Screw Me: A Screwed Duet (Five Points Hell's Kitchen Book 2) Read online

  Screw Me

  A SCREWED Duet: Part II

  Serena Akeroyd

  Copyright © 2019 by Gemma Mazurke

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Afterword

  Also by Serena Akeroyd

  Introduction

  Don’t forget, guys.

  You pronounce her name EE-FAH. LOL!

  Aoife = Ee-fah

  :P

  Chapter One

  Finn

  I thought I’d known rage.

  Truly, I did.

  I’d been abused by my father, and had known my mother was aware of it.

  I’d run from home.

  I’d killed.

  I’d sought a fortune and I’d made it.

  But catching my new bride on the church steps as a bullet tore through her body showed me that the rage I’d experienced in my life, was nothing compared to this.

  It surged inside me like a tidal wave. Forging more fury as it destroyed the limits of my control.

  On the streets, you learned to live fast. It was either that or die young. I’d never intended on dying young, and my bride, who was twelve years younger than me, wouldn’t either.

  Not if I had a say in it.

  There was a shocking scarlet stain on her white wedding suit, and suddenly, I regretted her not wearing the white meringue dress, having all the bridesmaids and the big wedding party. She’d deserved that. Not this small affair.

  She deserved the fucking world.

  My throat clenched and I refused to believe the world wasn’t still hers for the taking. I’d give her that and more if she just. Fucking. Lived.

  A part of me wanted to breakdown. To cry. But I couldn’t.

  My instincts were too strong. I wasn’t like my brother, Eoghan. I wasn’t a sniper, but he’d helped train us. Had helped forge our skills so that the Donnelly sons and myself weren’t dumbshits when it came time to hold a weapon.

  Clutching Aoife with one arm, I pulled the gun from the holster on my other shoulder. It seemed like fate that I didn’t even have to shuffle her in my hold to grab the gun. It slid seamlessly into my dry palm as I quickly took in the scene around me.

  At my back, there was chaos.

  I could hear moans of pain and low curses, as well as someone on the line with the emergency services.

  But I blocked it out.

  Blocked everything out as my gaze switched to hyper focus on the scene ahead.

  The gunmen hanging out of the van were barely twenty, and had they been older, they’d have fucking figured out that drive-bys were supposed to be fast. In and out before anyone could lay chase.

  Either they were slow, wanting to watch some of the pandemonium they had stirred, or the world had slowed down for me so everything took incrementally more time than usual.

  I saw the door to the truck the Colombians were using was still open as it drove past. I saw the grinning clown faces, loaded with those ugly fucking tats as they celebrated their ‘win,’ but more than that, I saw a target.

  As Eoghan had taught me, I took aim. I held my breath to steady my heartbeat, then I released it on a slow exhalation as I squeezed the trigger.

  It seemed to take forever for the bullet to find its way home. Proof of how time had slowed down for me. I watched its trajectory. My focus pure, like I could will it to hit the exact spot I required.

  Was I surprised when the back of the driver’s head exploded?

  Yes and no.

  My aim had been true, sure, and Aidan Donnelly’s boys were all naturally good shots, but to stop the driver? God was on my side. Maybe He was pissed at the bloodshed on the steps to His home, maybe justice—Old Testament style—was exactly what the Colombians deserved.

  Whatever the reason—God’s hand, my skill, sheer fucking luck—it worked.

  The truck jerked, and because this was a residential street, it crashed straight into the low wall separating someone’s front yard from the sidewalk.

  The momentum was enough to have the gunmen, who weren’t strapped in, soaring through the air ten feet and landing face first.

  They might have survived if my brothers hadn’t been there. But I was no longer interested. My focus switched to Aoife even as I heard several gunshots and more screams. Then, in the background, the wonderful wail of an ambulance.

  I looked down at her. My woman. My wife. And knew she was it for me. I’d never been so fucking certain of anything in my life.

  My eyes took her in. From the wine-colored hair that made her skin look so milky, to the glorious freckles I knew covered her everywhere. The white suit should have drained her, washed her out, but instead it augmented the different notes in her hair. And in the sun? It seemed to shine like burgundy.

  I wanted to fuck her under the sun, I realized. Wanted to see all that hair curtain me as she rode me on a beach somewhere. Bora Bora, Rio, Barcelona… I didn’t give a fuck. Just knew it had to happen at some point in our lives together.

  The stain blossoming through her wedding suit was almost as dark as her hair. The sight of it sickened me, and I wasn’t a man who was caught short by the sight of blood. But this was my woman, and before I could even feel fear at her life potentially draining from her, I couldn’t stop myself.

  I dipped my chin, kissed her mouth, then bit her bottom lip.

  Hard.

  She moaned.

  And this time, my throat did clutch.

  I found it hard to breathe for endless fucking seconds as she whimpered, “Finn?”

  My eyes watered and I burrowed my face in her hair and clutched her harder to me. “You stay with me, Aoife. The ambulance is coming. Don’t you fucking leave me.”

  I felt the curve of her lips against my cheek. “Won’t leave you.”

  “You’d better goddamn promise me that,” I rasped, unashamed when the tears fell and dampened her skin.

  She made a gurgling sound that had my heart stopping, then she breathed, “Love you, Finn,” and she fell silent.

  For a second, that silence roared in my head.

  It was…

  Was this what insanity felt like?

  I’d always ridden a thin line. My past warring with my present. What had happened to me, battling with all the shit I’d done.

  But this?

  I’d never felt so lost, so on edge, so out of control.

  I almost decked the guy who pulled her from me. Figuring it was another Colombian, I lifted the gun and stared down its sights before I even blinked back the tears marring my vision.

  A startled yelp and a crash had me jerking back to attention. The EMT’s hands were raised, his kit plunked on the church steps, and I lowered my weapon, muttering, “Sorry.”

  I received a well-deserved glower for my pains, but the man took one glance at Aoife and said, “We need to get her on the ground, sir.”

  The next ten minutes were the most confusing of my life.

  I crouched next to my bride, un
sure if she lived or died from how hard the men worked on her. Did they think I’d shoot them if they failed? Every now and then they eyed my gun, and though I wouldn’t hurt them, I wasn’t trying to ‘encourage’ them to succeed either.

  But there was no way in fuck I was sheathing this weapon when we were in the middle of an active threat.

  Sure, it was unlikely another round of Colombians would come roaring around the corner, but I wasn’t about to take any chances.

  The EMTs had ripped her jacket and shirt, exposing a silky bra I should have enjoyed removing later. Instead, some fucking EMTs were ogling my bride’s tits and I couldn’t even punch them for it. Not when I saw her breathe. It was the first time I realized she wasn’t dead, and I had to press a hand to the cold stone steps to prop me upright.

  She lived.

  There was blood everywhere and I wasn’t sure how they saw anything, but after another few minutes, I helped them move her onto a stretcher.

  As they rolled her down to the ambulance, I recognised that I wasn’t hearing anything. I turned around, saw Aidan Jr. had been shot in the leg and was being worked over by another EMT, Lena was sobbing, Conor was clutching his arm, and I didn’t hear any of it.

  I didn’t hear the sirens.

  The whispers of the audience we’d gathered even though the fuckwits, after a drive-by, should have stayed inside.

  I didn’t hear the wheels of the gurney on the stones as Aoife was taken to the ambulance.

  I heard nothing.

  I should stay. I knew that.

  In the ultimate of ironies, because this life was like that, I hadn’t been shot. Looked like Aidan Sr. hadn’t either.

  The good really do die young, I thought.

  We needed to get to work. Needed to handle this threat, but I wasn’t capable of anything.

  For the first time in my life, I wasn’t. Capable. Of. Anything.

  I was an intelligent man.

  My fortune, and that of the Five Points, had soared thanks to that intelligence. Thanks to my reasoning, and my business savvy. I knew where to apply pressure on our allies, how to twist the arm of our enemies. I was needed here to rectify this wrong, but Aoife needed me more.

  “Sir?”

  Someone grabbed my arm and shook me. I was too dazed to react this time. Too dazed to smack the shit out of anyone who touched me.

  They were the first words I heard, though.

  “…coming with us? Need to leave. Urgently.”

  I realized I was holding up the ambulance. Not that they usually waited for shell-shocked grooms, and in her state, I knew they wouldn’t ordinarily allow people to travel with them.

  But I wasn’t just anyone.

  I was a Five Points man, and Aoife was my bride.

  Shit worked differently for us.

  I jumped on board the ambulance, knowing that if I got in the way I could endanger Aoife’s life, I resented my six foot four frame more than ever as I tried to make myself as small as possible. Not easy.

  There was a short counter beside Aoife’s gurney, and next to that, a kind of seat. I folded my form into that tiny ass enclosure, sitting sideways so I wouldn’t be a burden in the limited space.

  Seconds after I settled myself, the ambulance took off and my heart rate went along for the ride too.

  ❖

  Aoife

  The beeps.

  It was the beeps that woke me. Fuck, they were so irritating. What was it anyway?

  They reminded me of Chinese water torture, except with sound and, ya know, no water.

  I wrinkled my nose as I tried to lift my hand to shove the pillow over my face, but when I tried to do that simple thing, my entire body ached.

  “She’s waking up!”

  The roar disturbed me. Jolted me in surprise and that sent agony shivering through me. It was then I realized how much I hurt. Jesus. It was everywhere. In my head, in my chest, even my toes ached.

  It was like when you worked out for the first time in months. A forty-minute TABATA workout didn’t just kick your butt during the session, but after? Talk about moving like a ninety-year-old. This was that kind of pain I was talking about, but it went deeper because I felt so weak. So frail.

  My brow puckered with irritation from the way I was hurting with no comprehension as to why, and I decided I needed to open my eyes. But for some reason, that wasn’t easy.

  How could eyelids hurt?

  What the fuck was going on with me?

  Another yell roared from someone close to me, and I felt my hand being picked up and my fingers being squeezed. A scent blossomed in my nose, but I didn’t know it. Or at least, I didn’t recognize it over the thousand other scents in this space. Then, I felt the soft brush of something against my temple, and as the scent and touch worked together, I realized who it was.

  Finn.

  I moaned his name and I heard him grit out, “Open your eyes for me, beautiful, my cailín.”

  God, I wanted to obey. I really did. But opening my eyes wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

  “They’re coming, Finn,” someone told him, and there was a lilt of Irish to the tone that comforted me. In fact, Finn had it too, which was funny because I knew he hadn’t been raised in the Old Country. His mom had been though, just like mine. We both had sayings and particular phrases that came from them—even if Finn had run from his mother while I’d clung to mine.

  “Please, Aoife, let me see those beautiful eyes.”

  Finn? Being charming? In front of someone else?

  Christ, was I dying?

  That thought, not his request, had me tearing my eyelids open. I wasn’t ready to die, dammit. I had so much sex to make up for. And not just any sex, but sex with this crazy, beautiful man. A man who made Jamie Dornan look like a six out of ten. Yeah, that hot.

  I heard a groan escape him, one so filled with relief that I frowned in confusion.

  “Finn?” I repeated, my eyes foggy as I stared up at him. I couldn’t seem to say anything else, my tongue incapable of forming other words. He was my anchor in that moment. My everything.

  “Aoife,” he breathed, then he squeezed my hand and whispered, “Let the doctors take care of you. Be a good girl.”

  More confusion filled me, but he squeezed my hand just as a team of people surged in from a door to his right.

  Not people.

  Doctors.

  Finn backed up to let them move around me, but I wanted him close. I needed him at my side—I was scared and hurting, dammit. I needed him, where was he going?

  “Her pulse is spiking.”

  “Finn,” I moaned.

  I heard him as he gritted out, “Aoife, baby, I’m here. I’m over here.”

  “And he shouldn’t be,” someone mumbled under their breath as they touched me, moving me and prodding me here and there. Places where it stung, places that sent shards of agony slicing through me.

  “He’s a Points man. You don’t argue with them,” another person muttered.

  “They’re all thugs.”

  Didn’t they know I could hear what they were saying? About my husband?

  Because, yeah, I remembered that.

  I remembered saying ‘I do,’ and hearing him say it in return. I remembered walking down the aisle and seeing the white peonies and baby’s breath that Lena, Finn’s adopted mother, had strewn along the pews in heavy garlands. I even remembered the feel of those silky flowers brushing against my hands as Aidan Sr., Lena’s husband, passed me my bouquet.

  We’d been in St. Patrick’s and now, we were here.

  Trouble was, I just wasn’t sure what had happened between walking down the aisle and this moment.

  I dozed off, which might have seemed impossible considering how the rude medical team were attending to me, but I was tired.

  Bone deep tired.

  I awoke to the sounds of Finn’s luscious voice rasping, “You’ve done everything you can?”

  “Of course!”

  The affronted ton
e had my lips twitching. Finn did that to people. He was a bit of an asshole, but I loved him anyway. Yeah, I did. I loved him in spite of his being a dick. Which made me either too stupid to live, or just someone who let hope run their lives, not realism.

  “You’d better have,” someone else growled, “I made it a point to find out where your family lives.”

  “Oh God! I-I promise. She doesn’t even need it,” came the panicked squeak. “It’s just her spleen. She might have some digestive issues as a worst-case scenario but otherwise, many people live comfortably without them.”

  “Like tonsils?” Finn asked, his tone doubtful.

  “Yes,” the other person seemed to clutch at Finn’s question. “Exactly like tonsils.”

  “What else?”

  Finn’s demand had the woman—my doctor?—audibly gulping. “She was incredibly fortunate that the bullet didn’t hit her stomach or damage her pancreas. We performed open surgery and as a result, she will have scarring. As it stands, she has some faint damage to her ribs that will take a few weeks to heal.”

  “Why has she been out of it for so long?” That wasn’t Finn. I didn’t know who it was, but he sounded like he took my lack of consciousness as a personal affront.

  “For several reasons. Her lung collapsed and then we had to deal with two nasty infections at the incision site.”

  “But she’ll be okay now?”

  She sucked down a sharp breath at the man’s question—I didn’t know who he was just that he wasn’t Finn—and seemed to brace herself. “While you can live without your spleen, it does put her at risk for infections. Before she leaves, we’ll vaccinate her against several viruses and bacteria. There are annual vaccinations she will have to have now to ensure she’s protected. The spleen helps filter blood but it’s a vital part of the immune system.”