Chapter 27
Ciara
“One of these days, we are going to find the time to have a proper honeymoon,” I mutter, staring out of the window and rubbing my back where my gun had dug into me.
“That would imply a proper marriage,” he says slowly, stopping at a red light to look at me.
“That is what we have. All legal and binding and before God.”
He snorts, a dark, humorless sound as he shifts gears, the SUV prowling forward like a sleek beast. “Paperwork and a priest don’t make a marriage, Ciara. Blood does. And we’ve got plenty of that between us now.”
He isn’t wrong. We are bound by more than vows; we are tethered by the bodies we’ve dropped and the secrets we’re keeping.
“Just keep your head in the game,” I say, my voice steady despite the adrenaline still humming in my veins. “Oisin is expecting a wreck. Don’t disappoint him.”
“I’m a professional wreck, remember?” He pulls the car into the shadowed alley behind the Copper Lantern, killing the engine. The silence rushes in, heavy and suffocating.
I lean over and grip his neck, digging my nails in. He hisses, but it’s full of lust, and it peaks my nipples. “Not anymore,” I murmur before pulling back.
He catches my hand before I can open the door, his grip bruising. His blue eyes search mine, looking for a crack in the armor. He won’t find one. “Don’t let them take you, Ciara.”
I smile slowly, reassuringly, but his words have hit the panic button in my chest. “I won’t.”
I slip out of the car and leave him to go around the back and wait for him to open up the window for me.
Half of me hopes there is one already cracked by the cleaner.
He needs to focus on his performance and not drinking, not worrying about letting me in.
Deciding to take matters into my own hands, I pick up a loose stone from the parking lot and palm it.
Slipping down the back between two dumpsters that stink to high heaven, I look up at what I hope are the toilet windows.
“Psst.”
I freeze and look to the right, further down the grim building.
A window is open, and Millie’s head is sticking out. “What are you doing?” I hiss, moving closer.
“Helping,” she says, pushing the window open further. “Dermot is at the corner table nursing a pint.”
“At this hour?” I mutter, using well-trained muscles from years of yoga and Pilates to hoist myself up onto the sill.
“My man isn’t a drunk,” she says with a knowing look.
“Neither is mine,” I spit out, dropping down into a stall.
“He will always be a drunk, girl. Even when he’s sober.”
I don’t have time to unpack the heavy truth of her words, nor the sting they leave in my chest. This is going to be a daily battle for Sean, and we’ve only just gotten started.
“I’ve got your back,” Millie says, lifting her gun off the cistern.
“You don’t need to—”
“He’s family,” she says, and I accept that. Quite apart from the fact that we don’t have time to argue about it, she is right.
I slip out of the cubicle and crack the door of the ladies’ room, moving like a ghost when I see it’s all clear. The Copper Lantern smells of breakfast, beer and coffee. At the end of the corridor, I crouch down and peek out, taking in everyone’s positions as best I can in the large pub.
I spot Dermot immediately. He’s huddled in a booth near the back, nursing a pint of Guinness and reading a newspaper.
My heart hammers against my ribs, a frantic rhythm I force into submission with a slow, controlled exhale as I take in the rest of the patrons. I can’t tell who is legit and who is there to shoot my husband, but I’m not taking any chances. They are all targets right now.
“Get me a double, and leave the fucking bottle,” a voice roars, shattering the morning lull as the doors burst open.
Sean.
He sounds wrecked. Slurred speech, aggressive tone, the perfect picture of a man spiraling into the abyss. My chest tightens. It’s a performance, I remind myself. It has to be. But the fear that the smell of the bar might be enough to break him, claws at my throat.
“Easy now, Sean,” the barman says, his voice wary. “Bit early for the hard stuff, isn’t it?”
“Early?” he slurs, swaying as he grabs a stool and sinks onto it.
“Time has no fucking meaning anymore.” Sean slams his hand on the mahogany counter, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the quiet pub.
“Pour the drink, or I’ll come back there and pour it myself,” he snarls, slurring the words just enough to sound like his tongue is heavy with fatigue and booze.
He knocks a coaster to the floor, his coordination seemingly shot.
It’s a masterclass in self-destruction, and it makes my stomach turn.
The barman, a young guy who looks terrified of the O’Neill reputation, slides a bottle of Scotch and a glass toward him. Sean stares at the amber liquid. He freezes. I raise my gun. If he lifts that glass to his mouth, I don’t know if I’m shooting the bottle or him.
“Rough night, O’Neill?”
The voice comes from a booth opposite the bar, shrouded in shadow. My finger tightens on the trigger. A figure slides out, casual, arrogant. He’s wearing a smirk that says he’s won the lottery.
“Fuck off,” Sean mumbles, not looking away from the bottle. “Busy.”
“I can see that. Looks like your new bride finally came to her senses and left you to the gutter where you belong.”
Indignation spikes on Sean’s behalf as the man limps towards Sean.
He has a busted nose and a boot on that suggests his ankle is just as broken as his face.
Must be Oisin. Sean did a number on him.
Oisin slides onto the stool next to Sean, wincing as he settles his weight off his bad leg.
He signals the barman for a glass of his own, acting like they’re old mates catching up rather than enemies circling each other over a pile of dead bodies.
“She didn’t leave,” Sean mumbles, his hand wrapping around the neck of the whisky bottle. His knuckles are white. Is he acting, or is he fighting the urge to smash it over Oisin’s head? “I did. She’s not worth the trouble you sent to my door.”
Ouch. I grimace, and my trigger finger twitches. I know he doesn’t mean that.
Or maybe he does.
Oisin laughs, a wet, rattling sound. “So you abandoned her like the spoiled little spare you are, drowning your sorrows, leaving her all alone for someone else to swoop in and take her. Maybe that someone will be me.”
I see the flash of brutality in Sean’s face. He is seconds away from violence. He wraps his hand around the neck of the bottle, and for a moment, he considers whether to drink it or smash it in Oisin’s face.
“Good luck,” Sean drawls. “She will bore you half to death with her rigid routine, and don’t expect her to put out. She is wound up tighter than a nun’s cunt.”
“Maybe she just needs the right man to loosen her up,” Oisin says with a smirk and nods to the bartender.
He pales and ducks out of sight, running faster than I can track him.
“Shit,” I mutter.
I glance at Dermot. He saw it too. He’s ready.
Sean returns the smirk. “You think you’re that man?” he scoffs. “Please. She has higher standards.”
“Oh, like you?” Oisin counters, unaffected by Sean’s attempts to disarm him.
Sean lets out a dark, ragged laugh that scrapes against my nerves.
He pours a measure of the Scotch, his hand shaking violently from performance or withdrawal, I can’t tell, and the uncertainty makes bile rise in my throat.
He stares at the glass, the liquid catching the dim light, before sliding it across the mahogany toward Oisin.
“I’m the husband,” Sean slurs, his voice dropping an octave, losing the drunken lilt for just a fraction of a second. “You’re just the desperate little shit trying to pick up my scraps.”
Oisin’s smirk falters. He senses the shift, the predator waking up beneath the skin of the prey. He wastes no time in trying to put it down.
He slams his hand to the back of Sean’s head, intending to ram his face into the bar top.
But Sean is faster.
The drunken slur vanishes, replaced by a snake-like reflex that Oisin doesn’t see coming. Before his face can meet the wood, Sean’s hand shoots up, catching Oisin’s wrist in a grip that must feel like a vice.
“Bad move,” Sean snarls, his voice crystal clear and devoid of any liquor-induced haze.
With a savage twist, Sean leverages Oisin’s momentum against him, slamming the man’s elbow down onto the bar instead.
The sickening crack of bone echoes louder than the shattered silence, followed immediately by Oisin’s grunt.
Sean grabs the bottle of Scotch by the neck and brings it down hard on the back of Oisin’s head.
Glass explodes. Amber liquid sprays everywhere, drenching them both in the scent of the very demon Sean is fighting.
Dermot is already moving from his booth, a silent shadow with a weapon drawn, covering the rear exit to stop Oisin’s men who rush in.
Oisin clutches the back of his head as he stumbles backward.
“You threatened my wife,” Sean says, stepping over the broken glass, his eyes burning with a sober, terrifying rage.
“You sent someone to assault her. You are standing here waiting to put a bullet in my head for five hundred grand, but you are nothing but a piece of shit, Murphy.” He pulls out the gun that was stashed in the back of his pants.
“Too fucking desperate for a big payout, you didn’t stop to think that I might be one step ahead of you.
Did you? They always underestimate the spare.
Not anymore.” He pulls the trigger, and Oisin’s face explodes.
I lunge forward. “Sean! Dammit. We needed to know if he knew.”
“He didn’t know shit,” Sean says coldly, not looking at me as Oisin’s body hits the deck. “Lowlife scum.” He spits on the dead body and turns to Dermot, who has successfully removed two men from the board while wrestling with a third.
Millie storms out of the corridor behind me and cracks the guy on the back of the head with her gun. “Get yer hands off my man, ye fucking arsewipe!”
Dermot grins in pride, and I forget for a second that Sean is drenched in Scotch.
I turn my attention back to Sean, who is staring down at Oisin, his nostrils flared as he inhales the scent of the Scotch soaking his tee.
My blood runs cold when someone grips me tightly in a chokehold from behind as he disarms me and levels the gun at Sean. “Contract’s still out, and it looks like it’s pay day for me.”