Chapter Twenty-Three

My Enemy's Friend

Rafe

I twiddle my thumbs along with everyone else in the warehouse while I wait on my friend-cum-enemy-cum-hopefully-friend once more.

If Konnor accepts my offering.

If he doesn't bring an army along with him for our little playdate and blow my world to shit.

If, if, if.

The two little letters comprising that tiny word could drive a man insane, and not of the slow variety.

The time gives me the space to think while we wait on my would-be ally. It seems my life has been all action until recently, until I met Willow. Before her, Dom and I ran our own show here while trying to avoid my father. If I couldn't, we worked at his bidding, proactive in our own territory, while holding up the family bargaining chip and Rhode Island seat of power.

Once I met Willow, she stole my attention in the best of ways, and I stopped working forward for a period and reacted. To everything. My world changed, hell, everything has changed. I have a pregnant sister, my healer has a baby, I've got enemies pushing their way into my every orifice, and I'm about to use my blood brother as a bargaining chip.

What the hell would my father say?

Do I care?

The answer to the latter is probably yes, and the words that flow through my head give me the solution to the former as though the Don himself stands at my shoulder.

Protect your own.

The ones I love. The people in this godforsaken warehouse, prepared to fight and die alongside me.

I meet Roman's eyes where he watches every entrance to the place, turning his back to a new blind spot constantly, while seeking his sister with every alternate breath. The boy has grown, developed into a man sometime when we weren't looking. Or maybe the truth had always been there, staring us in the face. All because he portrayed the mute, damaged boy, and that was what we all chose to see.

Clearly, Roman Hernandez has plenty to offer. Willow's family is in capable hands.

He tilts his chin up, indicating the arrival of my friendly foe and his entourage—not too many, judging by the number of cars that drift silently along past the open door. Black sedans, an SUV, and a silver–I fucking kid you not–DeLorean that looks like it came from a future about forty years past.

Fucking Irish. I grin ruefully at Roman and he returns the gesture, flicking his knife at Enzo's throat, sometimes leaving tiny nicks that create rivulets of blood to flow down my brother's neck and sometimes not. The boy—or not so boy but younger man—doesn't appear to be bothered by the blood trickling over his fingers where he slowly strangles my brother. At least, no more bothered than his sister, who edges her way closer to me with every minute.

Though we hold all the cards, the situation feels fraught, like any sudden movements will spring a trap that could end us all.

Everyone I love.

Protect my own.

With a silent nod to my father's shade, I wind an arm around Willow's waist and pull her into my body, pressing my lips to my temple. "I'm proud of him."

She snorts. "Who, my brother? Or yours that I've never heard about? What other family members are you hiding? A love child?" She glares up at me, though I don't have to look hard to see the fraying edges of her peace silently stolen by the ongoing threat to her family.

To us.

I comb my fingers through her hair and tug her head sharply back. If I can't give her utter proof that we will be alive in the next hours then I'll do the damndest to distract her in the best ways I know how.

"Do you know how beautiful you are?" I tug her hair until her back arches and she gasps with the pinprick of pain I provide that is overlaid with a heady dose of submission intended just for her.

"You're an asshole," she grumps prettily, whining a little as she twists in my grasp. "Let me up."

"Not yet." I stare straight into her eyes. Know who owns you, little wife. An unspoken promise of who we are together, and what will come if we survive the next few hours passes between us. All that in the fraction of a second before I slam my mouth over hers in a brutal kiss that does its job, distracting us both as heavy, sure footsteps fill the warehouse, followed by the small army I expected.

"Can't keep your shit in your pants for longer than thirty minutes, Rafe?" Konnor's voice drips with disdain.

I straighten, pulling Willow to my chest and shielding her recovery from our harsh kiss. That moment is for her, and her alone. No one, especially not Konnor fucking Hennie, gets to share that space. Not now. Not until I'm sure.

Because ever since she ran from me and straight to him, I've harbored a doubt.

"Guess we'll find out if this goes on much longer. I got you a gift."

"So thoughtful." Konnor's eyebrows rise above his hardened, coal-black eyes. His thick hair is pulled back into a ponytail that hangs halfway down his back over his black, long-sleeved tee. Ink crawls from beneath the neckline and at his wrists.

"Thank you. I tried." I smile at him, more a baring of teeth than anything else. "An exchange."

His lips twitch beneath the half beard he's growing. "For what?"

"Nothing at all. I give you something you lost. A replacement, as it were. To do with what you wish." I close my mouth and let him think on it.

Konnor does his best to constrain his curiosity. Our business dealings never take much time—usually we spend the aftermath drinking ourselves into a stupor. Not this time. No, this time, too many things have changed. I'm praying I can rectify one wrong by giving him the thing that will calm our waters.

The funny thing is I know he'll accept my offer. Hell, he'll even be surprised and perhaps grateful.

No matter what I do today, it won't change a damn thing between us when all is said and done.

We might walk from this place as friends. Drinking buddies. But at the end of the day he will still take something from me, when I least expect it.

A veritable thief in the night.

But Konnor Hennie doesn't walk on fucking water, and the waters around Rhode Island are mine.

"An eye for an eye. Have you met my brother?" I offer Enzo a genial nod.

The front of his shirt is strained in a growing pool of blood while Roman flays him one nick of a thousand owed at a time.

Konnor does a masterful job of keeping his expression blank. "You never said," he murmurs.

I shrug. "Family bastard. Keeping it all under the rug. He's yours," I add my offer almost as the afterthought that it's not.

"Mine." Konnor stares at me hard. His throat works.

"For the brother you lost." I keep my tone soft, reverent. "I am sorry, Konnor. Willow is too. We offer you repayment. He was the one who ordered the hit after all."

I let out a short breath and manage to take the next though my heart thumps painfully hard in my chest. Willow shifts against me but I dig my fingers into her waist, willing her still. Despite knowing I'm marking her skin beneath her clothing, that I'm hurting her, I don't let up. She stills in the circle of my arms, and gives into my pain, leaning her sweet weight against me.

Utter perfection.

Konnor watches the subtle interaction with a careful eye, missing nothing. We've been friends, known each other far too long for our interactions not to be layered with subtext several decades in the making.

"We're becoming the old men we hate," he says. He offers me a smile that transforms his face from the dangerous psychopath he is to the charming family Irishman who could be misconstrued as cheeky at best. "I'll take the asshole you don't want off your hands," he says softly, but his eyes harden and fix on me. And you still owe me a debt.

The scene plays out as I expect, and I give him a single nod, recognizing the payment isn't complete. Nor did I expect it to be.

"Then this is done." My clear voice echoes around the warehouse. "We're even."

Konnor's mouth tips up slightly at one side, knowing my lies are for the benefit of my gathered family.

"Fuck you." My brother spits blood on the floor between us and I'm not sure who he's addressing.

I watch him dispassionately, noting the whitening pallor of his already pale skin beneath dark hair that matches mine, though he lacks the laugh lines Willow has etched single-handedly onto my face these last months.

"A pity we can't stay." I hold Enzo's gaze a second longer, while my stomach churns.

Death will come for one of my people eventually in the form of a dark Irish archangel at a time of his choosing, and short of starting a turf war with my best ally on the Island, I won't be able to stop him. I don't know if I've just given away the best bargaining chip in my hand, or removed a thorn from my side only to gain a new one.

"Sure," Konnor drawls.

He nods to one of his men at his back, standing in a semicircle. A shot goes off and Enzo's head half shatters all over the place like an overripe melon. Blood and gray matter sprays in a hundred directions at once, and for a second even I'm stunned.

Roman breaks the silence with a raspy laugh that bounces off every surface.

It's my turn for my eyebrows to rise sky high as my protégé—baby brother, perhaps?—prods Enzo's remains into Konnor's man's waiting arms.

One brother in exchange for another.

I smile at the dichotomy of it all, releasing Willow. I'm bereft the moment I let her go—God, please not her. Don't let him take her—and take a step toward Roman who reaches out as if to grasp my shoulder in a familiar gesture. That I might have broken that barrier with Willow's approval leaves my chest aching.

A pity, because we never get to embrace.

Blood flecks my cheek, the splatter warm then cooling, and Roman falls to the fractured music of Willow's screams.