The One (Untouchables Mafia Series Book 3)
The One: Chapter 16

I giggle when Abel nips at my neck. He’s become more playful with me. With each second we spend together, his walls come down more. I know he’s giving me a side to him that no one else ever gets. It makes me feel special. It almost makes me love him.

“How are you feeling?” Abel slides his hand between my legs, cupping my sex.

After the first round of sex, he carried me into the bathroom, where we took a long soak. It ended with us going right back at it. He protested at first, worried about me being sore, but it was hard for him to say no when I reminded him what he said about me only having to ask. I’m sure me climbing him like a tree helped persuade him as well.

He let me take the lead, but it hadn’t lasted too long. Abel quickly took over. I might have been on top of him, but he had been the one moving my body. I get a thrill from the control he can take. It doesn’t scare me. In fact, it’s freeing because I know he will handle me with care. That he would never do anything to hurt me.

Being carefree and taken care of is something I’m not used to. I have been watching out for myself for most of my life. My father might have paid for things, but that’s really as far as his help ever went. He’d always been closer to my brother. That doesn’t seem to have turned out so great. It makes me wonder if my father knows what he’s been up to. I mean, it would be pretty impossible for him not to. He likes to have control of anything that might affect him negatively in the spotlight.

“I feel good.” I turn my head to catch Abel’s mouth in a kiss. His phone goes off again. He lets out a growl that has me giggling. “Answer it. Could be important.”

“You’re what’s important.”

“Do you know you can be such a sweetheart?” Abel’s eyebrows rise, making me laugh harder. “Guessing no one has ever called you that before.”

“No.” He brushes his thumb across my lips.

“It could be about me,” I remind him. There is shit going on with my brother and God knows what with my father. I know I’ll have to face it sooner or later, but it’s been nice getting lost in Abel. To forget about the rest of the world and my messed-up family.

“All right.” He sighs, rolling over to sit up and grab his phone. I get up to snag his shirt off the floor to pull on.

“I’ll make us something to eat.”

“That would be great.” He stands. “Need to step into my office.”

“All right.” I head toward the kitchen. “I’ll make you a cup of coffee,” I tell him. “The real stuff.”

I start breakfast as his coffee brews. When it’s done, I take it to him. I pause outside the door when I hear my name being said. I know I shouldn’t listen, but something inside of me tells me to.

“It’s Angel’s father. The fuck you want here?” Abel sounds pissed, but he kind of does most of the time when he’s talking to other people. He’s direct and always to the point. It’s only with me that I’ve gotten him to open up more. He knows I need to hear his words, so he gives them to me.

“I didn’t kill him.” My hand that is holding the warm coffee cup tightens. How could he have killed him? He’s been with me. Has my father been found dead or possibly missing? Shit. Would my brother kill our own father? “He’s still got all his fingers.” Abel pauses. “I didn’t say his toes too.” I take a step back. What the hell did that mean? “It didn’t take much for me to get him to talk. He’s a fucking rat.”

A few things start to click together in my mind, but I don’t want to believe them. I take a few more steps back, putting space between me and the office door. Abel told me it’s his job to extract information from people. Has he been extracting it from my father? I turn, rushing back to the kitchen.

“Angel.” I jump, Abel’s voice startling me. I drop the coffee cup, but Abel is quick, and he snags me around the waist from behind, lifting me from my feet and stepping back as the cup hits the floor and shatters. None of the hot coffee hits my bare legs. “Fuck, I’m sorry.” He sets me down on the kitchen island, leaning down to inspect my legs to make sure they are okay.

“Nothing got on me,” I tell him. My Abel kisses my knee sweetly as he stands. How is this the same man that was talking about removing someone’s toes only moments ago?

“Stay put until I get this cleaned up. Your feet are bare.”

I nod, my mind a whirl of thoughts that I can’t organize no matter how hard I try. I watch as he quickly cleans up the mess before focusing his attention back on me.

“Hey.” Abel takes my chin, guiding me to look up at him as he steps between my thighs. “You all right?”

“Yeah.”

His brows pull together, and I don’t think he believes me.

“I have to go handle something real quick. Will you be okay for a few minutes?”

“I’ll finish breakfast.”

“It’s late afternoon.” Abel gives me a half smile that makes me forget about everything in that moment. I never get smiles. I reach up and stroke his cheek.

“You make me forget about the rest of the world.”

“I want to forget the rest of the world.” Abel presses a kiss to my forehead. “Riley and Nikolai are going to come by.”

The mention of Riley makes me wonder how much she knows about what’s going on and about Abel. I think it’s more than she told me the other day. She dodged a few of my questions, and a few of her comments are starting to make more sense. I’m not upset with her because she’s in a weird predicament. Her loyalty is to Nikolai.

“Okay.” I don’t know what to make of all of this, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions either. Each time I’ve done that before, when it came to Abel, I’ve been wrong. “Can I ask you something before you go?”

“You can always ask me anything, Angel.”

“My father didn’t hire you?” He’s been saying the whole time that he took me to keep me safe, but he hasn’t said under whose orders. It was because of my friendship with Riley that my family was dug into.

“No.”

“You took me because of what happened with Riley?” Had she wanted to keep me safe?

“I took you because I wanted to keep you safe.”

“It’s not the only reason?” Abel shakes his head no. “Are you going to tell me?”

“I don’t want to scare you.” Well, crap. Before I can push, an alert goes off.

“That them?”

“Yeah.” Abel pulls out his phone. “I’ll send Riley up.” He presses a kiss on my mouth before he heads out the door. I stare after him, my head a mess.

I slip off the counter and hurry into the closet to change. This time when I see all the clothes, I notice the tags on them. Abel got his home ready for me. He knew he was going to bring me back here, and from the look of things, I will be staying for a while.

I run my hands along the clothes. They’re all brands that I wear, and some are actually replicas of clothes I already own that are hanging in my closet at home.

“Hey.” I turn around to see Riley standing in the doorway of the closet.

“That day at my house. When everything happened. You didn’t ask Abel to take me and make sure I was safe, did you?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “Nikolai just reassured me that you were safe.”

“Because he ordered Abel to take me?”

“I think Church had a plan already.” She motions toward the clothes.

“He was planning to take me all along.” Riley glances around, her eyes landing anywhere but mine. “Riley.”

“What?” She shrugs. “What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know.” I pull some clothes off the hanger to get dressed.

“These men are different.” She shrugs.

Her words hit the mark. She’s not wrong. Abel is a different kind of man, but isn’t it some of those differences that had me falling so hard for him?

“He tortures people,” I mutter, wiggling into a pair of joggers. I still can’t reconcile in my mind how my sweet, caring, doting Abel could be the same man these people call Church.

“Some people need torturing.” Riley shrugs again, as if this is no big deal. She goes around, opening one of the drawers with all the nail polish. “Want to do mani pedis?” Is she serious right now? She wants me to paint my toes while Abel is somewhere maybe removing someone else’s? I close the drawer. She is truly part of this world. “That a no?”

“Is my father one of the men he’s tortured?”

“I don’t ask those kinds of questions.” She holds her hands up. “There are some things better left unknown.”

“If it was your father?”

“Yeah, that comparison might not work for you.” Riley actually laughs.

“What does that mean?”

“Let’s just say that Nikolai and Matteo have made it so I am the only O’Haire left, now that my sister is married. Pretty soon I won’t even carry the name anymore once I get married. Then the O’Haires will all be gone.” Riley doesn’t sound beat-up about this.

“I’m over only getting details.”

“All right, you are one of us now,” she says before launching into how her sister and Matteo came to be, which also brought her and Nikolai together. When she’s done, it only makes it more clear that yes, these men are very different from others. Especially when it came to their women. But what I’m not sure of is what that means for me. “These men take what they want. They are possessive.”

“Insane?” I add.

“I think Church more than most.” I close my eyes. You would have to be on a different level of crazy to be able to torture people. “Hey.” Riley nudges me, making me open my eyes back up. “My man is a little insane himself. There is a reason he and Church are closer than some of the others.”

“Where is your man?” I ask, exiting the closet. Riley follows behind me.

‘He and Church are dealing with something.’ I stop, spinning around to face her.

“Something? As in my father?”

“Maybe?” She cringes, not wanting to admit that to me.

“Did they leave?”

“I don’t think they would leave us alone.” That means they are still here. That would also have to mean that my father is also here. I head for the door. I expect it to be locked, but it opens. He must have left it unlocked so that Riley could come up. ‘Angel.’ Riley chases after me as I descend the stairs. The warehouse door stands open as well. Nikolai’s car is parked in front of it next to Abel’s, but I don’t see them anywhere.

‘Where are they?’

‘We most likely don’t want to know.’ She grabs my hand, wanting to lead me back up the stairs, but I shake her hold off and start to look around. I stop when I replace a set of underground concrete stairs. It’s like someone dug up the earth just to make this basement. At the bottom, there is a metal door. ‘Angel, don’t.’

Maybe I should listen to her, but instead I go down them. When I try to open the door, it doesn’t budge. I press my ear to it, but you can’t hear anything.

‘They’re in there, aren’t they?’

‘Probably.’ Riley stands behind me. We both let out a small scream and jump when we hear the loud click of a lock before the thick metal door starts to open.

‘Shit,’ Nikolai mutters when he sees me, but I look past him, my eyes landing on Abel, who is standing over my father with a pair of pliers in his hand.