort of number?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t going to ask him, but we were talking, and he drew it out of me. I didn’t tell him it was you, of course, but I told him I thought I knew who’d killed Davis. And he volunteered to get the number.”

Killian’s expression tightened. “Pops’ not going to like that.”

“Then don’t tell him.”

He looked at me as if I was an idiot. “No secrets, Stacy. Once you start keeping them, things tend to fall apart. I won’t…” He stopped, his eyes sliding over my face. “But there is something you should know.”

“What?”

He took my arms and pushed me backward, back into the bedroom, setting me down on the bottom edge of the bed. He knelt in front of me so that I was looking down at him instead of him looking down at me.

“This guy who keeps coming after me? I have reason to believe he’s the same guy who killed Davis.”

I shook my head. “That’s not possible. This guy is a pro.”

“There were witnesses to Davis’ murder. They helped create a composite sketch of the guy.”

“You’ve seen it?”

He nodded. “It looks almost exactly like the guy who attacked me.”

“Almost. But that’s not definitive.”

His eyes dropped to the floor for a second. “No, it’s not definitive. But what are the chances that there are two killers out there who look that much alike?”

He took my hands between his, but I pulled away. I stood and began to pace, moving between the bed and the loveseat tucked over in the corner.

“If that was true, it would mean that someone either was out to make me awfully miserable, or that Davis was someone other than the man he told me he was.”

“It would.”

“You think Davis was lying to me?”

“Pops checked him out, Stace. He didn’t even exist until three months before you met him.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t believe it.

“I know it seems impossible—”

“It doesn’t just
seem
impossible. It is.”

“People lie, Stacy. What’s important now is that we find out why he lied to you. What was he after?”

He came over to me and pulled me against his chest. I tried to resist for a moment, but then moved into him, comforted by his touch. We stood like that for a long time.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Me, too.”

He lifted my chin and kissed me gently. How could he kiss me like that after what he’d just learned that I’d done? Why was he so good to me?

How stupid could I have been to think I loved Davis when I had this waiting for me?