Chapter 4
brONX
Walking into Kingston's office with bloodstains on my shirt and claw marks on my face probably isn't the best way to say,“I told you so.” But nobody ever accused me of having good timing.
The scratches sting every time I move my jaw. I drag my thumb across the raised lines where her nails broke skin, replaying the way she struggled against me, those blue eyes blazing like she wanted to tear me apart with her bare hands.
She nearly did.
I haven't slept. I caught the first flight out of Bucharest after Tierney took off, running on three black coffees and a stale airport sandwich.
Once I landed at JFK International, I took an Uber straight here because the lashing is gonna come one way or another, and I’d rather get it over with before Kingston shows up at my condo to inflict Christ only knows what kind of torture on me.
The space screams class and sophistication…floor to ceiling windows, mahogany, and lots of expensive art that looks like it was created by a kid in kindergarten. It gives off the we’re legitimate businessmen vibe, even though everyone here knows exactly where the bodies are buried.
Kingston sits behind his desk, glaring at me as I push open the door. Our father, Lorenzo, stands by the window, staring at me with a stony look on his worn face.
And Reign stands in a corner with his arms crossed, watching all of us with eyes that never miss a goddamn thing.
The door clicks shut behind me and I brace myself for what I know is coming next.
“You disobeyed a direct order,” Kingston barks. He doesn’t waste time or words. No “How was your flight, Bronx?” Nope, just the knife blade, straight to the throat.
I drop into the chair across from him and sprawl out, my legs stretched in front of me. Screw him if he thinks I’m gonna squirm.
“I made a judgment call,” I say.
“It was a shitty one. You made a goddamn mess of this mission.” He's doing that thing where his voice gets quieter the angrier he gets. Terrifying, if you're not used to it. But I grew up with it, so it’s like water off a duck’s ass for me.
“I told you to stand down. To wait for the team. To let us handle it strategically.”
“Yeah, and while I waited, the girl was downloading intel on us. She would have strolled out of there with God knows how much Viacava intel. Our names, K. Our operations. Everything. Do you get that?”
He leans forward, his eyes shooting flaming daggers in my direction. “And instead, she walked out with all of that plus a head start because you went in half-cocked and let her escape.” Kingston lifts an eyebrow. “So tell me, brother. What exactly did your judgment call accomplish?”
The silence pulls tight.
With a grimace, I pull out my phone and toss it onto his desk. It’s open to the screenshot of Tierney’s face that I grabbed from the security feed before I went in. Dark braid, sharp profile, pale skin lit blue by a monitor she had no business being in front of.
“Tierney Blake,” I say. “Twenty-six years old. Daughter of Declan Blake, head of the Blake family out of Belfast. They’re a mid-level Irish organization.
They deal in small-time drugs, protection rackets, and weapons trafficking across Eastern Europe.
Declan's been trying to rise as a global power for years but keeps failing. Dad turned down his alliance request a while back.”
Lorenzo nods. “They weren't worth the trouble. Small fish.”
“Small fish with big goals,” I counter. “And now the daughter has intel that could bury us.”
Kingston picks up my phone and studies the photo. His jaw tenses and he looks up at me. “What did she take?”
“I tracked her movements to the main server room. She must have taken enough to outweigh the risk of walking into the Blood Vault. I watched her run a bulk download before I engaged.”
“Before you engaged and lost her,” Kingston says, because he's a prick like that.
Reign pushes off the wall. “Do we know what she was actually there for? Seems like a hell of a risk for a small-time crime organization to hit the Tribunal's vault. Why us and not the other shady bastards they’re working with?”
This is the part that's been chewing on my brain since Bucharest.
“She wasn't there for us,” I say. “It was something to do with her brother.”
They all snap to attention. Especially Dad.
“Connor Blake’s a twenty-two year-old, history student in Dublin.
A bookish nerd who’s not involved in the family business.
According to what I dug up, the Tribunal approached Declan a few weeks ago with footage of Connor killing some guy.
Now they're using it as leverage against the family. I’m not sure what they want but if Declan doesn’t agree to it, the kid will either face time or be found hanged from a bridge. ”
“How do you know she was sent to destroy it? That she wasn’t there for some other reason?” Kingston asks.
“Because she told me herself.”
Kingston’s brows pull together. “You had time to chat?”
“Interogate, K… when I had her back against the wall, she blurted it out. Everything I've dug up in my research since then confirms it.”
I lean forward, my elbows on my knees. “She wasn't in that vault to drag us down. She was in there trying to save her brother's neck. But, she must’ve failed and had to improvise by downloading whatever she could reach, which just so happened to be Viacava files.”
Reign nods slowly.
“Family,” he says in a somber voice. “People do desperate shit for their family.”
They’re not just words, though. I know my brother well enough to understand there’s something behind them, but I don't have time to unpack that right now. So I file it away for later because Reign doesn't say shit like that out loud without a reason.
“I don’t give a fuck about her brother,” Kingston says, slamming his hand on the desk. “Declan Blake is sitting in Belfast right now with enough information to destroy us. Which means the clock is ticking.”
Dad steps away from the window. “We have three options. Retrieve it. Destroy it. Or destroy them.”
“Agreed,” Kingston says, picking up a glass and sloshing the amber-colored liquid around. “But we can't send a team into Belfast without starting a war with every Irish family on the continent. We need a better approach. A cleaner one.”
I look between them and sit up straight in the chair. “Let me handle it.”
Kingston rolls his eyes. “You? The one who let her escape instead of putting a fucking a bullet in her chest.”
“Yeah, K, me. I'm the one who owes it to our family.”
I grip the arms of the chair.
“Look, I saw the woman's face and know how she works. She fights like Declan trained her from the fucking womb. To pull that job off makes her smart. Smarter than anyone he should have access to.” I hold his gaze.
“Let me find her. Get close. Figure out what Declan's planning before he does it. I’ll take back control.”
“How are you going to do that?” Kingston asks before taking a long gulp of his drink.
My lips lift into a slow smile. “I have my methods.”
“Jesus Christ.” Reign snorts from his spot in the room. “That means he's going to try to seduce her.”
I lance him with a glare. “No, smartass. It means I'm going to do whatever it takes to protect my family.”
Kingston looks at me for a long minute, and I won’t look away. I’m not the strategist in our family, or even a planner like Reign, but I understand people. And I always get them to see things my way.
Kingston’s considering the options in silence, weighing my fuck-up against my usefulness. My recklessness against the fact I'm the only person in this room who's actually faced the target.
I can read him like an instruction manual. My brother hates the odds being stacked against us and knows we’re all fucked if I fail.
He should have a little more faith.
“Fine.” He bites out, as if he's handing me a loaded gun and hoping I don't shoot myself. “But you report to me every step of the way. No more going rogue, or taking shit into your own hands. This is your chance to clean up the mess you made, Bronx. Don't fuck it up.”
“I won't.” I stand and fix my cuffs. “Are we done here? I need sleep.”
“Yeah.... And Bronx?” Kingston waits until I'm at the door with my hand reaching to open it. "If the woman becomes a liability we can't manage, or if she or her father make a move against us, you do what needs to be done. Are we clear?"
I walk out and bring a hand to the back of my neck, squeezing the tension in it.
“Yep,” I say over my shoulder. “No one fucks with us, K.”
It's past midnight and all I’ve done is toss around on the mattress.
My Tribeca penthouse is semi-dark except for the glow of my laptop screen. I didn’t bother pulling the drapes to cover the floor-to-ceiling windows in my suite. There’s something calming about the Hudson glittering black and gold below.
A few empty whiskey bottles sit on the dresser, books, magazines and clothes litter the floor, and my worn out punching bag hangs in the corner.
I should pop a sleeping pill and sleep, but my mind is lit and all the caffeine I’ve consumed isn’t helping. The smart play would be six hours of solid rest and come back with fresh eyes and a clear head.
Instead, I'm pouring my third whisky and buried in everything I can find on Tierney Blake.
There’s not much to read up on, which is impressive. She's been scrubbed from almost every database that matters. There’s no social media footprint, no criminal record, and minimal government documentation.
On paper, she barely exists.
But the underworld has a longer memory than any server.
I pull strings, calling in favors from hackers who owe me, and intelligence contacts who know better than to ask why. The picture of Tierney Blake builds in pieces through whispers, secondhand accounts, and intercepted communications.
Evidently, she's her father's secret weapon. Some called her a retrieval specialist, pretty much a ghost who goes where others can't and comes back with whatever Declan needs.