Chapter 15 Liam
LIAM
Her words hit like a gut punch, cold and final, but I don’t flinch.
I can’t afford to. Not here, not with her green eyes blazing at me like I’ve just confirmed every warning her father ever drilled into her head.
I glance at the gun on the floor, still lying where it fell, a reminder that I just escalated a family war into something personal, all because I couldn’t stand seeing his hands on her.
I bend down, pick up the weapon with deliberate slowness, feeling its weight in my palm.
It’s a Beretta, compact and well-maintained, the kind Chris probably thought made him untouchable.
I eject the magazine, clear the chamber, and set it on her desk without a word.
Her gaze follows every movement, wary, like she’s expecting me to turn it on her next.
But she doesn’t back down. She never does.
That’s what draws me in, what makes this whole fucked-up situation impossible to walk away from.
I turn for the door, pausing at the threshold to look back. She’s still against the wall, cheeks flushed, lips parted, looking every bit as wrecked as I feel. “When you’re ready to admit what you want, you know where to find me.”
The gallery floor is empty as I walk out, the morning light filtering through the windows.
I push through the gallery’s front door, the Dublin morning air doing nothing to bring me out of the stupor I’ve fallen into. My hands are steady, but there’s a tremor working its way through my chest that has nothing to do with breaking Chris Kelly’s wrist.
She thinks I’m using her.
She’s not wrong.
The Aston Martin is parked half a block down, and I make it there on autopilot, sliding behind the wheel, I drop my head to the cool leather and groan.
I should have lied better. Or told the truth better.
It’s hard to know which. I’ve never been in this situation before.
Should I have looked her in the eyes and sold the seduction with the same cold efficiency I’ve used on every other mark, every other target Connor’s pointed me at over the years?
But something in the way she looked at me—like she was daring me to be honest, to confirm her worst fears—made the words stick in my throat.
My phone buzzes. Connor.
I ignore it.
The engine roars to life, and I pull into traffic without checking my mirrors, earning a horn blast from a taxi.
I don’t care about that either. All I can see is Siobhan’s face when the truth settled between us.
The way her expression shuttered, going from fury to resignation to something that looked uncomfortably like hurt.
Christ.
I drive without a destination, letting muscle memory guide me through Dublin’s streets while my mind replays every moment in that office. The look on Siobhan’s face when she realized I couldn’t deny what she’d accused me of.
I end up at the docks without meaning to, parking near one of our shipping warehouses. The smell of salt water and diesel hits me as I get out, and I lean against the car, staring at the sky that is indifferent to the chaos inside my head.
My phone buzzes again. Connor, relentless as always.
I answer this time. “What?”
“What did you do?” His voice is clipped, controlled fury barely contained.
“Be more specific.”
“Word is Chris Kelly got his wrist snapped this morning after a routine visit to Siobhan’s gallery. Care to fill in the blanks?”
“He had a gun on me, and his hands on Siobhan. I handled it.”
Silence on the other end, heavy with calculation. “You broke his wrist.”
“Could have been worse.”
“This is worse.” Connor’s voice drops to that dangerous register that I know all too well. Usually, it’s directed at Sean. Not this time. No, it’s all me. “Michael will see this as an act of war. Shit is going to hit the fan.”
“And? Isn’t it always?” I say bitterly.
Connor’s breath hisses through the phone. “This isn’t a joke, Liam. Michael’s been looking for an excuse to go to war, and you just handed it to him gift-wrapped. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking Chris Kelly had a gun pointed at my face and his hands on something that doesn’t belong to him.” The words come out before I can stop them, raw and possessive in a way that confirms every suspicion Connor’s ever had about my objectivity.
“Something that doesn’t belong to him,” Connor repeats slowly. “You mean Michael Kelly’s daughter. The woman who doesn’t belong to you but to our sworn enemy?”
“The very one,” I say, getting more pissed off with this shit by the minute.
“You’ve compromised the entire operation, Liam. Everything we’ve been building toward, all the careful positioning, and you threw it away the moment you decided Siobhan Kelly was worth more than family strategy.”
“She kicked me out.” The admission tastes like failure. “She knows I’m using her. Or was. She knows, Connor, and she told me to get the fuck out of her gallery.”
More silence. I can practically hear him recalculating, adjusting his strategy to account for this new variable. It’s what he does best—adapt, exploit, win regardless of the obstacles.
“Then fix it,” he says finally. “Or I go to Michael and make him an offer he can’t refuse in exchange for her marrying Sean.”
He hangs up, knowing he hit me where it hurts.
He probably has no intention of doing that.
He probably never did. But he knows how to make me dance like a fucking circus monkey.
Sibling rivalry at first, but now… now Siobhan has been caught in the crossfire of Connor’s manipulations.
Too bad the threat of it is enough to shove me violently back in line.
But fixing this means facing the mess I’ve made. The lies tangled with truth, the manipulation bleeding into something I never intended, and her reaction to it all is something I can’t control.
Then fix it.
Easier fucking said than done.
Staring at the phone, I pull up the text chain between Siobhan and me and tap the screen for a voice message.
Then I lock the phone with a curse that turns the air blue. “Fuck this. I need a fucking drink,” I mutter and get back into the car and fire it up.
I’m halfway to my usual pub when I change course, heading instead to the one place that might actually provide answers instead of just alcohol-induced numbness. Seamus’s gym.
The converted warehouse sits in an industrial area near the Grand Canal, its exterior deliberately unremarkable. Inside, it’s where O’Neill soldiers train, where problems get worked out with fists instead of words, where blood on the mats is considered therapeutic.
I find Seamus working a heavy bag methodically. He’s in his fifties now, but still moves like the enforcer who made his reputation breaking bones for my father. When he sees me, he doesn’t stop punching, just jerks his chin toward the other side of the bag in invitation.
I shrug out of my jacket, rolling up my sleeves as I take position. The bag swings toward me with each of Seamus’s strikes, and I catch it, hold it steady, feeling the impact vibrate through my arms.
“Heard you had an interesting morning,” Seamus says between punches. Left jab. Right cross. Left hook.
“News travels fast.”
“Always does when an O’Neill breaks a Kelly’s arm in broad daylight.” He pauses, breathing hard, studying me with eyes that have seen too much violence to be shocked by anything. “Connor’s pissed.”
“Connor’s always pissed about something.”
“Not like this.” Seamus resumes his assault on the bag. “He thinks you’re losing control.”
I catch the bag, steadying it against Seamus’s next combination. “He thinks I’m losing control over what? The Kelly situation? My judgment? My dick?”
“All three, probably.” Seamus lands a particularly vicious uppercut that sends the bag swinging despite my grip. “Are you?”
I don’t answer immediately, focusing instead on the rhythm of his punches, the familiar pattern of violence that’s always made more sense to me than words.
Left. Right. Left. Hook. The same combinations I learned when I was ten, when Connor first brought me here and told me that an O’Neill who couldn’t fight was an O’Neill who wouldn’t survive.
“She looked at me like I’d confirmed every terrible thing her father ever told her about us,” I say finally. “Like I was exactly the monster she expected me to be.”
“You are,” Seamus stops punching, breathing hard, sweat darkening his gray t-shirt. “You’re her enemy and she is yours.”
I let his words settle, the truth of them sinking into my bones like the ache from yesterday’s training session. “Not anymore.”
“Doesn’t matter what you feel.” Seamus unwraps his hands. “Feelings don’t change blood. They just make the inevitable messier.”
“Spoken like a man who’s never had them.”
He laughs, a harsh sound without humor. “I’ve had them.
Lost my wife to them, if you want the truth.
Loved her more than breathing, and it got her killed because I let emotion compromise my judgment.
Made choices based on what I wanted instead of what was smart.
” He tosses the wraps aside. “That’s why Connor keeps me around.
I learned the lesson you’re still fighting, and he knew you’d come here. ”
Damn him. Some days, I really hate that he knows me enough to play me like this.
I move to the bag, needing to hit something. My knuckles are still raw, but I don’t bother with wraps. The first punch lands solid, sending pain shooting up my arm that feels almost good. Clarifying.
“She thinks I’m using her,” I say, punctuating each word with a strike. “She’s right. Connor wants me to seduce her, gain her trust, position her as an asset for when Michael dies.” Left hook. Right cross.
“So you caught feelings for the mark.” Seamus watches me work the bag with the critical eye of someone who’s trained fighters for decades.
“No,” I say, shaking my head, deciding to be honest, even knowing it will get back to Connor before I’ve walked out of here. “I fell for her when she set foot back on Dublin soil, into a war she was removed from years ago.”
“Three years?” Seamus muses. “That’s a long candle to burn. What was your plan, Romeo? Were you waiting for the right moment to make your move?” He grabs the bag as I punch it so viciously, it swings dangerously high.
I land another combination, feeling the impact jar up through my wrists.
“I didn’t have a plan. That was the problem.
I just watched her. Built up this entire fucking fantasy in my head about who she was, what she’d be like.
It was obsession dressed up as duty. Now she knows it, and she thinks the worst of me, and Connor’s threatening to hand her over to Sean if I don’t fix this mess I’ve made.
She knows I’m full of shit, and I can’t even deny it properly because she’s not wrong.
” I step back from the bag, breathing hard, my knuckles bleeding through split skin.
“I am using her. Or I was supposed to. I had no plan past fuck her until she couldn’t see straight. The gallery? It’s just fucking noise.”
“This is why Connor’s right to be concerned. You can’t serve two masters, Liam. You either choose the family, or you choose her.”
“Why can’t I have both?”
“Because she’s a Kelly.” He says it like it’s the simplest truth in the world.
“Because even if she forgives you for the manipulation, even if she somehow decides you’re worth the risk, her family won’t.
Michael will see to that. And if Michael doesn’t, Chris will.
Even more so after today. He will be gunning for you. ”
I think about Chris’s face this morning, the rage and humiliation as I broke his wrist. The way he looked at Siobhan like she was a bitch that needed to be brought to heel. “Chris doesn’t scare me.”
“Chris is Michael’s heir. Michael is fading fast. You will be bumping up against the heir apprentice sooner than you think.”
“And what if Siobhan makes a move to take over? What then?”
Seamus looks taken aback for the first time since I’ve known him. “Do you think she is?” he asks carefully. Too carefully.
I’ve inadvertently thrown Siobhan to the wolves for no fucking reason.
That woman makes my mouth spew shit before my brain can tell me to shut the fuck up.
“I don’t know. After today? I wouldn’t put it past her.
She is stubborn, and she won’t go down without a fight.
Chris pissed her off, but I threw petrol on it.
She could rise like a fucking phoenix and burn this entire shitshow to the ground. ”
Seamus lets out a low whistle. “Have you mentioned this to Connor?”
“No. I just told you.” I grab my jacket, suddenly needing to be anywhere but here. “Which means I have about three minutes before Connor hears it anyway.”
“Liam—”
“I know.” I shrug into the jacket, ignoring the protest from my battered knuckles. “I’m compromised. My judgment’s fucked. I’m thinking with my dick instead of my head. Connor’s right to question whether I can handle this.”
“That’s not what I was going to say.” Seamus crosses his arms, studying me with an expression I can’t quite read. “I was going to say that maybe being compromised isn’t the worst thing that could happen to you.”
I stare at him. “You’re supposed to be telling me to fall in line. To remember who I am. What I owe the family.”
“I’m telling you that I’ve watched you for twenty years become more and more like Connor. Cold. Calculating. Seeing people as assets or obstacles. It’s made you effective, but it’s also made you miserable.”
We lock gazes for a split second before I turn from him. He doesn’t owe me his trust. He owes it to my father. I will be thrown under the fucking bus before my arse hits the leather of the Aston’s seat.
There is only one way forward that I can see now.
I might have placed Siobhan into the lion’s den with no concrete evidence to back it up, but that has to change.
She has to make a move on her cousin’s authority, or we are both dead.