Chapter 24
Nuala
“None of this makes sense!” I exclaim, slamming my hand on the dashboard and then shaking out the pain that shot through me.
“Tell me about it,” Logan mutters.
“No!” I yell. “You don’t get it! I was a fucking sacrifice.
She knew the hit was coming. She knew they were coming for the book.
So, she put me behind the bar, slapped a nametag on me, and waited for the bullets to fly.
” I stare at the rain slashing against the windshield.
“That man with the fifty. He wasn’t checking the nametag to see if I was Lisa.
He was checking to see if the target was in position.
Lisa and Stacey were in this together, and I fell for it like a fucking chump! ”
A chill that has nothing to do with the wet clothes sweeps over my skin.
“I was never supposed to leave that club. I was supposed to be the body they shot so that she could vanish with her secrets. Only they didn’t shoot me.
Only they didn’t get the book. Why? Why did they leave?
Why didn’t they come and find me? And why did Lisa think the book was still going to be under the table?
If she and Stacey were working together, she should’ve known Stacey had it, or rather that it had been removed from the function room.
Not to mention the fucking Garda. Surely, they would’ve looked everywhere?
I am so confused, Logan! I… I…” I burst into tears because my brain just can’t handle the monumental pile of shit that has landed on me right now.
I can’t breathe. The sobs tear out of me, raw and desperate.
Everything crashes down at once—the terror, the betrayal, the knowledge that I was meant to die so someone else could live.
Logan pulls over suddenly, tires screeching on the wet tarmac. Before I can process what’s happening, he leans across, pulling me over the center console into his arms. I collapse against his chest, my hands fisting in his shirt.
“I was supposed to die,” I choke out between sobs. “She set me up to die.”
“But you didn’t.” His voice is fierce, his arms tightening around me. “You’re here. You’re alive.”
“Why me? What did I ever do to her?” The words come out broken, muffled against his shoulder. “I don’t even know her!”
“Because you were convenient,” he says, and I can hear the rage simmering beneath his calm tone. “Because you needed the work. Because you look enough like her to fool someone from across a room.”
I pull back, wiping my face with shaking hands.
“The accountant—the dead woman—she panicked when she saw me go into the function room during lunch. She thought I was Lisa, didn’t she?
That’s why she rushed back in. She wasn’t going in for the book, she was going in because she thought I was her boss and then panicked when she realized I wasn’t and I had the book in front of me. ”
“That makes sense. One thing of many that don’t.”
“Logan, I can’t do this. I need to get away. I need to run.”
“No,” he says, cupping my jaw. “If you run, you will look guilty. By now, the Garda have to know it was you on shift, not Lisa.”
“But how would they know?”
“Stacey would’ve changed it for payroll.”
“Maybe.” I blink through the tears. “But I still don’t want to deal with any of this. It’s not what I signed up for. I wanted to work to pay my bills, or at least some of them! I didn’t want to get involved in the Dublin underworld.”
He stares at me for a long moment, his blue eyes searching mine. “What did you sign up for?”
The question catches me off guard. I wipe my nose with the back of my hand, trying to think. “I don’t know. A normal life, I guess. Working shit jobs to pay rent. Choosing between heating and food. Being invisible.”
“And how’s that working out for you?”
“It was working fine until—” I stop. Because it wasn’t working fine, was it? I was miserable. Broke. Cold. Hungry. Alone. One missed shift away from eviction.
“Until what?” he presses.
“Until you.” The admission slips out before I can stop it. “Until you made me feel like I mattered.”
His thumb brushes across my cheekbone, catching a tear rolling down my cheek. “You do matter.”
“To who? My mother barely speaks to me. I have no friends. No other family. No life worth protecting.” I laugh bitterly. “Lisa knew all of that. She picked me because no one would miss me. Maybe I should’ve just taken that bullet.”
His fingers press into my jawline, firm enough to command my attention but controlled, like someone who knows precisely how much pressure causes pain. His eyes fix on mine, the blue darkening at the edges. “Don’t ever say that again.” Each word lands with deliberate weight. “Not ever.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
“It isn’t.” The temperature of his voice drops several degrees, becoming something quiet and careful that makes the hair rise on my arms. My body responds before my mind can interpret the sensation—not quite fear, but something equally unsettling, something that makes me want to lean closer rather than pull away.
“You think I’d be here if you didn’t matter?
You think I’d risk everything—my family, my life—for someone worth nothing? ”
I stare at him, my chest tight. The rain hammers against the windshield, creating a cocoon of sound around us. His words hit something deep inside me, cracking open a wall I’ve spent years building.
“You don’t know me,” I whisper.
“I know enough.” His thumb traces my lower lip, and I shiver. “I know you’re brave enough to hold a gun to Connor O’Neill’s face. I know you’re strong enough to survive a massacre. I know you taste like heaven and feel like home.”
My breath catches. “Logan—”
“I know you matter to me.” His voice drops to that register that makes my stomach flutter. “More than I should let you. More than is safe.”
I search his face, looking for the lie. But there’s only raw honesty in those blue eyes, and it terrifies me more than Lisa’s gun did.
“This is insane,” I breathe.
“Yeah.” He leans closer, his forehead touching mine. “But I’m done pretending it’s not happening.”
The space between us crackles with tension. I should pull away. Should remind him we’re sitting on a dark street after nearly getting killed. Should point out that we barely know each other.
Instead, I close the distance and kiss him.
It’s desperate, hungry, born from adrenaline and fear and the knowledge that we could both be dead tomorrow. His hands tangle in my hair, pulling me closer. I taste rain on his lips, feel the desperation in the way he holds me like I might disappear.
When we break apart, we’re both breathing hard. His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide.
“We need to get back,” he says, but his hands don’t release me.
I nod, not trusting my voice. He’s right. We’re exposed out here, sitting ducks for anyone who might be following us.
He helps me back to the passenger seat, his touch lingering longer than necessary.
The engine purrs back to life, and we pull into traffic.
I stare out at the rain-slicked streets, my mind spinning.
Lisa’s face keeps flashing in my mind—my face, but twisted with malice.
How long had she been planning this? How long had she been watching me, studying my life, my schedule, my desperation for work?
“Whatever was on Stacey’s computer could implicate Lisa,” Logan muses after a few moments. “Too bad we lost the USB.”
“We didn’t lose it,” I say, pulling it out of my pocket and holding it up. “She dropped it. I picked it up.”
He grins. “Clever girl. So Lisa didn’t get anything she came for, and it looks like her partner in crime double-crossed her. She is on the losing side. We need to end this before she regroups.”
“Who is she even?” I ask, my fist clamping around the USB. “Some random woman who decided to level up?”
“Brennan is a powerful name in the city in the higher ups. Not overtly criminal, but judges, Garda, people with power who look the other way.”
“Garda. Garda who would search the crime scene and come up empty of a notebook,” I say bitterly.
“Pretty much.”
I stare at the USB in my palm, this tiny piece of plastic and metal that’s worth more than my life to some people. The weight of it feels heavier than it should.
“So we have corrupt Garda, corrupt judges, and a woman who looks exactly like me running around Dublin trying to kill us,” I say.
Logan’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Will we? Because right now it feels like we’re playing a game where everyone knows the rules except us.” I lean my head against the window, watching the city blur past. “What if there are more of them? What if Lisa has backup we don’t know about?”
“Then we deal with it.”
“You say that like it’s simple.”
“It is simple.” His voice carries that edge of controlled violence that makes my pulse skip. “Anyone who tries to hurt you dies. End of story.”
The matter-of-fact way he says it sends a dark thrill through my veins that I don’t want to examine too closely. I’m falling for a killer. A man who was a priest six months ago just shot a man twice, then stepped over him like it was nothing.
Logan’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. “It gets worse. If the Brennans have people inside the force, they’ll know we were at the club tonight. They’ll know about the body we left behind.”
My stomach drops. “The man you shot.”
“He’s not getting up to tell tales, but he will be noticed when they clear the scene.” Logan checks the rearview mirror again. “We need to assume they know exactly where we are and where we’re going.”
I press my palm against the window, the cool glass grounding me. “Then why are we going back to Connor’s? Isn’t that exactly what they’d expect?”
“Because sometimes the most obvious move is the safest one.” He takes a sharp left, tires squealing. “Connor’s estate is a fortress. They can expect us all they want—getting to us is another story entirely.”
The familiar gates of Connor’s mansion appear ahead, wreathed in shadows and rain. I watch the guards wave us through, their faces grim in the security lights. Everything looks the same as when we left, but something feels different. Charged. Like the air before a thunderstorm.
Logan parks in front of the mansion and kills the engine. The silence that follows feels heavy, loaded with everything unsaid between us.
“We need to tell Connor about Lisa,” I say, clutching the USB so tightly the edges dig into my palm, feeling crazy for trusting this man with my life.
“We will.” Logan turns to face me, his eyes scanning my face like he’s memorizing it. “But first, you need to understand something. What happens next is going to get violent. Messier than what we just walked away from.”
I swallow hard, my throat suddenly dry. “How much messier?”
“The kind where people disappear permanently. Connor won’t just want Lisa dead. He’ll want to send a message to anyone else who thinks they can blackmail the Irish mafia.”
Goosebumps ripple across my skin. “I can handle it.”
“Can you?” He reaches over, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw. “Because once we walk through those doors, there’s no going back to your old life. No more pretending you’re just a barmaid who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
I think about my damp and dingy flat with the stack of unpaid bills on the counter, the way I used to count coins to see if I could afford a loaf of bread. That life feels like it belonged to someone else now.
“There’s nothing to go back to,” I say quietly. “That life was killing me slowly anyway. At least this way, if I die, it’ll be quick.”
His jaw clenches. “You’re not going to die. Not on my watch.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“I can.” He leans closer, his breath warm against my ear. “I’ll burn this entire city down before I let anyone take you from me.”
His words should make me run. Instead, my skin catches fire, every nerve ending blazing to life as if touched by a live wire.
My heart hammers against my ribs like it’s trying to break free.
God help me, I want him to burn it all down.
I want to watch the flames reflect in his eyes as he destroys anyone who threatens what’s his.
There’s something shattered inside me that craves the brutal honesty of his violence over the hollow promises I’ve survived on for years.
Other men vow to call; Logan vows to slaughter anyone who touches me.
But fuck, I’ve never wanted anything or anyone more.
“We should go in,” I whisper, even though I don’t want to move. Here in this car, with rain drumming on the roof and Logan’s heat radiating against my skin, I feel safe. Protected. The moment we walk through those doors, we’re back in Connor’s world of calculated violence and shifting loyalties.
Logan nods but doesn’t move away. His thumb traces my lower lip, and I have to fight not to part my lips under his touch.
“It’s late. We are going straight upstairs, and we will speak to Connor in the morning.”
“Will he buy that?”
“He won’t have a choice. We are not confronting him until after I’ve fucked you into admitting that you’re mine, Nuala Quinn. Fucked you until you know exactly what I will do to anyone who hurts you. Fucked you so thoroughly that I am the only thing left in your world.”
I gulp and lean into him. “Yes.”