Page 16 of Intimately Faithful

She’d been in some scrapes in her time, all of which he’d pulled her out of. But this…shit.

“Aoife… hold up.” She blinked and stopped talking a mile a minute. Everything he hadn’t heard becausefucks sake… the mob,really?

Running a hand through his hair, he rested both forearms on the table, leaning towards her unconsciously. Every nuance on her face was stark against the backdrop of her freckles, but underneath that, her skin was pale.

He knew her.

He knew when she was scared.

Now he could say for good reason she was running from the mob with a mobster’s kid, they all better be fucking scared.

“Grigori Kuznetsov? You know who that is, right?” He had to ask, though it was pretty damn redundant when she nodded, head bent over the baby.

There might have been a slim chance she was unaware she was involved with a high-ranking member of the Russian mafia, currently residing part of their operation right here in town. But the moment her ginger head moved up and down, his belly sunk even further.

He needed to think, and he couldn’t do it sitting down. Popping to his feet, he got as far as the door, before he retraced his steps and plonked his ass back down.

Looked her directly in the eye.

“I can’t help you, Aoife, if you’re not honest with me, okay? I mean completely honest, whatever I ask you.”

“I need help, Danny. It’s why I’m here. It was the first place I thought of that he might not assume I’d go.” She told him, in a quiet voice. “I haven’t told anyone I knew you. Never mentioned your name once.”

“Okay. Good.” Air expelled, he was already in his mind trying to unravel this shit for her, though he didn’t have the first clue since he had no idea what trouble she was in. “Start at the beginning.”

“Two nights ago … I think it was two nights … all my days are jumbled. I don’t know how this happened, Danny, I swear. I just had to run. It was so bad, I can’t even—”

Watching her shaking and rush out words, Danny couldn’t stand it any longer, and he rounded the table to go down on his haunches in front of her, taking the hand not holding the sleeping baby in both of his. “Hey now, it’s okay, Aoife. You’re safe here, alright? Take it slowly. I’m not going to let anyone harm you or your daughter.”

“She’s—” Aoife had eyes on the baby, and he saw a tear drop down onto the little cheek. Nothing ever felt as bad as when Aoife cried. He used to say he’d move mountains to fix whatever had upset her and back then protecting her from her deadbeat family was easy in comparison to this.

Though his need to stop her tears was as strong as ever. He cupped her face, made sure she was looking at him. “I have to protect her from him, Danny. I saw him kill her—I saw Grigori kill a woman two nights ago and get rid of the body like she had never existed…he murdered my friend Yelena in cold blood.”

Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

It was worse than he thought.

Words failed him.

Down on his knees, holding his past love’s hand while she tried in vain to pull her emotions together and no words would come.

You couldn’t live in Armado Springs and not be aware of the two big factions. One who owned the town, that would be the local motorcycle club. The Renegade Souls was run by Rider Marinos. Danny knew most of them in one way or another and he liked the men.

The other group being a recent thing with the Russian mafia moving into town and making themselves known. You couldn’t switch on the local news without someone reporting part of their enterprise was breaking some law or other.

There’d been less and less mention of them lately and he’d wondered if the MC had finally gotten rid of the mafia.

He’d assumed she’d run because she’d stolen money from the mobster. Witnessing murder hadn’t even been in his list of options for what scared Aoife and for the love of Christ could it stop now with him assuming one thing then it turning out to be fucking ten times more dangerous.

It was making his head explode.

“I had to get out of there, Danny.”

“Did he threaten you?”

“He told me to keep my mouth shut about what I’d seen…I got his threat very clear.”

“You didn’t think to call the police?”

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