Broken Hearts

  BROKEN HEARTS

  M. O’Keefe

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  About the Author

  About Midnight Dynasty

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  The blood in the air left a taste in the back of my mouth. Copper and familiar, like. Comforting almost. The taste of my childhood. Of Christmas and Saturday nights. Birthdays.

  Poppy ran across the lawn, a ghost in the dark.

  Go, I thought. Go, princess. My unspoken words were a hand at her back, pushing her faster. Further. She wouldn’t go to the Constantines. I was sure of that. She’d been rattled by Caroline’s manipulations.

  I’d left my car down the road. The keys were in it. A stash of money. I had a man watching it; he would do what he could to get her into the car. Or follow her until she collapsed, and then he’d get her into the car.

  Prayer had not been completely beaten out of me by the priests, and I sent whatever remained from deep in my gut heavenward. Please get in that car. Even if just to climb in the back seat and hide. Sleep off whatever Theo had drugged her with.

  Up until ten minutes ago she’d been managing in the dark forest all on her own, sticking to the path like a good little girl. Theo had just been her driver. Caroline Constantine had been her kindly godmother and I’d been the wolf, taking bites out of her tender skin whenever I got the chance. But now everything was different. There was no path. Her house had been burned down. Caroline had been lying to her all along. Her driver was a spy for the Morelli’s.

  She needed to get the fuck out of this forest.

  But she wasn’t going to take help from the big bad wolf, I’d made sure of that.

  She’d get to her sister. Poppy was smart. Capable. So fuckin’ brave. She’d get to her sister and they’d take care of each other. I’d get word to Zilla, tell her they had to vanish and Zilla would get it done.

  Goodbye, princess. Godspeed.

  But then, in the dark of the yard, Poppy stopped.

  No. No, baby. Don’t do it.

  But of course she did. She turned. Looked back at her house.

  At me, standing here in the bright doorway. Well, that wasn’t totally true. She turned back to look at the man she thought I was. The man she wished I was. I’d played so hard on that, using it to bend her. Manipulate her. Get between her legs.

  She didn’t know me. If she did, there’d be no looking back. Only a deep gratitude for escape.

  It would be nice, though. To be the man she thought I was, even though that man was a son-of-a-bitch. A son-of-a-bitch, but not a monster, and the difference was a taste of something sweet after all these years of blood and rot.

  Not for you, lad. Never was. Never can be.

  The monster I truly was lifted the gun in my hand and pointed it at her. The stakes were high, and she needed to get away. From me. From all this shite. On the floor between my legs was Theo Rivers, the Morelli hit man I didn’t see coming, breathing his last. “They . . . want . . . her,” he gasped.

  “They won’t ever have her,” I said. “Shut up and die, Rivers, you fuckin’ cunt. There’s nothin’ for you here.”

  My eyes were still on Poppy. I imagined her in the dark. Her wide whiskey eyes. Her mouth.

  Rivers laughed, the sound so absurd I looked down and found him lying in a growing pool of his own blood, more bubbling from his lips.

  But he had another gun in his hand.

  Pulled from a holster I hadn’t seen from under his arm, he was pointing it at Poppy. My brain was a step behind, focused on Poppy, on what could never be mine. It was my only excuse, the only reason I’d fucked this up so bad.

  “Dead or alive,” he said and pulled the trigger. Rivers was former military, a sniper with an alarming number of kills. And even dying, he made the shot. In the dark of the yard, Poppy screamed and fell.

  My brain blanked. I put a bullet in Theo’s and ran to Poppy, sliding through the wet grass to fall at her side. The bullet from Theo’s gun took a chunk out of her arm, a rough raw wound oozing fresh blood onto the grass. She was out cold from whatever shite Theo put in her.

  Dead or Alive.

  That was how the Morelli family wanted her. And the Constantines weren’t going to be much better.

  I fixed things. It was my value. It was why I was alive.

  But I didn’t know how to fix this.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ronan

  Pitch-black, the night howled. The wind rattled the shutters and swept over the chimney, creating a low moan that sounded like a wounded animal. In the hearth, the fire sputtered and then roared, sputtered and then roared again.

  Dead or alive. Dead or alive.

  “Didja hear me, boyo?” Sinead said, and I got out of the chair where I’d been slumped. Where I’d been getting too comfortable.

  The whole cottage was entirely too comfortable. Unchanged, really, since my time as a kid. Small and low-ceilinged, full of books and soft chairs with blankets over the back. It smelled perpetually of tea and something baking.

  The Dead or Alive orders changed everything. I couldn’t just ship her off to Zilla with a target on her back. And I couldn’t leave her alone. There was a good chance this was a mistake, but all I had left was a choice of mistakes. I had apartments and hidey-holes all over the world, full of money and guns and fake passports, but Caroline knew about too many of them. And I didn’t trust Caroline. Not with Poppy.

  Not anymore.

  So, I’d made my way through an endless night. Back in time. To the one truly safe place I’d ever known.

  Which happened to be right next to the most dangerous place I’d ever known.

  That was a metaphor for something. Or a joke? I was just too tired to figure it out.

  The only thing that mattered is that no one would find this place. No one would trace us across an ocean and through time zones back here. It had been a reckless and dangerous twenty-four hours. I’d called in every favor I had saved up over the years and burned through all my liquid cash, bribing everyone who needed it—and some who probably didn’t—and got us here.

  Now what?

  “Ronan?”

  “I heard you, Sinead,” I said and walked across the wood floor to the stones of the kitchen off the back of the cottage. This part of the cottage was hundreds of years old. Part of a dairy for the church on the hill. “Do you have any coffee?”

  “Tea,” she said, coming up beside me. “I’ll pick up some coffee tomorrow. But stop changin’ the subject. What are you doin’ with that lass?”

  I had no fucking idea; that was the honest answer.

  I needed more time. A few more days. A lot more information. But even if Poppy had answers, did she know them? More importantly, would she tell me?

  Of course fucking not.

  She had to believe I shot her, and I wasn’t sure if telling her the truth was wise. Or merciful. I could handle her hate. I did not like it when she was scared. It made me want to be something I wasn’t and could never be. Comforting.

  Kind.

  “She’s sca
red.” Sinead said it as an indictment of me, and that was more than fair. Sinead didn’t know what was happening, but assuming it was my fault was always a safe bet.

  “How do you know?”

  “She told me!”

  “She woke up?”

  “For a few minutes about an hour ago. Asked what was happenin’.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothin’ because I don’t fuckin’ know what’s happenin’, do I?”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  She made that noise in the back of her throat that was pure Sinead. “You always were a cute hoor.”

  I smiled at the insult.

  The night outside the window over the sink was black—no stars, no moon—except for the rectangles of light in the distance from the Catholic church that used to be a school. Someone was still there. In the vestry, if my memory was right. The rest of the building was dark, a looming shadow, blacker than the night around it.

  “Where are the kids?” I asked. In my day, the building would be lit up like a carnival before the priests came in with the rods. More kids than beds. More beds than rooms. More chaos than sense. More pain than anything else.

  Coming back here was a dangerous choice. But Theo Rivers didn’t leave me with any.

  The Constantines and the Morellis didn’t leave me with any.

  The unconscious girl in the bedroom, with stitches in her arm, didn’t leave me with any.

  Oh, lad, came my father’s scathing voice in my head. You fucked this up proper.

  “It’s not a parochial school anymore,” Sinead said. “We made sure of that, but you didn’t stick around long enough to see it done.”

  “Who lives there?”

  “Father Patrick. He was new when you were here. You might not remember—”

  “I remember,” I said, my hand against the sink. The name stirred up the sleeping dogs in my head. Tommy and the cats.

  Don’t give ’em nuthin’.

  “Look at the head on you, you scut,” Sinead said. She was dressed in her coat with her keys in her hand, but she came back into the kitchen. “That girl’s gonna be fine. But I’d wager money you haven’t slept. Or eaten. There’s soup and turkey in the fridge. Bread in the—”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You look shite.” She stood in front of me—all five feet of her. Her red hair going gray, and her bright blue eyes were as able to see through a lie as they ever were. It had been eight years since my stay at the school. Twelve years since Sinead brought as much kindness as she could to a feral Protestant kid in a brutal Catholic parochial school. If I had known her earlier, maybe there would have been a chance for me.

  Still, when I showed up on her doorstep five hours ago, in the absolute dead of night knocking until she came to the door in her nightclothes, she recognized me right away.

  “Ronan Byrne,” she’d said, like it hadn’t been years. She’d even smiled at me with a fondness I hadn’t felt from anyone since her. “What’s the craic?”

  I’d told her I was in trouble and she opened that door up wide. Didn’t even flinch when I carried Poppy, out cold, from the back seat of the banjaxed Taurus I’d bought off a father of two at the airport.

  Years ago, when I first met Caroline, I’d thought she and Sinead were cut from the same cloth. Tough birds with soft spots for boys with criminal bents. I’d let that delusion color everything.

  But Caroline and Sinead were nothing alike. Caroline worked the angles, figuring out how to make this situation turn up best for her.

  Sinead just wanted to feed me.

  “You should at least change your clothes,” she said, pointing at the stack of clothes she’d gotten for me. “There’s clean kex in there as well. Not sure they fit, but it’s worth a try.” Some other man’s jeans. A cream sweater. Thick socks. Underwear, apparently.

  The white undershirt I wore was covered in blood. Poppy’s blood.

  It was still on my hands.

  The wind felt like fingernails across my soul. God, I had forgotten the wind. Every minute here felt too long.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said.

  I shook my head. The Morellis had put out the Dead or Alive orders on Poppy. It was a fair guess they’d like me dead too. Caroline wanted both of us alive, but she wouldn’t give a shit who got hurt in the process.

  “Best stay away from us for a few days,” I told her.

  Sinead put her hand against my shoulder. I twitched, calming the urge to smack her hand away before I did it. “What are you doin’, Ronan?”

  “The less you know, Sinead,” I said with as much reassurance as possible. Which, judging from her face, was not all that reassuring.

  “Are you goin’ to hurt that lass?” Sinead asked.

  Yes. As bad as I can. As much as it takes.

  “No. I’m gettin’ her free of a net she was caught in.”

  “And you?”

  Was I the net? Holding the net? Maybe I was caught in it too. Feck. I was bashed.

  “I’m fine, Sinead. I always am. You know that.”

  “It’s all right if you’re not. Some adult in your life should have said that to you before it was too late.”

  “It was too late when I was born,” I told her. “But thank you.”

  She pressed her lips tight, and I imagined there were a thousand things she might say about the boy I’d been and the night she’d saved me.

  “Go,” I told her. “We’ll be fine. I’m going to change, eat something, and then talk to Poppy. Thank you, again, for the use of your cottage.”

  “You paid me.”

  “You didn’t have to accept.” Though it had been the kind of money a pensioner would be foolish not to accept.

  “God, boyo.” She sighed. “Look at what’s come of you?”

  I saw myself as she might. Too thin. I was always too thin for her. Exhausted. Bloody. A dangerous man with a dangerous amount of money and a bag full of guns.

  I was what this place made of me, despite her efforts to soften the edges.

  Sinead left. And it was just the cottage, the moaning wind, and the dark outside.

  The closed door to the bedroom.

  Poppy.

  Dead or Alive.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Poppy

  I hurt. Oh. I hurt. A lot. My head. My shoulder . . . what did I do . . . ?

  Suddenly panicked, I opened my eyes. The ceiling was unfamiliar. A lamp beside my bed threw strange shadows across dark wooden beams, white plaster. A spider web of cracks in the corner. I was under a mountain of blankets that all smelled of cedar and mothballs. There’d been a woman?

  A woman with graying red hair and worry on her face she couldn’t hide.

  There’d been a fire.

  Which came first?

  “Poppy?”

  Ronan. Like a memory, the taste of him on my tongue came back to me. Salty and sweet. He’d kissed me, but wouldn’t have sex with me. Had I begged? Of course, I’d begged.

  But there was something else. A fight?

  More than anything, I remembered being scared. My heart pounding in my throat. I’m still scared.

  I’m scared of Ronan.

  “I know you’re awake.” Ronan’s voice was all sharp edges.

  Fear crackled through me like ice, clearing my head, pushing the pain in my shoulder to some distant place. There, yes, but also not there at all. Using my good arm, I pushed myself up to sit. My other arm was in a sling, bound to my chest. A mountain of white gauze wrapped around my shoulder. My fingers were all pins and needles.

  Ronan stood in the doorway. He looked tired. Haggard. His hair flopped down over his eyes. The white tee shirt he wore under his coat had blooms of rust-colored blood across his chest.

  Mine? Or his?

  “What happened to us?” I asked, my voice a croak.

  “You don’t remember?”

  I shook my head, making my brain throb in my skull. I winced and pressed my hand to my head.
>
  “I have medicine for you.” From his coat pocket, he pulled two amber bottles. “Something for the pain and an antibiotic. And the doctor said you should drink more water. That might help with the headache.”

  He left and came back into the room with a glass of water, crossing from the doorway to the side of the unfamiliar bed. Despite his blood-stained shirt and grim face—despite my injury, despite not remembering what happened—I wanted him to come into the bed. To wrap those arms around me and hold me. Comfort me.

  Tell me all the lies he’d been telling me all along.

  But that was a luxury I could no longer afford. I was in danger; my whole body knew it.

  And the danger was him.

  “What happened to my arm?”

  “A bullet grazed you.”

  “Grazed? It feels like it hit me.”

  “You have fifty stitches.” He shook out the pills and I held out my hand, imagining the touch of his fingers against my palm as he set the pills against my skin. That small scrap of warmth. Of contact. Wanting it. Craving it. But instead of touching me, he set the pills down on the dark wooden table beside the bed, cluttered with reading glasses and novels that weren’t mine.

  Right. See, Poppy? He’s making it clear.

  With trembling hands, I picked up the pills, set them on my tongue, and grabbed the glass of water. The glass was really heavy, and I spilled icy water down my neck and chest like a child. But he didn’t help. He stood there and watched me fumble.

  “What do you remember?” he asked.

  “The taste of your come,” I snapped, surprising myself. I even looked him in the eye when I said it. Go ahead, I thought. Pretend nothing happened. Pretend you never touched me. But I won’t play that game.

  He glanced away, out the window where the thick dark night pressed against the glass. “What else?”

  “The way you held my head when you fucked—”

  “Poppy!” He snapped and Lord, wasn’t that something? Wasn’t that something? This man rattled. This man showing me something he didn’t want me to see.

  I was still terrified, but I smiled at him, feeling not at all myself, and I liked it. My head hurt, my mouth tasted of cotton, and my shoulder screamed with every breath.