“Don’t let him take liberties with you, either,” my father adds. “It’s important that he’s your first man—in your wedding bed.Don’t let him take for free what he has to earn. Seduce, but don’t give in.”
I feel a flush creeping up my cheeks. “I understand,” I tell him through gritted teeth, looking away.
If there’s one thing I’m looking forward to above all else out of being married, it’s that the endless conversation around the state of my virginity will finally come to an end.
We take the elevator downstairs, where four other women are waiting—all strangers to me, women that my father has paid to be here tonight, to flesh out our plan. They’re all dressed in tight, revealing clothing—short bandage dresses with sky-high heels, tight jeans and lowcut tops, big earrings and flat-ironed hair, and heavy makeup. They look as foreign to me as I feel to myself, and I feel a wave of discomfort as I step away from my father and go to join them.
“Nice evening out, ain’t it, Luv?” one of the women says in a thick accent as we pile into the town car that my father rented for us while in London, complete with driver.
“Ah—is it?” I frown, squinting against the still-falling rain as I follow her into the car. “It hasn’t stopped raining since we landed.”
“New to London, I see,” one of the others, a pretty blonde, says. “It never stops raining here. Just whether it’s cold rain or warm rain, y’see.”
“It feels like cold rain to me.” I’m grateful for the leather jacket, at least, even if I’m supposed to leave it in the car before we go into the warehouse where I’ve been told we’ll find Connor and his men. “But yes, it’s my first time in London.”
Truthfully, though I wouldn’t say it to anyone, it’s my first time out of the States. I’d always pictured that first trip being on my honeymoon, somewhere warm and sunny with sand between my toes and a fruity drink in my hand. When I’d imagined that honeymoon with Liam, it had been full of passionate sex in a crisp white hotel bed with salt air coming through the windows, while he taught me everything I never knew about how to make love.
Things have turned out—a bit differently.
“And thanks to you, we’re riding in style!” The first girl crows, leaning back against the smooth leather seat. “Not how I usually go to my outcalls, that’s for sure.” She eyes me, picking up on my nerves as surely as only someone who is a veteran of this sort of thing could. “New to this, are you, Luv?”
“Mm. A bit.” I’m careful with my words. Once I get Connor’s attention and get him away from the warehouse, I won’t see these women again. They’re just my in, a way to make my arrival there look less conspicuous, and sell the whole story that I’m just taking him back to my hotel room for a quick fuck. I don’t want to give anything away.
“And that man in the hotel, he was what? Your pimp?”
I clench my teeth at that, a flare of anger flushing my cheeks at the thought of anyone insulting my father like that. But I rein it in. I’m not Saoirse the Irish princess tonight. Tomorrow, when things are more settled, I can sink comfortably back into the identity that I know so well and be myself again. But for tonight, I have to be someone else. A woman of the world. A seductress. Someone who hears a sentence like that and laughs it off.
“Something like that.” I look out the window at the rainy streets passing by, wanting the conversation to end.
“Not very friendly,” I hear muttered from one of the women, but I ignore it. The closer we get to our destination, the more my heart races to the point that I feel almost sick with nerves, and I wish I could run back to Boston. That I could rewind time and make everything go differently.
That I could make Liam never have become obsessed with that Russian ballerina and break our engagement—along with all my dreams of marrying the McGregor brother I preferred, and that sunny, sandy honeymoon.
You can do this,I whisper to myself in my head.You’re an O’Sullivan. You’re strong. You’re brave.
You can do better than marrying a disappointing man. You can be the heroine of this fucked-up fairytale.
The one who brings the prince back home.
The car turns down several roads that take us into a less well-heeled part of London, darker and more industrial, with less well-kept streets and buildings in disrepair. It doesn’t look anything like the kind of place where I’d find the Connor I remember—the cool, collected, passionless man who used to sit at his father’s left hand—but from what I read in the file that my father put together on him, Connor has done quite well for himself here. It reminds me of just how much rides on tonight. Connor has been happy enough to let everyone think he was dead—disappearing into a false identity, leaving his family and everything else behind, and starting a new life here. Now, my father wants to forcibly resurrect him, and I can’t imagine he’ll be happy about that.
As the car door opens and I step out, my boot splashes down into something wet—some kind of puddle that makes me suddenly glad I’m not wearing the heels I would have chosen. The smell of the nearby alley wafts towards me, making me wrinkle my nose, and I grit my teeth, refusing to let any of it rattle me.
The warehouse door is slightly ajar, and buttery light streams out, the sounds of loud drunk men spilling out into the warm night air. I pause at the edge of the door with the other four women surrounding me, my heart hammering in my chest, and I take a deep breath—something I quickly regret, thanks to the heavy smell in the air that I can taste on the back of my tongue.
And then, with my jaw clenched against the fear coiling around my spine, I step into the glow of the warehouse.
I see him instantly, at the same time that I hear the cock of weapons. “Stop right there, ladies,” two heavily Cockney-accented voices say. Still, I don’t bother looking at them, despite the fact that they almost certainly have guns pointed at our heads. Instead, ignoring both them and the pounding of my heart, I look straight ahead at the poker table set up in the middle of the warehouse and the man seated at the head of it.
It’s him. For all that he looks so much different, scarred and stubbled and tattooed, in a charcoal t-shirt and dark jeans with that leather jacket slung over the back of his chair, I recognize him instantly. I recognize the burnished auburn hair and those piercing bright blue eyes, and all I can do is hope that he doesn’t remember me.
“Nah, let them in, boys,” William—Connor—says, leaning back in his chair with a smirk on his handsome, stubbled face. “The game was getting a bit dull, but I’m sure these ladies can liven the night right up, am I right?”
There’s a roar of laughter from around the table, Connor’s men giving their raucous assent, and the other women push forward, heading straight for their marks. But I hang back a little, my gaze fixed on Connor, my heart beating so hard in my chest that I feel as if I can hardly breathe.
He’d been handsome in the photos, dangerously so, but here—in the flesh and up close—there’s something else to him. Everything about this room, from the armed guards to the table scattered with cards, chips, and money, the fugue of cigar smoke hanging in the air, and the clank of ice in highball glasses, screamspower, and it’s all his.
He built this from scratch. It wasn’t handed to him. Connor McGregor was the heir to an empire, but William Davies is a self-made man. Looking at the man at the head of the table, his eyes fixed on me as he takes a sip from his glass, I wonder how much of Connor is left in him.