Chapter 25
LIAM
Blind rage is blurring my vision.
Connor.
Connor turned Chris somehow, or Chris went to him, and that is why he wants this place so fucking badly; he will stop at nothing to get it under his control.
My hand tightens on Siobhan’s, and I pull her deeper into the branching darkness.
The heist. The gallery. Her. It was never about a simple turf war or absorbing assets.
It was about this. This tunnel, this score of a lifetime.
Connor sent me in to seduce her, to get close, not just to neutralize a threat but to find this place. He played me. He played us all.
“Where are we going?” Siobhan’s voice is a strained whisper beside me, echoing off the damp concrete.
“Away from them,” I grit out. My phone’s flashlight cuts a weak path ahead, revealing nothing but endless, reinforced earth. The air is thin, tasting of dust and betrayal. Every step is a gamble. Does this tunnel lead to another exit, or are we just running deeper into our own grave?
Footsteps echo from the main chamber, getting closer. They’re coming after us. Chris can’t have witnesses to his treachery.
I pull her to a stop where the tunnel curves sharply. “Listen to me,” I say, my voice low and urgent, pinning her against the wall with my body. “We are on our own down here.”
“So, we’re trapped?”
“No,” I growl, my lips inches from hers.
“We’re unleashed.” I kill the light, plunging us into absolute blackness.
I can’t tell her about Connor yet. Not that it makes a damn bit of difference to her.
She’s got her own shit to deal with regarding that and her treacherous cousin.
Connor hasn’t betrayed anyone. He just does what he always fucking does.
Plays the game. I slide my hand down her arm, lacing my fingers with hers.
Her grip is tight, her skin cold. We are a unit now, bound by betrayal and the shared instinct to survive.
I pull her along the rough wall, my free hand trailing against the concrete, feeling for any change in texture, any draft that might signal an opening.
The footsteps pause at the junction behind us.
I can hear their muffled voices, deciding which path to take.
A beam of light cuts through the darkness, sweeping the tunnel just ahead of us.
We freeze, flattening ourselves against the curve of the wall.
The light passes, and I pull her forward again, faster now.
They chose the wrong path. For now. But they’ll backtrack. Time is a luxury we don’t have. My mind races, replaying the blueprints I saw on the table. Ventilation shafts. There is another way out. Chris came through a different way. I just have to find it before they find us.
“Ventilation,” I whisper, my voice absorbed by the damp earth. “The plans showed shafts. They have to connect somewhere.”
Siobhan’s hand tightens on mine. “How do we find them in the dark?”
“We feel it.” It’s a long shot, but it’s the only shot we have. I pull her forward, my hand still tracing the wall. The concrete is cold, unyielding. Behind us, the shouts grow fainter as they move deeper down the wrong tunnel, but I know it’s a temporary reprieve.
My fingers snag on something. A seam. A metal plate, cold and smooth against the rough concrete. I stop, running my hand over its surface. A maintenance hatch, almost flush with the wall.
“Here,” I mutter, pulling her close. I feel for a latch, a handle, anything. My fingers find a small, recessed lever. It’s stiff with disuse. I brace myself, pulling with all my strength. It groans, then gives with a loud metallic screech that echoes like a gunshot in the confined space.
“Shit,” Siobhan hisses.
Behind us, the shouts stop. Then, a new sound: running footsteps, coming our way.
The hatch swings inward, revealing a shaft just wide enough for one person to squeeze through. The air that flows out is fresher, cleaner. It’s our way out.
“Go,” I command, pushing her toward the opening. “Now.” There’s no time to check where it leads. There’s only in or dead.
She doesn’t hesitate. She scrambles into the opening, her running shoes finding purchase on something inside.
I turn, raising my weapon as the beams of their flashlights bounce off the walls, getting closer.
I fire twice down the tunnel, the sound deafening, the muzzle flashes a brief, violent flower in the darkness.
The shots aren’t meant to kill, just to make them pause.
It buys us five seconds.
I swing into the shaft after Siobhan, my back scraping against the rough metal.
My hand finds the heavy hatch door. The shouts from the tunnel are right outside now, a furious chorus of curses.
I push, grunting with the effort as the thick steel grinds shut, plunging us into a darkness so absolute it feels like a physical weight.
The world outside is reduced to muffled shouts and the dull thud of fists against the hatch.
They’re trapped on the other side. We’re trapped in here.
My back is pressed against the cold metal, Siobhan’s body a warm, solid presence in front of me. The shaft is a tight fit, forcing us into an intimacy that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with survival. I can feel the rise and fall of her chest with each ragged breath.
“Now what?” she whispers, her voice unnervingly calm.
“Now we move,” I say. My phone flashlight cuts a narrow beam up the shaft, revealing a ladder of rusted rungs ascending into more darkness. “Up. Before they decide to shoot through the door.”
Siobhan’s phone buzzes in her hand as we move. She glances at it and freezes.
“What?” I hiss.
“The police. I guess someone finally noticed the shot-out window.”
“Forget that. Keep moving.”
She shoves the phone into her pocket, the screen going dark, but the implication of the message hangs between us in the suffocating blackness.
“Up,” I repeat, my voice a harsh rasp.
She doesn’t argue. She just starts climbing, the scrape of her shoes on the rungs the only sound besides our breathing.
I follow close behind, my weapon digging into my back, my body a shield between her and the sealed hatch below.
The shaft is tight, smelling of rust and old earth.
Every rung I grip feels slick with damp, threatening to give way.
Below us, a muffled thud, then another. They’re trying to force the hatch. It won’t hold forever.
“Faster,” I grunt.
Her pace quickens. We climb in a desperate, vertical race against time and gravity. My flashlight beam catches a mesh grate about ten feet above us. A possible exit. Or just another dead end.
“There,” she breathes, her voice echoing in the metal tube.
We reach it. It’s an old service grate.
It opens, and hands reach in to pull Siobhan out before I can react.
She screams and kicks, but she’s out of the tunnel in a matter of seconds, with me launching after her.
“Chris,” I growl when I see him holding her with a gun to her head, aiming my gun between his eyes. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” he hisses.
“Don’t even think about hurting her, or your broken arm will feel like a day at the spa.”
“You’re not in a position to make threats, O’Neill.”
We’re in some kind of forgotten utility corridor, pipes lining the walls, the air thick with the smell of damp and decay.
My world narrows to the space between the front sight of my Glock and his fucking forehead. Every instinct screams to pull the trigger, but her body is a shield for his.
“Let her go,” I say, my voice a low growl. “You’re already a dead man. Don’t make her part of it.”
Siobhan doesn’t struggle. She stands perfectly still in his grasp, but her eyes meet mine over his arm.
“She’s my insurance,” Chris spits, dragging Siobhan a step back. “Declan’s on his way. He’ll find you both, the traitors, and I’ll be the loyal nephew who took out the trash.”
I take a slow, deliberate step to my left, forcing him to adjust his angle.
“Siobhan is Michael’s heir,” I say to infuriate him. “You are just the nephew who got lucky.”
The words hit their mark. Rage, ugly and impotent, flashes in Chris’s eyes. His knuckles whiten around the gun. “Michael trusted me.”
“Michael pitied you,” I counter, my voice dropping lower, colder. “He gave Siobhan a legitimate business. He gave you errands. He saw a queen in her and a fucking court jester in you.”
Siobhan doesn’t flinch. Her eyes are locked on mine. I see the subtle shift of weight onto her back foot. She’s preparing.
Chris’s arm tightens around her throat, his anger making him sloppy. “Shut up.”
“She’s the one he was proud of,” I press on, watching his focus waver between me and the insult. “The one who got out, who built something. You? You’re just the stain he couldn’t wash out.”
That’s all she needs.
In a blur of motion, Siobhan slams the heel of her running shoe down onto his instep.
As he grunts and his grip loosens for a fraction of a second, she drives her elbow back into his solar plexus.
The air whooshes out of him. It’s not enough to free her, but it’s enough for the knife.
She brings the blade up in a vicious arc, slicing it across the back of his gun hand.
He grunts in surprise, his fingers spasming open. The gun clatters to the concrete floor.
The opening is all I need. My shot cracks through the corridor, a single, deafening report. Chris’s knee explodes, and he collapses, howling.
Siobhan doesn’t waste a second. She spins away from him, the bloody knife still in her hand, her eyes blazing with a terrifying, beautiful fire.
I move forward, kicking Chris’s fallen gun away from his reach.
He’s clutching his shattered knee, his face a mask of agony and disbelief.
He looks from me to Siobhan, the realization dawning that he picked a fight with the wrong fucking people.
With a deliberate motion, I step on his smashed knee and revel in the scream of pain.
“I told you not to hurt her,” I say, casually as Siobhan stares at me.
But she doesn’t stop me.
I lean heavily on his knee, and his face pales as the pain careens through his body.
“You will die knowing that she is going to take everything you think you are entitled to, that I’m going to help her do it, and that no one will give a flying fuck that you are gone.
” I raise the gun and press it hard between his eyes.
“You left my father to die so you could steal what was his. What is mine,” Siobhan says, her voice steady.
From the tunnel, I hear the echo of Declan’s men shouting. They’re getting closer. We have seconds.
Siobhan’s eyes meet mine, and in them, I see the reflection of my own soul—dark, ruthless, and utterly committed.
She nods once, and I pull the trigger. I am her weapon, her protector.
No one hurts her and lives.