Kingstons obsession, p.1
Kingston's Obsession, page 1
CONTENTS
Warning
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Newsletter and Social Media Links
About the Author
Other books by Carole Mortimer
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2023 Carole Mortimer
Cover Design Copyright © Glass Slipper WebDesign
Formatter: Glass Slipper WebDesign
ISBN: 978-1-914336-13-3
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved.
DEDICATION
My Family,
As always.
WARNING
There is some violence on and off the page in this book.
CHAPTER ONE
“No!”
It seemed to Brianna as if, having made that emphatic statement, she literally felt it as all the warm air left her small cottage, set beside the rugged coastline in the rolling hills of Southern Ireland, to be replaced by a frigid coldness.
Possibly because it had?
“What did you just say to me?” The iciness of her brother Connor’s voice confirmed as much.
No one, literally no one, said no to Connor. Not if they wanted to live.
But this was too important, affected Brianna’s life far too much, for her to simply accept her fate without protest. Not that defying Connor had ever gotten her anywhere in the past. Not when it didn’t involve his fists, at least.
He was Brianna’s half brother really, Connor having been ten years old and his brother Liam eight when their widowed father, Aiden Doyle, had taken Cora McBride as his second wife. Brianna had been born a year later.
The half siblings’ coloring was completely different.
Connor and Liam were what was called black Irish, with dark hair and, in Connor’s case, cold and glittering black eyes. Liam’s eyes, as he stood in front of the cottage door—as if blocking her from escaping—were equally as dark, but devoid of all the warmth of emotion he’d had as a child as he avoided her gaze and instead stared at the wall behind her.
Brianna’s below-shoulder-length and gently wavy hair was the same color as her mother’s had been, a mixture of red and gold, with a touch of cinnamon. Her eyes, surrounded by long dark auburn lashes, were the color of soft green moss. She had a sprinkling of freckles across her creamy cheeks.
No one looking at the three of them would ever think they were related. Which was something Brianna had always been grateful for.
From the first, Connor had resented his father remarrying only a year after Connor’s own mother had died. It had taken no effort at all on his part to include Brianna, his baby half sister, in that resentment. Liam had reacted less viscerally, often taking the time to play with her if Connor wasn’t there to see him. If he was, he tended to taunt Liam with being a sissy for playing with a girl. No young boy wanted to be called that.
Cora had done her best to protect Brianna from the worst of Connor’s violent outbursts. But with her husband spending most of his time in London working as an underboss for the Irish Mob there, leaving Cora and the children safely at home in Southern Ireland, he hadn’t always been at home to protect them from his own son.
Brianna had been twelve when her mother died of cancer. Afterward, with both his sons now fully grown, their father had taken them to London with him and done what he could to keep his daughter living in Ireland, away from the dangerous life he was forced to lead as a member of the hierarchy of the London Irish Mob. The most important of those things had been to arrange for Brianna to live in Dublin with his sister, her Aunt Bridget. Bridget had never married and chose to distance herself from the mob. Which wasn’t to say she didn’t know everything that happened within the different criminal factions, or how those events might affect her and Brianna.
Much as Brianna had enjoyed Dublin and appreciated Bridget looking out for her, when her father died shortly after her seventeenth birthday she’d been determined to move away from Dublin as soon as she was eighteen. Her father’s death had meant that Connor, as the eldest son, had stepped up into his role within the Irish Mob.
Brianna used the money she inherited from her mother on her eighteen birthday to start over. She’d officially changed her name to her mother’s maiden name of McBride, and then purchased this cottage situated along the remote coast of Southern Ireland, under that same name. Distancing herself, literally and figuratively, she’d thought, from everything to do with the Doyle family.
She should have known better.
Brianna drew in a deep breath in an attempt to center and settle her emotions before once again answering Connor. Because she knew that once she’d repeated her refusal, Connor’s retribution would rain down on her. Probably with his fists.
Her eldest half brother’s penchant for violence had been the torment of her childhood.
Three years ago, Connor hadn’t hesitated to prove himself to the leader of the Irish Mob so that he could take Aiden’s place.
Brianna gave a shudder, knowing that “proving himself” had meant Connor had to have killed at least once to protect the Family. She didn’t doubt he had enjoyed every moment of carrying out that killing!
She had literally shaken in her shoes when her aunt telephoned her six months ago and told her that, after eliminating the boss, Connor had now taken over as head of the Irish Mob in England’s capital and made Liam his second.
That coup had apparently been a bloodbath, with another half a dozen senior men, still loyal to the previous Irish boss, also having been shot and killed.
Not that the London authorities knew all those details. They only knew that seven of the top members of the Irish Mob had mysteriously disappeared. Nor had their bodies ever been found. Nor would they be. Brianna knew that they kept a pig farm for just that purpose, before burning and pulverizing the bones and using them as fertilizer on the adjoining farmland.
For weeks after the coup, Brianna had lived in fear of seeing her eldest half brother again.
Too late, she now realized that, as the weeks passed and then turned into six months, she’d allowed herself to become complacent. She’d mistakenly and stupidly believed Connor’s silence meant she was of no further use or interest to him.
So much so that when she heard a car arriving ten minutes ago, she’d instantly thought it was Norah from the small shop in the village, coming a day earlier than usual to make the weekly delivery of Brianna’s groceries.
She’d only realized her mistake when she heard the front door of the cottage being kicked open.
She’d immediately thrown open the back door, ready to run, but instead of making her escape she’d found two men already standing guard outside, preventing her from leaving. She had decided not to give them the satisfaction of dragging her through to the sitting room, and instead walked into that room unaccompanied.
“How did you find me?” She knew her Aunt Bridget wouldn’t have told them where she was. Bridget didn’t have a liking for her eldest nephew, and she could be as steely as her now-deceased brother when she needed to be. Connor’s threats would have meant nothing to her.
Connor glanced at their surroundings. “I’ve known exactly where you were since the moment you bought this cottage under Cora’s maiden name.”
Connor had known where she was for the past two years?
“How?”
He eyed her pityingly. “Nothing happens in my family that I don’t know about. Unfortunately, that family includes you,” he derided.
Brianna no longer felt in the least safe.
As the now smugly smiling Connor no doubt intended she shouldn’t.
“If I hadn’t known then, I would have made it my business to find out after the book you wrote and published as B. C. McBride caused such a bloody fuss.”
Brianna felt the color leach from her cheeks. “What book?”
Connor gave her a scathing glance. “I know it was you, Brianna.”
She eyed him pityingly. “Are you saying you actually read a book?” As far as she was aware, despite her mother’s best efforts, Connor was mostly illiterate, having played truant from school more often than he’d attended it.
“No, I haven’t read that fecking shite.”
“I have,” Liam put in softly. “But I didn’t share that knowledge with anyone else,” he added when Brianna gave him a reproachful glance.
“I told you, I have my own way of finding out what I need to know,” Connor said, dismissing them both. “Now stop changing the subject and accept you broke the rules when you wrote about your knowledge of the inner workings of the Irish Mob.”
She swallowed hard. “I don’t know what—” She broke off when the back of Connor’s hand made painful contact with her cheek. “You bastard!” She pressed her palm against the burning flesh as she glared at him.
“As if I haven’t heard that before.” Connor laughed, and so did h is men.
Brianna continued to gaze at him, sure the hate she felt for him must be glittering in her eyes. “It’s a fictional book.” She gave up trying to pretend she hadn’t been the author. “It bears no resemblance to anyone actually in the Irish Mob, living or dead.” But every word she’d written had been done with Brianna’s own blood, sweat, and tears, along with that of both her parents.
She’d had to do something once she moved to the cottage, knowing her inheritance wouldn’t last forever.
Her decision to totally distance herself from the Doyle family, both physically and by name, meant she’d been unable to attend university for fear Connor would find her, so she wasn’t qualified to do very much. But after spending a few months alone in the cottage, so far away from any other inhabitants, she’d known she had to do something with her time or go quietly insane.
She’d always loved to write stories in her head and in a little notebook she’d liked to carry around with her. She had even taken an evening course on fiction writing her last year in school.
Write what you know, her tutor had told her.
Which was exactly what Brianna had done. Her knowledge of the Irish Mob became the basis behind the thriller that had been snatched up by a publisher eighteen months ago. The book had been published six months ago.
She’d no idea it would become a number one bestseller. She’d even won awards for it, anonymously, of course. Because she’d believed keeping her identity as the author was far more important than personally accepting the accolades of reviewers and readers alike.
She gave a brief glance at her laptop sitting on the table beside the window looking out over the sea, where the sequel was already partly written.
Connor’s humor faded as quickly as it had appeared. “You broke the rules,” he repeated. “Now you’re going to pay the price for doing that.”
Brianna inwardly cringed at the deceptive mildness of Connor’s tone. A mildness that was totally in contradiction to the glittering malice she could see in his eyes. A nerve also pulsed in the tightness of his jaw, and his hands were clenched into fists at his sides. As if he was barely containing that violent temper Brianna was unfortunately all too familiar with and her throbbing cheek attested to.
Outwardly she lifted her chin, hoping her inner turmoil wasn’t obvious. The scornful expression in Connor’s eyes said she hadn’t been completely successful in that endeavor. “I said no,” she nevertheless repeated defiantly.
Connor stilled. “She said it again,” he echoed without any inflection in his tone.
She gave a firm shake of her head. “To be perfectly clear, I have no intention of accompanying you and Liam back to London. Nor will I let you marry me off to a member of some equally violent criminal faction in order to form an unholy alliance between the two of you.” She inwardly steeled herself for the reaction she knew was coming.
“You’re sure about that?” Connor growled.
“Yes.”
“Last chance,” he warned.
“I won’t do it—” Brianna didn’t get to finish that sentence.
Instead, she cried out as this time, the back of one of Connor’s hands hit her so hard across the side of her face, it actually knocked her to the floor.
The pain was excruciating, and she instantly felt the flood of the metallic taste of blood in her mouth from where her teeth had cut into the inside of her cheek.
“Leave her,” Connor instructed harshly as Liam would have stepped forward to assist her back onto her feet.
Brianna felt the tears tumble hotly down her cheeks as she glared up at her eldest brother. “I won’t ever willingly agree to be married off to some dirty old man just because that alliance will give you more power.”
“He’s the same age as me,” he told her smugly.
“Is he as sick you are too?” She gasped as Connor’s boot lashed out to make vicious contact with her rib cage. The pain that ensued was far worse than what he’d inflicted to her face. Enough so that she wondered if he hadn’t broken a rib or two.
“Maybe that’s something you should ask him at your wedding when he gets out of prison next week,” Connor scorned.
“Prison?” Brianna repeated hollowly. “The man you want me to marry is currently in prison?” Her voice rose higher with each word spoken.
“Yes.”
“What’s he in for?” But she knew.
She knew!
“Murder,” Connor confirmed. “It’s an occupational hazard in our line of work,” he dismissed as easily.
Brianna already knew Conner had killed in the past. But it was something else to be told that the man Connor had picked out for her to marry was also a killer.
“Admittedly, in this case, he beat his current mistress to death. But the bitch had it coming,” Connor stated uninterestedly.
The man Connor wanted Brianna to marry had beaten his mistress to death and she was the one who had it coming?
Brianna swallowed before speaking. “What did she do?”
Connor’s shrug was dismissive. “Terry and his father like to share their women, but then they found out this bitch had another man on the side she was also fucking.”
This situation just got worse and worse. “What happened to him?”
Connor grinned. “He was shot in the head and now he’s sleeping with the fishes. Which, in our case, means the pig farm, but I’ve always wanted the chance to say that quote about the fishes!” he added with relish.
Brianna was well aware of her brother’s obsession with the films and books about the famous fictional Italian Mafia family that quote had come from.
Brianna didn’t belong in that world. More importantly, she didn’t want to belong in that world. “You said this man is going to be released from prison?”
Connor grimaced. “Junior’s lawyer now has the means to go back to court and get the case against him dropped on a technicality.”
“Does that technicality include intimidation of the judge the retrial is being put before?”
He smirked. “I didn’t ask.”
In other words, yes it did. And Connor had made arrangements for her to marry this man? No, he was insisting upon it.
“Exactly who are these two men?”
“Anthony Bart and his son Terry.”
Brianna gasped. “The family at the head of the London Mob?”
“One and the same.”
Connor wanted her to marry the son of the London Mob boss known far and wide for his viciousness and cruelty?
A son who killed his last mistress.
A father and son who liked to share their women.
Did that mean they would share Brianna too?
She gave a fierce shake of her head. “I’m not going to marry a man I’ve never met and have no wish to ever meet!”
“He’s never met you either.” Her stepbrother’s gaze traveled slowly from her toes to the top of her fiery head. “But no doubt, having been in prison for several months, Terry will enjoy fucking you for at least as long as it takes for him and his father to impregnate you and produce an heir. Then he’ll get bored with you and go on the hunt for someone else to amuse them.”
“I’m not going to be fucked by him or his father!” She winced at having used the same profanity as Connor had to describe something she had always believed should be something beautiful between one man and one woman.
She may have wished, many times, that her mother had never married Aiden, but she had never doubted that the two of them were in love with each other. Or that, despite spending months away living in London, Aiden had remained faithful to his Cora, as she had to him.
“You’ll do as you’re fecking told and marry Bart’s son, forming an alliance between the London and Irish Mobs,” Connor growled as he loomed over her, obviously ready to strike again if she continued to argue with him. “There will be no more writing books once you’re his wife either,” he added with satisfaction before turning to Liam. “Get some of the men in here to tie and gag this bitch.”
