Epilogue
Dervla
Two years later
The air is thick with the scent of sea salt and diesel. I breathe it in, letting it settle into my lungs. The smell of work, of movement, of an empire running exactly as it should. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself until someone proves otherwise.
“How do you want to play this?” Declan asks, his voice low and steady beside me.
I glance at him, taking in the sharp set of his jaw, the way his hazel eyes gleam with anticipation even in the dim light.
Two years. Two years of raids and clean-ups, of tracking down the rot before it spreads too far.
Two years of learning that an empire doesn’t run itself, that the moment you stop looking is the moment someone thinks they can take what’s yours.
“The way we play everything else,” I say, my voice carrying more certainty than I feel. “Violently.”
Declan’s mouth curves into something that isn’t quite a smile. It’s sharper than that. Hungrier. “That’s what I like to hear.”
“Séamus would be proud,” Cormac adds from my other side, his tone light but his dark eyes scanning the warehouse ahead with the focus of a predator sizing up prey.
The mention of my grandfather sends a familiar prickle of irritation through me. “Yeah, if he were here,” I grumble, adjusting Henrietta’s position at my hip. “How dare he take an extended vacation to somewhere hot and sandy?”
I can picture him now, sprawled on some pristine beach, drink in hand, probably plotting his next move even while pretending to relax. Séamus ó Briain doesn’t know how to truly step back. None of us do.
“You think he’s with your dad?” Aidan asks, his gaze fixed on the building where an ó Briain holdings asset is about to get raided. Inside job. Always an inside job.
The question makes my heart squeeze with the knot of grief and anger that never fully eases up. My father. Alive. Hidden. Gone again, this time by choice. The wound of his deception has scabbed over, but it hasn’t healed. I’m not sure it ever will.
“Yep,” I say, keeping my voice flat. “I plan to interrogate him when he gets back.”
“If he comes back,” Cormac mutters.
I shoot him a look. “He’ll come back. He’s too much of a control freak not to.”
Declan snorts. “Takes one to know one.”
I flip him off without looking at him, which only makes him chuckle under his breath.
The sound eases some of the tension coiled in my shoulders.
This is what I’ve learned in two years: how to carry the weight without letting it crush me.
How to laugh even when there’s blood on my hands.
How to love men who are as broken and violent as I am, and somehow make it work.
“Right now,” I say, pulling Henrietta from her sheath, feeling the familiar weight settle into my palm, “we deal with these fuckers who think trying to steal from me is a wise move.”
The blade catches what little light there is, glinting like a promise. Like a threat. I’ve had her reforged twice in the past two years—stronger steel, better balance, a new edge that holds longer. She’s an extension of me, this beautiful, deadly thing that’s tasted more blood than I care to count.
Two years of running this empire, and the blade still feels like the truest part of me.
Aidan steps closer. His thumb finds the gap between my coat and my belt, pressing once against the skin there, possessive. “We go in fast,” he says, his voice all business now. “Three men inside, maybe a fourth. They’re armed but sloppy. They won’t be expecting us.”
“They never are,” Cormac adds, his mouth quirking. “It’s almost insulting.”
I turn to look at my three men, my anchors, my partners in every sense that matters.
I’ve had two years of learning how to be more than just a girl with a blade and a grudge. Two years of becoming the woman my father tried to build me into, the heir my grandfather needed, the Chancellor my enemies underestimated.
Two years of becoming us.
“Let’s make this quick,” I say, adjusting my grip on Henrietta. “I’m hungry, and I have something I want to talk to you all about later.”
Declan raises an eyebrow. “Something good?”
“Something overdue,” I reply, then turn toward the warehouse entrance before they can ask more questions.
The building is a warehouse on the docks.
It is industrial, grey, and unremarkable from the outside, which is exactly why we use it for high-value storage.
Someone inside has been skimming product for months, funnelling it out through a side operation that thought it was clever enough to stay invisible.
It wasn’t.
I found the discrepancy in the books six weeks ago.
Aidan traced the money. Cormac identified the men.
Declan wanted to burn the place down immediately, but I made him wait.
Patience is a weapon too, and watching people hang themselves with their own rope is satisfying in ways that violence alone can never be.
Declan cracks his neck, the sound sharp in the quiet night. His eyes are bright with the kind of focus that used to scare me. Now it just makes me want to kiss him. Later.
“No splitting up,” I say, my tone leaving no room for argument. “We go in together. Front door. Fast. They don’t get time to think.”
Aidan’s mouth tightens, but he nods. He stopped arguing with me about entry strategy around the time I proved I was right three operations in a row. He’s learned to trust my instincts the same way I’ve learned to trust his ability to see three steps ahead of everyone else.
We move as one, a unit honed by practice and blood and the kind of intimacy that comes from watching each other kill.
The dock is quiet at this hour, the only sounds the gentle slap of water against concrete pylons and the distant hum of the city.
A crane sits idle overhead, its arm cutting black against the orange-lit sky.
Our boots are quiet on the wet tarmac as we close the distance to the main entrance. No rushed footsteps, no whispered plans. We don’t need them. We’ve done this enough times that it’s muscle memory now. The approach, the breach, the execution.
Cormac reaches the door first. He tests the handle. Unlocked. Idiots. These fuckers deserve what’s coming.
He looks at me. I nod, feeling my heart rate pick up that familiar notch, adrenaline singing through my veins.
He drives the door inward, and I’m through it before it hits the wall.
The warehouse interior is cavernous, all exposed girders and concrete floors. Fluorescent strips buzz overhead, casting flat white light across stacked pallets and industrial shelving. The air tastes of salt and diesel and the faint chemical tang of whatever’s being stored here.
Three men at a table near the far wall. Cards. Money. Phones. A half-empty bottle of whiskey that they won’t live long enough to finish.
One of them looks up.
His face does something interesting in the split second before he dies—fear, recognition, and the dawning understanding that he is already dead, he just hasn’t stopped breathing yet.
Henrietta has left my hand before he can even croak out a response.
The blade buries itself in his throat before he can stand, the throw as clean and instinctive as breathing. He goes down hard, chair tipping backwards, hands clawing at the hilt like he can undo what’s already done. He can’t. Nobody ever can.
Blood sprays, dark and arterial, splashing the table in abstract patterns.
The second man lunges for a gun on the table. Cormac puts a bullet through his hand before his fingers close around the grip. The man screams, high and sharp, clutching the ruined mess to his chest. The sound echoes off the concrete, raw and animal.
Cormac doesn’t give him a second chance. The next shot takes him through the centre of his forehead, professional and cold. The man drops across the table, scattering cards, cash and coins that roll across the floor with metallic pings.
The third goes for the exit at the back.
Declan is faster.
He catches the man by the collar three strides from the door and slams him face-first into the shelving.
Product crashes to the floor with boxes splitting open, contents spilling.
The man’s nose breaks against metal with a sound that echoes through the warehouse, wet and crunching.
Declan hauls him back and throws him to the ground at my feet.
I look down at him, this pathetic thing bleeding and whimpering on the concrete. Two years ago, this might have given me pause. Two years ago, I might have hesitated, wondered if there was another way.
Not anymore.
“Thought you could steal from me?” I ask, my voice conversational, almost friendly. “Really?”
Cormac crouches beside him, his expression flat. “Stupid, stupid man.”
The thief whimpers, blood streaming from his nose down onto the concrete. He doesn’t look at me. Smart enough for that, at least.
“Where’s the fourth?” I ask, retrieving Henrietta from the first man’s throat. The blade slides free with a wet sound that no longer makes me flinch.
He says nothing, just gasps and bleeds.
I crouch down to his level and grip his jaw, forcing his eyes to mine. Up close, I can see he’s younger than I thought—maybe thirty, with the kind of face that probably charmed people once. Not anymore.
“I’ll ask once more,” I say softly. “Where is he?”
“Gone,” the man rasps, his voice thick with blood and snot. “Ran an hour ago. Said it wasn’t worth it.”
“He was right.” I stand, wiping Henrietta clean on his jacket. “Unfortunately for you, you stayed.”
His eyes go wide, and he starts to say something that might be a plea or a prayer or just incoherent panic.
I don’t wait to find out what. I pull the gun from the back of my waistband—Ronan Murphy’s gun, claimed two years ago and kept as a trophy—and put a bullet through his head before he can finish the sentence.
The warehouse goes quiet.
Just the buzz of the fluorescent strips, the distant slap of water outside, and the ringing in my ears from the gunshot.