Chapter 47 #2
“Sit,” he repeats, voice softening in that awful, controlled way that’s so much worse than shouting. The same tone Jen had perfected—quiet, reasonable, and absolute, right before the next words out of her mouth would cut me to shreds.
My legs move on their own accord, finding the nearest chair. Niamh collapses beside me, looking behind her at the doors before turning wide, blue eyes to me. Softly shaking my head, I reach for her hand and squeeze. It’s all I can offer her right now.
Antonio pours the tea with meticulous care, as though we’re guests, not prisoners dragged from a basement. It’s so arrogantly condescending it makes me want to lunge across this table and stab him between the eyes with the dessert fork to my left.
“I thought,” he says, sliding a cup toward Niamh, “we should all get to know each other a little better.”
My pulse spikes, and I lick my lips, trying to summon the courage to say something—anything—before my voice fails me. Then softer footsteps, careful and deliberate, enter the room. Too light to belong to any of Antonio’s guards.
Niamh goes rigid beside me, breath catching. I turn, heart slamming so hard it hurts, lungs already burning.
And just like that, the last fragile thread of hope snaps.
The woman standing behind me does not belong here.
Blonde hair freshly blown out. A fitted skirt suit that screams money and control, not cages and concrete. Her presence is polished, composed—untouched by the rot of this place.
Una Quinn.
For a second, my brain refuses to accept it. Misfires. Reaches for any other explanation. A trick. A hallucination. Shock finally tipping me into madness.
No.
No fucking way.
The slap comes a beat later—hard and breath-stealing like a physical thing.
Matt’s mother.
The woman I’d only ever seen at Christmas dinners, charity galas, smiling from framed photographs like she belonged to a safer, cleaner world. A woman who should exist nowhere near places like this.
My stomach rolls, bile creeping up my throat as her eyes lock onto mine.
She smiles.
That same infuriatingly assured smirk I’ve seen in a hundred photos curls her lips, as if she’s exactly where she’s meant to be. Like this room, this building, me, all of it already belongs to her. Like we should be thanking her for the honour of being here.
Cold dread spreads through me, sharp and invasive, sinking its claws deep into my chest.
“Hello, Lily,” Una says, her voice smooth, velvet wrapped around barbed wire.
Niamh’s fingers clamp around my wrist, hard enough to hurt. She might not know who this woman is, but she knows danger when she sees it. And in this moment, with that smile and glint in her eyes, it’s suddenly clear that Antonio isn’t the only predator in the room.
My thoughts scatter, panic detonating behind my ribs.
What is she doing here?
How is she connected to this?
How long has she been connected to this?
I open my mouth but nothing comes out.
Then, broken and shaking, the words finally force their way free.
“Why… why are you here?”
Una steps further into the room, shutting the door behind her with a quiet click that feels louder than a slam.
“Because,” she sniffs, slipping off her gloves one finger at a time, “there are things far bigger than you or Matthew. And you have become… an inconvenience.”
My breath catches, before stuttering out of me.
“An inconvenience?” I echo, the word tasting sour in my mouth.
As she rounds the table, she moves with the effortless authority of someone who has never had to justify herself. Someone who has never been denied. Someone who has erased entire truths with nothing more than a manicured hand and a well-placed smile.
Antonio rises, standing beside her. His eyes are dark and unreadable but when they meet Una’s, something flickers between them. Not tension, but recognition, possession, familiarity and a hundred other things that make my stomach drop.
Oh.
The realisation hits before I can stop it, before I can shield myself from it.
Una and Antonio. Together.
Not just partners in cruelty, but… lovers. The casual brush of her fingers along his arm. The way he stands back, content to let her lead. The way the room seems to bend around her authority while he watches, amused.
Antonio chuckles low, indulgent. “Tell her, Una.”
The way he says her name—soft, intimate—makes my skin crawl.
I press my back hard against the chair, wood biting into my spine as panic claws up my throat.
They’re together. And together, they’re a nightmare I can’t outrun.
“You were gone,” Una says evenly. “Out of his life, out of our world. And that was for the best.” Her gaze sharpens. “You really should have stayed gone.”
Anger flares, sudden and fierce, slicing through the fear. “I’m not your problem,” I snap. “I never was.”
Una’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “No,” she agrees coolly. “But my son’s weakness is.”
The room spins. I want to spit at her, I want to scream, I want to punch through her perfection. But all I can manage is a harsh inhale, shaking, heart hammering like it wants to break free of my ribs.
“My son cannot lead,” she continues, circling behind my chair, her heels whispering against the floor, “if he is tethered to a girl who makes him reckless and emotional. A girl who teaches him to choose himself over his legacy.”
“I don’t—” My voice fractures. “I never—”
“Love him?” she finishes, stopping close enough that I can smell her perfume—cool, expensive, suffocating. “You do.”
“And that,” she adds softly, “is precisely the problem."
Niamh’s voice shakes. “She hasn’t done anything. Please. Let us go.”
Una doesn’t even look at her as she joins Antonio at the head of the table.
“As long as you exist in Matthew’s orbit,” she says, “he will choose you. Over the family. Over his future, the one I painstakingly planned. Over everything that matters. And that, my dear, simply cannot happen.”
Her fingers trail lazily over Antonio’s arm before she steps directly in front of me, blocking out the rest of the room.
Blocking out the future.
“You need to be removed from the equation,” she continues calmly. “Permanently.”
Ice floods my veins—swift, absolute. A numbing certainty that sinks straight into my bones.
“You helped Salvatore,” I whisper, my voice barely holding together. “You’re working with him.”
Una tilts her head, eyes glinting like steel beneath glass. “You think this was all Antonio’s idea?” she asks softly, venom wrapped in velvet. “No, Lily. This… operation? The women. The children. The buyers.” She spreads her hands, elegant, almost indulgent. “It’s been a team effort.”
The air leaves my lungs in a sharp, broken pull. My pulse slams so hard it throbs behind my eyes.
“You,” I rasp, fury and disbelief tearing at my throat. “You—how could you? The Four Points would never—”
“Oh, the Four Points,” she interrupts with a soft, humourless laugh. It tastes like ice and ash. She steps closer, bracing her palms on the table. “So quaint. So small. So predictable. They think honour protects them. Codes. Loyalty. Morality.” Her smile sharpens. “It’s almost charming.”
My fists clench. “They will never let you live after this.”
Una’s smile widens, cold and victorious. “And that is precisely why they will never find me. This isn’t about loyalty, Lily. It’s about power.” Her gaze locks onto mine. “And power always wins. The Cosa Nostra is superior, the Four Points are merely children pretending to be dangerous.”
Heat sears through my chest, sharp and suffocating. My nails bite into my palms as I fight the urge to lunge at her, to tear that smug composure straight from her face.
“It is me you should fear now,” she says quietly, almost thoughtfully, “that dear old Benedict isn’t here to interfere.”
The name cuts me like a dull blade.
Benedict.
My biological father. The man who murdered Freya in front of Helen before Helen ended him. Far from a good man and yet, he’d been standing between me and this?
The realisation twists inside me, sick and sharp. What made him hesitate? What changed his mind? The questions claw at me, fast and frantic, dread and fury winding together so tightly it feels like my chest might collapse.
I shove back from the table, the chair screeching across the floor. “Stay away from me,” I gasp, the words barely sounding like my own.
Una’s expression barely flickers, but the cold in her eyes deepens. “Dramatics will not end well for you,” she says, her tone low, deliberate, hypnotic.
She reaches toward me, a small, controlled movement, and something inside me snaps. Panic spikes so suddenly I can’t stop it, and the scream tears from my throat before I can swallow it.
“Don’t touch me!” I cry, my voice raw and jagged, echoing across the walls of the room. It slices through the air and ricochets down the hallways, the sound a physical force in itself.
Una freezes mid-step, her composure faltering for the briefest fraction of a second. Then the hallway erupts in chaos—shouts, boots pounding against concrete, barked orders, the crack of splintering wood. Her eyes go sharp, dangerously cold.
“No,” she whispers, almost to herself. “He shouldn’t be here.”
But he is. I can feel it before I even see him. The tension in the air shifts, heavy and electric. Matt. His presence is a storm rolling toward me, unstoppable and furious. Mine.
I suck in a shaky breath, my chest trembling, my fingers curling instinctively. “He heard me,” I whisper, though the sound is swallowed in the chaos around me.
Una’s mask fractures then, just enough for me to see it.
Fear.
She knows that Matt is coming.
And nothing—not Salvatore, not the guards, not even his own mother—is going to stop him from tearing this place apart to reach me.
And when he does, Una and Antonio will learn just how unforgiving the Four Points can be when they come to save one of their own.