Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ronin
I throw my weight against the chair again, rocking it hard from side to side, trying to tip the damned thing over. When it finally goes, it cracks against the stone floor hard enough to knock the breath out of me and send pain shooting through every bruised and broken part of me.
I lie there on my side, dragging air back into my lungs, the ropes biting deeper the harder I struggle. My shoulders are on fire. My ribs feel split open all over again. Every part of me is screaming to stop. None of it matters. I can’t stop now.
She’s gone.
I can’t believe I did it again. I crossed an ocean for her, got her in front of me at last, and when it came time to say the things I came here to say, I ruined it. Same as always. Same as Boston. Same as the wedding. What the fuck is wrong with me?
I see her face again, the way it changed when I went at her like that, and my stomach turns.
Malachy will be back soon. He’ll come through that door and end this before I can get near her again, and I can’t let that be it.
Not like this. I have to get to her. I have to make her listen. I have to make this right.
I pull at the ropes again, teeth gritted, and the cracked chair arm under me finally gives enough to shift. Not much. Just enough. Enough to get one wrist half loose and tear skin doing it. I wrench it the rest of the way free, then go straight for the rope still binding the other one.
By the time I get to my feet, my head is pounding and my hands are slick with sweat and blood.
I lurch across the room, shove the door open, and my first breath of fresh air in days is so cold it burns in my lungs.
I stop dead just outside, my eyes darting over the yard, searching for any sign of her.
There’s nobody out here. Just open land with a handful of houses scattered across it, and for one wild second I think she could be in any one of them.
I don’t have time to tear through every damned door looking for her.
Then I hear it—the sea, somewhere beyond them.
I take off toward the sound, boots slipping in the snow, my breath burning in my chest. She’s talked about this place enough times.
The lane to the shore. The wall. The sea. If she went anywhere, she went there.
Before I even reach the end of the path, I see them sitting on the wall with their backs to me, facing the water. There’s no mistaking Alannah’s strawberry-blonde hair. Finn Walsh sits beside her, the big bastard shoulder to shoulder with my wife like he belongs there.
The sight of them together punches what little air I had left straight out of me, and I catch myself against the low stone wall, dragging in air that never feels like enough.
I know Alannah’s not out here looking for another husband.
She’s not that kind of woman. I knew that when I said it, and I know it now.
But I said it anyway. When she started pushing, asking the questions I’d come here knowing I owed her answers to, it all went wrong.
The second sorry stopped feeling like enough, I panicked.
Then I saw her left hand, her bare ring finger, and I grabbed at it.
Used it to hurt her. Used it to make her stop asking questions I couldn’t bear to answer.
Used it to turn the whole thing back on her because I couldn’t sit there with the truth of what I’d done at my feet.
And now he’s the one sitting beside her. The one there when I’m not. The one everyone says would’ve treated her better. Would never have hurt her the way I did. Looking at them now, I know they were right. Doesn’t mean I’m just going to stand here and let it happen.
I push off the wall, and the stone beneath my hand shifts.
Finn leans closer to my wife, and something in me snaps.
I close my hand around the loose rock and pull it free, then head straight for them.
The moment I reach Finn, I swing hard, driving the rock into the side of his head with a sickening crack that knocks him sideways off the wall and onto the frozen ground.
I stand over him, the rock still clenched in my hand.
Blood is already darkening the snow beneath his head.
It’s tempting to swing again. To keep going until there’s no Finn Walsh left for Malachy to marry her off to.
I’m still considering it when Alannah jumps down from the wall and rushes toward him.
I drop the rock and catch her before she can reach him, one arm locking around her middle, the other clamped over her mouth.
“Finn!” she screams against my hand, and it pisses me off all over again.
He doesn’t deserve her voice like that. He doesn’t deserve her worry. He doesn’t deserve any part of her.
She twists hard, trying to tear free, but I haul her back against me and drag her up the lane. “Time to go, Alannah,” I mutter against her ear.
“No—Finn—” The words break against my palm, and her tears run warm over the back of my hand.
“He’s alive.” I don’t know that for sure, but I say it anyway. “Move.”
She bucks hard, trying to throw me off balance, but I keep her moving.
The houses come back into view ahead of us, dark shapes against the falling light, and my pulse kicks harder.
The sun’s dropping fast. She’s looking at them too.
I can feel it in the way her body tenses against mine, in the way her eyes keep darting from one to the next.
She knows the same thing I do. Any second now, a door could open.
Someone could step out. And if that happens, I’m finished.
Fuck. I need to get us off this land. Every person here would put me in the ground if they caught me with her.
But I’m not getting us away on foot. Not with her fighting me like this.
Not with the cold cutting straight through me.
Then I remember the cars I saw outside some of the houses when I came out of the shed.
One sits closest to us, outside a dark, quiet house with no lights on inside. It’s worth a try.
I drag her toward it. The closer we get, the harder she struggles, but I tighten my hold and keep her moving.
“Walk,” I grit into her ear. “Or I go back and make sure he stays down.” She goes still at my words, and that’s all I need.
I haul her up the steps and drive my shoulder into the door. It flies open.
We stumble inside. The place is cold and dark and quiet, the last of the daylight barely reaching through the curtain-covered windows. I kick the door shut behind us, and my eyes go straight to the hooks by the door. A ring of keys hangs from one of them. Thank Christ.
I rip them free, and the moment she sees them in my hand, she fights harder, twisting and clawing, trying to wrench free.
I keep hold of her and drag her with me back into the cold.
The car sits just outside the house, snow crusted along the hood.
I yank the passenger door open and shove her toward it. “Get in.”
“No.”
She jerks away from the open door, but I catch her by the back of the coat and force her down into the seat. When she tries to surge back up, I press her back into it. “Don’t.”
She glares up at me, wild-eyed, tears still wet on her face. “Ronin, please—”
“You belong back in Boston with me, wife,” I tell her, my voice low and rough and too fierce even to my own ears. “Not here. Not with them. With me.”
Her whole face twists. “Don’t say things like that to me now.”
I slam the door shut and round the front of the car fast, the keys digging into my palm. By the time I get behind the wheel, my hands are shaking so badly it takes me two tries to get the key into the ignition.
“Where are you taking me?” she asks, and there’s fear in her voice now, real fear, and I hate that I’m the one putting it there.
“Home.” The engine catches. I throw the car into gear and hit the gas. The tires slip in the snow before they catch.
“You can’t do this.”
I scoff. “Bit late for that.”
I’m driving blind. The ship I came in on had to have docked somewhere around here, but I was out cold when Malachy brought me in.
I’ve got no fucking idea where the harbour is.
I just need to find the water. There has to be a sign.
The road bends away from the family land and joins a wider one.
A sign goes by too fast for me to catch all of it, but I see enough.
Harbour. Arrow pointing left. I wrench the wheel that way.
“Ronin, stop the car.”
I don’t answer. I’m leaning so far over the wheel my ribs are screaming with it, every bump in the road knocking pain through me, but I keep driving. Another sign. Then another. Harbour. Quay. Goods yard. Enough for me to follow. Enough.
The signs lead me into the harbour. I pull in too fast, and the car skids to a stop.
Men are loading crates onto boats in the last of the light.
I sit there breathing hard, both hands locked on the wheel, and scan the vessels until familiar markings on one of the hulls catch my eye.
Not one of ours, but close enough. I recognize the bastard standing at the end of its gangway too, one of the local runners our men use.
He knows my face and knows better than to ask questions.
I get out and round the car. When I yank her door open, she shrinks back from me, pressing herself against the seat. “Ronin, please. Don’t.”
“Get out.”
“No.”
I reach in, close my hand around her upper arm, and drag her out. Her boots skid on the wet ground when she tries to pull away, and she nearly falls. I tighten my hold and haul her upright.
“You’re hurting me.”
I know I am. I hate that I am. But not enough to let her go. Nothing is enough to stop me now. I keep her tight against me and head for the gangway.
The runner at the bottom straightens when he sees me coming, confusion flashing across his face before caution wipes it clean. His eyes flick to Alannah and then back to me. “Mr. Byrne.”
“We’re getting on.”