Chapter 26
brONX
This conversation with Connor is gonna get fucking ugly, and I need to do it when Tierney’s not around. She’s too protective for her own good, and she’ll battle me to the death even with the proof I have.
So after lunch, I wait for her to work on some project with Livvie. Then I slip out of the penthouse and take the elevator down to Connor’s floor.
The way she looked at me in the shower this morning keeps looping through my mind. Not the heat, not the desire - I’m used to that. It was the trust.
Complete, unguarded trust as she let me wash her hair, as she leaned into me like I was her comfort instead of the enemy.
For the first time since I’ve known her, she wasn’t fighting me or herself. She was just...there. With me. In the gym, watching me work the heavy bag with that soft smile she thought I couldn’t see.
The way she followed me to the pull-up bar, pretending it was competition when really it was connection.
I scrub a hand down the front of my face.
Now I’m about to blow up her world.
Connor opens the door on the second knock, surprised to see me.
“Bronx? Everything okay?”
“We need to talk.”
“Sure.” He steps aside to let me in then peers into the hallway behind me. “Is Tierney with you?”
“No. She doesn’t know I’m here.”
Something flickers in his expression at that. Wariness. Like he knows this isn’t a social visit.
“What’s up?”
I pull out my phone, open the photos from yesterday, and hand it to him. “Want to explain this to me?”
Connor stares at the screen showing him sitting across from Liam O’Rourke. I watch his face carefully - the initial shock, then recognition, then what looks like defeat.
“Fuck,” he whispers.
“You know I know who Liam O’Rourke is, right? He’s one of your father’s most trusted men. So tell me why you were meeting with him here in the city.”
Connor hands me back the phone, his face pale. “You don’t understand—“
I grab him by the shirt and push him against the wall. “Then make me understand. Because right now it looks like you’ve been lying to everyone, including your sister.”
“Let go of me!”
“Your sister thinks she married me to protect you from some Tribunal threat. She’s upstairs right now, happy and trusting, while you’re having secret meetings with Declan’s people. So start talking.”
Connor turns away, raking a hand through his hair. “I never wanted any of this.”
I release him but don’t step back. “Any of what?”
Connor slides down the wall until he’s sitting on the floor, his head in his hands. “I was studying at the University of Dublin, working toward my literature degree. Then Da came to me six months ago and told me my life was about to change.”
“How?”
“The Murphy family. Da owed them money - a lot of money. Two million euros.” Connor looks up at me, his eyes haunted by fear. “And when he couldn’t pay, they said they’d kill both of us. Me and Tierney. As payment for his debt.”
A cold sensation twists my stomach. This isn’t about Connor being a criminal. This is about him being collateral damage.
“And Declan had a plan?”
“The marriage arrangement. But it required getting leverage first.” Connor’s voice is barely a whisper.
“The vault job wasn’t about some Tribunal threat.
It was to get intelligence on a family in the Tribunal network so Da could propose a marriage deal from a position of strength.
He’d offer Tierney and in exchange, get protection from the family because of the intel he had on them. ”
The pieces click together in a way that makes me sick. “The Tribunal story was bullshit.”
“Complete fabrication. Da needed Tierney to think she was protecting me from something real so she’d go through with the vault break-in and the marriage.”
I think about Tierney that night in Bucharest, the fury in her eyes when she thought I was just another criminal trying to control her life. How wrong she was, and how fucking right, too.
“And you’ve known this whole time.”
“What was I supposed to do?” Connor’s voice cracks. “Tell her the truth and watch her flee the country? Let the Murphys hunt us both down because our father couldn’t pay his debts?”
“So you came to New York to help sell the lie.”
“I came to New York because those bastards were already looking for me in Dublin. Da said I’d be safer here while the marriage got established.
” Connor wipes his eyes. “But yeah, I was also supposed to make sure Tierney believed the cover story. And the cover of me being enrolled in uni here made sense.”
Jesus, the manipulation runs deeper than I thought. Not just Tierney being used, but Connor being forced into complicity.
“What was the meeting with O’Rourke about?”
“Checking in. Making sure the arrangement’s holding, that your family’s agreeable to the situation, that Tierney...” He trails off.
“That Tierney what?”
“That she’s adapting. That she’s not going to try to leave.” Connor looks up at me. “Liam wanted to know if the marriage was working, if she seemed happy.”
I think about this morning again. The way Tierney laughed in the gym, genuine and carefree. Such a huge turnaround from the girl who came here weeks ago to be forced into a marriage.
How she didn’t pull away when I carried her to the shower, didn’t fight me when I washed her hair. The admission that we’d moved past hate.
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth. That she’s falling for you.” Connor’s voice drops. “That for the first time since this nightmare started, she actually seems happy.”
The admission hits me like a brick to the chest. Because I’ve been falling for her too, and now I just got confirmation that our entire relationship is built on her father’s manipulation, lies, and betrayal.
“She has no idea any of this was orchestrated.”
Connor shakes his head. “None. She thinks she cracked that vault to protect me from the Tribunal. She has no clue Da was using the intelligence to leverage this exact marriage arrangement.”
“And you were just going to let her keep believing the lie?”
“I was going to let her be happy!” Connor yells. “Do you see her face when she talks about you now? Do you see how she’s changed? For the first time in her life, Tierney Blake isn’t angry at the world. She’s safe, she’s cared for, and she’s with a man who actually...” He stops.
“Who actually what?”
“Who actually loves her. Even if you won’t admit it yet.”
He’s not wrong. Somewhere along the way, protecting Tierney became more important than the mission. Her happiness became more important than my family’s expectations.
“She deserves the truth,” I say.
“The truth will destroy her. She’ll blame herself for being manipulated, blame you for being part of it, blame me for lying to her.” Connor scrambles to his feet. “And then what? She leaves, the marriage falls apart, and the Murphys comes for both of us anyway?”
“You can’t build a life on lies.”
“Can’t you? Look at her this morning. Tell me she wasn’t the happiest you’ve ever seen her.”
He’s right, and that makes it worse. This morning, Tierney looked at me like I was her choice, not her obligation. Like maybe we could have something real.
Connor nods, looking like a man facing execution. “Will you try to make her understand that I was trying to protect her?”
“I’ll try. But Tierney doesn’t forgive betrayal easily. And this is going to feel like the worst kind of betrayal. From both of us, and your da.”
I head for the door, my chest tight with dread. The same woman who looked at me this morning like I might be worth loving is going to learn that her entire life has been built on lies.
THREE HOURS LATER
Kingston weaves through darkened neighborhoods of huge estate homes out on eastern Long Island. A gated mansion finally comes into view. He lowers his window and stabs the button next to the intercom to announce our arrival.
The black wrought iron gates creak open. We pull into a driveway that leads to the mansion at the bottom of the hill. The place is dark except for a few lights on the main floor.
The front door opens before we have a chance to knock. A man in a dark suit wordlessly leads my brothers and I toward a large drawing room where two other men sit.
“Gentlemen,” the lead Tribunal member says, his Italian accent thick. “Thank you for coming. Kingston, it’s been awhile.”
Kingston shakes their hands and nods, a tight smile on his lips. I’m sure he’s thinking it hasn’t been long enough. Reign and I shake hands with him after Kingston.
“My name is Carlo Rossi and this is my associate, Giovanni Fiorentino. And we set this meeting to clarify our position on the Blake situation,” Carlo says.
He and Giovanni sit next to one another, leaving us to sit across from them.
My stomach clenches as I settle into the chair. “Which is?”
“We were never actively pursuing Connor Blake. The boy witnessed something minor, but nothing that warranted our intervention. Hardly worth our time,” Giovanni says.
Reign leans forward. “Then why all the threats? The surveillance?”
“What threats?” Confusion twists Carlo’s expression. “We’ve made no moves against the Blake family. Why would we waste resources on such small players?”
“But Declan Blake said—”
“Declan Blake says many things. Most of them are lies.” Giovanni shrugs. “If he told you we were hunting his son, he was mistaken. Or lying.”
The pieces start falling into place with sickening clarity that I don’t want to acknowledge. “You’re saying there was never a Tribunal threat?”
“Correct. Though we understand there was a vault incident some time ago. Our vault.”
Kingston’s jaw tightens. “And?”
“And we’re curious about what Declan Blake plans to do with the intelligence his daughter obtained. It must have been quite valuable to risk such an operation.”
“He’s using it as leverage,” I say. “For protection.”
“Ah. So he fabricated a threat from us to motivate the theft, then used the stolen intelligence to negotiate actual protection. Clever.”
“His daughter had no idea,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Not our concern. But we’ll be watching to see how this plays out, especially now that you are key players seeing as how one of you has married the Blake girl.
” Carlo stands. “Out of respect, we want you to know that any threats the Blake family faces, they don’t come from us.
We have bigger concerns than petty Irish criminals. ”
The meeting ends there, but the damage is done. Everything we believed was a lie. Tierney broke into their vault based on a bullshit threat, and Declan is still holding that intelligence over our heads.
When we leave, Kingston is bubbling with anger. “Declan Blake played us like fucking morons.”
I pull out my phone and text Connor.
Is Tierney with you?
His response comes quickly.
She’s in the gym then we're having dinner together after. Why?
“Let’s go to the penthouse,” I tell them. “We need to figure out how to handle this without Tierney finding out yet.”
I text him back.
Don’t mention anything we talked about with her.
Got it.
I lean back against the seat, a deep sigh shuddering my chest.
The Murphys want Declan's blood money - two million euros he doesn't have. And they've threatened to kill both his children as payment.
Which means they'll come for Tierney.
My wife. And that makes this a Viacava problem now.
Kingston's going to want answers about how we protect Tierney without starting a war with an Irish crime family over Declan Blake's debts.
The woman who laughed in my arms this morning just became a target.
And she has no fucking clue.