me into a spirit in a half shell when I found out she stole my family’s money and threatened me with a worse fate. Since then, I cared for nothing until Leith came along.
Think of your boy crush from back in the day. Not the one who just made you blush. The one you would remember until hell froze over.
That was Leith MacKenzie. All he ever had to be was the world’s biggest crush. But in that precise second, he became more.
You’re probably wondering what awful fate befell my parents. We were living on top of the world before they died by the gun. Their demise should’ve cautioned me against all things MacKenzie. But I was twelve, and this was love. So that day, something greater, something more exhilarating than I could ever imagine, was forged from the fear and hunger I had for Leith MacKenzie. I became his; he became mine. Still, I was my father’s daughter, no matter how much I loathed admitting it. I knew the ins and outs of Dad’s life. So, I wouldn’t make the same mistakes Momma had. But there was no way in hell I’d let Leith go.
Chapter 2
Leith
Current Day
Keeping secrets from the one ye love is a bad idea. Keeping secrets from a woman ye personally taught how to shoot a .380, no matter how pink and frilly the gun is, well that makes me a feckin’ eejit.
Chevelle threatened me on our prom night. With her tawny thighs clamped together, she promised to unlock the key to her treasure. But I had to choose her or the power of my clan. MacKenzies dabble in it all. Racketeering. Robbery. Arms dealing. Drugs. Butchery of body parts.
Well, I said feck the family business. Not because I wanted to cut the tightest piece of pussy I would ever have.
Nae.
That ain’t me. Besides, the bonny girl became mine the day some bampot, some idiot, with his floppy wee baws, walked into her room naked as the day he was born.
I’ve never pushed drugs, and my parents wouldn’t have me do shite against my moral character. I had never killed a man either. But the day Chevelle casually mentioned her adoptive mom crying about her highest paying john missing his usual time, I didna lie to her.
Aye, the John was deider than a wooden plank.
Nae, I’d not personally killed him. My sweet, sweet Chevelle should have chosen her words wisely. My mam finished him off herself. Da watched, and he told all his weans, me included, to chop the ned, the petty criminal, into wee pieces. “Do away with the rubbish,” he said.
Today is a new bloody day, though. I have a wife that I’d move the feckin’ world over for, and I’m breaking her heart. She doesn’t even know it. I look at myself through the rearview mirror of my Audi convertible. My blue-green eyes bug.
“Feck!” I reach into the glove compartment to grab the baby wipes Chevelle stashed there. I rub the specks of blood from my jaw. My lovely wife will have so many words for me if she saw the faintest indication of blood. What happened, she’d ask. You’re not bleeding, she’d observe. Where’d the blood come from? Why aren’t you bleeding? I’d make a joke of my response, ask her why she’d want me to be bloody feckin’ bleeding? The attempt to see her smile would fall short, and in the end, I’d be fecked!
Last Sunday, I woke up with my wife, kissed my three-year-old on the forehead, traveled to Silicon Valley for the workweek, and I wasn’t a murderer.
Today. I glance down at my hands. Nae matter how much I washed them, red taints my nail beds and stains the grooves of my calloused fingers.
“Breathe,” I warn myself, rubbing a baby wipe over the flecks. At least, I’d tossed the suit I was wearing.
I pull up to our home. Getting out of my Audi, I slam the door, edging around our muscle car, a Chevelle SS. If it’s not an import, I’m a Chevy guy.
I head through the garage into our one-level home. A glass wall offers a view of the Southern California coast of Laguna Niguel. On the balcony, a flight of stairs leads down to the beach. We had a fence put in the day Mia scoot-crawled across the deck. Another outdoor staircase leads above the house to a pool, jacuzzi, and an area where Chevelle gardens.
I climb up the steps to the roof and glance past the custom