Chapter 20
brENNA
The attempt on my husband’s life is set to take place tonight from what I heard. It’s too quick for us to come up with a fool proof plan or for us to even change anything.
The security that usually is around is only around until ten at night when they leave to go home. And we don’t know which of them we can truly trust.
Cormac seems certain that Maxim can be trusted so he lets him in on what we’re trying to do.
Maxim is going to be putting his life on the line right along with me.
Both of us are depending on Cormac to be the monster everyone thinks he is.
I should be scared and I guess a small part of me is but mostly I’m just ready to show these bastards what they get trying to go up against this new empire.
The punishment will come with the fires of both our hells combined.
I get myself ready for the night. I put on my pajamas. Put my hair up in a bun and slide into the bed next to the large warm body, making sure to pull the blankets up as high as possible. All the lights are already extinguished except for a little moonlight streaming in from the window.
It’s late but I don’t dare let my eyes slide shut.
It’s quiet and I spend the time counting the seconds, waiting for the shoe to drop.
It’s about two in the morning when that’s exactly what happens. I hear something click and then a window being slowly opened. I fight to keep my breathing even and an arm reaches over and drapes my body. Tucking me more under his body, shielding me from what we both know is to come.
I hear the footsteps coming down the hall. They don’t know where all the creaking spots are. I can tell by the sound of the creaks just how close they are. I only hear one set of foot steps. Only one. Thank god.
“Easy.” The deep voice whispers in my ear.
The adrenaline is coursing through my body and it’s getting hard to keep still.
The door to the bedroom slowly pushes open and the person comes to stand at the edge of the bed.
“Cormac.” A voice booms out but neither of us in the bed moves.
The killer huffs in frustration as he walks to the side of the bed and pulls the covers back.
His eyes widen in surprise when instead of finding Cormac huddled up next to me he finds Maxim.
On perfect cue, he lifts his hand and quickly disarms the man in front of him while Cormac lunges from the closet with a billy club and strikes the would be assassin in the back of his head. Knocking him out cold.
Violence has never been a welcomed sight for me. I’d grown used to it but would never seek it out. But for this bastard, I can’t wait to see him squeal.
CORMAC
I do not feel the hit of the club in my palm, but I hear the crack of bone and the body goes slack. Maxim already has a zip tie around the bastard’s wrists by the time I haul him up by the collar.
“East rooms,” I say. My voice comes out flat, too quiet for how fast my heart is going.
Maxim nods once and moves. Brenna is right behind me, barefoot, calm in that way that means she is not calm at all.
I want to tell her to stay, to lock herself in the bathroom, to let me handle this, but she has already proven she will not hide and I am done pretending I can keep her in the dark.
If they are coming for my throat they will expect me alone. Let them find the two of us instead.
We take the stairs. The wood complains, old and tired, same as my patience.
The air in the east hall smells like char and old rage.
The scorched walls drink the candlelight and throw it back in jagged pieces.
I put the son of a bitch in the chair that faces the blackened fireplace and drag the steel chain from the trunk along the wall.
Not pretty. The links scream across the floor and make the dogs bark in the pens they are locked up in outside. Good, let the house remember what I am.
“Ankles,” Maxim says, and he kneels to bind the man to the chair legs while I lock the chain across the chest and cinch it tight. Brenna keeps to my right shoulder, quiet as a shadow, eyes on the door and the windows both. Her hands do not shake. I love her for that.
The man starts to moan. Blood runs along his hairline and pools under his ear. He blinks, tries to look around, realizes he cannot move, tries to jerk and only makes the chair creak.
“Where am I,” he mutters.
“Nowhere you want to be,” I say.
He focuses on me and flinches. He knows my face. I see the recognition, then the calculation that always comes next with men like him. How much can he sell his life for. I squash the idea before it gets big.
“You came to kill me,” I say. “We can skip the part where you pretend you got lost.”
He licks his lips and tries a smile. “It’s not personal.”
Brenna’s voice is soft behind me. “You said that to yourself coming up the stairs too. To bad it doesn’t matter.”
He glances past me at her and tries to twist his neck for a better look. Maxim steps into his line of sight and the man goes still again. Good. Look at me.
“What is your name,” I ask.
He hesitates. I pick up the billy club again, then think better of it and set it down. Wood dulls too fast. I reach for the drawer in the old desk and pull out a length of rubber tubing and a mallet. Maxim does not comment. He has seen me work before. Brenna does not look away.
“My name is Owen,” the man says quickly.
“Owen what.”
“Owen Price.”
“Who sent you, Owen Price.”
He presses his lips together like a child. I slam the mallet into his thigh. Rubber takes the sting from my hand and puts it in his muscle. He screams like I dislocated his soul. The chair jumps. The chain bites. The scream echoes down the burned hallway and sounds like history.
“Who sent you,” I ask again, calm as a priest.
He sucks air and sweats. “Got a number. No name.”
“Try again.”
Another strike, lower now, same leg, nerves waking up and shouting. His breath turns choppy. Blood beads where his teeth cut his lip.
“You will not make it to sunrise,” Brenna says, still soft, still terrible. “Tell him what he wants to know.”
“Doyle, O’Sullivan, I don’t fucking know” he blurts.
Maxim goes still. My jaw ticks.
“You have to know something. Who was going to pay you?” I ask.
“Niether of your old man’s. Someone under them. A cousin, an ally. I don’t know.”
I believe him. Errands like this rarely move on proper signatures.
“Who else knows you are here,” I ask.
“No one.”
I flick my eyes at Maxim. He shakes his head once toward the hall, meaning the exterior cameras are quiet, no motion beyond what we planned.
Still, a job like this never rides with one horse.
I nod and he moves to the door, posts himself in the jamb with his gun out and his head half turned.
He can watch both the stair and my back from there.
I lean in until I can smell the copper on Owen’s breath. “You are going to give me more than just a number. Why now. Why tonight. Why this house and this bed.”
He holds my gaze and tries on bravery. It sits wrong on his face. I take the mallet to the other leg. The sound is uglier this time. Something in his knee did not like it. He gasps and tips his head back and for a second he is just a man who made a bad bargain and knows it.
“Talk,” I say.
“Because you’re getting in the way,” he pants. “You moved the dock crews. You cut off two pilots. You changed the dates, the routes, the contacts. You locked out old channels. You did it fast. You did it without asking. It made people nervous.”
“People,” I say. “Which people.”
He swallows. “Families that have kept the balance for a long time.”
“The balance,” Brenna repeats. “You mean the agreement to keep the pie cut the same while everyone pretends not to be starving.”
He looks at her again, then at me, then at the black fireplace like maybe there is a god there. “They think you and her together are a problem,” he says. “Not because of love. Because of math.”
My grip tightens. “Explain.”
“You put two empires together and you do not just get bigger. You get heavier. You pull other pieces toward you. People who have been allies look at that and they do the math. They say if they let you keep pulling you will swallow them. So they talk about stopping the pull before it turns into a tide.”
The room feels colder. Brenna steps closer to my side, heat against my forearm. “How many talk,” she asks.
Owen takes a shaking breath. “Enough that if one fails the next will try. Not all at once. Quiet, steady. Ships delayed that never make it. Crews that get sick. Accidents. Then a night like this where a man like me draws the short straw and comes to make a house quiet.”
I want to hit him again just to bleed off the need, but information matters more than rhythm.
“Who is organizing,” I ask. “There is always one hand tying the threads.”
He stares at the floor. Sweat runs. “I do not know who holds them all.”
He is not just a blunt instrument then. He has watched the board. In my head pieces start to move. Routes. Warehouses. Shell companies. Silent partners who are not so silent. Questions stack beside the ghosts on the mantle.
I crouch until my eyes are level with his. “Does my father know.”
The candle by the window hisses. Maxim shifts his weight. Brenna goes very still.
Owen tries to smile and fails. “Your father knows nothing and that’s how it needs to stay.”
“Liar,” I say, quiet and certain.
He flinches. My father knows what he is paid to know. He is not in this country. There are distances even money cannot shrink in a day.
Brenna steps half a pace forward. “Does my father know,” she asks.
Owen looks at her like she is a trick. “Your father is even more oblivious than his. Your father actually thinks this marriage is going to help him in the long run, the second you pop out any kids with the last name O’Sullivan your father is all but dead.
You’re the last of his fucking line and he gave you away to get more of the now and nothing of the future. ” he says.
Heat scorches the back of my throat. Brenna does not move. Her eyes shine like wet coal and her mouth presses into a line that is not soft at all.
I straighten, set the mallet on the desk, and pull open another drawer.
There is a roll of cloth there, tools in stitched pockets.
Pliers, a punch, a little torch with a hissing mouth.
I do not plan to use the torch in a room with memories soaked into the walls, but I let him see it.
Men talk faster when they can imagine the next ten minutes.
“Times,” I say. “Dates. Routes we are not supposed to look at. Warehouse numbers. Call signs. Give me enough to pull a thread and see where it runs.”
He closes his eyes and starts to talk. Numbers.
Wednesdays that became Fridays. A plane that files for Tulsa and lands in Amarillo, waits, then goes dark and takes off without a plan.
A container supposed to hold ceramic tile that weighed too much and was rushed past inspection because a man at the gate had a new truck two weeks later.
He talks and I watch his throat work and try to see the shape of the thing behind his words.
Maxim cuts in once, low, because he is hearing what I hear. “That warehouse,” he says. “The old tram hub. It sits between two buildings we don’t own.”
Owen nods fast. He is eager now that he can feel the end of the rope and wants the last minute to mean something. “Yes. They use the dead angle. There is a back alley they call the spine, you can get a truck in, no prying eyes. The city still thinks the easement is closed.”
I file it away. “Names,” I say. I want to know who.”
He swallows. Gives me one. Another. Two more.
Some I know, some I do not, some I have only heard next to numbers in the corner of a ledger.
The board gets clearer. The rage settles into something colder and sharper.
It feels like the first breath after a long dive, like coming up through fire and finding air.
I go back to ask more information, trying to get to the bottom of this.
Owen opens his mouth.
The window breathes. The candle flame flutters as if someone sighed against it. In the half second of silence that follows, the old glass explodes. Along with the back of Owen’s head.
The chair rocks. The chain holds. Blood crawls down his cheek and patters on the floor in a stupid, steady way that offends me.
“Down,” Maxim barks, and he is already moving, already grabbing Brenna and dragging her sideways behind the waist-high file cabinet that survived the fire.
I lunge for her too, cover her with my body, and grab the back of the chair with my free hand to yank it out of the line of the window.
My grip slips in the blood and I curse and shove.
A second shot cracks and takes a bite out of the old mirror by the desk. Glass rains over my shoulder. Brenna does not scream. She is breathing fast and careful, and I can feel her heartbeat through my shirt.
“Angle is from the south yard,” Maxim says. “Low roof or the hedge line.”
“Thermal,” I snap.
He has the small monocular out before I finish the word. He peeks around the cabinet, quick and mean, then jerks back while a third shot slaps the edge of the window frame and throws splinters like teeth.
“Movement behind the tree line,” he says. “Single. He is falling back. He will be gone in ten if he knows the grounds.”
I curse myself for not leaving the dogs out. I was worried they’d jump the gun and try to take out the assassin before I could get a chance to capture him.
“We won’t catch them.” Maxim shakes his head.
I edge us deeper into the wall shadow and take stock. Owen is dead. The source is cut. The names he offered are enough to start a war and not enough to end one. The fact that a rifle just spoke to me inside my own house is an insult I plan to answer with interest.
Let them add up their math. Let them call it balance. I will show them gravity.