CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX #2
Silence. The kind where men are thinking.
"What exactly are you proposing?" Conor leans forward.
"A strike. Coordinated. Every family contributes men. We hit Viktor before he can regroup." I look at the table. "Matty has the intelligence. Locations. Supply routes. Communication channels. We've been building this for weeks."
Matty stands. He moves to the end of the table and lays out papers. Maps. Photographs. Phone records. Everything he's been compiling in silence while the rest of us were putting out fires.
I watch the men in the room study the documents. Watch their expressions shift from skepticism to something else. Something I recognize because I felt it myself the first time Matty showed me what he'd built.
This isn't guesswork. This is the entire Bratva operation in Ireland laid bare by a twenty-four-year-old accountant who everyone thought was too fragile to be in the room.
Conor picks up a photograph. Studies it. Sets it down.
"Friday," he says. "You want to move on Friday."
"Sunday. Viktor knows his source inside our operation just went dark. Every hour we wait is an hour he uses to reposition."
"How many men do you need?"
"From each family? Armed men. As many as you can spare. Ready to move on six hours' notice."
Conor looks at Seamus. Seamus looks at Lorcan. The Brennan brothers glance at each other. Something passes between all of them. The old language of men who've been doing this long enough to know when the tide has turned.
"I want my men under my command," Conor says. "Not taking orders from a Murphy."
"Your men, your command. I coordinate the operation. That's the deal."
More calculation.
"If this goes wrong," Seamus says slowly, "Viktor doesn't just come for you. He comes for all of us."
"He's already coming for all of you." I let that land.
"He's been moving through Ireland systematically, family by family, and the only reason you're all still here is because he hasn't finished yet.
Dillon O'Rourke is in a hospital bed. My house is rubble.
Sunday is your last chance to fight back before Viktor decides you're not worth the effort of keeping alive. "
The room is very quiet.
Conor Reilly looks at me for a long time.
"Sunday." He stands. Extends his hand across the table. "You have my word."
I take his hand. Grip it hard.
Seamus stands next. Then Lorcan. The Brennan brothers nod from across the table.
One by one, they agree.
The farmhouse empties slowly. Cars leaving down the private road, taillights disappearing into the gray afternoon. I stand at the window and watch them go and try to feel something other than the coldness that's kept me upright for weeks.
It doesn't work. The coldness is all there is. And maybe that's all right. Maybe that's what leadership actually looks like. Not inspiration. Not speeches. Just seeing what needs to happen and making it happen, no matter what it costs.
Aoife finds me in the bedroom an hour later. Aidan's spare room, the one with the low ceiling and the view of the fields. I'm sitting on the edge of the bed with my hands on my knees, staring at the wall.
She closes the door behind her.
"How did it go?" she asks.
"They're in. All of them."
She moves closer. Sits beside me. Our shoulders touch, and the warmth of her cuts through something I didn't realize was frozen.
She's quiet for a moment.
"When?" she asks.
"Sunday."
"That's two days."
"Yeah."
"And if it doesn't work?"
I don't answer right away. Because the honest answer is one I'm not sure she wants to hear.
"Then we're out of moves," I say. "Viktor retaliates. Hard. And we spend whatever time we have left trying to survive it."
She turns to face me. Her eyes are red-rimmed from last night. From Reilan. From everything that's happened since she walked into my life and I started ruining hers.
"We could die on Sunday."
It's not a question. I don't treat it like one.
"Yeah. We could."
Her hand finds mine. Her fingers lace through mine and squeeze. I squeeze back.
"I need to tell you something," she says.
I wait.
"When I came here. When my father signed the contract and put my name next to yours and told me this was my life now." She swallows. "I hated you. I hated everything about you. What you represented. What you'd done. What I thought you were."
"I know."
"Let me finish." Her thumb runs along the side of my hand. "I hated you, and I planned for you. I researched you. I made files on your weaknesses. I told myself I was going to survive you, and surviving was all I was willing to aim for."
The corner of my mouth lifts. "Smart."
"I was wrong." Her voice drops. Not weak. Just quiet. The kind of quiet that comes before something real. "I wasn't wrong to be careful. I wasn't wrong to protect myself. But I was wrong about you."
I turn to look at her. She's already looking at me.
"You're not what I expected," she says. "You're better. In ways I didn't know to look for."
Something cracks open in my chest. Something I've been holding shut since long before she came along.
"Aoife."
"I'm not going anywhere." She says it the way she says everything. Direct. No flinching. Looking right at me, so I can't pretend I didn't hear it. "Whatever happens on Sunday. Whatever comes after. I'm here. I choose this. I choose you."
Something shifts in my chest. Something I don't have a word for and don't want to examine too closely, because if I look at it straight on, it might disappear.
I pull her to me. My hand goes to the back of her head, my fingers tangling in her hair, and I press my face against her neck, and I breathe.
"Say it again," I manage.
"I choose you."
I pull back enough to see her face. She's steady. Certain.
"I don't deserve that," I say.
"I know." The ghost of a smile. "I'm giving it to you anyway."
I kiss her. Slow. Not desperate, not frantic. Her mouth opens under mine, and the taste of her floods through me and my hand tightens on her waist hard enough to feel bone.
She pulls me closer, and the kiss deepens, and the room falls away. Just her mouth. Her breathing. The warmth of her body pressed against mine.
"I don't know how to do this," I say against her mouth. "I don't know how to be this."
"You're already doing it." Her forehead against mine. Her breath on my lips. "You've been doing it."
I lay her back on the bed. She pulls me down with her.
This isn't like the dining room. Everything in me slows down. Every touch deliberate. Every second, something I want to keep.
I unbutton her blouse. One button at a time. She watches me do it, her chest rising and falling, her lips parted. The fabric falls open, and I put my mouth on her collarbone and trace the line of it with my tongue.
Her hands slide under my shirt. I pull it off. Her palms flatten against my chest and move down, over my stomach, to my belt.
"Wait," I say.
She stops. Looks up at me.
"I want to look at you."
Her breath hitches.
I push the blouse off her shoulders. Reach behind her and unhook her bra. Let it fall. She's bare from the waist up, and she's not hiding from me, not crossing her arms, not looking away. She lets me see her.
I trace the line of her ribs with my fingertip. Down to her waist. The soft curve of her hip above the waistband of her trousers.
"You're beautiful," I say.
She reaches up and touches my face. Her thumb runs along the line of my jaw.
I unfasten her trousers and pull them down slowly. Her underwear with them. She kicks them off, and she's naked beneath me, and my whole body tightens, blood rushing south so fast my head swims.
I kiss her throat. Her chest. The valley between her breasts. I take one nipple in my mouth and suck gently, and she arches into me with a gasp.
I work my way down. Her ribs. Her stomach. Her hip bone, where I bite lightly, and she makes a sound that goes straight to my cock.
I settle between her thighs and put my mouth on her.
She cries out. Her hand flies to my hair, gripping. I'm slow about it, taking my time. No rush. No urgency. Just the taste of her and the sounds she makes and the way her thighs tremble against my ears.
I lick into her with long, flat strokes. Her hips roll against my mouth, and I press my hand to her stomach to hold her still. She's wet. Soaked. I groan against her, and the vibration makes her jerk.
I slide two fingers inside her. She clenches around me, hot and tight, and I curl them against that spot that makes her back arch off the bed.
"William." My name, broken. Desperate.
I keep going. Working her with my mouth and my fingers until she's shaking, until her hand is pulling my hair hard enough to hurt, until her thighs clamp and her stomach goes rigid under my palm.
She comes apart. The sound she makes fills the room, raw and open, my name spilling out of her like she can't hold it back. Her whole body shakes, and I work her through it, gentling my tongue as the aftershocks roll through her.
I kiss the inside of her thigh. Her hip. Work my way back up her body until I'm hovering over her.
Her eyes are dark. Blown. She reaches for my belt, and this time I let her.
She pushes my trousers and boxers down and wraps her hand around me, and I hiss through my teeth. I'm hard enough that it hurts, the blood pounding, the head swollen and leaking against her palm.
"Now," she says. "I need you now."
I push inside her.
We both go still.
Her eyes find mine. Hold. Nothing between us. No walls. No strategy. No performance. Just this.
I start to move. Slow. Deep. Watching her face. The way her lips part with each thrust. The way her eyes flutter closed and open again, finding mine, holding on.
I drop my forehead to hers. Close my eyes. Feel her body move with mine.
I pull almost all the way out and push back in, and she gasps and wraps her legs around me, her heels pressing into the small of my back.
"Harder," she breathes.
I give her harder. Drive into her until the headboard hits the wall, until her nails rake down my back and her teeth find my shoulder, and the sting of it keeps me right here, right now, inside this moment.
I reach between us and find her clit. Circle it with my thumb while I thrust into her, and she breaks. Her body clamps down around me, her walls squeezing me so tightly I can barely breathe, and the sound that comes out of her is nothing she'd ever let anyone else hear.
I follow her over. Bury myself deep and come so hard my arms shake with the effort of holding myself up. Her name on my lips. Her body holding mine.
I stay inside her.
I don't want to move. Don't want to break whatever this is. Her fingers trace lazy patterns on my back, over the scratches she left. My face is against her neck. I can feel her pulse under my lips. Fast. Slowing.
"Sunday," she says eventually.
"Sunday."
"We're going to survive it."
I don't tell her she can't know that. I don't give her the pragmatic answer, the honest answer, the one that says the odds aren't as good as I'd like them to be.
"Yeah," I say. "We are."
She threads her fingers through my hair. Holds me there. Against her. In this borrowed room in a borrowed house on borrowed time.
I pull out of her slowly. Roll onto my back. She tucks herself against my side, her head on my chest, her hand over my heart.
"Your heart is fast," she says.
"You do that."
The quiet settles. Not empty. Full. Full of things I can't say and don't need to because she already knows them.
My phone vibrates on the bedside table. Matty's name on the screen.
I reach for it. Read the message.
All three confirmed. Men and arms committed. Meeting point confirmed for 0400 Sunday.
I show Aoife the screen. She reads it. Nods.
"They're in," she says.
"All of them."
"Better odds than we've had."
I set the phone down. Pull her closer.
Every man they send is my responsibility now. Every family that agreed is betting their people on whether I've read this right. Add that to the list. Reilan. Frank. My father. The weight of this family and every family tied to it pressing down on my shoulders until I can barely stand.
But I'm standing.
Aoife's hand tightens on my chest. Her breathing slows. She's falling asleep. Trusting me enough to close her eyes, to let go, to be unguarded.
I stare at the ceiling, and I think about Sunday. About Viktor. About the warehouse and the men and the plan Matty built and the lives hanging on whether I've read this right.
Then I think about Reilan. About the M6 west of Ballinasloe. About the thing Aoife can never know.
I'll carry that. Along with everything else.
My phone vibrates again. I pick it up.
Matty.
Viktor is bringing in more men. Dublin port. Confirmed by Reilly contact.
I read it twice.
The odds just got worse.
I type back: How many more can he pull?
Three dots. Then:
Working on it. Meet me downstairs in ten.
I look at Aoife. Asleep. Peaceful. The first real peace I've seen on her face in days.
I ease out from under her carefully. Pull on my clothes in the dark. She doesn't stir.
I open the door and step into the corridor, and my phone buzzes one more time.
Matty again.
There's something else. Not on the phone. Come down now.
I pull the door shut behind me and head for the stairs.