Chapter 33
Ciara
The rain has turned the windscreen into a kaleidoscope of gray and neon as we idle down the street from Lamberts.
It’s not much to look at—a betting shop with blacked-out windows and a flickering sign that buzzes loud enough to be heard over the engine of this dying Toyota.
It screams illegality, the kind of place where money goes to die, and kneecaps go to get broken.
“Ready?” Sean asks, checking the magazine of his Glock with a calm efficiency that makes my breath hitch.
I look at him. His knuckles are bruised, his lip is split, and he’s wearing a hoodie that smells like mildew, yet he’s never looked more like a king without a crown. The man beside me is a weapon forged in the fires of his own hell, finally pointed at the right target.
“As I’ll ever be.” I reach into the back of my waistband, feeling the cold steel of my own weapon against my skin.
It’s a grounding sensation. A week ago, my biggest concern was a gala seating chart.
Now, I’m about to raid a bookie joint in O’Sullivan territory to keep our heads and prevent a Russian takeover of Dublin. Life comes at you fast.
“Front door?” I ask, eyeing the two bouncers smoking cigarettes under the awning. They look bored, complacent. They also don’t look Irish. They have no idea a storm is parked fifty feet away.
“Front door,” Sean confirms, his eyes icy as he realizes we are already walking into Russian territory. “We don’t have time for stealth. We hit them hard, grab the book, and leave before they realize who just robbed them. How many rounds have you got left?”
“Nine. You?”
“Fifteen.”
We exchange a look that speaks more than words ever could.
We are screwed.
He kills the engine. The silence in the car is heavy, charged with the electricity of what we’ve done and what we’re about to do. He looks at me again, and for a second, the violence softens into something possessive and terrifyingly raw.
“Stay behind me, Ciara.”
“Not a chance,” I reply, pushing open the door and stepping into the drizzle. “We’re partners, remember?”
He follows me out quickly. “After this, we can go on that honeymoon.”
“Too fucking right. I need three months to rest after this nightmare.”
“Done. Anywhere you want.”
“I always wanted to go to St. Kitts.”
“Then that is where we will go,” he says as we walk casually up to the bookies.
The bouncers don’t even give us a second look. Their mistake.
The first bouncer flicks his cigarette into a puddle, his gaze sliding over us with lazy arrogance. He sees a couple out for a stroll in the rain, not a death squad of two. He opens his mouth, likely to tell us to fuck off, but Sean moves faster than thought.
A sickening crunch echoes as Sean drives the heel of his palm into the man’s nose, sending bone shards into his brain. The guy drops without a sound.
The second man reaches for the inside of his jacket, his eyes widening with realization, but I’m already there. I jam the barrel of my SIG into his gut, stepping in close so our bodies shield the weapon from the street.
“Inside,” I whisper, my voice steady.
He glares down at me, contemplating taking me out with one of his meaty fists, but Sean’s looming presence convinces him otherwise. Good for me. I don’t particularly want to kill him on the sidewalk in broad daylight.
Sean steps over the first body, his eyes dark and empty of anything but the mission. He grabs the standing man by the throat, shoving him back against the wet brick until his head cracks against it. “She said, inside. Now.”
We shove him through the door, the bell jingling cheerfully in contrast to the violence radiating off us. The shop is dim, filled with the murmur of televised races and the old skool scratch of pens on betting slips. Heads turn. The air thickens instantly.
I scan the room—three counters, a reinforced door leading to a back office, and five men who look like they break thumbs for fun. For a split second, I rethink this plan. I rethink everything except wanting to live to see another day.
But when I look at Sean, my husband, a man battling his demons on a secondly basis and willing to sacrifice everything to show his father he is not the family screw up, my resolve clicks into place.
I promised before God, for better or for worse.
I didn’t mean it at the time, but I mean it now. With every fiber of my being, I mean it.
Turning my gaze to the table of Bratva enforcers, I don’t think. I shoot.
Nine rounds.
Have to save one. Always save one for yourself. It’s a lesson that has been drummed into me more times than I’d like to admit. Rather die by your own hand than rat.
The kick of the SIG jars my arm, a familiar jolt that grounds me in the madness. The man at the head of the table drops, clutching a red blossom on his chest. It’s the signal for hell to break loose.
Furniture crashes.
Glass shatters.
The remaining men scramble for weapons, but hesitation is a death sentence, and I’ve already passed judgment. I squeeze the trigger again, clipping a second enforcer in the shoulder before ducking behind an overturned table as return fire cuts through the air where I was standing a second ago.
Sean doesn’t bother with cover. He is a force of nature.
He aims. He fires. He is brutal, efficient, and terrifyingly sober.
It turns me on almost as much as it scares me.
He lays down suppressing fire, the deafening cracks of his weapon forcing the remaining Bratva enforcers to keep their heads down.
This isn’t a tea party. It’s a savage invasion and theft operation that requires nothing but brutality. No words. No one looks to see what the other is doing. No husband protecting his wife.
He trusts me.
I don’t let him down.
As he cuts his way to the back office, I take out two more enforcers.
Sean blasts the office door wide open with a shotgun he must have found under the counter.
Splinters rain down like deadly confetti, dusting the carnage we’ve created. I don’t flinch. I keep my SIG trained on the overturned table where the last enforcer is, my breath coming in sharp, controlled bursts.
Sean turns to check on me and levels the shotgun. I don’t even flinch when he fires it at the door as backup runs in. He gives me a nod, and I return it, firing off two rounds that hit my targets, a little off kilter, but they are down.
Six rounds down.
The sounds of groans are overpowered by the commotion coming from the back office. Sean isn’t taking any prisoners. If they are standing in his way, he’s taking them out.
When he emerges, moments later, shotgun still in his hand, covered in blood spatter, my heart beats a little faster. He is gripping a ledger, handwritten evidence, an anomaly in this digital age, but easy to destroy with no paper trail when the Garda come knocking.
“Move,” Sean says, striding past me.
I don’t need telling twice. I scamper after him, keeping my back to his back in case any of the guys is only playing dead.
Of course, there is always one.
He fires off a shot before I can take him down, and it grazes my shoulder.
I grunt as the pain flares in my arm, loosening my hold on the gun.
“Ciara,” Sean grits out and wraps his arm around my waist, lifting me off my feet as he whirls around, the shotgun raised as he blasts the shooter in the face. Without a look back, he carries me out of the bookies like some kind of fucking caveman with a shotgun.
He shoves me into the passenger seat with less grace than a sack of potatoes, slamming the door before I can even curse at him. My shoulder throbs, a hot line of fire that radiates down my arm, but the adrenaline is still pumping hard enough to keep the scream locked in my throat.
Sean slides behind the wheel a second later, the shotgun clattering onto the backseat.
The ledger goes under the seat, a precious commodity.
The engine cranks, whining in protest before catching with a rattle that shakes the entire frame.
He stomps on the gas, peeling away from the curb just as shouting erupts from the doorway behind us.
“Let me see it,” he barks, his eyes flicking between the road and my arm as he tears through the back streets in a zigzag that is hard to predict and impossible to track.
“It’s a graze,” I grit out, pressing my hand over the tear in my shirt. The fabric is wet and sticky, but I can move my fingers. “Drive, Sean. We have the book. We need to get this to your father before O’Sullivan realizes his entire future just walked out the door.”
“Fuck the book,” he snarls, slamming the gearbox with enough force to threaten the transmission. “You’re bleeding.”
“I’ve bled before. It’s surface damage.” I hiss as the car hits a pothole, sending a fresh spike of agony through my arm. I pull my hand away, checking the damage. Bright red, but the flow is sluggish. “See? I’m not dying. But we will be if O’Sullivan’s Russians catch up to this tin can.”
He doesn’t look convinced, his jaw locked tight enough to grind diamonds, but he refocuses on the road. The rusted sedan roars like a dying beast as we weave through the labyrinth of Dublin’s backstreets, putting distance between us and the hornets’ nest we just kicked to shit.
That notebook is worth more than the car, the safe house, and the bounty on Sean’s head combined. It’s the smoking gun that turns Ryan O’Sullivan from a respected rival into a traitor who sold Irish soil to foreign interests.
“We go straight to your father,” I say, my voice steady despite the stinging throb in my arm. “No stops. No safe houses. We drive through the front gates, drop this on his desk, and let the fallout bury O’Sullivan along with the hit on you.”
Sean’s jaw is set in granite. “Yeah,” he breathes, his voice dark with a promise of revenge. “Let’s go home.”