5. Declan

DECLAN

I slipout of bed while Bree is still sleeping, her soft snores in the air. She's out, and I can't help but find it a little cute how she's drooling on the pillow, which I slipped back under her head last night after finding her under it.

Cute? A Murphy?

I shake my head, throwing on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, not worried about wearing a suit today. I just got married, after all, and if Da is going to make me do the ceremony and the consummation, he can damn well give me a vacation for the honeymoon.

I'm shocked that last night even happened, given how much Bree hates me. And she was the one who initiated. Of course, I wasn't going to say no. I don't make it a habit of saying no to beautiful women.

She may be a Murphy, but she's also drop dead gorgeous.

Besides, it's just sex.

I'm going to have to work out how to get around this, how to get out of this marriage, because love isn't in the cards for me. It never has been. And with a Murphy, it will never be about love. But still. A wife is a weapon to be used against you in this life, so I just need to convince my father that this is a bad idea.

But when this is all over, when we've been able to take down Niall Murphy, maybe we can get a quickie divorce. I'll make Da and Gray pay for every cent of it.

I walk downstairs, following the fresh scent of coffee in the air. Our chef, Marisol, has made muffins and some sausage, and I grab a muffin on the way to the dining room table.

She smacks at my hand briefly. "Wait for your father," she scolds, but I stuff a muffin into my mouth, grinning at her.

She shakes her head. "You always were stealing food."

"It's because your food is so good, Marisol." I hug her slightly with one arm.

She smiles up at me, putting her slender but familiar arm around my waist.

Gray's already at the dining room table, sipping coffee and eating a plate full of sausage. He's got a massive plate in front of him, and I wrinkle my nose, eating my muffin.

He narrows his eyes at me. "Sugar's not good for you."

My mouth full of muffin, I shoot my middle finger up at him, and Gray rolls his eyes.

We're always like this, at each other's throats in a playful way. It's different with our sisters. They need to be protected, but Gray and I? We've battled a lot over the years, getting into fistfights over something as simple as the last piece of cheesecake. I like to think we've grown up a little, but stuff like this makes me think differently.

He scoffs at me. "Childish."

I slowly raise my other middle finger up, grinning at him, and then Gray finally cracks, breaking into a laugh.

"How'd it go with your wifey?" Gray smirks, and I shake my head.

I'm not one to kiss and tell, even in this situation. But in reality, it'd been out of this world. I can't believe how good it was, how well she took me, how much she gave back.

"That good, huh?" Gray responds, but I ignore him. "I need you to come down to the warehouse."

I raise an eyebrow. "I thought I was on my honeymoon?"

Gray snorts. "Yeah, right." He finishes his sausage and stands, putting his coffee cup down on the table. "Come on. You're late."

I look down at my watch. It's only nine in the morning, so I'm not that late.

"You guys are really going to make me work the day after my wedding?"

Gray chuckles, walking out the door and expecting me to follow. I sigh, annoyed, but I follow him anyway.

When we arrive there, Jimmy Connor, one of my father's right-hand men, is already there, popping open crates of the shipments we've gotten.

Gray goes to him and claps him in the back. "Have we lost any to Murphy this month?"

Jimmy scoffs. "Not yet, but there's still time."

Niall Murphy, unlike my father, started his business outside of Ireland. He basically keeps things going by stealing from us, causing havoc and chaos, etcetera. Even when he can't manage to steal our shipments, he fucks them up somehow. He's a snake, plain and simple.

The warehouse is huge and abandoned, dust everywhere, the building dilapidated and nearly falling down. There are leaks in the ceilings and we have to be careful how long we keep our product there. Of course, we can't do renovations, or it would be suspicious, even though we own the business.

"What do we have today?" I ask.

"Thirty kilos of china white. Fifteen kilos of dust. Three hundred firearms."

"Pistols?"

"AKs," Jimmy responds. "All accounted for."

I hum. "Have you tested the dust? Last time they tried to pass off ten kilos of basically baby powder."

"Tested and pure," Jimmy brims.

He helps my father with arranging shipments and a few other things. He's Da's most trusted man, besides us, of course. Jimmy's a few years older than Gray, and he's been basically like a brother to us.

"So, things are going well?" I ask.

"I mean, for now." Jimmy raises his eyebrows. "Word on the street is that Murphy's pissed off. Out for blood."

I grin. "Good."

Jimmy looks at me, confused.

Gray shakes his head, but he's smiling, too. "You're obsessed with starting a war."

"I'm ready for a war," I insist. "It's about fucking time."

"I don't know what he's on about," Jimmy admits. "Thought he was too busy with his new strip club, Luxe."

"Speaking of that."

Gray turns to me. "One of his girls is waiting for you in the back."

I blink at him, confused. "One of his girls?"

"Just listen to what she has to say," Gray urges.

Why the hell would one of Murphy's dancers come to us, of all things? And why talk to me? My brother is next in line for the business, not me.

But I guess of the two, I have more patience to listen.

Anyway, I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. If she has information about Murphy and his plans, then she's an asset.

I walk to the back office and open the door.

The girl sitting there, wearing a tube top, a short skirt, and a full-length fur coat, flinches as if I've burst open the door instead of gently opening it.

"O-oh," she stutters. "Mr. Burke."

"Call me Declan."

She looks to be about Bree's age, maybe younger. With a sweet, round, pretty face, she doesn't seem like the type of girl to work for Murphy.

"D-Declan," she says, her voice finally smoothing out. "I'm sorry to bother you. I'm Diamond."

I'm aware that Diamond isn't her real name, but it doesn't matter.

"What is it you need to tell me, honey?" I try to set her at ease.

She swallows hard. "Luxe is getting dangerous." She looks at her feet. "Mr. Murphy's taken a lot of the girls. He's forcing them into doing extras."

"Extras?"

She licks her lips as if her mouth is dry. "You know, extras. Prostitution." She nearly whispers that last word, as if it's a bad word.

I frown. "He's forcing girls to sell their bodies?"

She nods slowly. "Yes. A lot of us... well, we're reliant on...things."

"On drugs."

Diamond looks up at me, something suddenly sharp in her dark brown eyes. "Drugs that the Burkes supply."

I can't argue with that.

I spread my hands. "Well, if you're here for freebies, I can't help you."

"It wouldn't be freebies."

I know she's hoping for dust or some of that new china white we have, but I'm not in the business of giving dust away to all the pretty girls that come to me.

She seems as if she is thinking of approaching me, but her body just sags in the next second. "It wouldn't be free, because I'm giving you information."

"What do you want?"

A pang of sympathy for her rocks me for a moment. I know how girls get caught up in this life, and she looks so young...

"Just a gram." Her eyes are pleading, and her voice is getting squeakier. "Dust. I'm going to share it with the other girls."

I wince, not liking the sound of that, but what can I do? It's the life we live.

"All right," I say. "You can have it, if you give me something I can use."

"Some of the girls are under eighteen," she murmurs.

My eyes snap up to hers where I'd been looking at my hands.

"What?"

"Some of them are young, Mister. He keeps bringing them in, from all over the world."

"Sex trafficking," I nearly whisper.

I know that Murphy sinks pretty low, but I didn't think it was this low.

She nods. "He's getting a shipment in a few days. I was hoping that you could stop it."

She presses her lips in a thin line. "I know I'm just a junkie stripper," she says, and suddenly there are tears standing in her eyes. "But I don't like the idea of children getting pushed into this life."

"You're doing a good thing, Diamond." I stand up. "Listen, I'm going to get you to Jimmy. He'll give you the gram if that's what you want."

Her eyes light up, but then I pause, just standing there, looking at her.

"But if you want a way out," I say quietly. "Out for good? Jimmy can also take you to rehab. Change your name. Get you away from Murphy."

Diamond looks up at me and I hope the flash in her eyes is hope.

"You're a good man, Mr. Burke."

"Declan," I remind her.

"Declan." She smiles and stands up.

I lead her over to Jimmy, walking away so that I don't know if she chooses the drugs or the rehab because I think it would break my heart if she chose the former. It might make me think twice about what we do, and that isn't good for anyone.

I find Gray popping open crates and checking product, not testing it because none of us actually partake, but just checking to see that it's all there.

I tilt my head to the crate in front of him. "How's it look?"

He glances at me. "It's fine. Everything's here. It's almost a miracle."

"I've got something to tell you."

Gray frowns. "What is it? Don't tell me he is using underage girls at the club?"

"Not just at the club," I say. "Prostitution. He's bringing in girls from all over, making them work in the clubs, getting them hooked on our shit, and then pushing them into sex work."

"Jesus," Gray mutters. "What a piece of shit."

"Well, we knew that," I point out. "But there's a shipment in a couple of days."

Gray wrinkles his nose. "It fucks me up when you refer to people as shipments."

"I know," I say. "But it's Murphy, not me. The girl that showed up, she's going to give Jimmy a date, time, and location. I want us to be there, intercept it."

Gray grins. "Well, why not? He intercepts our shit all the time."

"We offer them a way out."

Gray nods. "Of course." He pauses. "You know, this thing with his daughter, intercepting his girls... it really is going to be war."

"I told you, I'm ready." And I mean it with all my heart.

We haven't been able to take Murphy down because they have too many allies, and we never have had definitive proof that he's the one stealing our shipments and messing everything up.

Gray looks at me for a long moment. "I hope you mean that."

"I fucking do." My eyes narrow at him. "It's time to put Murphy out of business once and for all."

By the time we get ready to leave, I can't stand the curiosity anymore. I sidle up to Jimmy, and he glances at me as he closes all the crates, getting them ready for sale.

"Did she take the rehab pamphlets?" I ask. "Did she take the help?"

Jimmy smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "She did, but she also took the dust. You've got a bleeding heart, capo."

I sigh. It's not great that she took the drugs, but maybe, after a bender, she'll take a look at the pamphlets, too.

"I'm tough as nails."

Jimmy gives me a knowing smile.

He knows as well as I do that I have a soft spot for young girls, want to protect them. God even knows if Diamond is more than eighteen or nineteen. She needs protection, and she's clearly not getting it from the Murphys.

I keep thinking about poor Diamond's dark eyes as we leave the warehouse, and I think there's more than one reason to hate Niall Murphy.