Chapter 31
LIAM
The iron gates of my father’s estate loom ahead, a wrought-iron promise of violence disguised as old money. I punch the code into the keypad, and the heavy barriers swing inward with a groan that sounds too much like a cell door opening.
I pull the car up the winding driveway. The mansion stands stoic and gray against the morning sky, its windows dark eyes watching our approach. This isn’t a home; it’s a command center, a place where affection goes to die, and strategies are birthed.
I kill the engine. The silence is sudden and heavy.
“He wants a merger,” I murmur, unbuckling my seatbelt but keeping my eyes on the front door where two of Connor’s guards are already stepping out.
“And what do you want?” she asks.
“Depends what you want,” I say, turning to face her.
“My father will kill me if I go in there and capitulate.”
“You have to think like he isn’t here anymore, Siobhan.”
“I know that, but it’s difficult knowing he is still out there somewhere.”
“I can understand that. But if he weren’t. What then?”
“I don’t know,” she answers truthfully, and that’s one of the things I love about her. She can admit her weaknesses.
“I will follow whatever you want to do,” I say seriously. “But I need some guidance on what that is.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she whispers.
I grip her hand tightly. “I know. And this isn’t something you can fake either. He will see straight through any bravado or empty threats. He is a great white shark, Siobhan. Don’t make the mistake of thinking anything else.”
“Oh, I don’t,” she says. “I could always handle my dad. Your dad, though? I’m fucking terrified.”
“Then treat him like you would your dad. I mean, after all, he will be your father-in-law one day.” I smirk, and she giggles.
“I will listen to what he wants, but I can’t make any promises about my response.”
“That’s acceptable. Do whatever you can to throw him off guard. Be unpredictable but not reckless or emotional.”
She nods, taking that sage, yet crappy, piece of advice on board. It’s the best I’ve got without knowing what her moves are.
“Ready or not,” I murmur, pushing the car door open.
The morning air is crisp, carrying the scent of impending rain and the faint, lingering smell of smoke that clings to our clothes.
I round the hood to her side, but she’s already stepping out, smoothing down her jacket with a dignity that belongs on a throne.
I offer my hand. She takes it, her grip firm, her palm cool against mine.
We walk up the stone steps, and the guards step aside without a word, though their eyes flick nervously to the holstered weapon at my hip. They know better than to ask why the heir and the enemy are walking in together.
Inside, the house is a mausoleum of silence. The air is stale, heavy with the weight of centuries of O’Neill sins. I don’t wait to be announced. I lead her straight to the library, the heavy oak doors looming ahead.
I push them open without knocking.
Connor sits behind his massive mahogany desk, looking like the devil waiting to collect a debt. He doesn’t look surprised. He looks satisfied.
“Punctual,” he says. “I admire that.”
Siobhan pulls her hand from mine and moves forward, a big smile on her face. She edges around the corner of the desk and flings her arms around my father as if he were a long-lost relative she is ecstatic to see.
“Mr. O’Neill!” she exclaims as my dad sits stock-still, his face an utter picture as this woman gives him a hug he has probably never experienced in his entire lifetime. “It’s so good to finally meet you!”
I press my lips together, trying not to laugh my arse off. Unpredictable? She just fucking redefined the word.
For a second, the great Connor O’Neill looks like he’s swallowed a live grenade.
His hands hover awkwardly in the air, unsure whether to push her away or pat her back, caught in a paralysis of sheer confusion.
He does neither. He simply freezes, his predator’s brain short-circuiting at the sheer audacity of the contact.
Siobhan pulls back, but she doesn’t retreat to the safety of the guest chair.
Instead, she perches on the edge of his massive desk—a territory violation that would get anyone else shot—and beams at him.
“Liam has told me so much about you. Mostly about your love for chess games and cryptic phone calls.”
Connor clears his throat. The shock in his eyes hardens back into calculation, but the rhythm is broken. She’s taken the lead, and for the first time in his life, my father is on his back foot.
“Ms. Kelly,” he says, his voice regaining its gravelly edge, though he eyes her as if she might bite. “I wasn’t aware this was a friendly meeting.”
“Why not, Dad?” she counters with a big, overdramatized wink, scooting back and crossing her legs and looking every inch the mafia queen I know she is. “Now, about this truce.”
I step forward and take a seat. I’m enjoying this far too much. Siobhan has completely disarmed him, and he has no idea how to play the next second, let alone the entire meeting.
Connor flicks his gaze to me, a flicker of grudging respect warring with irritation before he glares back at her. “I never wanted a daughter,” he growls.
“Too bad. You got one. Liam and I are going to be married as soon as my father’s funeral is over, and a girl needs a role model, no?”
“Funeral,” he mutters, making me think he knows something is fishy about that. He doesn’t mention the marriage. Yet.
He smells the rot in the lie. Connor didn’t get to sit in that chair by believing in coincidences. But he can’t prove jack shit, and he knows it.
He brushes past the marriage comment because it suits him. It aligns with his desire for control—or so he thinks. If we marry, he assumes he gains the Kelly assets by proxy through me.
“Michael was a stubborn bastard,” Connor says finally, regaining his composure. The shark is swimming again. “Dying before I could kill him myself feels like one last insult.”
Siobhan slides off the desk, her movement graceful, confident.
She takes the leather seat beside me, and the shift in power is real.
“You’ll get over it,” she says dryly. “Now, about this truce. You want the territories united. It is kind of boring, though, isn’t it?
Who would we fight with if not each other? ”
“The O’Sullivans, for a start,” Connor growls. “Not to mention, the Landys, the Formichaels, and the Stantons.”
“Okay, point taken,” she says, holding her hands up. “But here’s the deal. I’m new to this. There is no point pretending otherwise. But that doesn’t mean I was born yesterday. You aren’t taking my family’s territory.”
Connor leans forward, his elbows resting on the mahogany, fingers steepled like a cathedral of bone. “Marriage to my son absorbs your assets into ours. That is the nature of the beast, girl. You don’t get to keep your name and take mine.”
“I’m not taking yours,” she corrects him, her voice cool and dangerously calm.
“I’m adding it. The Kelly organization remains autonomous.
We share intelligence, we coordinate against the O’Sullivans, and we stop bleeding each other dry in the streets.
But my money stays mine. My men stay mine.
The territory lines that my father and his father before him drew up in blood, remains… mine.”
I watch the old man weigh it. He hates that she is running rings around him. A self-confessed amateur is bulldozing her way over him.
“And if I refuse?” Connor asks softly, his gaze shifting to me.
“Then Liam and I walk out of here,” she says, not even looking at me to confirm. She knows. “And you lose your heir along with any truce discussed.”
Connor’s eyes narrow on me. “You’d walk away from your birthright? For her?”
I don’t hesitate. I look at the woman who accepted it as I carved my name into her skin. “In a heartbeat.”
The silence stretches, tense and brittle. Finally, Connor leans back, a shark recognizing another apex predator. “Fine. But know this, Siobhan. Autonomy has a price. When the wolves come—and they will come—you bleed for your own land.”
“Naturally,” she replies, her voice steady as she stands.
She extends a hand across the desk, forcing him to acknowledge the pact formally.
Connor stares at it for a beat too long, testing her nerve, before gripping her hand in a shake that looks more like a bone-crushing contest than a gentleman’s agreement.
She doesn’t flinch. She smiles, that sharp, dangerous smile that I’m starting to realize is her weapon of choice. “Pleasure doing business with you, Dad.”
She turns on her heel and walks out, leaving the great Connor O’Neill staring at the empty doorway with an expression that sits somewhere between fury and admiration. I offer my father a single, curt nod, a farewell to the man who raised me and the heir I was supposed to be, before following her.
The walk back to the car is silent. The moment the car doors seal us inside, the tension snaps. Siobhan sags against the leather, letting out a breath that sounds like a deflating lung.
“Is this what you really want, Liam?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“You’re giving up everything,” she whispers.
“I’m giving up nothing,” I growl, leaning across the console to grip her throat tightly, pressing my forehead against hers. “I chose you over him, and I’d do it again.”
“Why?”
I kiss her, hard and fast, a seal on the pact we just made in that library. “Because a king without a queen is just a man sitting in a cold room waiting to die,” I murmur against her lips. “And I’m done waiting.”
She stares at me, searching for a lie she won’t find. I’m not trading one master for another. I’m choosing the only partner who can match my darkness step for bloody step. I belong to her now, just as surely as my name is carved into her skin.
“We’re not just surviving anymore, Siobhan,” I say, pulling back to grip the steering wheel. “We’re conquering, and we start by getting the hell off this property before Connor changes his mind and decides to shoot out our tires.”
I gun the engine of the unmarked sedan, shattering the estate’s oppressive quiet.
As we speed toward the iron gates, leaving my father’s fortress in the rearview, the weight on my chest lifts.
I glance at her. She’s watching me, her hand resting on her stomach where the adrenaline is likely still churning.
“The funeral,” she says, her voice gaining strength, shifting instantly from lover to strategist. “We need to plan it. It has to be convincing.”
“It will be,” I promise, reaching over to lace my fingers with hers. “We’ll give Michael a send-off that makes the Pope look like a pauper. And then, Mrs. O’Neill, we’re going to make this city bleed for us.”
Her lips curve into that sharp, dangerous smile I’m addicted to. “Mrs. O’Neill,” she tests the name, and it sounds like a loaded gun. “I want that.”