Chapter 3
TIERNEY
“What the fuck?” I hiss, thumping the steering wheel.
My foot stays steady on the gas, not needing to draw attention to myself in a foreign country.
I glance in the rearview mirror and clock the red bruise blooming on my forehead, the result of head-butting Bronx Viacava.
The second I knocked his cap off, I recognized the smug bastard’s face from his brother’s wedding photos. I’ve never paid much attention to their family. My knowledge of them is basic at best.
They weren’t in my orbit, and I sure as hell wasn’t in theirs.
Until now.
It almost feels like the universe planted a Viacava directly in my path as a personal fuck-you for failing the mission.
I groan and shift gears, taking a right, then another, following the route back toward my hotel.
Rather than park close by, I abandon the getaway truck a few blocks away and stick close to the buildings, where my dark clothes blend into the shadows.
My head pounds, and my pulse still hasn’t settled after going one-on-one with a man trained to fight the same way I do.
He stayed focused and disciplined for a few minutes until he wasn’t.
The satisfaction that follows is brief. I bite down on my bottom lip to stop myself from visibly gloating as I leave the darkness and step into the bright hotel lobby.
I keep my head down and head straight for the stairs, taking them two at a time until I reach room 111 on the third floor.
Every job starts with checking into a room with angel numbers for luck, a habit I’ll never let die.
Even though I couldn’t find the footage of Connor, I didn’t come away empty-handed. I just hope my da sees it that way and understands that the security in that place was next level.
I strip off my tactical gear, loosen the braid in my hair, and sit on the edge of the bed, reaching for the small pocket where I secured the USB.
For such a tiny little device, it sure as hell carries a lot of weight. I curl my fingers around it and close my eyes, hating how the botched job knots tight in my chest.
I did everything right—got inside, distracted the guards—but when it came to the crunch, the damn files weren’t there.
Before I put on normal clothes, I walk to the wardrobe and punch a code into the safe where I left my laptop and a burner phone.
After a long exhale, I call my da and press my back against the wall as it rings.
“Did you get it?” he answers, no formalities or questions about my well-being.
I close my eyes and force out a response. “No. The encryption was too deep. I couldn’t locate it in time.”
A heavy silence stretches, though I know better than to fill it with apologies or excuses.
“You had one job to do. And you failed,” he says, his tone flat and controlled, weighted with tight disappointment.
“Da, the files weren’t where you said they’d be. They’re buried deeper than I had time—”
“You trained to overcome problems, not to drop them at my feet as excuses.”
“I tried,” I say, doing my best to keep it together. “I did everything you asked. But the intel you had was wrong, or they moved it, or—”
“Or I should have sent someone more capable.”
The words land like a slap.
I swallow the hurt and bury it deep, where he won’t hear it and decide I’m weak.
“I couldn’t get what we wanted, but I downloaded other material. A lot of intel on another family.”
“Who?”
“The Viacavas. The Italian family who hit the papers with the wedding of the year a few months ago.”
The line goes silent until I hear my da spark a lighter, the familiar hiss coming down the line as he scorches the tip of his cigar.
“The Viacavas indeed?” The way he says the name makes my stomach tighten.
“Yeah. I don’t know exactly what I downloaded, but it’s substantial. Enough to—”
“Send me the files immediately.” His tone is urgent, though warmer than the icy displeasure from seconds ago.
“And what about Connor?” I ask. “We need to find another way to get the footage—”
“Send me the files, Tierney. Now,” he repeats, firmer this time. “I’ll review them and decide what comes next.”
“Okay. Hold on. I’ll do it now.”
I connect the USB drive to the phone and start a secure transfer, routing the files through an encrypted relay.
They stream across continents, from a hotel room in Romania to my father’s office in Belfast.
“It’s done.” I disconnect everything and grab the duffel bag at my feet. “You have it.”
“Good girl.” His praise settles over me like weak sunshine on a wintry day. “Get on the plane. We’ll talk when you’re home.”
When the line goes dead, I empty the safe, pull clean jeans and a hoody from the duffle bag, and get dressed.
Everything else gets packed away before I order an Uber.
The drive to the airstrip gives me time to retrace my steps and pick apart my performance, every decision replaying on a loop I can’t shut off.
Maybe if I’d had a few more minutes, I could have dug deeper, pushed harder, pulled Connor’s mistake out of the vault before it locked me out.
That lack of time burns into me as regret.
Still angry with myself, I board the jet, pull up my hood, and tell the flight attendant I won’t need anything during the flight.
As soon as I get comfy, my phone buzzes with a message.
Damien: Call me if you’re still awake.
I let my head fall back against the headrest and sigh. The last thing I want right now is conversation, especially when I can’t explain why I flew to Bucharest in the first place.
Damien is the white knight in my dark world. He knows who my father is, and he knows I work for him, but he doesn’t know what I do, or how violent I can be when I’m pushed.
Bronx flashes through my mind then, all dark hazel eyes and that smug, knowing smirk of his. I shake my head and push the thought of him away. That’s a man I wouldn’t even touch with a long stick, or anyone else’s stick.
Give me the comfort and reliability of Damien any day.
“Hey…” I say when he answers. “Why are you up so late?”
“Missing you,” he says. “Did you get the deal done, or whatever it was your da sent you there for?”
I exhale through my nose. “It didn’t go as planned, and he told me to come home.”
“Really? When are you coming back?”
“I’ve boarded his jet already.”
“Come straight to my place,” he says. “You’ve been gone far too long this time. Is your da pissed at you?”
I look out at the runway lights and let the heaviness settle behind my ribs.
“He was, and then I threw the old man a meaty bone, and he’s chewing on it as we speak,” I say, smiling despite myself.
“You want to talk about it, Tier?”
“It’s safer if I don’t,” I sigh. “That’s what we agreed, right?”
“Will it always be like this… secret trips and sealed lips?” he asks.
While I fly across continents with ammunition tucked into false linings and weapons I’m not supposed to own, Damien spends his evenings painting Warhammer figures for tabletop battles that never draw real blood.
“I haven’t kept the truth from you once, Damien,” I say. “You knew where I went and I phoned you every night. I don’t need to share the details of why he sent me there.”
He sighs, and my stomach drops.
“Okay. I get it. I’ll leave the key under the plant pot at the front door for you.”
I groan at that. “No. That’s the first place someone looks when they want to break in.”
“Seriously, no one wants to walk in on me hunched over my desk with my magnifying visor on,” he chuckles. “You watch too many crime documentaries.”
“Put a spare key in a food bag and bury it in the flowerbed beside the rear tire of your car,” I tell him. “I’ll check in with my da first, and then we’ll spend the weekend together.”
“Okay.” He makes a sound like he’s stretching. “Love you.”
“Lock up properly,” I say. “I’ll be there soon.”
I end the call and toss the phone onto the seat beside me. There’s a niggle in the back of my mind, a problem simmering under the surface, waiting to cause a heap of trouble.
Bronx Viacava knew my name.
At this point, he probably knows my shoe size and what school I went to, which is more than I know about him, and that’s a problem I can’t ignore.
I pull out my laptop, fire it up, and connect to the plane’s Wi-Fi. Typing his name into the search bar brings up a handful of unimportant facts.
The good looking Italian lives in New York. He’s the wild second son. The one the FBI can’t pin down because he’s smart enough not to leave a trail and apparently he has a reputation for being unpredictable.
On paper, he comes across as money and muscle with a rebellious streak.
But when I pull up the recent photos from his brother’s wedding, my pulse kicks.
He could almost pass for refined in that bespoke suit and white-toothed smile, until you look past the surface and catch the warning in his eyes, the sense that the polish is just another layer he knows how to wear.
A man like him pulls the trigger first and asks questions later, and yet that’s not what happened inside the vault.
Bronx had more than one chance to kill me, and instead he took out a guard to clear my escape.
That was a choice. Or a well-planned trap.
I close my eyes, hating how my veins heat when I remember the rough scrape of his stubble, the way our faces hovered inches apart, close enough to notice his warm breath, close enough for trouble to ignite.
Shaking it off, I close the laptop and slide it back into my bag, but the Bronx problem doesn’t go with it.
There’s no doubt that the Viacavas will contact my da while I’m in the air.
The jet climbs into the night sky, and I let my tense muscles relax, telling myself I’ll rest.
Every time my eyes close, my mind replays codes, corridors, red lights and burning hazel eyes that refuse to stay filed away as a threat.
Hours pass, and the pilot murmurs over the intercom, announcing our descent. When we touch down at the city airport, dawn breaks, painting the sky in shades of gray and silver.
A car waits on the tarmac with a driver rather than my father. The way it always is. I sit in the back alone, not speaking.
Eventually, the car pulls through the iron gates and crunches up the gravel drive. The Blake family home rises ahead of us with its red brick, ivy-dappled walls, and my da waiting on the front steps.
He never waits for me, and the fact his expression suggests he’s somewhat pleased, makes my stomach tighten.
I climb out of the car and offer him a respectful smile. “You’re outside early, Da. Are you going somewhere?”
“Tierney.” He closes the distance, and before I can brace for it, he pulls me into a brief embrace. “You did well, honeybee.”
My thoughts scatter instantly. He only uses that name when he’s pleased, when something has gone exactly the way he wanted it to.
“But I didn’t get the evidence they have on Connor,” I say quickly, the words tripping over each other as they rush out. I clamp my jaw shut when my bottom lip threatens to give me away.
“No… you didn’t, but we won’t dwell on that part.” He pulls back, his hands settling on my shoulders as he looks at me and winks. “You got something better. You brought me pure gold.”
“What do we have on the Viacava’s—”
“What do we not have on them?” The corners of his eyes crease as a broad smile pulls across his face. “They’re bad men who’ve done bad things and we have their secrets in our pocket.”
“But they know it was me, Da,” I tell him. “Bronx was there himself. We went head to head. The Viacavas know what I did.”
“Oh, don’t worry. They will get to know you properly very soon.”
“What are you planning? We need to protect Connor?”
“Connor will be fine,” he says, patting my arm. “I have a plan. Trust me, honeybee. This will be my best move yet.”