Chapter 22 - Liam
Liam
The needle on my speedometer is buried past a hundred and twenty. Every red light is a suggestion I ignore; every siren behind me is a ghost I’ve already outrun.
My ribs are screaming, the bruises from a week ago feeling like fresh fractures with every jolt, but I welcome the pain. It’s grounded. It’s real. It’s nothing compared to the soul-consuming wrath incinerating my veins.
They took her.
They reached into my world—the world I tried to build for her—and they plucked her out of it like a goddamn prize. They took her to the world I tried to protect her from.
Eamon. Finn.
And whichever nameless shadow they’re bowing to.
I’ll rain down a hellfire on them all. I’ll make the warehouse explosion seem like a birthday candle.
This isn’t business anymore. This isn’t about evolution, sanitization, or the crown.
This is about my goddess, who taught a monster how to be a man—and tonight, for her, I will remember exactly how to be a monster again.
Not a single drop of blood will touch her. I will drown them in their own and carry her above the red tide.
I grab my burner and hit the speed dial I never thought I’d use.
Claire Ryan picks up on the second ring.
“Liam,” she says, steady and cold as a winter morning in the Catskills. “I just learned the perimeter at the manor has been breached.”
“They took her, Claire,” I growl, taking a corner on two wheels, the scent of burning rubber filling my nostrils. “Eamon was there. They’ve taken her to my skyscraper in Manhattan. The penthouse.”
Silence. Not of shock, but calculation. I can almost hear the gears of the old agent turning.
“The FBI handles kidnapping cases, Liam.” Supreme authority in her voice. “Especially those involving high-profile targets and…known criminal elements.”
“I don’t need the Bureaus, Claire. I need her back.”
“You need both,” she counters. “I’m reaching out to my contacts at the New York Field Office.
If your building is as secure as you’ve said, they’ll need a federal warrant to breach without starting a domestic war.
I’ll have a tactical team on standby at the perimeter in three hours.
They’ll be working under ‘official channel’ cover, but the orders will be coming from me. ”
“Three hours is too long,” I snarl. “I’ll be there in one.”
“Liam, don’t be a fool. If you charge in there alone, you’re dead or captured, too, and she becomes leverage.
Let the Bureau provide the distraction. You know that building better than anyone.
Find the back doors. Find the service shafts.
I’ll make sure the red tape is cut before you hit the lobby. ”
“I’m not waiting for red tape, Ms. Ryan,” I spit, the possessive rage roaring blood to my ears.
“Liam,” she warns. “Remember what I told you. If anything happens to my granddaughter…if a single drop of her blood is spilled because you were too reckless—”
“Castrate and dismember, Ms. Ryan,” I finish, focusing on the lights of the city. My grip on the steering wheel tightens, cracking the leather. “I won’t let a drop of blood fall on her head. I’ll drain the city dry first.”
I hang up before she can argue.
Manhattan looms ahead, a jagged skyline of glass and steel. My tower is one of the tallest—a needle of black glass piercing the clouds. It’s my pride. My fortress. And right now, it’s a cage for the only thing in this world I care about.
I know every inch of this skyscraper. I designed the security protocols myself. I know the gaps in the sensor sweeps, the blind spots in the cameras, and the private service elevator, which only responds to a single thumbprint.
Mine.
Parking in an alleyway two blocks over, I grab my tactical vest, two Browning high-power pistols, and a Steyr Aug assault rifle from the passenger seat. Blades in my vest. I don’t need a hit squad. I don’t need a plan.
I have a vow.
I slip through a nondescript door in the side of the building—a delivery entrance which bypasses the lobby entirely. My thumb hits the scanner, triggering the green light.
The elevator ride to the top is a blur of floors and adrenaline. My heart is a drumbeat of vengeance.
I’m coming, Lexie. God help anyone who stands between you and me.
The elevator pings as it reaches the sub-penthouse level. I check my magazine, chamber a round, and step into the shadows.
I’m the Donovan King, and I’m about to show those traitors exactly why my father feared me.
Four stand in the hallway, dressed in five-grand suits and holding submachine guns like they’re toys. Old Guard fossils who should have retired a decade ago.
I don’t give them a chance to speak. Precise, surgical, I fire two shots to the chest, one to the head.
The suppressor makes it sound like a series of heavy coughs in the marble corridor.
I don’t stop to watch them fall. I don’t stop to breathe.
I just kick the double mahogany doors open and step into the light.
The penthouse is silent, save for the soft clink of china from the dining table.
I’m covered in the copper-and-salt spray of the men I just ended. The blood coats my tactical vest and masks my face. I am the monster they always wanted me to be.
But then I see her.
Lexie is pinned to the side of a man who should have drowned in ice and silence. Darragh. My father. He’s alive, and he’s holding my world like she’s a rag doll. His thick arm binds her waist, the other priming a gun to her temple, so casual, my vision turns to slaughter.
“Lexie,” I rasp.
“Liam!” she cries with a dark terror. It levels me.
I take one step forward, my finger tightening on the trigger, but I’m too distracted by the sight of my father. I don’t hear the shadow moving behind me.
CRACK.
Something heavy connects with the side of my head, blinding me with an explosion of white light. My knees buckle. The world tilts, and I’m hitting the floor before I can even register the pain.
Through a haze of gray and the ringing in my ears, I make out the weasel face of Finn O’Malley grinning down at me. He kicks my gun away and then drops a knee into my bruised ribs. I let out a wheezing groan, the air leaving my lungs in a desperate rush.
“Liam, no!” my world shrieks.
“Easy now, boy,” Finn sneers, baring his teeth. “I wouldn’t want to finish ye before the main event.”
He grabs my wrists, and high-grade steel clicks, cuffs locking them. I’m hauled upright and slammed into a heavy dining chair, my arms wrenched back and cuffed to the solid armrests.
Lexie is struggling, chest heaving, limbs writhing as she tries to pull away from my father. “Let him go! You bastard, let him go!”
My head is swimming, blood dripping from the gash in my temple and stinging my eye. I want to tell her it’s okay. I want to tell her I’ll kill them all.
Then, I see it.
She’s thrashing, her silver barrette—the one she’d used to escape her handcuffs in her room—falling from her curls.
It bounces off my father’s knee and lands softly on my lap, hidden in the folds of my dark trousers.
I wrestle, tipping the chair back just enough to slide the barrette, catching it in my fingers.
Finn swings his fist again, and my spine snaps. I taste blood.
I stop fighting the cuffs and let my head hang, my fingers closing around the cold, delicate metal of the barrette.
A low, carnivorous rumble leaves my father’s throat. He cocks his head, staring me down, full of a cold, satisfied hunger.
“You may be clever and cunning, Liam,” he croons and drags his thumb over Lexie’s lower lip. Bile rises in my throat. She jerks away. “But you lack the patience of a true king.”
Hot embers flare in my throat. “Get your filthy hands off her,” I growl.
Darragh just smiles, a slow, terrifying thing. He pulls Lexie closer, forcing her to sit on his lap while he maintains the gun’s pressure against her ribs. He peers at Eamon, who stands by the silver tea service, watching the scene, expression unreadable.
“Now, lad,” Darragh says, leaning back in the chair, tugging Lexie’s hip back. “Let’s discuss your future. The way I see it, you’ve made a right mess of my legacy.”
He pauses, letting the silence weigh on the room.
“Here is what’s going to happen. You have forty-eight hours to transfer every one of those ‘clean’ tech and shipping assets back into liquid cash. The Old Guard is hungry, Liam, and you’ve been starving them.”
Lexie is staring at me, her breaths ragged, her eyes pleading. My fingers still work the lock with the barrette.
“And that’s just the beginning,” Darragh continues, roaming his hand over Lexie’s waist with a disgusting possessiveness.
“You’ll restart the trafficking routes through the ports.
No more morals, no more conscience. And to seal the deal, you’ll marry the daughter of the Dublin Syndicate head.
It’s time we brought some fresh, established blood into this family. ”
“And Lexie?” I glare.
“Elexia stays here.” Darragh cups her cheek. She snaps her teeth, a hiss of pure loathing escaping her. Darragh just chuckles. “She’ll be my personal…florist. Something to keep the house looking pretty. Something to remind me of my son’s failures.”
He leans in closer to her ear, his voice lowering to a tone of pure, unadulterated malice.
“And you should know, Liam…if you refuse, or if you even think about crossing me again…” He glances at Lexie, then back at me. “I’ll ensure her skin meets with nothing but thorns for the rest of her very short life.”
Icy sharp horror curdles my blood.
I lock eyes with my sweet savior. I need her to know. I need her to see the promise in my gaze.
I’m not going to obey. I’m going to finish what I started in the woods all those years ago. And I’m going to make sure a blade is the last thing he ever feels.