Chapter Thirty-Four
Flynn
“Fecking hell…” Kian rasps, voice like gravel dragged across concrete. He forces himself upright on the thin mattress, broad shoulders hunching as a shudder rips through him.
I’m still flat on my back, concrete biting into my spine through the mattress someone threw down like an afterthought.
My black T-shirt is glued to my chest and back, cold and stiff with the burst blood bags we all wore.
The metallic stink of it clings to my skin, my hair, the back of my throat.
My arms feel like lead, veins sluggish from whatever cocktail the doc pumped into us to slow our pulses to corpse-level.
Connor groans low beside me, dragging one tattooed forearm across his face. “Flynn, I’m never letting you talk me into this shite again. Feels like the worst hangover of my fucking life.”
The poison lingers even after the antidote, thick in my blood, making my heartbeat lazy and my thoughts swimmy. I hate it. Hate feeling slow. Hate the way my muscles twitch like they forgot how to answer, but someone is too quiet.
I shove up fast, the world tilting for a second before it rights itself.
Declan sits on a metal chair across the dim room, spine straight even though his face is chalk-pale.
The doctor’s fingers press against his carotid, counting.
Declan’s chest rises and falls shallowly, the black ink of his Celtic skull stark against skin still too cold.
His knuckles are white where he grips the chair arms, biceps flexing hard enough the veins stand out like cables.
“I’m fine,” he mutters before I can ask.
“Fuck…” I drop back for half a second, eyes closed, riding out another wave of vertigo. My ribs ache where the squib bags detonated, with bruises blooming under the fake blood.
The new burner in my pocket buzzes against my thigh. I fish it out with fingers that still tremble, thumb smearing red across the screen.
One word from Kaden:
Done.
Air leaves my lungs in a rush that hurts. “It’s done,” I say, voice rough. “They told the girls.”
My stomach knots so hard I almost double over. Viviana can play a corpse in her sleep; she’s done it before. But Autumn… Autumn saw Kaden drenched head to toe in blood. Even knowing the plan, some part of her must have believed for one second that I was really gone.
I can’t think about that yet, or I’ll lose it.
Declan’s eyes flick to mine, sharp green even through the haze. “Did he buy it?”
Kylie, posted by the door, gives a short nod. “Flanagan leaned over Kian himself. Checked for breath. Smiled like he’d just won the lottery.”
“Motherfucker,” Kian snarls, ripping his ruined shirt over his head. The motion makes every muscle across his chest and back jump, fake blood cracking and flaking off in sheets.
Logan steps forward, calm as ever. “We moved fast. Threw you in the van before any of his men got a second look. They think we took the bodies to the fishing warehouse freezer. By now half the city believes the kings are on ice.”
Liam drops three black duffel bags and kicks them across the floor. “Clean clothes. Boots. Gloves.” He pries open a crate of neon energy drinks, the kind that taste like battery acid and lightning. “Doc said these’ll shock your systems awake.”
I crack one open and chug. The burn hits my throat, spreads like fire through my chest, races down my arms. My pulse stutters, then slams back to life. Veins flood hot; feeling rushes into my fingers, my legs, the heavy muscle of my thighs.
“Christ, Flynn,” Declan laughs, low and ragged, watching me down it like water.
We strip fast. Ruined shirts hit the floor in wet slaps.
I drag on black combat pants that settle low on my hips, the fabric pulling tight across my quads.
Hoodie next, soft, worn, smelling like gun oil and safe-house dust. I roll my shoulders; the ache is already fading, replaced by that familiar coiled violence I’ve been holding back for weeks.
Another burner vibrates against my palm.
Unknown number. Two words:
Thirty minutes.
A slow, vicious grin splits my face.
“Showtime.”
The room moves as one. Four men rising in perfect sync, in all black, all muscle and ink and barely leashed rage.
Kian cracks his neck, shoulders rolling like a fighter stepping into the ring.
Connor checks the slide on his Glock, veins standing out along his forearms. Declan stands last, steady now, the tattoo on his back flexing as he pulls the hoodie over his head.
“Let’s move.” He grunts.
It’s past two in the morning, and we lie perfectly still beneath heavy black shrouds, the kind they use for bodies at a crime scene.
The fabric is coarse against my lips; every breath tastes like dust and death.
My heart is a slow, deliberate drum, thanks to the last dregs of the damn poison, but my finger rests steady on the trigger guard.
Footsteps echo off steel beams.
“Rurik Vastrikov,” John Flanagan’s voice rings out, smug and oily.
“John.” Rurik’s reply is flat, amused.
“It was bloodier than I expected,” John says. I hear the soft scuff of his shoes on concrete as he walks the line of shrouded shapes. His foot nudges my ribs, hard, testing. I don’t flinch. Don’t breathe louder. Don’t move a single muscle.
“You said you needed them gone,” Rurik answers, thick with humour. “You never specified how pretty.”
“Of course. I forgot you Russians enjoy a proper bloodbath.” John chuckles and moves on, the sound of his steps circling behind me now, closer to Declan.
“Let’s get to the point,” Stepan cuts in, impatient.
John stops near Rurik. “You said without the Callaghans and Flynn in the way, you’d be next in line.”
Rurik’s tone sharpens. “What about the women? Their wives? Don’t they inherit?”
John laughs, actually laughs, the sound scraping down my spine like nails on glass.
“One of the oldest rules of the Consortium: only a man can take the seat. And neither of them had children. If they had, I’d have handled it tonight while the bodies were still warm.
” He claps once, delighted with himself.
My finger twitches against the trigger. Blood roars in my ears.
“Good,” Rurik says simply.
“Who knows?” John continues, dripping with slime. “Maybe I’ll make that pretty young thing my next wife.”
Every muscle in my body locks. I feel Declan go rigid beside me.
“Flynn’s wife?” Stepan asks, curious.
“Of course. Declan’s is Italian. She never should have married the leader in the first place.” John’s footsteps come back toward me, slow, savouring. “Some rules are sacred.”
I can practically hear Declan’s teeth grinding.
“I never thought a Consortium member would turn on his own,” Rurik muses. “Your call surprised me.”
“I know you want more than the guns returned,” John says, greedy now. “A better deal. That’s what this is about. Money.”
Rurik and Stepan both laugh.
“Oh, Flanagan,” Rurik says, his tone dropping to something lethal. “You really think money is the most important part of a deal?”
Boots shift. Rifles click softly as safeties come off. Russian shadows move along the walls.
“We have a deal,” John insists, urgency cracking through the smugness. “Sixty percent us, forty you—”
“True,” Rurik interrupts. “But we struck a better one.”
The shrouds fly off in perfect unison.
We rise, like the dead come to collect.
John Flanagan goes corpse-white, mouth open, eyes wide enough to fall out. His knees actually buckle.
I step forward, pistol pressed dead-centre to his forehead, the cold muzzle kissing skin.
“Surprise, motherfucker,” I smile, slow and vicious.
Declan, Kian, and Connor fan out beside me, weapons up. John’s two remaining bodyguards reach for their guns; Russian suppressors cough twice each. Two soft thuds. Two bodies hit the ground before John can finish blinking.
“No—” he chokes. “We have a deal!”
Rurik steps to my side, hands loose at his thighs, grinning like a wolf.
“Let me teach you something, Irishman,” he says pleasantly. “There is one thing more important than money.”
I lean in until John can smell the gunpowder on me.
“Loyalty,” I growl, voice raw with every second I had to lie still while he planned to put his hands on my wife.
John tries to step back; the muzzle follows, indenting his skin.
“How?” he whispers, shaking his head like a broken toy.
I press harder.
“Because the second you decided to sell us out, you stopped being one of us.”
His pulse flutters wildly against the barrel.
“And tonight, John,” I say, soft as a promise, “we stop being dead.”
“You’ve been dying to see me in the ground,” I say, voice low, lethal, the barrel of my gun grinding against John Flanagan’s forehead until the skin dents white around it. “You even used Autumn.”
Declan steps in behind him, presses his own pistol to the base of Flanagan’s skull. The metal kisses hair.
“You thought you’d force my hand,” I continue, leaning in until he can feel the anger in my blood. “Make me kill her or vanish, because you knew I’d never put a bullet in my own wife. That would’ve been my death sentence, and then you’d only have the Callaghans left to sweep away.”
Declan doesn’t speak; he just swings. The butt of his gun cracks against Flanagan’s temple with a wet, meaty thud. Blood sprays in a hot arc. John drops to his knees, swaying, crimson already sliding down the side of his face and dripping onto the concrete.
“One neat little ambush when we were all together,” Declan growls, crouching so his mouth is level with John’s ear. “That was the plan. But you made one mistake, you greedy cunt. You got impatient.”
I laugh, dark and humourless, and lower myself until we’re eye to eye. Blood drips from the gash Declan opened, pattering between us like a clock counting down his last seconds. I slide the muzzle under his chin, forcing his head up.
“So we got ahead of you,” I say softly. “I called the Vastriks myself. Told them exactly what their ‘partner’ was cooking. The rest was just watching you hang yourself.”
Rurik steps forward, hands in his pockets, smiling like a man who’s already spent the money. “We don’t like family stabbing family in the back,” he says, almost gently. “The Callaghans offered fifty-fifty and no taxes for a year.” He shrugs, amused. “Hard to say no.”
Flanagan’s eyes dart to Kian, wild, desperate, searching for an ally that was never there.
Kian just grins, slow and vicious, teeth bright against the blood on his face.
“These fuckers were never my family,” Flanagan spits, lurching to his feet, blood pouring down his cheek and neck, soaking into his collar. “They never listened to a goddamn word I—”
“We never listened,” I snarl, closing the distance until my chest almost touches his, “because you ran, you spineless prick. You ran when our fathers went to war. You ran when the Dark War started. You hid while the rest of us bled.”
Declan’s voice detonates behind him, pure thunder. “You’ve never done shite but count other men’s money and lick boots!”
John flinches like the words are bullets.
I press the gun harder under his chin, forcing his face up to mine again. My pulse is a war drum, every muscle in my arms, my back, my shoulders locked and burning.
“Tonight,” I whisper, so close my lips nearly brush his, “you finally stop running.”
I stand, and Kian moves in with Connor beside him. They grab Flanaghan by the shoulders.
“You remember the way we deal with traitors, right?” Kian whispers, and that’s the exact moment John Flanaghan finally understands what’s coming.
He screams.
Kicks.
Spits.
He looks like an animal fighting for its last breath.
“What will happen to him?” Rurik asks as Kian and Connor drag Flanaghan out of the warehouse.
The corner of my mouth lifts. “You can have a front-row seat to how the Irish Consortium handles betrayal.” I clap him on the back.
“I will accept the invitation,” he smirks.
“Flynn.” Declan nods, and when I turn, Doyle is walking in.
We kept him out of this, didn’t tell him the plan, had Liam keep him away in case things went south. He’s a good kid. Loyal. If he keeps going like this, he’ll be an important part of the Consortium one day.
“I need to call the Keeffes,” Declan sighs.
I nod. “Christian’s going to lose his shit.”
“Can I help with anything?” Doyle asks as I pull my burner out.
Nothing. No signal.
“Anyone got service?” I ask.
Everyone shakes their head.
Great.
“Doyle,” I call, and he turns. “Go to Declan’s. Tell Autumn and Viviana it’s done, and we’ll be back by sunrise, and tell Kaden to meet us at the Keeffe’s mansion.”
“Of course, sir,” Doyle says.
Everyone barks out a laugh. He freezes, confused.
“Flynn or Brady, never sir, mate.” I clap his shoulder and wink.
He laughs awkwardly and hurries out.
“I have a feeling he thought I was about to shoot him,” Liam mutters.
“Probably,” Declan shrugs.
Now we get to the Keeffes, and then I go home, to my wife, so I can bury myself in her and forget this fucking mess.
“Flynn,” Declan calls, and I fall into step beside him.
“Good job, brother.”
I grin. “Don’t tell me you had doubts.”
“That fucking drug…” Kian groans behind us. “Never again.”