PUSH: Ultra Alpha MMA Badboy Mafia Romance (Southside Brotherhood Book 2) (2 page)

“I want to die.” Flynn fought to keep his voice steady. “I’ve seen enough people die, I’m not scared. Hell will be better than this. I know that’s where I’m going for the things I’ve done. I could have been everything to you, everything you want, everything you need. You fucking belong to me even if I never get to have you.”

A creak on the floor boards outside the door drew their eyes.

The slow, steady steps faded, and Flynn watched Lilly’s chest begin to rise and fall again.

She reached for the cut crystal glass on her nightstand, the resting vessel for the amber liquid she kept hidden in a shoe box on top of the mahogany armoire.

“I’m not going to scream.” Lilly looked out the window and took the last sip from her glass.

Flynn leaned forward, trying to catch his breath, imagining how it would have felt to be inside of her, two souls melting into a bliss only reserved for those willing to risk indescribable pain. He could smell her subtle scent in the air. It rippled his skin and made the room seem too warm.

When he raised his own emerald eyes, Lilly sat staring at her hands, playing with the gold band on her right ring finger, a reminder of the mother she wished would have protected her. But, still the one person in the world she loved.

“I want you to live.” The ice in her voice melted.

Flynn strained to hear as her voice softened until he could barely make out the words. “I want to keep you around as a reminder of just how close I came to real danger, the kind of danger that only comes when you allow yourself to be seduced by what could have been. By fairy tales.”

Flynn let out another long breath, both hands rubbing over his head before settling on his face. He felt the weight of their sadness, their obligations and secrets. The room felt like it was filling with ice water, both of them freezing and suffocating and unwilling to swim to safety.

“Did you hear me?” The cut in her voice brought him back to the moment.

“What?”

“I’ll let you live if you make me a promise.”

I’m not sure I want to live. I came here to die. I was ready — now my heart is beating again.

“What?” Flynn felt the wave of sick grip his gut.

“Don’t come back here. Don’t think of us. Pretend I’m dead… or you will be.”

The crystalline reflection of a single gathering of salt water in the corner of her eye wrapped wire around Flynn’s slowly thumping heart. His fingertips were cold and the room warmer with every second he let his eyes stay on hers.

She held his life in her hands. He’d come here to die. He’d already decided. One scream from her and it would be over.

“I don’t make promises I can’t keep.” Flynn didn’t bother to whisper. He was done playing.

The gathered tear found its way down the ripe warmth of her cheek, and a sardonic smile curved the fullness of those beautiful lips.

“I hate you,” she said.

“I know.”

Flynn closed the ten feet between them and took those lips from her, tasting the flavor that haunted his dreams every night since she took his hand that day on the front steps.

Her taste crashed over him. When he released her, the sound of her scream echoed inside the mansion loud enough to raise the roof. Within a minute, the room filled with the sound of footfalls from the hall and the click of the locks opening from outside her gilded prison.

And let it all be done.

Chapter Two

Flynn’s half-brother had arrived at the hospital less than two hours after the knife had done its work as he lay on the floor next to Lilly’s bed.

“Does it hurt?” Gideon sat back in the chair next to the emergency room bed.

“Fuck off. Why are you even here?” Flynn winced as the nurse cleaned around the stitches, the gauze pink with the final cleanup of what should have been the last pumps of his heart.

“Dad sent me. You should know that, dumbass. Besides, this is better than anything else I could think to entertain myself tonight. I should have brought popcorn.”

“Keep your arm in the sling, Mr. Dunleavy.” The young auburn haired nurse struggled to use her most professional voice. “You will tear the sutures if you move it too much. It’s a deep laceration; you will have some blood seepage for several days. Call the emergency number if you experience sharp pain, you cannot stop the bleeding, experience fever or the wound becomes inflamed and red. Here are your discharge instructions. You really need to be admitted. You are leaving against medical advice.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I need to call a cab.” Flynn sucked in a deep breath and crunched his abdominals, doing his best to sit up without using the muscles in his left arm or chest.

The nurse unconsciously licked her bottom lip as Flynn’s six-pack flexed, her eyes moving over his shirtless upper body.

“They added a new element to your ink.” Gideon said. “Cut right through that tribal Celtic bullshit. I think I like it. Scarification, looks good bro.”

Gideon slumped lower in the vinyl chair as he watched the nurse leave through the curtain. The ball bearings on the metal track over their heads scraped back and forth with the opening and closing of the cloth divider.

Gideon and Flynn shared half their DNA, but they moved in different worlds. Gideon lived in a bubble of his dark privilege, born perfectly into the corrupt world of crime and family loyalty. His onyx, slicked back hair and dark eyes were the same color as his soul.

Flynn fought to breathe. The plan hadn’t come to fruition. Laying on the floor of Lilly’s room a couple hours ago, he didn’t fight back as Leonard brought the knife down and cut a long, slow road from his shoulder across his pectoral muscle.

As Leonard had cut, his goon-twin prepared to stomp Flynn’s head into mashed potatoes with the heel of his boot.

“Dad’s not happy. You must know that, but just in case you are in shock and not thinking clearly, I’ll remind you. What is your fascination with that girl? You’ve already gotten yourself kicked out of the house, disowned, no job, no money. No one in their right mind with any connection to our world will help you. All for a girl you have never even touched…or have you?”

Gideon droned on, and Flynn detached from his half-brother’s snarky arrogant recounting of the state of his life.

That girl? What the fuck does he know? You can’t explain blue and gold and green to a colorblind imbecile. All I fucking know is, I didn’t die last night, and now I have to figure out how to live. Jesus Christ, why didn’t she let me die? It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I was one boot stomp away, and she called off the dogs. I still can’t believe they listened to her. That fuck kept his knife a half-inch in my chest muscle the entire time she negotiated for my life. If her fiancé weren't my dad, the twins would have finished me without hesitation.

“You may never fight again. That fucker cut deep; you may not get your swing back. Then what? You have no family, no money, no friends and no career. Quite the American dream. Maybe you could run to Ireland, see if you can lick your wound back across the pond. Join the IRA. Chase Leprechauns and drown yourself in gallons of Guinness. I can hear you now at the pub, recounting your tale of woe and defeat by the new world that chewed you up and spat you right back where you belong. The bastard son of the great Colin Dunleavy, couldn’t keep his cock from getting him killed. It’s weak bro.”

“Fuck off. What the fuck do you care? Tell Dad to fuck off, too.”

“Tell him yourself.” Gideon smiled as Flynn winced.

Flynn got to his feet with a deep breath. He caught a sidelong glance of himself in the mirror over the sink. The purple around his eye was just beginning to turn to shades of green. Half the white of his eye had exploded into a deep red that made him look like a half-turned zombie.

Dark, dried burgundy tipped the ends of his brown hair and the three-day facial scruff that covered his hardened jaw line.

Jesus, I could be an extra in the damn
Walking Dead
.

Luckily, he’d worn black pants, so the soaked in blood along the front didn’t show. He didn’t have a shirt; they’d cut it off in the emergency room. His black leather jacket had luckily made it through in one piece. He did his best to wrangle his good arm into its sleeve and hitch the other side up over his other shoulder.

“Fine, brother. I’ll let you be on your way. But, before you go—now that you are bright-eyed and focused—Dad has a message. You listening?” Gideon’s leaned forward to be sure Flynn was listening.

I can’t fucking wait to hear this.

“He says you have an appointment. Five o’clock today, O’Leary’s.”

Shit. I may just die today after all.

***

Gideon sat stone still grinning as Flynn pushed through the opening in the curtain and made his way through the moans and coughs that came from behind the other closed curtains of the emergency room. The antiseptic smell burned in Flynn’s nose as he headed toward the glowing red ‘EXIT’ sign at the end of a long hall.

With low expectations, he reached into the inner pocket of his jacket.

Well, what the hell did I do to deserve this good karma?

His fingers wrapped around his wallet and phone, both intact and his wallet still filled with green.

It won’t get me far, but it will get me the fuck away from here. Thank fuck for city hospitals, always some cab driver waiting around to drive some drunk fuck back to the row.

“Belmont and Cass,” Flynn said as he dropped into the stale-smelling backseat.

The driver putting the cab into gear was the only acknowledgment of Flynn’s existence and directions.

He’d been ready to die. Willing in fact. Now, in the back of this shit-smelling cab, he couldn’t be sure where he stood on the whole living or dying decision.

What he did know was the taste of her lips.

Flynn leaned his head back, let his eyes go to half-mast and tried to remember every nuance of her flavor. Lilly's scent nearly drove him mad, and now he knew her taste. He couldn’t stop reliving the kiss, imagining the softness and the way she yielded when he nudged her with his tongue.

The cab lurched to a stop in front of the Camden Arms, a classic Detroit public housing project left to fall into itself on the north end of the building after a fire from a homemade meth lab consumed nearly a third of the apartments.

Sheets and towels covered the windows of the second-floor apartment where Mrs. Leonard stayed with her six grandchildren, the flicker of the perpetually lit television the only glow of light.

“Six-fifty.” The driver didn’t even turn around as Flynn handed him a ten, slipped off the backseat held together by strips of duct tape and headed toward unit six, right under the never ending gymnastics of the seemingly sleepless gaggle of youth that lived above.

The irony of moving here, behind the razor wire and quadruple dead bolts, was that Flynn felt safer than in the 11,000 square foot estate where his father had housed him in New American luxury for the last twenty-seven years. Despite his former home's security, fences, cameras and staff, this hovel of Detroit’s crumbling inner city still felt more secure.

Inside unit six, Flynn flopped onto the drooping green sofa. He couldn’t stop staring at the crack that ran from the light switch up over the yellow ceiling and down to the plug behind the TV which he had never turned on.

A deep throbbing came from his chest. The twelve shots of Lidocaine were wearing off, and Flynn was beginning to feel something again. The low burn quickly turned to branding pain every time he tried to lift his arm.

He let out a groan and went from sitting to laying. The sad faded green couch doubled as his bed. The digital clock on top of the cardboard box next to the never-used TV flashed 5:15 am.

So, twelve hours until I go see Topher. Twelve hours until I see if I get to live. And, now I want to. The second she took my kiss, I decided, and everything that came before changed. Now, I fucking need to figure out how to get to her without killing us both. Fuck. Six months ago, I didn’t feel anything. Six months ago, I accepted my shitty fate as their fighting-dog. Trained on the weak, chained and destined to earn them every dollar I could in the pit until I was of no more use. Then, she showed up. Now I’m completely fucked.

Chapter Three

The marbles inside Lilly’s head rolled around with vigor the next morning. The throbbing behind each eyeball more familiar that she cared to admit.

I hate him. More than before.

I counted the locks when they left.

Click. Clunk. Click.

The middle one is the original, the one I managed to unlock from the inside like MacGuyver. The next day they added two more.

What did they expect? It’s my brain they want. Did they not expect me to use it for my own purposes now and then? Fucking stupid apes.

Why do I hate him so much?

Because.

Before him, I’d never felt much of anything. Never dreamed I would love anyone or could expect any more from my life, which wasn’t much.