The Mafia Marriage Heist (Blood Debt Brides #2)

Chapter 1

TIERNEY

I’m three hundred feet underground and the air is damp and cold.

Male voices drift through the dark tunnels as I scurry into a room and hide.

“—check the western stack again.”

“Already did. Nothing but heat spikes.”

Boots pound gritty concrete, the armed men I’d dodged a minute ago coming my way. I press myself into the narrow gap between two server housings, body flush to the metal casing, pulse ticking in my throat as if it's an SOS signal.

If I needed help, no one could save me down here. I don’t though, because this is the most important mission my da ever sent me on and I haven’t failed him yet.

That means relying on my skill, wits and the weeks of research I’ve done on this underground vault.

A flashlight beam slices past my face. Sweat slicks my spine despite the cold.

“Swear I saw movement,” one of them mutters.

“The vents move. Happens all the time.”

A hand slaps against the casing inches from my shoulder. I suck in a breath and go rigid.

Electricity hums against my spine, vibrating like a live current. My stomach rumbles, having skipped my last meal. I pray they didn’t hear it.

Another voice comes, even closer now. “Seems to be a fluctuation.”

“Where?”

“Sector three. Could be nothing?”

“Or it could be something.”

The flashlight sweeps again, scanning far too close for comfort, and then it dims. Their footfalls grow distant, and their voices dissolve into the hum of the vault.

Cold air pours over my skin like the winter surf in Ireland.

I wait three heartbeats to make sure I’m alone and creep deeper into the shadows. When I move to the main room, the smell is weird, like recycled air flavored with metal and dry heat from the miles of servers.

The Blood Vault breathes around me with secrets that could bring down every powerful family in the world.

I’ve broken into vaults before. Banks. Private collections. A senator’s panic room in Prague that had some fascinating illicit photographs of him.

However, those places were small-time jobs. None of them held this level information.

Connor’s face flashes behind my eyes while I flank the long wall, my tactical gear cast in green light from the glow of machines. I shake off the tightness in my chest and focus on the order my da tasked me with.

If I screw this up, they’ll ruin my brother’s life.

I check my Apple Watch and take a deep breath. Once I’m in the system, I have twelve minutes before it resets, and this vault seals itself from the inside with no way out.

I count out my steps inside my head. Twenty-four. Turn. Seventeen. I’ve etched the route into my head, memorizing it after weeks of reconnaissance.

At the end of the room, another corridor splits in two, the arched ceiling rising overhead. My feet move, not making a sound, until I find more rows of server towers stretching out in front of me, black and monolithic, their indicator lights blinking as if they’re working brains.

The cold crawls under my skin, raising gooseflesh over my scalp.

This is it. The heart of it all.

Every secret the Red Tribunal has ever collected lives here. These servers house every crime, every betrayal, and every murder that never went public.

And that’s why I’m here. To extract and delete the evidence they claim to have on Connor.

The central terminal stands apart from the rest, a solitary workstation ringed by servers like a throne room built for a beast of a machine. I slide into the chair, fingers already moving over the buttons.

The interface blooms to life at my touch, layers of encryption making this place a damn fortress.

Da’s voice echoes in my head. “Download everything they have on him and us, Tierney. Purge the originals. And get the hell out of there before the vault doors lock you in.”

I plug in the USB drive, custom-built and burning warm against my palm. The decryption software spins up, chewing through the first layer of protection.

My fingers fly as I navigate directories and subdirectories, code cascading across the screen, and witness the volume of information they hold.

The scale of it is obscene, going back years. Centuries even, the evidence digitized and preserved, so it’s never forgotten.

From what I can see, there are financial records, operational logs, and footage that could be so dark I’d never be able to unsee it.

I’m not here for that intel, though.

I click on the ‘pending acquisitions’ folder and find it empty.

My stomach drops.

I search again, typing in our surname, Blake. When it comes up blank, I use alternate spellings and internal tags Da had warned me about.

But the cursor blinks back at me and the screen stays blank.

I check the timer on my watch again, my breath uneven now as a wave of panic sets in.

Eight minutes left.

I dig deeper because this is where my training comes into play. When the plan breaks, I push on and widen the search parameters, forcing the system to show me more.

Connor’s footage remains buried in the masses of folders, with more encryption locking it away. And I’m running out of time to break the code.

Six minutes.

A folder catches my eye with the well known Italian mafia family name, Viacava.

They’re forged from old power and strengthened by a recent marriage to our Irish rivals, the O’Callaghans. We all saw the wedding photos of Kingston and his bride, Olivia, splashed across the tabloids.

That family is untouchable and lethal in the flesh.

My brows tug tighter, the further I fall into the Viacava never-ending rabbit hole. Christ, the files stored on these men are extensive. Information that could bring their empire to its knees.

I save it to the USB, even though their dirty laundry isn’t what I came for. If I can’t save my brother myself, I’ll bring home enough fire to burn a path that’ll save him.

The bulk download begins. Data floods the drive, the white digital progress bar inching forward with agonizing slowness.

Sixty-seven percent downloaded… Seventy-four.

“C’mon…c’mon,” I whisper, glancing over my shoulder.

Sweat beads at my temples, my pulse louder than the servers whirring. Connor’s laugh fills my head. The way he used to trail after me as a kid, calling me Tier-Tier and the destroyed look on his face when Ma died, glassy eyes wide, waiting for me to fix everything.

Ninety-three percent…ninety-seven.

Just four minutes remain before I need to escape this maze with something that makes this trip worthwhile.

After a racing heartbeat, the loading bar hits one hundred percent. I yank the drive free and slide it into the tight-fit pocket at my ribs, frustrated that it’s not what I came for.

Three minutes and counting.

The moment the progress bar vanishes, the Vault must detect unusual activity.

Lights blink for a moment as if everything is resetting, or worse, preparing to shut down. The steady hum of the servers drops half a pitch.

At that very moment, I’m certain the servers know something was stolen.

In a hurry, I scrub the logs and delete the false-routing alerts I had set up, erasing all digital traces that could link this back to the Blakes.

Backing away, I skirt the walls, sticking to the shadows as I retrace my steps through the underground tunnels.

I’d set up a decoy distraction in the farthest server location, occupying the armed men elsewhere while I got to work here.

My breath comes fast and shallow. Two minutes left and I still have to take the lift to the surface.

A crackle of radio chatter carries in the shadows. Voices overlap and someone swears.

I duck behind a row of towers, press myself to the floor, and listen.

“They’re shutting down on the south side.”

“What the hell happened?” someone yells, out of breath as they run past my hiding place.

“They can’t be overheating; this place is colder than a meat locker.”

Any second now the decoy will die, and they’ll know someone’s here.

I adjust my route by instinct alone, cutting left instead of right, trusting the map burned into my head. My pace matches the rhythm of my racing heart.

A flashlight beam washes across the far end of the passage, and I drop to my knees.

I hold still, pulse hammering, sweat trickling down my spine. A second guard appears, their shadows stretching long across the concrete as they scan the corridor I just vacated.

Fuck, they’re not interested in the failing servers at the other side anymore.

They’re hunting for an intruder…for me.

When they disappear, I slip back into action, changing direction, choosing the fastest route to the elevator shaft, which is my only way out.

By the time I get there, the light flickers again, and the steel doors slide open.

I freeze.

Standing inside the elevator is a broad-shouldered guy dressed in black, positioned dead centre like he’s been waiting for the doors to part.

He wears an Uzi strapped across his chest and dark hair peeks out from beneath a baseball cap pulled low; the brim shadowing a coarse-jawed face that hits me with a jolt of familiarity.

He looks like a soldier rather than a polished Red Tribunal senior, with one foot back, shoulders loose, weight distributed as if he’s expecting trouble and welcomes it.

Rich hazel eyes lock on mine. The irises lighten a fraction in the low light as he waits for my next move.

“Going up?” he asks, taking one step sideways, expecting me to join him.

“You’re not Tribunal,” I say, reaching for my gun but keeping it in place for now.

His mouth curves into a wolfish grin. “Neither are you.”

I shove a foot inside the lift to jam the doors, needing him to leave so I can get the hell out of here before the alarms sound.

My nerves spike, aware of the seconds ticking past, pressure building in the vaults rock foundation.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“The one who’s about to make your night a hell of a lot worse.” He tilts his head, studying me.

“I don’t have time for this.” I draw my gun, aim it at his chest, and step into the elevator anyway. “Get out.”

He doesn’t move to unstrap his weapon and seems unbothered by the barrel aimed at his heart. Instead, his gaze lowers as if he’s cataloguing my stats before returning to my face.

“No can do.” He taps the machine gun and shrugs.

This guy looks like he’s cosplaying cartel muscle, all black, and heavy hardware, but none of the Tribunal’s discipline, which means he’s oblivious to the fact that the program I used to stall my interference is about to expire, and when it does, both he and I will be trapped down here… and executed.

“You’ve got something I want.”

When the steel doors slide shut behind me, I punch the button and press my back to the inner wall.

“Doubt it,” I say, keeping cool.

The space shrinks around the bulk of him and his strong posture. With his full attention directed at me, I grit my teeth as an unwanted awareness curls low in my stomach, irritating and ill-timed, even as I keep my aim steady while my pulse goes wild in my throat.

The elevator jerks upward, and my stomach drops with it.

I track his reflection in the mirrored panel as the lift climbs, noting how he doesn’t sway or even brace.

“You going to hand over the information you just drained from the vault?” he asks, voice rough and gravel-deep in a way that would have me swooning if I didn’t have a boyfriend waiting back in Ireland.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I flash him a bright, fake smile. “I’m maintenance. Fixed a server. Heading home for dinner.”

The first alarm hits, the light blinks, and the elevator judders.

“Shit,” I mutter, poking the buttons over and over.

A light bursts on from the corner and bathes the elevator in red. The lift stutters again, then continues upward at a slower pace, grinding like it’s thinking about stopping altogether.

His smile doesn’t die. Rather it dimples his cheek and spreads as if he has all the time in the world, and I’m the one on the clock.

“It’s a long way home to Ireland, Tierney Blake, and I’m not letting you out of this elevator until you hand it over.”