Chapter 29
Ciara
“Don’t be absurd. Connor will find out and flay me.”
He rolls his eyes. “I doubt it. He will know what we’re doing.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then we will make sure he does before he can get near you.”
“Shouldn’t we just tell him? And my dad? Donal won’t care if I put a hit out on you, but he might take matters into his own hands if he finds out.”
He gives me a scathing stare. “Gee, thanks, Donal.”
I shrug. “Whatever. But this plan is insane.”
“Insane is the only currency we have left,” Sean counters, his grip on the steering wheel whitening his knuckles.
“Think about it, Ciara. Who would question the unhappy bride wanting to cash in on a mistake?”
I hate that he has a point. In our world, betrayal is more common than bread. A wife turning on a husband she barely knows? It’s a narrative the underworld will eat up with a spoon. It’s dirty, it’s vicious, and it’s exactly the kind of move my father would respect—right before he killed me for it.
“And how exactly do I claim a hit on the dark web without leaving a digital footprint that leads straight back to my phone?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest. The adrenaline is fading, leaving a cold pit in my stomach.
“We don’t use your phone. We use a burner. We go to a safe house I know. One Connor doesn’t track.”
I glance at him sharply. “You have a safe house your father doesn’t know about?”
“A man needs a place to fall apart where the audience isn’t watching,” he mutters, his eyes checking the rearview mirror for the tenth time in a minute. “Or in this case, a place to get pissed and do what he wants with no one watching.”
He looks wild, shirtless and covered in ink, smelling of violence and the ghost of whisky. But his eyes are clear. Terrifyingly so.
“Fine,” I say, leaning back against the seat, resigning myself to the madness, and trying not to think what do what he wants means in real terms. “But if I end up accidentally putting a bullet in you to save your arse, I’m going to be very pissed off at your funeral.”
A dark, jagged grin splits his face. “Deal.”
He drives us deep into the North Inner City, navigating the labyrinth of red-brick terraces and gray council flats with an ease that speaks of too many late nights and bad decisions.
The safe house isn’t a house at all; it’s a nondescript apartment in a block that looks like it’s held together by damp and despair.
“Charming,” I mutter as he kills the engine.
“It’s invisible,” he corrects, opening his door.
The wind whips through the open car door, biting at my skin, and I can only imagine how it feels against his naked chest. But Sean doesn’t flinch.
He steps out into the drizzle, his tattoos sharp against his pale skin, looking like a war god who lost his armor but kept his weapons.
I follow, scanning the grimy windows above for twitching curtains.
We take the stairs. When he unlocks the door to number 4B, the air that greets us is stale, smelling faintly of dust and old takeaway.
I step inside, expecting the chaotic den of a junkie. Instead, it’s barren. A single mattress on the floor, a cheap table with a dusty laptop, and blackout blinds drawn tight against the world. No personal touches. No photos. Just a cell for a man serving a sentence of his own making.
“Welcome to the gutter, wife,” he says dryly, locking the door and sliding the deadbolt home. He walks straight to a pile of clothes in the corner, pulling on a black hoodie that smells like mothballs. “Don’t get comfortable. We do this, and we go.”
“Comfortable?” I croak, not even wanting to breathe in case I die of mold.
He snorts. “Someone is being snobby.”
“Someone wants to live to see another day,” I mutter, avoiding the damp patch on the floor and cringing at the stains on the ceiling.
“Here,” he says, flinging me a burner phone.
I catch it, but then I just stare at it. “Forgive me if I don’t know how to access the dark web.”
Sean snorts, moving past me to the wobbly table. “For a mafia princess, you’re surprisingly sheltered.” He takes the phone from me and starts tapping.
“Excuse me for preferring to look a man in the eye when I order a death. It’s polite.”
“God, I love you,” he says, still staring at the screen.
We both freeze.
My brain practically short-circuits trying to come up with a response to that.
Fortunately, he saves me. “Here,” he says, handing me the phone. “Your username is PrincessPolite.”
I snicker despite the tension pinging between us.
Love.
That is not something I thought either of us would ever feel or say. I know I care about him; I care about him staying alive and trying not to self-destruct. But it’s a selfish motivation. I don’t want to deal with a drunk failure on a daily basis.
You keep telling yourself that’s all it is.
The inner voice is a mocking sound that makes me clear my throat.
I snatch the device, forcing my eyes to lock onto the glowing screen instead of the man who just detonated a grenade in the middle of our conversation. “PrincessPolite,” I read aloud, my voice drier than the dust coating the floorboards. “You think you’re funny.”
“I think I’m terrifyingly charming,” he counters, but he doesn’t look at me. He’s busy scanning the street through a crack in the blackout blind, his back rigid. He knows what he said. He’s waiting for the fallout.
I decide to let the radioactive dust settle. There are bigger problems than my arranged husband catching feelings—like the half-million-euro price tag on his handsome, stupid head.
My thumb hovers over the listing. It’s a grainy photo of Sean outside the church, looking disheveled and angry. It makes my stomach turn. Someone was watching us that day with ulterior motives. It shouldn’t surprise me, but it adds a sinister layer to our wedding that wasn’t there before.
I look down at the interface. It’s a mess of encrypted forums and black backgrounds, but there it is. Contract #8940. Target: Sean O’Neill.
“Okay, I found it,” I say, pushing past the nausea. “Do I just hit ‘claim’?”
He nods stiffly. “Add who you are. It will make whoever ordered the hit take notice.”
I tap out the message with cold, steady fingers, channeling every ounce of the ruthless bitch my father raised me to be, every ounce of the shuttered off woman my mother abandoning me made me.
I’m the arranged wife. I have access. Back off, boys. The payout is mine.
“Sent,” I say, the word heavy in the damp air.
The screen goes black, reflecting my own grim expression back at me. It feels like signing a death warrant, even if it is a bluff.
Sean steps away from the window, the floorboards groaning under his weight. He takes the phone and looks at the message, then aims that blue gaze at me, a dark smirk playing on his lips that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Convincing,” he murmurs. “You almost sound like you mean it.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?”
He huffs a laugh, but the sound dies quickly in the stale air. The tension from his earlier slip still vibrates between us, louder than the distant traffic outside. He runs a hand over his face, looking exhausted and wired all at once.
“So now what?” I ask, needing to fill the silence before he tries to explain himself. I’m not ready for explanations. I’m barely ready for this reality where I’m hunting the person hunting my husband.
“We wait,” he confirms. “Whoever put that contract out will want you to verify you are who you say you are.”
“And when they do?”
“Then we find out if this is about you, or something else.”
He moves closer, invading my personal space in that way he has, making the dingy room feel suddenly airless. “Ciara, about what I said earlier—”
“Don’t,” I interrupt, holding up a hand. My heart gives a traitorous little kick, but I shove it down. “Let’s focus on keeping you alive. Emotions are just another liability right now.”
He stares at me, his winter-sea eyes searching, intense. He looks like he wants to argue, to push until I crack, but the burner phone buzzes violently in his hand, saving us both.
Sean forces his gaze to it and grimaces. “They want you to verify your identity.”
“A selfie?”
He nods, handing the phone back to me.
I hold the cheap plastic device up, staring into the front-facing camera. I lift my left hand, so the ring is in the picture and place my forefinger over my lips in a cheeky shot that looks like I’m fired up to end this marriage the only way I know how.
I hit send on the photo, and a message comes back almost immediately.
Verified. Nice ice. How soon?
“How soon?” I gulp.
“Five hours,” Sean says. “That puts us after dark and gives you enough time to take me out without it looking like we made the entire thing up.”
I nod and send back: Five hours.
Hope you get him before the others do. Drop in six hours at the South Side Industrial Park, if you manage it.
“Okay, so in six hours, he wants me to show up with your body. He hopes I get to you before the others do.”
“Take that as he is ordering them to stand down,” Sean states, folding his arms. “He wants you to do this.”
“We can’t assume that,” I say, shaking my head. “We could go outside, and someone could blow your head off.”
“So, we wait here.”
“And then what? I can’t show up with your dead body!”
“No, but you can stuff me in the trunk of the car, and when whoever it is shows their face and lifts the lid to see proof of death, I will shoot him in the face.”
“Simple,” I say, though my stomach churns at the thought of driving him to his own funeral, fake or otherwise. “And if they shoot the trunk before opening it just to be sure?”
Sean shrugs, a careless motion that belies the tension locking his jaw tight. “Then I die a very cramped death. But these guys want proof you killed me. They don’t want their hands dirty.”
He sounds confident. Too confident. He’s probably right, and to be frank, we don’t have a better option.
“Five hours,” I murmur, glancing around the dismal room. “Five hours to wait in this luxury suite.”