CHAPTER THIRTY #2
He looks exactly how I remember him. Tall. Lean. The kind of build that comes from discipline, not bulk. Gray hair cropped close to his skull. A face that’s all angles. He’s wearing a dark coat, and he moves with the unhurried pace of a man who’s already won.
Ten men flank him. Rifles up. Trained on the three of us. Jason standing with a broken arm. Me on my knees in the grass beside a woman who can’t stand. Two guns between us. Jason’s in his good hand, hanging at his side. Mine is somewhere in the wreckage, gone when the car flipped.
The odds aren’t odds. They’re a death sentence.
Viktor stops fifteen feet away. He looks at the burning car. Then at Jason. Then at me.
“William Murphy.” His accent turns my name into something foreign. He says it like he’s reading it off a list. “I expected more of a fight.”
I don’t respond. I’m trying to get my legs under me. My knee buckles, and I catch myself on one hand and try again. This time it holds. I stand. It costs me everything I have.
“Your driver was one of mine,” Viktor says. “Has been for six weeks. Since before your little summit with the families.” He tilts his head. “You should vet your people more carefully.”
Jason moves beside me. Slow. His good hand tightening around the gun at his side.
“Don’t,” Viktor says without looking at him. Three of his men adjust their aim. “I have no interest in your brother, William. He’s irrelevant. He’s been irrelevant since he married into my family and then ran from it.”
“Fuck you.” Jason’s voice is tight with pain.
Viktor ignores him. His eyes stay on me.
“You killed my men tonight,” he says. “Thirty-seven of them. That’s expensive. That’s the kind of cost that demands a return.”
“You attacked my family.” I straighten. The pain in my ribs makes every breath feel like swallowing glass. “You shot Dillon O’Rourke. You burned my house. You came to this country and thought you could take what we built.”
“I didn’t think . I did.” Viktor’s mouth moves into something that’s not quite a smile. “Your father’s empire was falling apart long before I arrived. I simply helped it along.”
My fists clench. The split knuckles crack open, and blood runs fresh between my fingers.
“You want to kill me,” Viktor observes. “Good. That’s honest. More honest than the rest of this.
” He gestures at the burning car. “But you’re unarmed, William.
Bleeding. Your woman is barely conscious.
Your brother has one working arm. And I have ten men with rifles.
” He steps closer. “So let’s be practical. ”
“I’m not interested in practical.”
“No. You’re interested in legacy. In being the Murphy who held the line.
The one who didn’t break.” He studies me.
“I know about you, William. The drinking. The recovery. The way your father treated you. The way Alex passed over every other brother to put you in that chair.” His eyes narrow.
“I know why he chose you. Because you’re the one who can take a hit and keep standing.
That’s useful. That’s rare. And it’s the reason I’m going to offer you something none of the other families got. ”
“I don’t want your offer.”
“You want to hear it.” He pauses. “Walk away. Take your woman. Take your brothers. Leave Ireland. I’ll let you live. All of you. You have my word.”
“Your word.” I almost laugh. “You just put a missile into my car.”
“Because you refused to listen to reason. Because you assembled a coalition against me. Because you forced my hand.” He says it calmly.
Like we’re discussing a business disagreement.
“But the coalition is broken now. Your base of operations is burning. Half the men who pledged to you tonight are dead or scattered. It’s over, William. You just haven’t accepted it yet.”
Behind me, Aoife makes a sound. Small. Pained. I don’t turn around because if I take my eyes off Viktor, I’m dead, but the sound goes through me like a blade.
“Last chance,” Viktor says.
I look at him. This man, who came to Ireland and tore through everything my father built.
Everything Alex bled for. Everything I’ve been killing myself to hold together.
This man, who put a bullet in Dillon O’Rourke and sent a missile into a car carrying the woman I’ll never say the words for but would die beside without thinking about it.
“No.”
Viktor exhales. Almost disappointed. He raises his hand.
Engine noise. Loud. Coming fast from the road behind us. Headlights cutting through the fog. Not one set. Multiple. Tearing down the narrow road at speed.
Viktor’s men turn. Half of them. Rifles swinging toward the new threat.
The first vehicle comes off the road and across the ditch without slowing. It’s one of Aidan’s Range Rovers. The driver’s window is down, and Matty is leaning out with a rifle, and he fires three times before the wheels hit the grass. Three of Viktor’s men drop.
The second vehicle follows. Aidan behind the wheel. More men pouring out the back doors before the car has fully stopped. Conor Reilly’s people. The Brennans. Armed and moving and angry and alive.
Viktor’s line breaks.
I don’t wait. I don’t think. I cover the fifteen feet between us in four strides, and I hit Viktor Tarasov with everything that’s left in me.
We go down together. His body under mine. His coat bunched in my fists. My forehead connects with his nose, and I feel the cartilage give, and his blood is on my face, in my mouth, hot and copper-bright.
He’s fast. Faster than a man his age should be. His knee comes up into my ribs, right where they’re already broken, and the pain whites out my vision. I lose my grip. He rolls, gets on top of me, and his fist catches my jaw hard enough to split the inside of my cheek against my teeth.
I taste blood. Mine. His. Mixed.
His hand goes to his belt. A knife. Short blade. He brings it up, and I catch his wrist with both hands, and we’re locked there, his weight pressing down, the blade inching toward my throat.
Gunfire all around us. Men dying. But the sound is far away, belongs to another fight. This one is just us. Just me and the man who took everything.
I twist his wrist. He’s strong, but my hands are bigger, and I have both of them on his one, and I torque the joint until something gives, and the knife drops. He goes for it. I don’t let him. I pull him toward me instead, hook my arm around his neck, and roll.
Now I’m behind him. My forearm across his throat.
He claws at my arm. Digs his nails in deep enough to draw blood.
His legs kick. His body bucks. But I have the angle, and I have the leverage, and I have twenty-seven years of being told I’m not enough, fuelling every pound of pressure I put on his windpipe.
“You think this ends with me?” Viktor’s voice is a rasp. Barely there. Air forced through a closing gap. “You’ve barely met the real power.”
I loosen my arm. Just enough. Not mercy. I want to hear what comes out of his mouth.
He sucks in air. Coughs. His body shakes with it.
“The Bratva,” he says. “I’m the middleman. Expendable. There’s someone above me. Already here. Already watching.”
“Who?”
“Let me go, and I'll tell you.”
I tighten my arm again. He chokes.
“Try again.”
His hand reaches up. Finds my face. His fingers are cold.
“Volkov,” he whispers. “His name is Volkov. And he’s already here.”
I break his neck.
The sound is small. Precise. A single crack that gets lost in the gunfire. His body goes slack. Heavy. I hold him for another second. Then I let go, and he falls face-first into the wet grass.
Around me, the fight is ending. Viktor’s men are down or running. Aidan’s people and Conor’s crew are sweeping the field in pairs. Matty is walking between the bodies, checking. Methodical.
I try to stand. My knee gives out. I catch myself. Try again. My ribs won’t let me take a full breath. The cut on my side has soaked through my shirt and down into the waistband of my trousers. My hands are shaking.
I make it to my feet.
One step. Two. The field tilts. The burning car and the bodies and the dark sky all slide sideways like someone’s pulled the ground out from under me.
I go down hard. Knees first. Then my hands in the wet grass. Then nothing holds, and my face hits the earth, and the cold of it is the last thing I feel.
Voices. Far off. Someone saying my name.
Hands on my shoulders. Rolling me over. Aidan’s face above me, or what I think is Aidan’s face, blurred at the edges and doubling.
“Stay with me.” His mouth is moving, but the sound takes too long to reach me. “William. Stay with me.”
Aoife. I need to get to Aoife.
I try to say her name. Nothing comes out.
“She’s okay.” Aidan again. Reading it on my face. “Jason’s got her. She’s okay.”
The sky above him is black and orange. Smoke and stars. My body is shutting down, and I can feel it happening, system by system, like a building going dark floor by floor.
Viktor is dead. Face down in the grass ten meters from where I’m lying. The man who terrorized us for a year. Who shot Dillon. Who burned my house. Who sent a missile into a car carrying the woman I’d die for.
And he was just a middleman.
A small fish in a pond we haven’t even seen yet.
Volkov. The name sits in my skull like a splinter. A man I’ve never heard of. Already here. Already watching. And Viktor, the man who brought an army to Ireland and nearly destroyed everything, was just the one they sent because he was expendable.
That’s the last thought I have before the dark takes me. Not victory. Not relief.
Just the cold understanding that we killed the puppet, and the hand is still out there.
And it knows our names.