Chapter 19 Liam
LIAM
As confident as I can be that we are not being tailed, I pull over to the side of the road on an industrial estate that is both isolated enough to see any cars coming from either direction, but with businesses that have CCTV set up outside. They’re about to get a show, but fuck it.
“Do not move,” I say to Siobhan, picking up the Glock as I get out of the car and move around to the trunk.
Popping it, I reach in and pull the zipper on a black holdall.
Rooting through, I find a pair of black jeans and a black long-sleeved tee that will do for now, nestled on top of a pair of black running shoes.
Placing the gun down briefly, I strip off the towel, flashing my dick to anyone who is looking and pull on the jeans.
Shoving the gun into the waistband at the back, I yank the tee over my head and brush the soles of my feet off with the towel, before pulling on a pair of socks and the shoes.
Every movement is honed by years of needing to be ready for violence at a moment’s notice.
I slam the trunk closed, my eyes scanning the rooftops, the windows of the surrounding warehouses.
I slide back into the driver’s seat. Siobhan is staring straight ahead, her hands clenched into fists in her lap.
Her bare feet are a mess, scraped and bleeding on the floor mat.
I want to rip Chris’s fucking throat out with my teeth for making her bleed.
I know it’s him, and he will pay for this.
For every cut, every moment of terror he just put her through.
Before I can comment, the burner phone I keep tucked in the glove box vibrates.
Siobhan jumps at the sudden sound, but I reach over and pull out the cheap smartphone, putting it on speaker out of some insane need to be open with her, regardless of the consequences. “Yeah?”
“Michael Kelly collapsed,” Connor’s voice rings out without pleasantry. “He’s in a coma at St. Vincent’s. Chris is moving into place already. Get on it.” He hangs up as I sit frozen, not even daring to look at Siobhan.
I curse myself to hell and back.
My need to not be seen hiding anything just bit me on my dick, and there is no taking it back.
“Dad,” she murmurs. “I knew he was doing too much. Is he okay?” She grips my arm, asking a question she knows I don’t have the answer to.
“You heard Connor, as I did. I’m sorry, Siobhan—”
“Save it,” she spits out and faces front again. “Your condolences mean shit.”
Her voice quivers, and she blinks back tears. For once in my life, I have absolutely no idea what to do or what to say. I chuck the phone back in the glove box and face forward, my hands gripping the steering wheel.
“I’ll take you to him.”
“Why? So Chris can finish the job?” she says bitterly. “He’ll be expecting it.”
She’s not wrong. The hospital is a fucking kill box. Chris will have it locked down tight, waiting for her to show up, grieving and vulnerable. Her practicality in the face of this shock is admirable.
Connor’s order echoes in my head. He means the power vacuum.
With Michael down, the Kelly family organization will be in flux.
Movement on their prime assets before Chris’s authority takes a foothold would result in a massive coup for us.
He doesn’t give a single fuck about the woman sitting next to me, whose world is imploding.
But I do. That’s the difference. That’s the liability.
She’s staring out the window, her profile a study in controlled devastation. She’s not crying. She’s calculating.
Without another word, I set off again, heading for my penthouse. I need a plan. A plan to keep her alive. A plan to destroy her cousin. A plan to take everything.
“The war you came to talk to me about,” she says suddenly. “This just got real, didn’t it?”
“It was always real, Siobhan, it’s just now the players have changed.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning with your father out of the picture, it’s Chris you need to go up against.”
“Go up against? Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?” She finally turns to look at me.
“I’m not suggesting anything your brain hasn’t already thought of,” I say diplomatically.
“You think I should take him on,” she says, her voice flat, devoid of emotion. It’s not a question.
“I think you’re the only one who can,” I reply, my eyes on the road.
“Chris is a thug with a crown he didn’t earn.
The old guard won’t follow him for long, not without your father’s fist holding them in line.
They’ll follow strength. They’ll follow legitimacy.
They’ll follow you, if you give them a reason. ”
She’s silent for a long time after that.
The grief is there, a shadow in the depths of her green eyes, but something else is rising to take its place.
Resolve. A cold, sharp fury. This is the woman I saw from the beginning.
Not just the elegant gallery owner, but the Kelly heir with a spine of steel and a mind like a weapon.
The sniper, my father’s call, Chris’s move—it hasn’t broken her.
It’s forging her into the queen I know she could be.
We pull into the underground garage of my building. I kill the engine, and the sudden silence is absolute.
“My mother ran from this war,” she says eventually.
“And you ran straight back into it. Why?”
The question is loaded, and we both know it.
She turns her head slowly, her gaze meeting mine in the dim light of the garage. The grief is still there, a raw wound, but it’s surrounded by something hard and bright, like diamonds forming under pressure.
“Because she thought running was the only way to win,” Siobhan says, her voice low but steady, each word a carefully placed stone.
“She thought she was saving me, but all she did was teach me how to be a ghost. I didn’t come back for him, or for the money, or for any of this shit.
I came back because this is my home, my blood, and I’m done being haunted by it.
Chris doesn’t get to take it. You don’t get to take it.
It’s mine to burn to the ground if I choose. ”
The words hang between us, a declaration of independence so fierce it’s a declaration of war. She’s not just talking about the Kelly organization. She’s talking about everything.
In this moment, Connor’s plan, his strategies, his entire fucking war seems small and insignificant. He wanted me to use her as an asset. He doesn’t understand. You don’t use a queen as a pawn. You clear the board and help her take the throne.
“Then let’s burn it,” I say.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “If this were Chris… If he really put a hit out on me, he did it after my father collapsed. He probably arranged it as my father lay dying at his feet, so he had a clean shot at taking the business over. The sniper was desperate. Three shots. If this were a professional who had time to scope out the place, pick his moment, he would’ve waited until you weren’t there.
He had a short window, and he took three shots when he should’ve taken one and fucked off, whether he missed or not. ”
I blink. Her deduction is accurate. That’s how it typically works. A sniper will always get another chance, but not if they are under a tight deadline and it’s kill or be killed.
“Don’t look so fucking surprised,” she says with a chilling smile that makes my dick harden.
That smile, that cold, brilliant assessment, is the most beautiful fucking thing I’ve ever seen.
She’s surviving; she’s adapting, analyzing, turning grief into a weapon in real-time.
Connor wanted me to find a weakness to exploit.
He never considered that her greatest strength would be the thing to bring me to my knees.
“He’s sloppy, and desperate men make mistakes. We’ll use them against him.”
The surprise flickers in her eyes this time. She expected me to argue, to take over, to treat her like a civilian caught in the crossfire. She didn’t expect me to treat her like a partner. An equal.
I get out of the car and walk around to her side, opening the door. She doesn’t move, just watches me, her expression guarded as I hold my hand out for her. She doesn’t hesitate. She takes it and climbs out of the car, a queen in her dirty bare feet.
“Did you really think you could come to my apartment after what happened in my office to try to convince me to take my father’s organization?” She is trying not to smile, and it ruins the menace she is trying to portray.
“No,” I say, the single word holding more truth than anything I’ve said to her before. “I came to your apartment because you kicked me out, and I couldn’t fucking breathe. The rest of this... this is you. I’m just trying to keep up.”
Her smile falters, replaced by a flicker of uncertainty. She expected a strategic answer, a confession of a long-held plan. She didn’t expect the raw, simple truth of my obsession.
I tighten my grip on her hand, a silent promise. “Connor wants me to handle you. Chris wants to kill you. They both see you as a problem to be solved. They don’t see what I see.”
“And what’s that?” she whispers, her voice barely audible in the concrete tomb of the garage.
“The only one who can win this fucking war.”
I lead her toward the private elevator, my thumb tracing the back of her hand.
She follows without resistance. Inside the elevator, the doors slide shut, sealing us in a box of brushed steel and low light.
She leans against the wall, her eyes closing, the first crack in her new armor.
The war is waiting for us outside these doors, but in here, for this moment, she’s just Siobhan. She’s mine.
“Connor wanted to go to Michael with an offer he couldn’t refuse for you to marry my younger brother,” I blurt out suddenly.
Her eyes snap open. “What?”
“He really wants that gallery,” I say, exhaling slowly as my brain ticks over. I stare at her and tilt my head.
She stares back. “How did you get involved?”
“I would’ve had to kill my brother if he came anywhere near you,” I say. “I’m a lot of things, Siobhan, but I don’t commit fratricide.”
She nods as the doors ding open, leading to the hallway outside my apartment. I go first, scouting the corners, but all is quiet. I open the door, and she follows me through, closing it as I turn off the alarm.
“What are you thinking?” she asks.
“I’m thinking why Connor wants that gallery so badly.
Legal assets are ten a penny. Kelly legal assets aren’t hard to find, and probably not hard to make a deal with the devil to take over.
So why the gallery? Why offer up his son in an arranged marriage that will tie the O’Neills to the Kellys indefinitely? ”
“To end the blood feud?” she asks, but even as she says it, I can see she doesn’t believe it.
“No. This is bigger. This has to do with the gallery location. Who chose it? You or Michael?”
She blinks. “Me, but it was one of many options that Michael’s lawyer presented me with. You think there is something special about that location?”
“I think if you don’t know, we need to go and find out.”
“Got any shoes that would fit me?” she asks with a sly smile, alluding to some mythical lost and found box from one-night stands I’ve never had.
My gaze bores into hers. “No, but I have a pair of flip-flops that I wear to the pool. Best I can do, sweetheart.”
She hides her relieved smile as I retrieve the flip-flops from a utility closet, along with a first-aid kit. When I return, she’s standing by the window, staring out at the city as if it’s a foreign country. She doesn’t flinch when I kneel in front of her.
“Lift your foot,” I say, my voice rougher than I intend.
She hesitates, then places her foot in my hand. It’s small, delicate, and covered in grime and blood from the alley. The sight of it, the vulnerability of it, ignites a cold, clean rage in my chest. Chris will die for this. Slowly.
I clean the dirt and scrapes with an antiseptic wipe. I work methodically, sticking a band-aid on the worst cut. When I’m done, I slide the flip-flops onto her feet.
“There,” I say, looking up at her. “Ready for battle.”
A ghost of a smile touches her lips. “Let’s go and see what the families have been hiding and what they are willing to sacrifice everything for.”
I nod slowly, but then say, “Do you want to call St. Vincent’s?”
She hesitates. “No. It’s a distraction. There is nothing I can do for him by inquiring about his status.”
“But what if—”
“He dies?” she asks, cutting me off. “Then he will die knowing the last thing he said to me was a threat. I may not have spent my formative years with him in my life, but I know my father. He is too fucking stubborn to go out without at least making good on it.”
I snort at her callous evaluation of her dad. She is probably right. I know Connor would drag himself back from his deathbed to exact any kind of threat he made. It’s in their DNA.
“Offer stands if you change your mind,” I say.
“I won’t,” she says and turns back to the door, yanking it open before I can check the hallway is safe.
This woman, this enemy turned lover, will be the death of me.