Chapter 40
40
SAMANTHA
B raiden’s command jangles in my head: Get Aiofe from the nursery. Go to the safe room.
My legs move before my brain catches up. By the time I slip open the nursery door, I’ve shoved down the worst of my horror. I’m not a child in my parents’ home any longer. The glass at Thornfield didn’t shatter. Braiden is managing the explosion.
My fingers brush against the Glock I nestled at the base of my spine. The feel of the textured grip is enough to steady me. There’s no need to terrify Aiofe by drawing it now.
She’s tangled in her sheets, her bright red hair spilling over her pillow. Curled up on her side, she has her stuffed rabbit—Coinín—tucked beneath her arm. I’m astonished the sound of the bomb didn’t wake her. I can’t remember ever sleeping that soundly.
“Aiofe,” I call softly, hurrying across the room. I don’t want to startle her, but I can’t waste too much time being gentle. I smooth her hair from her face .
A frown creases her forehead as she stirs. “Come on, Aiofe,” I say, pushing back her covers. She’s all arms and legs, too big for me to carry down the stairs. “We need to go.”
I get her on her feet and halfway to the door. She’s left Coinín on her pillow, though, and turns back to get him. “Hurry,” I urge. “Braiden wants us downstairs.”
Her uncle’s name must unlock something in her drowsy mind, because she stops resisting. The corridor on the ground floor is cool. Windows march down one side, looking out over the driveway, toward the garage. Orange light flickers weirdly.
Every time I think about the boom of the explosion, my knees threaten to buckle. That sound tore apart my life when I was Aiofe’s age. That sound killed my parents.
I hear men outside, shouting over the crackle of fire. Someone hollers that the front gate is open. The fire department is on its way.
I don’t have to worry about any of that. I don’t have to think about the cars. I don’t have to remember the glass that shattered when I was a child. I only have to do what Braiden taught me to do, my first full day at Thornfield.
I haven’t worked the safe room door since Braiden showed me how to access it, months ago. But he drilled me then, testing me three times, making sure I could work the latch alone, blindfolded, with a madman on my heels.
Now, the door glides open silently, heavier than the entrance to a bank vault. As Aiofe and I cross the threshold, sensors bring up the lights inside. Just as Braiden taught me, I take care to lock us in, testing the door twice to make sure no one can follow us into the refuge.
The room looks like a den in someone’s well-furnished basement. A pair of heavy couches face each other, upholstered in forest-green leather. A huge television screen sits between them, filling most of the wall.
“We’re safe now,” I tell Aiofe. “No one can get in.”
A thick rug swallows the sound of my footsteps as I cross the room to a small refrigerator. Finding a bottle of water, I crack the seal before I pass it to her.
“We’re safe,” I say again. I don’t know if I’m trying to convince her or myself. I take the Glock from my waistband, and the pistol’s weight is comforting, even though no one can reach us here. I know how to use the weapon. I know how to protect myself, and Aiofe too.
She’s still standing in the middle of the room. In her long white nightgown, she looks like an angel, or maybe a girl in a choir. Her lips form a tight little circle of displeasure.
“Drink up,” I say. And then I try to make things better. “I wish we had a plate of Fairfax’s cookies to go with that. We’ll ask him to make lemon snaps once we’re out of here. Maybe ginger cakes too.”
Aiofe only stares. Her eerie silence makes me long for a fallback, for more firepower than my Glock provides.
A gun safe is built into the far wall. Braiden taught me how to open it, the same day he gave me access to the room. I’ll feel better with a second gun in easy reach.
Turning my back on the frozen Aiofe, I cross to the safe. Desperate for the child to feel more secure, I keep up a constant patter.
“My father taught me how to fire a pistol on my eighth birthday. He took me to a firing range, an outdoor one, with targets that looked like they were miles away. He showed me his pistol and taught me the names for all the parts.”
I set my Glock on the credenza beneath the safe. Hands free, I lower my thumb to the biometric pad. “They had all different types of targets.” I continue speaking to Aiofe, pushing a smile into my voice because she can’t see my face. “My father said it was just like Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”
The lighted dial on the safe turns green. I go on: “None of the targets looked like donkeys, though. And I knew better than to go all the way down the range to pin anything on?—”
“ Samantha! Look ? — ”
I snatch up the Glock and whirl to face the impossible.
Aiofe doesn’t speak. Aiofe hasn’t said a word in the four months I’ve lived in this house—not when she’s happy, not when she’s sad, not when she’s protesting one of Braiden’s edicts.
But my ears ring with the sound of her voice now—higher than I expected, louder than I ever dreamed. The vowels pull like taffy through an Irish brogue that matches Birte’s and Grace’s and Braiden’s.
And no wonder Aiofe screamed.
Madden Kelly is clutching her close to his chest. His forearm arches across her throat. He’s forcing her head back. Her eyes are so wide, I can see white around her pupils. Coinín’s collapsed in a heap by her feet.
An evil black pistol presses against her temple.
“She’s just a child,” I tell Madden. I try to pitch my voice like I’m talking to a jury, like I’m sharing simple facts that can’t possibly be in dispute. “Let her go.”
Aiofe sobs. “He was going to shoot you!”
His grip tightens on her throat. “Shut the fuck up.”
Aiofe ignores him. “He came out of the jacks,” she says. “While you weren’t looking. He pointed his gun. He wanted to kill you. Samantha! He wanted?—”
She cries out—in surprise or pain or fury—as he pushes his gun into her flesh. I’ve felt Madden’s rage before. I know it leaves a mark.
“Hush, Aiofe.” I keep my weapon aimed at Madden’s head. “You’re okay,” I tell her. “We both are. Take a deep breath. Everything’s fine.”
I take my own deep breath, trying to get her to imitate me. My throat is immediately coated with the scent of citrus and wood. It’s the smell of my childhood, of my father when he pulled me onto his lap and called me his principessa . It’s Acqua di Parma, the cologne worn by Antonio Russo.
And by every man under his command .
The cologne means more than Asher’s photos, more than the bomb exploding in the garage, more than the gun pushing against poor Aiofe’s temple right now… Russo has branded Madden Kelly as clearly as if the Mafia boss pissed down the leg of his dark jeans.
In my mind, I hear the limerick Fiona left on my desk: She spied for a wop . Gave away the whole shop. “Fiona got it wrong,” I say.
“Fiona?” Madden sounds confused.
“ You were the spy. You always were. But the limerick Fiona…” Left on my desk . I’m about to say it, when I realize the truth. “She didn’t write the limerick,” I say flatly. “ You did.”
He laughs like I just shared the punchline to a filthy joke. “Took you long enough.” He smacks his lips as if he never learned the difference between kissing and devouring. “All I did was borrow Fiona’s lipstick.”
I fight the urge to slip my finger past the trigger guard. Aiofe squirms, trying to turn her face away.
Madden grunts as he tightens his grip around her throat. “Ingram said you made quite an impression in Southie. Demanding to see Fiona. Threatening to bring the FBI. But Fiona was with me in Philly, the whole fucking time.”
My entire trip to Boston… The nightmare fight with Braiden that followed… Moving from hotel to hotel to hotel in Dover… Trying to duck my death sentence…
All because of Madden.
The urge to shoot him is a hot wire threaded into the base of my skull. But if I fire, his hand might spasm. He might get off a shot. He might hurt Aiofe.
So for now, I need to make Madden feel smart. Feel safe. Feel like the type of man who would never dream of harming the terrified child he’s holding hostage.
I look into his flat brown eyes and try to sound like we’re two ordinary people having an everyday conversation, like neither one of us holds a gun. “You must have been planning this a long time. Blowing up the garage tonight… How did you know Aiofe and I would come to the safe room?”
He cackles like a child torching an anthill with a magnifying glass. “Fuck the two of you. I knew my pussy brother would come. He’d hide like a little girl.”
But he didn’t. Before I can point out Madden’s mistake, Aiofe starts to struggle. I don’t know if it’s the “little girl” that sets her off or the thought that Braiden’s a coward. But she spits something in Irish and tries to land an elbow in Madden’s ribs.
He yanks her neck back like he’s jointing a chicken.
“Aiofe!” I say, more terrified than I let myself sound. I stiffen my arms, resigned to taking a shot, because I see no other way to save her.
Madden counters by digging his weapon into the bone beside her eye. She stops fighting, but her entire body vibrates, her hair swirling like she’s charged with static electricity.
No.
Her curls don’t move in an electric current. They sway in an air current.
I glance over her shoulder. Down the hallway. Toward the door I closed and locked. Into the shadows—where Braiden crouches, body taut as wire, a pistol glinting in his hand.