Chapter 27 Liam
LIAM
Declan stands by the elevator, a soldier waiting for his new commander. He sees her face, the hard set of her jaw, the chilling calm in her eyes, and he knows. His posture shifts, the deference no longer forced. He sees what I see. The new head of the Kelly organization.
As we descend in the silent elevator, I’m caught in the crossfire of my own making.
Connor used me to get to her, to get to the heist. He thinks my loyalty is a given, a birthright he owns.
He doesn’t understand that I just watched the woman I’m sworn to betray declare her faith in me over her own dying father’s final words.
That fucks with my head on a scale I’m not ready to unpack yet.
The doors open to the ground floor, and Declan steps out first, protecting her.
“I need to go to the police station,” she says. “Sort out this mess with the sniper.”
“It’s done,” Declan says. “Your father… you… have a man on the inside.”
I hide my smile as Siobhan’s glare practically skins him alive. It’s a perk she will have to get used to. “Home then,” I say to her.
She nods but then stops and looks down. “The family home.”
Declan nods his approval once and then leads her out to the car. I trail in their wake, a bystander to this transfer of power.
The ride to the Kelly estate is a silent, suffocating affair.
I sit beside her in the back of the Range Rover, the space between us charged with the ghosts of everything we’ve done tonight.
Being with her, I’m a traitor to my own bloodline, driving into the heart of enemy territory with the woman I was supposed to break.
She stares out the window, watching Dublin pass, but I know she’s not seeing the city.
She’s seeing the board, mapping her next move.
Connor is a piece on that board. So am I.
The gates of the Kelly estate swing open, admitting us into the manicured grounds. This is it. There’s no turning back. By stepping out of this car onto Kelly soil, I’m choosing a side. I’m choosing her. The question is, what exactly is she choosing?
The car pulls to a smooth stop on the red-bricked driveway in front of a sprawling mansion that’s as much a fortress as it is a home.
Declan gets out, opening Siobhan’s door with a quiet reverence that wasn’t there before.
She emerges, not as the grieving daughter, but as the new mistress of this house of secrets.
“We need to talk,” she says as Declan leads us inside.
I nod and follow her to her father’s office. She pauses in the doorway, but then gathers her wits and moves inside, going straight to the chairs by the fireplace.
Declan leaves us alone, and I sit opposite her, elbows on my knees.
“It was Connor,” I say before she can.
“I know. But that’s not what this is about.” She hesitates, and I brace myself. “Michael is faking his own death as we speak,” she adds so low that I have to lean forward to hear her.
I stare at her, the words settling in the quiet of the room like fallout. “Why?” I ask carefully. “What is his end game?”
“To retire on his own terms. To leave me to continue his legacy. He doesn’t have much time left, he’s moving secretly to the west coast to live out whatever time he has left. No one knows. Not even Declan.”
“So why are you telling me?”
“I don’t want there to be secrets between us.”
“That means you plan on keeping me around?”
“If you’ll have me,” she says, lifting her chin slightly, defiantly.
“What do you plan to do about Connor?” I ask instead, leaning back and fixing her with an intense gaze.
She breathes in deeply. “Absolutely nothing.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Oh?”
She smiles and stands up. “I need a shower and some food.”
“Fucking same,” I growl, suddenly ravenous. “I stink.”
She giggles, and I follow her out of her father’s office, up the stairs to her bedroom.
Her room is a ghost of the woman she used to be.
Soft colors, abstract art, books piled high on a nightstand.
It’s a space built for peace, and it feels like a violation for me to be standing in it, smelling of gunpowder and blood.
She moves through it like a stranger, her steps hesitant on the plush rug.
The giggle she let out downstairs is gone, replaced by the crushing weight of her new crown.
“Nothing isn’t a plan, Siobhan,” I say quietly, shutting the door behind us.
“Oh, I have a plan,” she says with a cryptic smile and turns from her closet, a clean towel in her hand. Her eyes are shadowed with exhaustion, but the fire in them is banked, not extinguished.
I follow her into the bathroom, stripping off my shirt as the steam fills the space.
She’s already under the spray, her back to me, the water sluicing over the tense lines of her shoulders.
I step in behind her, the heat a welcome shock.
My hands land on her waist, pulling her back against my chest. She leans into me, a silent, weary surrender.
I kiss her shoulder and then grip her wrists, pulling her arms up over her head to place her hands on the tile.
Slowly, I trail my fingers down her sides, gripping her hips and pulling her back slightly. My cock is already raging.
I slide my hand around to cup her pussy, feeling the heat of her through the cascade of water. She drops her head as I slide my fingers over her clit, pinching it slightly before rubbing my fingers over it in a tight circle.
She pants, feeling the pleasure coursing through her.
I should play with her more, tease her until she is begging me, but I can’t wait.
I grip my cock and shove it inside her cunt, thrusting deep, bottoming out inside her with a guttural groan that echoes off the tiles.
A gasp tears from her throat as her hands splay against the cold tile, her body arching to accommodate every inch of me.
The water streams over us, hot and relentless, but it’s nothing compared to the heat of her pussy clenching around my thick cock.
“Liam,” she gasps, her voice breaking on my name.
I don’t answer with words. I pull back slowly, torturously, until only the head of my cock remains inside her, then slam back in with bruising force. Her body jerks forward, her nails scraping against the tile as she tries to find purchase.
“This is what you do to me. Every fucking time I look at you, I want to be inside you. Fucking you. Marking you so deep you’ll never forget who you belong to.”
“Yes,” she whimpers, pushing back against me, meeting my thrusts with desperate urgency. “Yes, Liam. Please.”
I grip her hips harder, my fingers digging into her flesh as the sound of our bodies colliding fills the bathroom, mixing with the rush of water and her broken moans.
She’s close already, I can feel it in the way her body is primed, ready to shatter for me.
Her pussy clamps down on my cock, pulsing and milking me, and it’s my fucking undoing.
“Fuck, Siobhan,” I rasp, my orgasm hitting me with a violence that leaves me shaking.
I empty myself inside her, marking her from the inside out, claiming her in the most primal way possible.
But it’s not enough. I need to know she is mine in every way.
Withdrawing from her, enjoying her moan of protest, I murmur, “Do not move.”
She looks over her shoulder at me as I climb out of the shower and grab my pants, pulling out the blade I’ve got stashed.
I step back into the shower, the knife in my hand, water streaming over the blade. Her eyes widen when she sees it, but she doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch. She just watches me, her chest heaving, her body still trembling from her orgasm.
“What are you doing?” she whispers.
I don’t answer. I just move behind her again, pressing my body against hers, the knife held carefully away from her skin. My free hand trails up her spine, tracing each vertebra until I reach the base of her neck.
“I need you to understand something,” I say against her ear, my voice low and rough.
“You are mine. My possession, Siobhan. No other man will ever lay his hands on you the way I do. If any man hurts you, I will peel their skin off while they still breathe. That’s what it means to be mine. Does that scare you?”