Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Cavin
“Y’alright, brother?” My cousin Donovan eyes me curiously.
I shake my head. “Need to get the fuck out of here.”
“Right, then. I’ll notify the front,” he says with a chin lift.
I slam my office door hard enough to rattle the frame. My hands are shaking—not with fear, never with fear. It’s something far more dangerous coursing through me, something that needs blood and violence to settle.
That girl. That fuckin’ girl.
That beautiful, exhausting, infuriating fucking woman.
I stalk down the back corridor, and my crew melts out of my way like they can smell what’s coming off me. Good lads. They know better than to get in my path when I’m like this.
The bass thrums through the walls, but it’s not enough—not enough to burn off whatever the fuck burns inside me. My skin feels too tight, my blood too hot.
“Sir, do you need anything?” one of the bouncers asks, but I shake my head.
Need anything? Like fuck, I need something.
Her.
But I can’t have her, not yet.
I need the ring.
The thought comes to me so quickly, so naturally, it surprises me. But not now. I can’t. I haven’t been in a ring since before my time in prison.
I shove through the doors into the main club. The crowd’s thick tonight, bodies pressed together, the air hazy with smoke and sweat and spilled drink. But it’s beautiful, and it’s mine. I love it here. It’s my second home.
My feet carry me with purpose, straight toward the exit that takes me to my car so I can pay the fucking tribute.
Not only do I hate being strung by the bollocks, but I could still be here, still have more time with Erin.
I owe her a punishment for coming here, and goddamn it, I’m aching to fuckin’ administer it.
But here we go again. The goddamn monthly tribute, and I’m not even one step closer to discovering who demands it.
I get to my car, my hand on the door handle, then pause. A prickle of awareness skates across my neck.
Something’s out of place. Something’s wrong…
Is this where I parked?
I frown, pulling out my phone. “Declan,” I say when he answers. “Check the security footage, will ye? I know where I parked my car, and it looks like it’s been moved.”
“It’s been moved?” he says. “Jaysus.”
I gesture to a valet who’s nearby.
“Here, I want you to take my car, pull it up to the front,” I tell him, handing over the keys. “I want to go through security footage first.”
“Yes, sir.”
I go back to the phone and head to the entrance of the club. “What do you see on the footage?”
“Nothing,” Declan says. “It’s too dark. What the hell? It looks as if—”
BOOM!
I fall to the ground on instinct as glass splinters. The car goes up in flames.
“Christ!” I gasp, staring at the inferno.
Someone bombed my goddamn car.
The door to the club flies open, and Declan runs toward me, his face pale in the orange glow of the flames.
“The valet—” I start, but I can already see him. Or what’s left of him. He was at the other end of the lot, standing by my car when it went up. He’s fucking toast now—dead. Burned to a crisp.
The acrid smell of burning fuel and flesh hits me, and my stomach turns. That could’ve been me. I was seconds away from getting in that fuckin’ car.
I look at my watch. Ten goddamn minutes. I have ten goddamn minutes to pay this tribute.
Of course. This is what they do. Every single fuckin’ month, something comes up. Something stops me from paying it.
This was no accident.
“Goddamn it!” I slam my fist on the hood of another car. “You have to take care of this. I parked it myself tonight. Who was the valet?” The one whose family we need to visit and pay our respects to now that he’s gone.
“I don’t know his name,” Declan says, shaking his head, his voice trembling as security pours out of the club. “He just got here, and I—”
His eyes are glassy as he scrubs a hand across his face. That was one of ours. One of my men, and it should’ve been me. And he died because I parked there.
Because someone wants me dead bad enough to kill innocents. If I’d been the one to go up in flames… there’d be no wedding, and that tribute would sit unpaid.
My cousins pour out of the club, taking in the smoking car, with curses and promises of revenge.
“I sent him over,” Donovan says, walking up with his hands in his pockets. His face is stricken, pale eyes wide. “Jaysus, Cavin, I sent him to get your car. I didn’t realize you had parked it yourself. I told him you'd be wanting to leave soon. Fuck!”
He runs his hands through his hair. “That should've been—I almost went myself, but I thought—”
“It's not your fault,” I tell him, even as my mind races.
“Aye, well, when we find out, they'll wish they didn't,” Declan says darkly.
Donovan laughs, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. “Just saying—whoever it is, they know our movements. Know our people. Has to be someone close, doesn't it?”
I look at the time.
“Jesus Christ.” My mind races. “I have to go.”
“Cavin,” Declan snaps, “where the fuck are you going now?”
“I can’t tell you,” I tell him. “Not now. You have to trust me.”
“Don’t I trust ye?” he says, shaking his head. “Fuck. Go now. Go.”
“I’ve got to go. I need to take one of the cars—” We’ve got backups used for escorts and the like.
“Goddamn it, you’re gonna tell me what this is,” he growls under his breath, even as he tosses me a fob on a ring.
“I promise. As soon as I know there won’t be blowback, I’ll tell you.”
I get in the car and drive like the devil. Five hundred thousand euros. Every fucking month. The numbers burn through my mind. And I don't even know who the bastard is bleeding us dry.
I pay the goddamn tribute at 11:58 p.m. I slam the fucking envelope in the fucking slot, with two minutes to spare, and scream into the night, “MILLIONS!” like a goddamn werewolf fighting a full moon.
My family's safe for another month.
My bollocks are in a sling for another month.
I’m draining us dry, bit by bit. Making moves I never wanted to make. Getting into bed with people I shouldn't have. All to keep the cash flowing to some faceless fuck who's got us by the throat.
Christ, but I'd have loved to take it out on Erin's disobedient, willful little arse.
When it’s done, I call Declan. “Okay,” I say. “I’m sorted.”
“Right,” he says. “I instructed the guards to take Erin and her sister home and closed the club for the night.”
“I owe you. Thank you.”
I get back in the car, call Seamus, and drive—my mind racing the entire time.
Seamus answers right away. “What the hell happened?”
I fill him in.
“Somebody bombed your car. We have nothing recorded. This is insanity, these random attacks once a month. Seems like clockwork.”
Yes, yes, it does.
I know exactly why. There’s someone who doesn’t want me to pay that goddamn tribute.
“Is everybody else safe?” I ask Seamus.
“Aye,” he says.
He doesn’t know that Erin was there tonight. I don’t want him to know. I don’t want anybody to know yet.
“Good,” I say. “We need to up the security at the club.”
“Agreed,” he says.
All the more reason for my betrothed to be nowhere fucking near it.
I find myself taking a route I haven’t driven in goddamn years. My hands turn the wheel without conscious thought, guiding me with purpose toward the one place that’s always made sense.
The ring.
I can’t get it out of my mind. I need to get in the ring. I crave it like a man craves drink.
I park Declan’s car and send a quick message to the group chat. I’ll be back. They’ll know where I am by now.
I need to be here.
This used to be my second home, before the club became that.
When I was a lad, barely tall enough to see over the ropes, Malachy brought me to the gym to train.
Taught me how to fight properly, not the scrappy street brawling every kid from Ballyhock knew, but real fighting.
Technique. Discipline. How to read a man’s body before he even knows what he’s going to do himself.
It always felt perfectly right, being here. More right than school ever did, more right than sitting in a pew at Mass, listening to Father O’Brien drone on about sin and redemption.
In the ring, everything made sense. There were rules, but they were simple. Hit harder. Move faster. Don’t go down.
The rest of life was complicated. This never was.
Conversations die as I pass through the crowd. I hear the whispers, feel the eyes tracking me.
“Is that—?”
“No fucking way.”
“Cavin McCarthy.”
“Thought he was done with all that.”
“Look at him. Does he look done?”
“He hasn’t fought since—”
I don’t acknowledge any of it. My focus narrows to a single point: the ring.
It smells familiar—sweat, blood, desperation, victory. A ref sits by the bar, drinking. The bartender materializes at my elbow with a shot glass. Jameson, neat.
I take it without looking, throw it back, and slam the glass down on the nearest table. The whiskey fucking burns, but it’s not enough.
I reach the ring’s edge and grab the top rope, vaulting myself up and through. The crowd goes quiet.
The canvas is stained with old blood, some of it probably mine. My boots hit solid, and I straighten, then roll my shoulders.
I begin to unbutton my shirt, one button at a time, and the crowd falls to a whisper.
I shrug it off, grab a fistful of my undershirt, and yank it over my head.
The roar is instantaneous.
The entire fuckin’ club goes wild. The sound hits me like a physical thing—screaming, stamping, fists pounding on tables.
I toss my shirt outside the ropes, and it disappears into grasping hands.
I turn in a slow circle, bouncing on the balls of my feet to warm up. They can all see it now with the overhead lighting, the scars mapping my ribs, my back. Evidence of who I am, what I’ve done, what I’ve survived.
Prison didn’t soften me—it honed me into something sharper, meaner.
I crack my knuckles and roll my neck. The familiar pre-fight ritual settles over me like a second skin.
“Well, fuck me.”
A low growl of a voice, familiar and unwelcome, cuts through the noise. I know it before I look.