Love on the Run: A Masen Mafia Romance

Chapter One

Biting against the gag in his mouth, Harry O’Donoghue glared at the two stoic men guarding the door to the dungeon.

To be fair, Harry didn’t know if this was actually a dungeon. He’d woken up a few minutes ago, vision blurry and head pounding. He’d sat there, completely immobile, for an embarrassingly long time before he even recognized that he was immobile on purpose. It’d been a few minutes of testing his vision before he even managed to take in the rest of himself.

The aching headache spoke to a head wound — and his lapse of time and cognitive abilities spoke to a bad head wound. He could only faintly remember walking toward the train station, more a knowledge than a memory, and now he was… here.

Wherever here was.

Harry was gagged and bound to a chair in the middle of a cement-floor room with no windows. He was tied so tight to the chair that his pulse was hammering in his body, desperately trying to circulate with no real luck. He fought against his restraints until his muscles were weak like jelly, but he hadn’t even gotten a centimeter of give on the ropes.

As soon as the adrenaline from fighting fizzled out, Harry’s brain started to catch up to his body. His immediate response was a burst of sharp, undiluted terror. It made him flail and surge, even after that had proved to be useless.

He was a cop. Not a very good one, and really only technically a cop, as he’d only just gotten the job fresh from the academy two weeks ago. But… still. He was a cop. He forced that part of his brain, and not the petrified kid part, to take over. He focused on what he could see.

The room was dark. Maybe not a dungeon, but a basement at least. It smelled dank and like gasoline. That does not bode well, he thought, a bit hysterically, but with effort he forced that part away, too.

He refocused on his captors. Glaring at them had gotten him nowhere before, but he couldn’t help the narrowing of his eyes as he took them in.

Harry didn’t recognize the men. His vision was still a little off, though that could have been how dim the room was, with only one dangling, swinging light bulb above him like a bad horror movie.

They hadn’t said anything. From the way they stared straight ahead, bored and disinterested in the choking, writhing sounds that Harry was making as he struggled, they wouldn’t say anything.

But even without their help, Harry realized what was happening. All in all, he felt a little embarrassed it had taken him more than a few seconds to figure it out. He blamed the way his head was still pounding and his heart was trying to crawl out of his chest in fear. It only took another moment of considering the men, the basement, the horror-vibes going off like a warning bell all over the place, and then Harry knew there was no other explanation. He knew who brought him here:

The Masens.

The Masens were the biggest crime family in all of Chicago. They’d been the biggest crime family in all of Chicago for generations. Even if Harry weren’t a cop, he’d know about them. It was a don’t ask, don’t tell situation in the streets.

Harry’s friend had gotten messed up in them. Harry had gotten messed up in them trying to get his friend out. He’d thought… well, the drug dealers that his friend had been messing around with had been low level. He thought pulling out, saying, hey, no, I just graduated the academy, I’m out, would be… fine?

He was an idiot. Of course it wasn’t fine.

The Masens didn’t let people just walk out. Certainly not people who were going on to be cops. If anything, him being a cop was a greater pull for keeping him under their thumbs. Even the low-level grunts who worked for the Masens knew better than that, and Harry was an idiot for thinking he’d get away with it.

And now, here he was, trapped in a dungeon or a basement or something with the creepy Halloween version of the Doublemint Twins, and Harry was going to die.

Dying because he was a cop wasn’t the worst-case scenario; dying because he was an idiot, though…

He wondered if there was a chance that Jake, his friend, was going to make it out of this alive. He was certain that he himself wouldn’t.

Still, despite being absolutely certain of that, Harry fought against the thick ropes. They burned his skin, digging into him painfully, and he was momentarily grateful to the gag between his lips. At the very least, it would keep him from biting his tongue off in pain.

The guards didn’t even look at him as he struggled.

He didn’t blame them; this was clearly pointless. Nothing short of a knife would cut these ropes.

He stopped struggling against them for a moment, chest heaving as he panted. He couldn’t breathe. If he hadn’t been trained for stressful situations, he was sure that he’d be having a panic attack right now. He could feel the way his breath felt too shallow and his lungs felt too small, and his eyes were spotty with big black circles popping up as he tried to force oxygen into his brain. His heart slammed against his throat, his blood audible to his own ears. His head hurt in that distinctive, pulsating way that he knew meant he’d been hit — and hard — in the head.

Harry took as deep a breath as he could manage and then stretched, arms pushing as hard as they could.

His elbows lifted; his wrists remained flat against the chair arms.

This is fucking pointless, he thought to himself, scrambling to think of a new plan. He couldn’t fight his way out of here; not trapped in the chair and not with the concussion he was sure he had. He couldn’t talk his way out of here with this gag on. He couldn’t leverage anything, he was only a rookie, barely green at all. He didn’t have anything.

The door creaked open.

A shadowed, looming figure slipped in between the opening and headed toward him, face hidden.

Harry’s life flashed before his eyes in the second that spanned the door handle twisting and the metal moving.

He saw his parents before they died when he was a kid; he saw his uncle before he died two years ago, after taking Harry in. He saw Jake’s fearful face when he came to him for help. He saw that guy from the club he never kissed and he saw the one that he did. He saw his sort-of boyfriend, a guy he’d always been too afraid to really open up to. He saw his captain, clapping him on the back and welcoming him to the squad. He saw the laughter of the drug-dealing goon that must have been who turned him in to the Masens.

He’d been such an idiot! He’d refused to really live, spending his whole life reacting or planning, and now his life was over. He should have learned to paint. He should have told that guy he loved him. He should have—

Jesus, he should have done anything else. Anything more.

He was definitely having a panic attack now. His lungs hurt and he scrambled backward as the dark figure came closer. There was nowhere to go at all but he still cringed against the back of the chair like there was. A small part of him realized that the chair must have been bolted down for him to not tip over.

Harry heard the clicking of the man’s shoes — he guessed it was a man, from the size and hulking presence — and his eyes fell shut.

No! he told himself.

He couldn’t figure out a way to not die here today; he couldn’t figure out a way out of these ropes, a way to go back and fix his idiotic mistake of trying to get out from underneath the drug dealer’s thumb. He couldn’t do anything about being here. But he didn’t have to die like this — cowering, afraid, eyes closed to his reality.

Harry wasn’t a messed-up kid anymore, running money between different train stations all over Chicago, mopping up his friends’ messes because he could. He wasn’t a nobody, an orphan on the streets anymore.

He was a cop. He had worked hard for that. He had been proud of that. If Harry was going to die here, in this dark, gruesome place, he was going to die proud. He was going to die a cop.

He opened his eyes.

The gun in front of him wavered, just slightly, and Harry’s eyes widened. Not in fear — in recognition.

The man holding the gun wasn’t a goon or a drug dealer, at least not one of the ones he’d met before.

The man holding the gun shouldn’t have been here at all. Because the man holding the gun was someone that Harry knew from a whole different world.

Gun falling to his side, mouth parted and eyes wide in a mimic of Harry’s own half-forced expression, Arthur Keating was looking at him.

For a long, unblinking moment, the two men froze as they stared at each other. Arthur’s familiar, ice-blue eyes peered into his with a look of complete uncomprehension. He couldn’t fathom what Harry was doing here, it looked like, and Harry damn well knew that he had no idea what Arthur was doing here.

Briefly, he thought, This is all a huge misunderstanding. A burst of relief at the idea that this had all been a horrible, poorly executed practical joke. A hazing! The squad must have—

But then, no, an unreadable expression shuddered across Arthur’s face and then it locked in tense fury. When he reopened his eyes, they were hard and cold, and Harry felt himself shiver from the immediate, shocking lack of warmth.

Arthur? Harry cried out, though around his gag it came out more like Ah-hah? The immediate relief he’d felt from seeing someone he knew was gone, replaced with ice-cold fear.

Arthur’s jaw snapped shut. His eyes narrowed and the gun rose again in one smooth, fast motion.

Harry should have been a trembling, shaking mess, but instead, his entire body was locked in complete stillness. Arthur’s eyes were nothing but dark slits, his jaw locked, and it was an expression of fierce concentration that Harry recognized.

Pointing a gun to his head, Arthur Keating looked at Harry with an expression so murderous he felt as if he was already dying.

Until about thirty seconds ago, Harry had had no idea that Arthur had anything to do with the Masens. From the look on his face before he’d locked away any emotion, Arthur was coming to a similar realization about him:

They didn’t actually know each other at all, did they?

Harry could only faintly feel the tears rolling down his cheeks. He knew they were falling, could see a little clearer between each drop, but even if he’d had access to his hands, he would have been too shocked to do anything about them. He let them fall and tried to find the answers to questions that were still forming in the wrinkles of Arthur’s face.

Arthur stared back, absolutely inscrutable. His eyes opened a little wider, just for a moment, and then he moved in a striking motion so fast Harry choked on his breath, and the gun touched his forehead. Arthur pressed the gauge of the gun hard against Harry’s temple, the cool metal slipping against his sweating skin.

Arthur, Harry thought miserably. What have you done?

Harry was glad he was gagged. He was glad no one could hear the desperate words clawing at his throat.

His boyfriend held the gun to his head, and if Harry didn’t know him as well as he did, he wouldn’t have any idea that he was trembling. It was just his wrist, a little muscle there, and one in his jaw, twitching as he tried so hard to hold himself still. Harry had seen him do the same thing between their sheets.

Up until about thirty seconds ago, Arthur hadn’t