Chapter 28
Sean
The overwhelming stench of the Scotch soaking my tee is nothing compared to seeing another man with his hands on my wife.
The fumes rising from my shirt are dizzying, a siren song promising relief, but the sight of the barrel leveled at my chest and the arm crushing Ciara’s windpipe silences the craving instantly.
The world narrows to the terrified twitch in the bartender’s eye.
“Drop it, O’Neill, or I paint the wall with your brains and take her as a bonus,” he spits, his grip tightening on Ciara. Her face is flushed, but her green eyes aren’t filled with panic. They’re burning with the cold fury.
I don’t drop shit. I raise my weapon, keeping it leveled at the center of his forehead, ignoring the barrel pointed at my chest. My hand is steady. Rock steady. The alcohol soaking my shirt burns my skin, a reminder of the hell I walked through to get here, but this? This is simple.
“You have three seconds,” I grit out. “And they’re all gone.”
I pull the trigger, knowing with crystal clarity I couldn’t have guaranteed a week ago, that my aim wouldn’t hit her.
She grunts and elbows him in the ribs to loosen his hold as the bullet slams into his shoulder.
He hisses and lets her go, slapping his hand to his injured shoulder as Dermot steps up behind him, catching him as he stumbles.
“Who put the hit on me?” I ask, moving closer. I doubt he knows, but I want to give him the chance to spill his guts if he does know, before I end him.
Ciara kicks him in the balls and snatches her gun back. “Rude,” she snarls at him. “Never disarm a lady.”
Neil, I think his name is, croaks as he bends over double. I approach and grab a handful of his hair, yanking his head back as I place the gun under his chin. “Last chance.”
“I don’t know,” he stammers. “Picked it up like everyone else.”
“Everyone else? How many?”
“Six, I know of were talking about it. Could be more.”
“Six?” Ciara hisses. “Who is this fucker?”
We’ve taken out two, plus the shooter at Connor’s estate, who has probably gone to ground after his audacious, yet sloppy, attempt at my life on O’Neill home turf.
Connor will be violently kicking over every rock he can get his hands on to find out who it was.
It’s safe to say they are no longer in the game as they run for their life.
“Someone who really wants me out of the way,” I spit out.
Neil is just a chancer hoping for a lucky break, but that backfired when he laid hands on Ciara. I pull the trigger. The crack of the gunshot is deafening in the confined space, and Neil drops to the sticky floor like a sack of potatoes, joining the carnage of my morning.
The silence that follows is heavy. The fumes are suffocating, a toxic cloud wrapping around my throat, begging me suck on my tee, to taste the poison that’s soaking into my skin. My hands start to shake as I rip the shirt off.
“Sean,” Ciara says, coming to me and taking it from me. Her eyes aren’t on the bodies; they’re locked on mine, fierce and grounding. “We need to get out of here before the Gardaí decide to actually do their jobs.”
She’s right. Leaving a trail of bodies in a pub isn’t exactly subtle. Stepping over Oisin’s corpse without a backward glance, I hear her follow. The contract is still active, the hunters are still out there, but as I push out into the cold air, the only thing that matters is that I didn’t drink.
It’s an epiphany, a revelation that kicks me up in the arse harder than any beating I’ve taken. I grip Ciara’s hand, dragging her towards the SUV, leaving Millie and Dermot to move out on their own.
When we reach the car, I pull her closer and press her up against the cool metal. My wet tee hangs from her hand, still reeking of my vice, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except her.
My hand goes to cup her jaw, and I squeeze gently. “I choose you.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Choose yourself first, Sean.”
She’s refusing to be the only thing standing between me and the abyss, forcing me to stand on my own two feet. It’s terrifying. It’s the most loving thing anyone has ever done for me.
“Get in the car,” I growl, snatching the sodden tee from her grip and hurling it into the trunk. The reek of Scotch lingers, but the biting wind helps keep me in control.
Sirens wail in the distance, a reminder that we’ve left a bloodbath behind. Ciara doesn’t argue. She climbs into the passenger seat, her face pale but composed, the gun still loose in her hand.
I slide behind the wheel, the leather cold against my naked back. The SUV roars to life, vibrating through me. My hands aren’t shaking. Not yet. But the itch is there, scratching at the back of my throat, demanding payment for the adrenaline dump.
“Where to?” she asks, her eyes scanning the mirrors, looking for a tail we might have picked up.
“Anywhere but here,” I mutter, peeling out of the parking lot with a screech of tires. “We need to find out who wants me dead badly enough to pay half a million for the privilege.”
“And then?”
“And then I kill them,” I say, merging aggressively into the mid-morning traffic. “Before I run out of patience with this utter bullshit.”
“You mean you haven’t already?” she asks, her tone light as we pass a line of police cars heading toward the Copper Lantern.
“I can’t believe that punk, Neil,” I growl, suddenly. “Fucking cunt. How many times has he served me in the past, and he takes a hit out on me? I didn’t even know he was in the life.”
“Everyone is in the life when the price is right,” Ciara replies, her tone flat as she checks the side mirror.
She’s not wrong, but it burns. I tipped that prick well.
I listened to his shit jokes while I drank myself into a stupor.
Yet, the moment my head had a price tag, he didn’t hesitate.
It’s a brutal reminder that loyalty in Dublin is bought, not earned.
Unless you’re family. And even then, it’s a coin toss.
James. Uncle fucking James, the fucking pedo who tried to fuck a young girl in a stable. He makes me fucking sick, and he will pay with his goddamned life.
My skin feels tight, too small for the rage expanding inside it. I feel naked in more ways than one. The cold leather against my bare back is a biting reminder that I’m stripped of my armor, both literal and chemical.
“What are you thinking?” she asks.
“You don’t want to know,” I reply bitterly.
“James?”
The one word nearly stops my heart. “How did you know?”
She sighs. “I didn’t tell you that for it to haunt you, Sean. It’s in the past. It’s done. I’ve dealt with it and moved on.”
“Dealt with it,” I scoff. “No, Ciara. You don’t deal with something like that unless it’s by putting a bullet between the eyes of the fucker who traumatized you. Even then… it’s not a given.”
“So what? You are going to kill your uncle over this? Your blood?”
“Oh, make no mistake, he is going six feet under before this is over.”
“He’s Connor’s brother,” she says quietly, staring at me. She isn’t defending him; she’s measuring the blast radius.
“I don’t give a fuck if he’s the Pope,” I snap, gripping the steering wheel until the leather creaks. “He touched you. Connor can either help me dig the hole, or he can fall into it with him.”
The adrenaline is receding, leaving behind the cold, rattling emptiness that usually demands a drink. I shove it down. I have a new addiction now: vengeance. It burns cleaner than whisky, but it’s just as dangerous.
“We need to focus. Find out who wants you gone.”
“Out of the way…”
“What?”
“Someone wants me out of the way,” I say, drawing that thought back into my mind to tick over.
“Same thing,” she mutters.
“No, it’s not. I haven’t done shit to anyone who didn’t get paid off by Connor or Liam. This isn’t about cash or debts. This is fucking personal. This is about you.”
“How do you figure?” she asks, not dismissing it, simply asking me to clarify.
Which I can’t.
“Call it a hunch. I was doing just fine before you came along.”
“Just fine, were you? Soaking at the bottom of a bottle?”
I grimace at her. “You know what I mean. The timing is a bit of a fucking coincidence. The timeline tracks. Dermot said twenty-four hours. That’s now closer to twenty-six. The contract was put out after we got married.”
She hisses out a breath.
“Still want to tell me this isn’t about you?”
She goes quiet, staring out the windshield as the wipers slap away the drizzle that is falling.
She knows I’m right. The silence in the car is thick enough to choke on.
Twenty-six hours. That’s barely enough time for the ink to dry on the certificate, let alone for someone to decide the exit on my existence is worth half a million euros.
“If it’s about me,” she says finally, her voice tight, “then who benefits from you being dead? The marriage is sealed. If you die, I’m a widow, not a free woman. The alliance stands.”
“Does it?” I scoff, taking a sharp turn down a side street to lose a gray sedan that’s been trailing us for two blocks. “Or does it leave you vulnerable? Does it put you back on the market for some sick fuck to claim?”
My mind flashes to James. That slippery, lecherous bastard.
If he wants her—if he’s been waiting fourteen years to finish what he started in those stables—then getting rid of the husband is step one.
The thought makes bile rise in my throat, bitter and acidic.
But why go to all this trouble? He is my uncle.
He could get close enough to put a bullet between my eyes himself without all the fanfare of a contract.
But he knows Connor would skin him alive.
It doesn’t make sense, whichever way you swing it. As much as I hate it, Ciara was just some girl he thought he could have his way with and had already forgotten about her by the time he sobered up.
“We need to get off the road,” I mutter, checking the rearview mirror again. The sedan turns off. Paranoid? Maybe. But paranoia keeps you alive. “I need a name before I start tearing this city apart brick by brick.”
“How are we going to get it?”
“You’re going to take out the contract under your own name, wanting to get rid of the loser you got dumped with while still maintaining appearances. Let’s see who that drags out of the shadows to help you along.”