Chapter 25 Saoirse
SAOIRSE
It’s all the confirmation we need that Irish blood is wrapped up in this whole mess. I’d clung to the hope that the Triad were lying and simply trying to sow distrust among our own ranks but there’s no denying it now.
“What girls?” I bark down at Stephen. “What fucking girls?”
He doesn’t answer me. Instead, he spits a mouthful of blood in my direction as Cian hauls him to his feet. “Ain’t telling you shit.”
“Oh.” I can’t wait to get my hands on this guy properly. “You will.”
Cian drags him outside while I head back into the other room with the Triad and two of our guards, but a scene of carnage greets me when I open the door.
Both our guards are dead and the Triad, previously thought unconscious and too weak to do anything but bleed, stands over their bodies with blood drooling from his lower lip and a glistening blade in his left hand.
“Cian,” I yell cautiously, backing out of the room. “Cian!”
“What?” His distant yell from outside is cut short and in a snap decision, I bolt away from the room containing the angry Triad and sprint outside.
It’s carnage.
What remains of our team are engaged in a brawl with several members of the Chinese Triad who pour out of cars and vans that must have arrived during the firefight inside the building, else we would have heard the engines.
Cian is on the ground with his knee pressed into Stephen’s back, keeping him flat on the ground while he fires a few shots over the hood of the car he’s crouched behind.
“Cian!”
“Saoirse!” He turns toward me. “Call Cormac, tell him we need—fuck, we need everyone!”
My hands struggle to work as I try to get my phone out of my pocket. How the fuck did this happen? We were careful, we were so fucking careful. Did we underestimate the Triad?
How the fuck did they get here so quickly?
Was it something else?
A cold sensation washes down my spine like the trickle of frozen water as a thought enters my mind while I hurry down the steps.
Were we set up?
Cian mentioned that all my tracked drugs came through here. Was this a trap? Did I just walk Cian into this because I was too wrapped up in my own thoughts to assess this properly?
As I reach the bottom of the steps, the door behind me slams open and the crazed, bloodied, knife-wielding man stands at the top. Our eyes lock and my heart leaps up into my throat.
Suddenly, there’s a scream of tires. I spin on the spot and pinpoint Cian sprinting toward me with his face wide and eyes panicked, but none of his yelled words seem to reach me. All I hear is the car and my warning about the vehicle rises in my throat.
I’m not fast enough.
One second, Cian is a few feet away from me yelling, and the next, he’s flying up in the air like a spinning top as the car knocks him clean off his feet.
“Cian!” I scream myself hoarse.
His body crumples down onto the hood of the vehicle and his limps form rolling to the ground is the last thing I see before I’m tackled to the floor and piled upon by several of the Triad.
What remains of our team and swiftly killed, words are yelled and threats spilled, but none of that matters.
All I see is Cian lying on the ground near where the car stopped, his face bruised and bleeding, and his eyes closed.
The cold wakes me several hours later, bringing me to consciousness in complete darkness. Everything hurts. I vaguely recall the thump of boots against my body and a hand in my hair before my world went dark in the parking lot.
Where the hell am I?
Despite the aches and pains that light up around my body as I pull myself up from the damp ground and rest back against an equally damp, cold wall, I ignore them.
Now is not the time to wallow. I’ve been in situations like this before and Cormac was very rigorous in our training when it came to something like this happening.
Personal feelings don’t matter.
Pain doesn’t matter.
Check yourself, situate yourself, and escape. That’s what I need to do.
That’s what I should do.
But as I pat down my pockets searching for my phone or anything they might have left behind, all I can think about is Cian. The horrific way his body twisted when it flew up in the air and the sickening sound it made when it landed on the hood of the car.
He was trying to reach me. He was trying to save me from that knife-wielding asshole and disregarded his own safety to do it.
I did this.
This is my fault.
My mouth tastes like iron and as I swallow, a leaking sensation trickles against my cheek.
Gently probing the area with my tongue, I groan softly.
My teeth have torn the inside of my cheek but with how it’s still slowly bleeding, it can’t have happened that long ago.
Maybe I haven’t been here for as long as I fear.
Gathering the blood with a sweep of my tongue, I spit it off to the side, then strain through the darkness trying to glimpse anything.
There’s nothing. This room is pitch black.
Think, Saoirse. Think.
There’s almost too much to think about and cutting through it all to keep myself focused is painful. I can’t think about Cian, or Cormac, or that little fucker Stephen and the phone call he made. I need to focus on myself.
I need to get out of here and the rest will come.
Starting with the floor, I crawl about on my hands and knees very slowly until I’ve located all four walls of the room and satisfied myself with how the floor is.
No hidden traps, just smooth damp stone that holds a lot of condensation.
It’s the same with the walls. Three of them are damp and smooth with no defining details that I can find but the fourth has a door.
A locked door that creaks and whines when I pull hard on the door handle. Locked. Of course it is. My hair’s a mess but there are no pins left in it from the fight. Fuck.
Feeling around the door handle, I’m in the process of examining the lock in the dark when it clunks suddenly and a vibration moves through the entire door. Then the handle dips.
Snatching my hand back, I step away just in time for the door to swing open and I see my chance.
The moment the door is wide enough, I launch myself forward and leap upward while lifting my leg as high as I can.
My knee collides with the sternum of a man coming through the door and he yelps in surprise, then grunts as we topple backward into the well-lit hallway.
He lands hard on the ground and I drive my elbow down as hard as I can onto the bridge of his nose as the second man yells.
“What the fuck?”
Rolling off the first, I swiftly kick the side of his head to ensure he’s unconscious then spring up onto my feet.
As the second man wrestles to get his gun out of his holster, I run at the wall and leap upward.
Bracing against the wall with one foot, I swing my other leg around as hard as I can and kick him fiercely in the side of the head.
He goes down hard and I land over him, driving my knee into his throat and punching him several times in the face.
He’s out for the count just like the first.
Taking his gun, I glance around. We’re at the end of a corridor which means I only have one direction to go. Hopefully wherever these fuckers came from is the way out. Gun in hand, I start jogging slowly down the corridor until pain in my stomach forces me to take a breather against the wall.
Ow.
Why does it hurt? Is it the fight? The stress? Is something wrong with my baby?
My head swims and my vision blurs as I lean, panting, against the white wall illuminated by bare yellow bulbs hanging above. Maybe it’s the lighting.
Fuck.
I need to get out of here.
Continuing on, I weave through an array of corridors and past several locked doors.
Stairs carry me up from an underground basement and into the crumbling, dirty ruins of some kind of warehouse.
The air is fresher and a breeze rushes past my bruised skin as I jog as quietly as I can until I find him.
Cian.
My poor brother.
He’s dangling by his wrists from iron chains in a side room with no door. His head hangs low, his bare chest bruised and stained with blood dribbling past his cut lower lip. His hair is matted and one of his legs is clearly badly broken but he’s alone, thankfully.
“Cian?” Rushing in, I abandon the gun on a nearby metal trolley to grab his face with both hands. “Cian? Come on, wake up. Wake up for me, please!”
He’s motionless and silent. Even his hands hang limp in their bindings and offer me no aid as I examine the chains and manacles. I know what he’d say if he were awake. He’d tell me to get out of here. To abandon him and get help.
But I can’t.
He’s my twin.
The other half of me.
“Cian please, please wake up! Please, I can’t do this by myself. Please!” Tugging at the chains proves useless so I scan the room and start rummaging through the trolley looking for a key. I’d even taken a sliver of metal at this point, anything I could use as a lock pick.
“S-Saoirse?”
His slurring words bring me back to him and I cup his cheek, smiling as strongly as I can while tears tingle behind my eyes. “I’m here. Fuck. I’m right here.”
He struggles to focus on me and blinks sluggishly, but as his lips press together for another word, hands suddenly grab my shoulders and arms and drag me away.
“No!” I immediately begin to thrash in every direction, lashing out fiercely at the men I didn’t even hear coming. “No, let me go! I’ll kill you, I’ll fucking kill you!”
Never have I meant something as strongly as I do in this moment. My fists connect with faces, my kicks land but there are more men this time and I’m swiftly overpowered with two punches to my face and one to my gut.
That one sends ice through my veins and I’m forced to the floor with someone’s knee pressing onto my head to keep me down.
“He was right, she’s a fucking wildcat,” says one man who walks around me twirling a blade.
“The fun we could have,” sneers another.
“Shame she’s already spoken for,” adds a third.
“But he isn’t,” comes the first voice again. “This meat’s fair game.”
I’ve witnessed a lot in my time in this world. I pride myself on my own torture methods and my skill at getting people to talk, and I justify my own cruelty by having a goal. A goal to protect my family and my people.
These fuckers have no goal. They torture Cian for the enjoyment of it and force me to watch.
He’s my brother. I love him more than I love myself, and I’m powerless to do anything but watch as they cut up his body, beat him, burn him, shave his head, and twist the broken bone at his shin until he screams himself hoarse and passes out. They’re quick to wake him though.
I can’t help him. I’m utterly powerless.
“Do you see?” Hands finally drag me to my feet and it’s not until a fat, meaty hand grabs my jaw and forces me to look into a round, angry face with bloodshot eyes and a piggy nose that I realize I’ve been crying.
“See what?” I spit hoarsely, unable to stop my body trembling.
“This is what happens when you stick your nose where it doesn’t belong, bitch.”
His fingers pry painfully into my jaw and he forces me to face Cian as his torturer grabs one more blade from the tray.
“Wait,” I gasp as that blade is lifted to his throat. “Wait, no hold on. Hold on wait, no don’t. Don’t. Don’t! Please, don’t do it. Cian! CIAN!”
They hold me and force me to watch as that blade slices across his throat and blood cascades down his chest like a wave. His eyes meet mine and the fear in them melts away to understanding.
Painful defeat.
What have I done?