24. Kyle
24
KYLE
Patrick and I switch the rental car we took from the airport with another vehicle parked outside a railway station. Patrick drives. An hour later, we’re pulling up outside a secluded property buried deep within the countryside of Donegal.
We’re gathering a team. Apparently, it’s more than Patrick’s life is worth if he lets me out of his sight and I end up getting myself thrown off a cliff in the process. His words.
The property belongs to an Irish mob that have a reputation for smashing kneecaps first and asking questions later, and they’re already aware of the cliff-top mansion purchased by Sasha Bogrov.
“The man who built it was a mad fecking scientist.” The speaker, a man called Damon O’Hara, has thick silver hair and a walrus mustache that twitches when his lips move. His accent is stronger than any I’ve heard before. “Ye’d have to be to build a house on the edge of a fecking cliff.”
“The place gives me the heebie-jeebies,” his brother, Aiden, says. “Says a lot about the fecker who bought it.”
“What do you know about them?” I ask.
We’re in a secure underground room that contains an arsenal of weapons: pistols, revolvers, shotguns. While the women are upstairs watching TV in the kitchen and preparing dinner, chatting about their favorite shows and the Christmas gifts they’re yet to buy, the men are choosing ammunition to raid the mansion where Sienna is being held captive.
“New mob. They’ve not been active in Ireland, until now. But their rep doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. They’re thieves, and no one likes a fecking cheap, nasty crook.”
I fill the men in on the bratva’s demands for the Titan.
They don’t react, but I spot the tic pulsing in Damon’s temple. “I don’t care who the feck they are, they don’t get away with stealing a good man’s work.” He opens a canister of bullets and tips them into the palm of his hand.
A younger lad joins us. He looks like Damon, but with a mop of strawberry-blond hair and golden stubble on his chin and upper lip.
Cillian hands his father a drawing. “I downloaded the layout of the property. There are three levels, but I’m guessing they’re holding the woman captive in the basement.”
“Is there a way into the basement from underground?” I ask.
It will make life a whole lot easier if we don’t have to go through the house to reach Sienna.
“I checked.” Cillian shakes his head. “I couldn’t find any plans.”
“What about the cliff?” Patrick studies the drawing spread across the table. “Could we gain entry that way?”
“Not unless you can grow some fecking wings before we get there.” Aiden chuckles, a dry throaty sound, the product of a lifetime spent smoking cigars.
“It’s blowing a hoolie out there now.” Cillian helps his dad load weapons into an oversized rucksack. “Not the kind of weather I’d go abseiling in.”
“Don’t worry, lad.” Patrick looks me in the eye. “We’ll get her out of there.”
Aiden claps me on the back. “You’re with the O’Haras now, boy. The bastards won’t even see us coming.”
I’ve heard the term ‘blowing a hoolie’ before. I never really understood what it meant until now.
The entire county is on red alert for Storm Humphrey. The government has issued a warning for folks to stay inside, shut away or lock down any freestanding garden equipment, and prepare for loss of power. It’s a short distance from the O’Hara property to the waiting, blacked-out vehicles, but the gale-force winds have us walking head-down, almost horizontal into the squally gusts. We’re saturated by the time we load up the trunks and climb inside.
We drive in silence.
The closer we get to the coastline, the stronger the gales become. The rain is torrential; the windshield wipers are working at double-speed, and visibility is still practically non-existent. The vehicle we’re traveling in is getting buffeted about by the wind, and my stomach lurches each time the driver has to wrestle with the steering wheel to keep us on track.
I try to picture Sienna in the basement of the mad scientist’s mansion. What’s down there? An image of shelves filled with glass jars containing pickled body parts and rodents swimming in formaldehyde pops into my head, and I shove them away.
I hope that she knows I’ll save her.
I don’t even know if she has regained consciousness or if the bastard Nick Morris is feeding her with drugs.
“We get Sienna safely out of the house,” I say to the group in general, “but you leave Nick Morris to me.”
“Goes without saying, lad.” Damon glances at me over his shoulder from the front passenger seat. “Ye’ve got a score to settle. Ain’t one of us going to stand in your way.”
The terrain begins to climb.
There are no streetlamps, and it’s impossible to see anything other than the rain lashing the vehicle’s windows.
So, I sit back and think about Sienna.
The way she pants when she’s having an orgasm. The way she tastes when I’m eating her pussy. The way she arches her back and pushes herself onto me when she’s about to come.
The twenty-four hours she spent in my apartment were exactly how I envisaged it would be to live with her. As a couple. I can’t help smiling when I picture her padding around my kitchen with the comforter wrapped around her like a cocoon. Her rosy cheeks. The easy conversation over scrambled eggs and black coffee.
It’s everything I want.
There’s only one person standing in my way.
Nick Morris.
Sure, he isn’t working alone, but I’m unfazed by the new Russian bratva. They dared to try stealing my brother’s business, and they’ll get what’s coming to them. I’ve yet to figure out the best way to deal with Nick Morris.
He isn’t a member of the bratva. He’s a slimeball playing on the periphery of the mafia world without having first learned the rules. A worm who needs to be crushed underfoot.
My mom recognized the cruelty behind his eyes the instant she saw him.
Men like Nick Morris never learn from their mistakes. They simply duck under the radar, throw their accomplices under the bus to save their own skin, and find a new target. They prey on the weak. Only Sienna is a lot stronger than he has given her credit for.
As am I.
I’m aware that he chose to attack my family through me: the one he recognized as the weakest link. It’s no secret that I took a three-month sabbatical from the family business and came to Ireland, or that I underwent years of therapy following the accident. If he has done his research, he probably knows that I’m asthmatic too.
But I’m in love with Sienna, and I will not let her down a second time.
I doubt that Nick Morris has ever been in love, apart from with himself. I doubt that he’s capable of putting someone else’s interests before his own. But his lack of empathy is my advantage, it’s what will ultimately make me stronger than him.
The vehicles converge outside a ten-foot-high brick wall, and the drivers kill the engines and the headlamps.
Damon addresses Patrick and I in the back seat.
“We’ll make our way on foot.” He unfolds the plans for the mansion and raps it with hairy knuckles. “There’s a gravel drive that leads to the entrance. The rest of the land is wooded—the guy who built the place clearly wasn’t a people-person. We’ll stick to the trees until we reach the edge here.” He taps the diagram a second time.
“Lights?” I ask.
“Attached to the soffits. They’re sensory activated, but the storm will work in our favor. Even if they pick up our movement, the bratva mob will think it’s the rain lashing the equipment.”
I nod. “We’re going through the entrance or is there another way in?”
“There’s a door here at the side. Mud room. We’ll split up once we reach the property. My Cillian will lead his team through the side door and Aiden will cover us through the front. Once you’re inside, you head to the staircase at the rear of the building. It will take you down to the basement.”
He folds the diagram and stashes it inside the glove box.
The icy rain stings my face when I climb out of the vehicle. The wind is driving it into us in diagonal sheets that slap our faces and drench us from head to toe. It might work in our favor when it comes down to the security lights but invading a cliff-top mansion in sodden clothes when you can’t feel your fingers isn’t how I would’ve chosen to do this.
The wall surrounding the property is topped with razor-wire. Cillian and another young lad scale the wall like cats and snip through the wire to allow the rest of us access to the ground. We follow them using ropes and drop down to the ground on the other side by bouncing off the trees and using the branches to slow our fall.
This is the easy part.
The treetops provide some shelter from the torrential rain, and we make our way towards the property, which appears to be in total darkness, not a glimmer of light peeping out from behind closed windows. A security light pops on, activated by the gusting wind and we all freeze. The original owner clearly trusted that few people would attempt to either scale the cliffs or climb the razor-topped wall. The lights are the old-fashioned static type that cast spotlights across the grounds, leaving the rest of the area in darkness, exacerbated by the blinding lights.
I make a mental note of where the lights fall, tracking the fastest and easiest route to the imposing entrance without getting caught in the spotlight like an actor who forgot his lines.
We move stealthily through the woodland until we’re almost in the clearing.
From here, the mansion looks even more sinister and formidable, the kind of property movie directors scour the planet for to feature in their horror movies. I squint against the rain trickling into my eyes and scan the turrets on each corner of the rooftop for the obligatory bats silhouetted against the full moon.
A glimmer of movement near the front facade catches my attention. I wipe my eyes with my sleeve, and peer through the rain, but I can’t see anything, and the security lights remain off.
“Ready?” Damon asks.