Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,120
in a kilt, Jennifer Haymore releases the third book in her Highland Knights series, Highland Temptation.
Until next time ~Happy Romance!
Gina Wachtel
Associate Publisher
Don’t miss the next edgy, seductive novel by M. O’Keefe
Worth It
Coming soon from Loveswept
Continue reading for a sneak peek
Chapter 1
SEPTEMBER
There’s a sound people make when they break.
Not the gut-twisting snap of a bone or ligament. But the hiccupping sigh that escapes when the person realizes they are not who they thought they were. They are not as tough. Or as smart. Or as strong or powerful or rich as they wanted to believe.
I know how to break a person. I’m not proud of it, but it’s a skill. And a useful one in a fight and a business negotiation.
It’s a pretty simple science; find the place hidden and secret, where they hoard all their weaknesses, and then you find the right pressure to apply to that sensitive spot.
But then—and this is the hard part—you can’t flinch. You can’t back down. You can’t ease up in the face of their pain. You have to be right there while you break them. Staring into their eyes as you rob them of the comforting lies they tell themselves.
It’s fine. That’s what I tell people across boardroom tables, when I’ve taken their money and their plans and bent them to my will.
It’s okay, I whisper to the men whose noses I’ve shattered as I walk them back to their corner of the ring, blinded by blood and tears.
Breaking shows people where they belong in the world. It can be comforting. It should be comforting.
Hierarchy works.
Survival of the fittest works.
And that sounds awful. I understand that.
But know—I am not a hard man. I’m a busy one.
And very—very—wealthy.
Outside the Porsche, the world is wet and green and I can practically feel the humidity through my suit despite the air-conditioning. I’m heading down into a trailer park to meet my brother Phil’s “wife” and “kids.”
Tiffany is her name and she says she’s been with Phil for over five years and has three children with him.
My family—Mom and Christina and I—didn’t know anything about her. Tiffany claims she didn’t know anything about us, either—but that’s pretty fucking dubious.
Phil—my brother—was always really good at secrets. He was like a pack rat, keeping everything that mattered hidden away, stored in some dark hole. It was the only thing he was good at. And I smell Phil all over this thing with his “wife.” He wants money. Again. And access to Mom. Again.
And I’m not putting her through that again.
So, wife or not, Tiffany will not be getting close to my family. I was going to this godforsaken corner of the world to break her.
Because the first time I heard the sigh of a person breaking—it was my mom. And the person breaking her was my little brother Phil.
Dad and I had been out back fishing, or nursing hangovers, or both, and we heard Phil yelling at Mom in the kitchen. Phil was fourteen at the time, but we already knew. We didn’t talk about it, but my sister Christine and I…we knew. Mom and Dad might still be in denial. But Tina and me, we understood something was off with Phil. Something bad. He was born mean and small and entitled. Like at birth, oxygen didn’t get to his brain or his heart.
He was vicious and irredeemable.
Anyway, that day Dad and I were out back, and we heard Phil yelling. Phil hadn’t hit Mom, yet. That would come a year later. But that kind of violence was in the air around him, like a stink. Again, no one talked about it, but it followed Phil around like a shadow.
A threat.
I got into the kitchen first.
Phil was laying into Mom, swearing at her, saying stupid, shitty things. I told Phil to get lost—shoved him for good measure. He took a swing at me, so I swung back and split his lip. Swung again and then again, each time, feeling the satisfying pop and crunch of cartilage and skin breaking beneath my knuckles.
Dad finally broke us up.
“Fuck you,” Phil said to me. And then he looked over my shoulder at Mom and Dad. “Fuck all y’all.”
And then he left.
Fourteen years old.
In the silence after the door slammed, I heard that hiccupping sigh from Mom. The soft, sad sound of her breaking.
It remains to this day, the worst sound I’ve ever heard.
Phil came back, tail between his legs a week later. But the cycle was in place. Fight. Leave. Return. Fight. Leave.