Unchosen Ruler (Audiobook)

He’s the future unchosen ruler of the O’Malleys.

Locked away for too many years.

Underestimated and pissed off.

Protective beyond all rationale.

Possessive unlike any man I’ve ever known.

I should run.

Except Liam O'Malley isn't a choice.

He's the air I breathe.

Still, I wonder if I can really be queen of the O’Malleys—especially when I discover the truth about who I am.

Anyone else in our shoes would make a different choice, but nothing with Liam is predictable.

In our world, anything but strength gets you killed.

It’s what makes him the perfect unchosen ruler.

Hailee O'Hare

In my world, bad boys have always been off-limits. It never mattered how attracted I was to them. Every man I felt drawn to who fit the definition, I avoided like the plague. It didn't matter how many times they asked me out or how much pressure my friends put on me to stop dating the safe, boring guys. I had my rule for a reason, and I wasn't about to break it.

The guidelines I set for dating were all due to my childhood. Stability wasn't something I experienced early in life. My mother fled with my sisters and me to Chicago. She did it to get away from my father, who was an abusive criminal. No matter how much time passed, my mother never stopped worrying about him finding us.

The year I turned twelve, everything changed. That's when my father went to prison for murder. My mother morphed into a new person after she told us. Her stress lifted, and it's like she could finally breathe again. However, that didn't mean any of us forgot.

There are times I still have flashbacks of the violence that reigned over our house. Those moments serve as reminders to never let anything I can't control into my life. Also, to always choose the safe route because nothing in life comes free. Everything has risk. Managing it is the only way not to get hurt. Dating a bad boy was a surefire way to go directly into the danger zone, and that wasn't an option. 

Then Liam O'Malley set his sights on me. The moment our eyes met, it was like an earthquake ripping through my core. No matter how much I tried to stay away or told him we couldn't be together, I always found myself running toward him. Once our worlds collided, there was no way to escape each other.

Everything about Liam is one hundred percent bad boy. Unbelievably sexy. Fearless. Protective beyond all rationale. Possessive, unlike any man I've ever known. And a hard-core convicted criminal. But that isn't all. He's the only son of the head of the O'Malley crime family. And the Irish clan's successor. The O'Malleys rule all of Chicago and are enemies with too many other crime families to count.

That one fact should have been dangerous enough to keep me away, but it didn't. And my mother never told me everything about my lineage. She never disclosed to my sisters or me who we were or what our bloodlines made us a part of. To this day, I wonder if I would have stayed away from Liam or he from me had either of us known. There's no way to tell for sure. My head says we would have. The honest side of me says if Romeo and Juliet couldn't, we didn't stand a chance. There would have been no way to stop us from being together.

Then there's the question about what would be different in my life had I known.

Would anything?

Would everything?

The truth unleashed makes me a hypocrite. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is spelled out on my classroom wall. It's in front of me all day, every day. Each morning, my class recites it, and we discuss it. I always tried to live by it. And it always felt easy.

That is, until now.

The thing about secrets is they don't always stay buried. Sometimes they come to life. It doesn't matter if you want them to or not. The moment it hits you who you really are and what your birthright bears, you're at a fork in the road. You have to choose the direction to take, even when both have risks more significant than anything you could ever fathom.

They say good triumphs evil. I used to believe it, but I'm no longer sure. How can it when to get what you want, you have to go against everything you've ever preached and destroy anything that stands in front of you? Do you morph from good to evil? If that's the case, does it give you the ability to overlook things in the future you always thought in the past were wrong?

There isn't a lot I'm sure about anymore, except one thing: Liam O'Malley isn't a choice. He's the air I breathe. Staying an innocent, good girl is no longer an option.