Chapter 37
Sean
Idon’t sleep.
Ciara’s breath evens out, her body warm against my side, and I lie there staring at the ceiling while the city hums beneath us. The quiet in my skull is a stranger. No bottle whispering. No tremor demanding tribute.
James is gone. The ghost is out of her life because I put it in the ground. That sits clean in me. Still. Like the first second after a punch lands and your opponent realizes you aren’t playing.
I ease out from under her, slow enough not to jostle her shoulder.
She makes a small sound and grabs for me in her sleep.
My hand finds her wrist and presses once.
I’m here. When her fingers loosen, I slip free and grab a fresh pair of joggers from the closet.
Pulling them on, I move out of the bedroom, careful not to wake my wife.
My wife.
My life.
In the space of a few short days, she has become everything. Without her, I would be nothing.
Well, no. That’s incorrect. I would be a drunk. Probably dead. Shot by my own father.
I snort as the crime family life really hits home. Blood means nothing. Family is who you choose, and I choose Ciara. Even though she was thrust, unwanted, into my life to pay a debt I owed to Connor, I now owe him everything.
The scent of a slow-cooked meal that Millie left for us drifts in the air as I cross over to the front door. I slam the deadbolts into place for the first time since I moved in.
Crossing to the window, I lean my forearm against the cold glass, staring out over Dublin, wanting to find something to make all of this right with Ciara. I’ve done nothing for her except cause her grief.
My phone buzzing distracts me, and I pick it up from the coffee table where I left it several days ago. The battery is practically dead, but the number on the screen makes me pick it up.
“Ryan,” I say slowly.
“You sound good for a dead man,” O’Sullivan states. “Tell your wife she made a big mistake lying to me.”
“I have no need to pass on the words of a man who has hours to live.”
He scoffs. “You won’t come for me, Sean. You don’t have the stones.”
“Try me. I’ll be extremely disappointed if your Russian buddies get to you first, though.”
The threat lands exactly how I want it to. Ryan inhales sharply. And then he lies like any sniveling fucker would. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I have the ledger. Or rather, Connor does. I’m surprised your new friends didn’t inform you of the robbery, or are they super pissed off that several of their men got gunned down in broad daylight while watching your bets come in, so have cut you loose to swing in the wind?”
Silence.
“You have nowhere to go, Ryan. Connor knows about the hit, he knows about the Russians, and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t kept this information to himself.
He will handle the Bratva, but you? You are mine to smash into the fucking ground.
If you think taking out a contract on my head to get to my wife was a good idea to save your skin, you thought very wrong. ”
“You have no proof I ordered the hit—”
His voice cracks. Just once. But I hear it. The fear.
“I’m coming for you, Ryan. There is nowhere you can hide.”
I end the call before the battery dies. I want him off guard and wondering when and where he’ll be removed from this earth.
“Sean?”
Ciara’s voice is soft, sleep rough. I turn. She’s walking towards me, drowning in one of my tees, hair a dark spill over her shoulders. For half a second, the rage falters under the weight of her.
“You should be sleeping,” I say.
“You should be in bed with me. Who was on the phone?” She's barefoot, the penthouse floor cold beneath her feet, but she doesn't seem to notice. Or care. She walks to me like gravity itself is pulling her, and I can't look away.
“O’Sullivan.”
Her eyebrow goes up. “And?”
“Well, he knows I’m alive,” I say with a slow smile.
She giggles. “No shit. So, he’s coming for me for lying to him?”
“He tried to threaten you, but he knows he is out of his depth. He knows we know about the hit, about the Russians, and he knows Connor is dealing with his Bratva friends as we speak. They will cut him loose under a deal with Connor, and he will be flapping in the wind. I told him I’m coming for him. ”
“When?”
“I left that open-ended.”
Her eyes flash with understanding. A man on the run gets desperate. But it also means it puts her in danger.
I cross the space between us to wrap my arms around her waist. “Ryan is used to buying his way out of trouble or trading on his family name. He’s never had to fight for survival in the mud without a penny to his name and no one willing to give him a marker.
He has burned every bridge today, and some that weren’t even built yet.
Not even the lowest loan shark out there will touch him with a barge pole. ”
She leans into me, resting her forehead against my chest. I can feel the tension slowly bleeding out of her, but the steel remains.
She isn’t afraid of the fight, and it’s one of the things I love most about her.
“He intended to use the money that my father gave him for my dowry to pay off the contract on your head. That makes me feel sick.”
“He will pay. But we aren’t hiding, Ciara,” I murmur into her hair. “We’re letting him sweat. Let him look at every shadow and wonder if it’s me. When he snaps, we’ll be there.”
“And until then?” she asks, tilting her head back to look at me, her green eyes searching mine for any sign of the cracks I usually hide so well.
“Until then, we rest. We heal.” I brush a stray lock of hair from her face. My thumb lingers on her cheekbone, tracing the delicate curve. Memorizing it. Because the truth is, I'm not afraid of O'Sullivan. I'm afraid of the moment I let my guard down and someone gets to her.
I'd burn Dublin to ash before I let that happen.
She sighs, a heavy sound that vibrates through my chest. “Take me back to bed, Sean. If we’re going to wait for a war, I want to be unconscious for a few hours of it.”
“Whatever you want, wife.” I scoop her up, ignoring her weak protest, and carry her back to the sanctuary of the sheets. The dead phone on the table and the ghost of the bottle don’t even whisper my name as I walk away. All I can hear is her heartbeat. “I love you, Ciara O’Neill.”
She grips my jaw tightly as I sit her on the bed. “I love you, Sean O’Neill. No one has ever protected me, defended me, challenged me, the way you do. You are a strong man battling demons, but you are not alone anymore. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
I fall to my knees next to her and place my head in her lap.
Her hands go into my hair, and we just breathe together.
Her nails rake lightly over my scalp, a rhythmic tether keeping me from drifting back into the dark.
I stay there, soaking in the absolution I don’t deserve but greedily accept.
For years, I thought the only peace available to me came in a bottle of amber poison.
I was wrong.
It’s right here, in the hands of a woman who looked at my broken edges and decided they were worth holding together.
“Come up here with me,” she whispers eventually, her voice thick with exhaustion.
I lift my head, blinking against the fatigue that suddenly hits me like a sledgehammer. The adrenaline crash is brutal, leaving my limbs heavy and my mind foggy, but the craving is distant. It’s a dull ache rather than a screaming void, muted by the reality of her touch.
I climb into bed beside her, pulling the duvet up over us, creating a fortress against Dublin, against O’Sullivan, against the ghosts of the men I killed today.
Ciara turns immediately, pressing her back to my chest, fitting into me like she was carved for this space.
I wrap my arm around her, burying my face in the curve of her neck, inhaling the clean scent of soap and skin.
It’s better than whisky. It’s better than winning a hand of poker.
Tomorrow, Connor will have demands. Tomorrow, the Bratva might retaliate, or Ryan might try one last desperate play before we put him down. But right now, in the dark of the penthouse, with my wife in my arms and a clear head, I’m untouchable.
“Sleep,” I murmur against her skin.
“Sleep,” she echoes.
Her breathing evens out first, slow and deep. I listen to it, counting each exhale like a prayer.
And for the first time in a decade, I do. Without the nightmares.