Riley: #4 (Kelly Clan) Read online

  “They trashed my apartment? How did they even know about us?” she asked.

  Riley stood and paced the floor. “Can’t even believe this shit,” he said as he continued to pace back and forth.

  She watched as Riley pulled out his phone and called Finn.

  Daisy placed her head on Anna’s lap and absently she rubbed the dog’s head. It was nice to have some sort of comfort at the moment.

  She glanced over at the screen and was surprised to see Jason’s face front and center. She turned up the volume on the TV again.

  “Anna’s been on a bad path for some time now,” Jason said to the camera. “She’s got a new boyfriend in the Mafia, and people like that just can’t be trusted. It’s not surprising at all that he beat her and trashed her place. We’re dealing with a common thug here. Sometimes…” He let out a melodramatic sigh. “Some women are just attracted to danger, unfortunately. I tried my best with her, but I’m not a dangerous Mafia guy.”

  The reporter seemed to agree. The sympathetic look on her face for the poor man who’d been left by the evil woman said it all.

  Riley stopped beside her on the couch, his face full of rage. “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch,” he said. He grimaced. “Not you,” he said into the phone. “That prick Jason is on the news. It’s all over the place. Anna’s place got hit last night. Can you send some guys over to deal with it?”

  She slipped her hand into Riley’s. He stared down at her for a moment before letting her hand go and stepping out of the room.

  A cold ball of worry crept into her heart. She needed him, and he was blinded by his anger.

  Riley stepped back in the room and she clicked off the TV.

  “I’m going to go check out your apartment,” he said. “We’ll get this taken care of. You just sit tight, and I’ll be back soon.”

  She sighed and nodded, motioning to her phone. “I’ll plug it in and at least call the police so they know I’m not dead.”

  She watched as he refused to meet her eyes and quickly made his way out of the house without waiting for her response. The alarm beeped on, and she was left alone with only her thoughts.

  * * *

  Riley felt like an ass as he stood outside his own house. He’d spent hours at the apartment talking with both the police and Finn about the whole thing.

  Anna called the police to confirm that she was not home that night, clearing them both of any wrong doing. Not that it mattered much. The reporter had condemned them both in the public’s eye. And Jason certainly did his best to help.

  Riley and Finn both agreed that the whole thing didn’t make much sense. The Russians didn’t do things like this publicly unless they really thought that they needed to send a message.

  They liked to strike when you least expected it. Telegraphing your moves put your enemies on the defense, and it made it harder to surprise them. The ambush at the storage unit was more their MO.

  Riley and Finn figured it was a threat. Well, the message was received loud and clear. They were all in danger, and the Russians were done playing around.

  Still, that wasn’t what he felt like an ass about.

  When he’d left Anna earlier, he knew she was hurting, but he didn’t have any comfort for her. More to the point, he didn’t even deserve to comfort her or be in the same room with her. This was all his fault.

  If he had just stayed away from her, maybe the Russians wouldn’t be hitting her so hard.

  Boris had a score to settle with him over his cousin, and Riley knew it was only a matter of time before he tried to collect on that debt.

  He wondered if they had purposefully missed at the storage unit. Maybe the whole point was to rattle Riley and Anna before they finally moved in for the kill. Given some of the Russian’s moves in the last year, it wouldn’t be surprising.

  Now, Riley had put the woman he loved smack dab in the middle of the opening stages of a mob war, and the only way he was going to be able to protect her was to unleash the beast: to let himself be the killer he knew he could be. Even if it meant he couldn’t be with her because his hands were too dirty, he had no choice.

  The men of the local Russia Mafia couldn’t be reasoned with. They’d already tortured, kidnapped, and murdered people in the city. The only thing they knew was the way of the gun, and he’d need to talk to them using a gun.

  They couldn’t be reasoned with, but they could be cowed.

  Quietly, he stepped inside the house. The door beeped, and he knew that wherever she was, Anna heard.

  Daisy came trotting in and danced around his legs, happy to see him, her tail wagging back and forth.

  Riley squatted to pat her head. “So how much trouble am I in?” he whispered to the dog.

  She snorted loudly and danced her way back to the kitchen.

  He noticed for the first time the delicious smells coming from the kitchen. His stomach rumbled, and he only hoped that he’d be able to eat as well. Hours of dealing with the police and Finn hadn’t left him a lot of time to pick up a bit to eat.

  When he stepped into the doorframe of the kitchen, Anna stood with her back to him at the sink. She was wearing one of his shirts, and it hung nicely on her, exposing her beautiful legs.

  She stilled when he came into the room, the dishes forgotten almost instantly.

  Riley stepped up behind her.

  “It smells good,” he said softly.

  Her shoulders tensed.

  “I made stew,” she said.

  She glanced over her shoulder, and he spotted her red puffy eyes. She’d been crying, and it was all his fault.

  Riley stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.

  “Baby, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault.”

  Anna cried silently. Her body shook as she did so.

  With little effort, Riley turned her in his arms. She pressed her face to his chest and wove her arms around his middle.

  “I needed you, and you just left,” she whispered.

  His heart cracked at her words. He’d been so angry that he’d had to leave and do something before he did something worse like knock out a few of her ex-husband’s teeth.

  “I know,” he mumbled and kissed the top of her head. “I shouldn’t have left you. I was so wrong. It won’t happen again.”

  She looked up to him. Her face was more honest and open than he’d ever seen her before.

  “I need you,” she said. “You make me feel safe. I can’t do this without you.”

  Riley leaned down and placed a soft kiss on her lips. When he pulled back several tears had slipped down her cheek. He brushed his thumb across them and nodded.

  “I’ll never leave you again,” he said firmly.

  Anna nodded and turned back to her dishes. He wasn’t sure if he’d gotten to her, but he vowed he’d never again be the reason she cried.

  He was surprised when Anna turned back around to him.

  She sighed. “Let’s eat some dinner, and you can tell me how bad my apartment is.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Anna woke up from a sound sleep. An odd thumping noise had reached through her dream and roused her awake. She realized someone or something was outside the bedroom window.

  The thick curtains mostly prevented her from seeing anything, but a few crunches and thuds suggested someone was skulking outside. A few shifts in the little moonlight peeking in from the edges of the curtains caught her eyes, and she swallowed.

  She started to move but felt Riley’s arm tighten around her. When she opened her mouth to say something, he pressed his lips firmly to her ear.

  “Don’t make a sound,” he whispered.

  Anna nodded. She felt her body start to shake as her mind processed who might be outside the bedroom window.

  “We’re going to move out of the bed, and as soon as we do I want you to get on the floor,” Riley said.

  Anna nodded again, her heart pounding. More bullets were coming soon. She
just knew it. She wondered for a second if Riley’s windows were bulletproof.

  She felt Riley slowly turn and followed him down onto the floor. She watched in the dim light as he grabbed the two guns and belt from inside the door beside the bed and slipped on the jeans that he’d discarded there the night before.

  She could just barely make out what he was doing when his face suddenly appeared in front of hers.

  “Stay right here,” he said to her. “It might just be a reporter, but I’ve got to check it out.”

  She could see from his face that he didn’t think it was a nosy reporter. Someone was outside trying to get in. Anna grabbed ahold of his arm.

  “It’s dangerous,” she whispered. “I don’t want anything to happen to you. Maybe we should just call the police.”

  Riley leaned in and kissed her hard. When he pulled back, she could see the grim resolve in his eyes.

  “The police wouldn’t get here fast enough, and if it’s the Russians, we run the risk of innocent people getting killed. You stay here,” he said to her. “I’ve got to keep you safe. If I don’t come back in, then you can call the police. But don’t come out, no matter what.”

  Anna watched as Riley crouched down on the floor and made his way out of the room. It wasn’t until she heard the beep from the front door that she felt totally alone.

  Her heart picked up even more, and a few beads of sweat formed on her head.

  Something wrestled against outside the window, and she shook as she lay on the floor. She jumped as something big thudded against the window. She was surprised when the glass didn’t shatter everywhere inside and reconsidered whether or not Riley had bulletproof windows.

  Something slammed into the window, and she waited for the sound of breaking glass.

  It never came. Instead, a loud piercing alarm ripped through the air.

  Her heart thundered in her chest as she worried about Riley out there. With the noise, she would have no way of knowing if he was safe. Daisy made her way over to Anna on the floor and whined at the sound. Anna wrapped an arm around the dog and buried her face in the dog’s fur.

  “He’ll be back,” she whispered. “I know he’ll be back. Don’t worry, girl.”

  As quietly as he could manage, Riley made his way around the corner of the property. The bedroom was in the back of the house, and he was certain that whoever had been there before would still be there. He only needed to get the drop on the bastard before things got real.

  He heard the two loud cracks as the person tried to break the shatterproof windows, not quite bulletproof but still an investment he was now glad he’d made. The alarm ripped through the air, and he saw a streak of black as the person bolted from the window.

  Fucking sloppy. If Anna weren’t involved, he might have been insulted that the Russians thought they could sneak up on him in such a pathetic way.

  Riley sprinted after the intruder, his gun in hand.

  “Stop, you fucker,” he shouted. “This doesn’t have to end badly if you stop right now.”

  The black ski-masked intruder looked at him over his shoulder as he ran but didn’t slow down.

  He was tired of this shit. He wasn’t waiting for the Russians to ambush Anna again. The third time wasn’t going to be the fucking charm for the assholes.

  He raised his gun as he ran and tried to take aim. The first round went wild, and he could hear the other man shout as it hit a nearby tree.

  He fired again. This time it clipped the man’s leg.

  Riley kept waiting for the other person to return fire, but it never happened.

  He ran faster, hoping to catch up, but the black car on the road came into view. It beeped as the doors unlocked, and the intruder slipped easily in the driver’s side door.

  He gritted his teeth. Even in the dim moonlight, he recognized it as the same black car he’d seen at the storage unit.

  He took aim at the car and fired several shots, nailing the back tire as he did so. Still, the car raced on, the tire smoking.

  This shit did not make sense.

  The Russians weren’t known for sending one man to do a job and certainly weren’t known for not finishing the jobs they started. This was really sloppy work.

  As it stood, the hitman had managed to get his car shot twice by Riley, and himself shot, but hadn’t managed to hit either Riley or Anna.

  What the hell was going on? Did Stefano have some untrained cousin he was trying to train up by throwing him randomly at Riley and Anna? At the rate things were going, the asshole was going to get himself killed without even bruising Riley.

  He made his way back around to the front of the house and stepped in the door. Quickly, he shut off the alarm and found Anna lying on the floor hugging Daisy in the bedroom. He pulled her into his arms.

  “Are you okay?”

  She nodded, fear still written all over her face. “Won’t the police be here soon?”

  “Did you call them?”

  “No, but the alarm.”

  “Yeah, my alarm doesn’t call the police.” He shrugged. “Not exactly like I want cops showing up and going through my place.”

  She bit her lip and nodded.

  “Got to call Finn,” Riley said to her. Things just weren’t adding up, and he needed actual answers.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Riley looked around the room at the gathered group of men. Finn had brought the main leaders in the family out. Liam, his half-brother, Conor, Noel, and himself.

  They were the most trusted people within the organization, and Riley knew whatever was going to be said must be serious if Finn was willing to call in Conor from his honeymoon, if only because it must have seriously pissed off Claire. They’d been lucky the guy hadn’t flown off to France or something for it.

  Anna was in the bedroom, sleeping with the aid of a glass of whiskey and Daisy. She didn’t need to be burdened with all the details. If he did his damn job, this would all be over before she had to deal with another scary experience.

  After all, this wasn’t just about protecting his woman, even if that was the most important thing. This was about someone deciding they could go after the Kelly family.

  It was important to figure out who it was so they could be dealt with. If they let it go, it wouldn’t be long before somebody else’s woman got attacked.

  The whole incident still burned him. It was so fucking cowardly. A real man went after his enemy directly. This hiding in the shadows and going after a woman shit annoyed him. The fucker doing this didn’t have any real balls.

  Finn sat in an armchair and stared gravely at the group, his fingers interlaced. They knew something was going on, and despite what he had said, they also knew that Ennis was still a concern.

  Whatever else they might think about Ennis, he’d proven himself a wildcard with some of his previous antics.

  “The Russians are the only option that make any sense,” Finn said. “I know that Riley has his doubts, but I don’t get why anyone else but the Russians would target us, and even if they would, why target Riley and Anna in particular? Why not come after me? Or Conor?” He gestured with his hands. “If it’s just about fucking with us in general, why not go after several of our people, especially if the point is just to work our nerves?”

  Riley grunted. He trusted Finn, but all of his instincts screamed at him that this wasn’t the Russians, unless they were purposefully just tossing cannon fodder at the Kellys. That hadn’t been the strategy before, and so he doubted Stefano would suddenly do something so boneheaded and wasteful.

  The Kellys might be weaker than they were before, but the Russians were far from home and the center of their power.

  Among other things, if the war heated up, both groups would draw more attention from the police and the FBI. And too much attention from law enforcement would benefit the more peaceful Kellys than it would the ruthless Russian interlopers. Hell, a lot of them could easily be deported.

  A strategy like that might be useful if th
ey took out Finn in the exchange, but not so much by taking on someone like Riley or his woman.

  The whole thing just smelled off. And even if the Kellys weren’t as strong as they were before, lesser groups and gangs didn’t have the power to take them on, so they didn’t make sense as suspects, even if the sloppier MO might possibly fit one of them.

  It was Noel who spoke first in response to Finn. He shook his head.

  “It just doesn’t make sense though,” Noel said. “This isn’t how the Russians work. They might screw up once, but screwing up twice when they had surprise, especially with Stefano in town? This isn’t filling us with fear, it’s putting us on alert and making us think their people are incompetent, and I can’t see their leaders standing for that. There has to be something else at play here.”

  “Ennis,” Riley said, nodding to himself. He was the only explanation that made sense.

  Desperation had already driven Finn’s brother into pulling some questionable moves, including showing up by himself at places patrolled by loyal Kelly men. If he didn’t have the full support of his allies, he might risk a pawn or two just to fuck with the Kellys. After all, no matter how personal it might be between the Russians and the Kellys, it was more personal between Ennis and Finn.

  Finn shook his head. “It’s not Ennis,” he said. “There’s no way it’s him. This just isn’t his style.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but nothing else came out of his mouth.

  Conor ran a hand over his face. He sighed loudly. “We’ve got to tell them. It’ll help make things clearer.”

  Finn shot him a nasty look. “I’m not putting them at risk like that. They don’t need to know.”

  Conor stood and gestured around toward the group.

  “If you can’t trust the men in this room, then the whole operation is already shit and pointless,” Conor said. “Fucking take a chance, man. Got to start trusting someone before it’s too late, or we’ll all end up in a shallow grave with the Russians and Ennis dancing on top.”