Chapter 48 #3
“You know I’m right. If it wasn’t for his obsession with Helen, these assholes would never have found out what we’ve been doing. We wouldn’t have had to start marking the girls and scale back. Keep a low profile.” He scoffs, mouth twisting like he’s tasted something sour.
Nico’s grin widens, eyes glinting with malice.
“And don’t get me started on the collateral,” he says, voice low, savouring the words.
“Some… accidents. You know, the one that got your baby brother, Aidan? Too bad about him, huh? If only he’d stayed out of Peter’s way, maybe he’d be here. Playing hero with his big brother.”
The room freezes. Even the air seems to stop moving at the mention of Cole, who had placed himself between Peter—Logan’s uncle and second at the time—and Abbie.
Peter, we later discovered, was as tied to this bastard ring as Angus, and while he’s long since been dealt with, Cole’s name is still like an open wound for his brothers.
Aidan’s jaw tightens, fury darkening his face even as Liam calls out to him. In a flash Aidan slams Nico’s head against the wall again before tightening his grip on his throat.
“Don’t. Speak. Again,” Aidan growls, voice low, controlled, lethal. “You speak, you die.”
Nico’s eyes flick to Lily—still pressed against Isabella, hand still trembling—but Aidan shifts to place himself in front of her. Nico’s smirk fades for the briefest fraction of a second.
Antonio tries to interject, seeing the fury on every man in this room's face. “I—it’s not what you think—”
Nico laughs again, his voice coming out in little more than a wheeze by this stage. “There’s no point in lying, Padre. It’s over. It’s just too bad we didn’t get to sample the goods first.”
Aidan doesn’t hesitate. He pulls Nico away from the wall and puts him in a chokehold.
His forearm snaps tighter, squeezing with bone-crushing precision.
Nico’s eyes bulge, his neck straining against the unrelenting grip.
A wet, rattling cough escapes him, followed by a sharp, gurgling choke.
Panic and realisation flicker across his face, but it’s too late.
Every gasp, every futile twist of his body, only tightens the coil of steel around his throat.
Antonio lets out a strangled, horrified cry and lunges for his son, fingers clawing at the air, only for Liam to slam into him, pinning him against the table. Da moves with calculated force, restraining Una against his chest before she can do anything.
Nico goes slack, body folding unnaturally over Aidan’s arm before collapsing to the ground with a wet, final thump. The sound fills the room, a brutal punctuation mark. Blood tinges the corner of his lips, his eyes glazed, the life seeping out of him in a sickeningly immediate silence.
The room goes deathly still, every eye frozen on the aftermath. Suddenly, the chaos feels muted under the weight of answers finally coming to the surface. Jonathan lowers his gun slightly, voice quiet but cutting through the tension.
“Tell me the truth, Isabella. What do you know?”
Isabella whimpers under Lily’s blade. “Nothing—Mum said—Papà didn’t—it wasn’t—”
“Don’t. Lie.” Lily presses the knife harder, her whole arm trembling. “You were supposed to be my friend.” Her voice breaks, splintering. “You smiled at me every day. Laughed with me. Knew what they did to girls and came to class like it was nothing.”
Isabella sobs, breath hitching in wet, panicked gasps. “I didn’t want to! They threatened me—I didn’t have a choice—”
“Bullshit,” Liam snaps. “You always have a choice.”
“You chose them,” Lily whispers. “Over me.”
Una’s composure cracks. “Isabella, for God’s sake, shut your mouth.”
“No,” Jonathan says. “Let her talk.”
Antonio’s voice spikes, frantic. “She doesn’t know anything. We kept the girls separate. They weren’t supposed to interact—she was only supposed to calm the assets, not—”
Lily’s snarl rips through the room. “Assets?”
Una fights Da’s grip. “Fine! Victims. Girls. Whatever you want to call them, they were never meant for you to find!”
Niamh flinches so hard she nearly folds in on herself. “They hurt us,” she whispers. “Beat us. Starved us. Threatened our families. And when one girl ran… they brought her back. And made us watch as they—” She cuts herself off, pressing a hand over her mouth as tears trickle down her cheeks,
For a beat, there’s silence.
Then Da swears, low and vicious.
Jonathan’s voice is quiet as he glares at Una, lip pulled back in disgust. “You murdered those girls.”
Una opens her mouth—some weak justification already forming—but Antonio snaps first, panic tearing through him.
“We didn’t kill them!” he shouts, thrashing as Liam hauls him back.
“Where are the others?” I demand. I draw my gun and use the barrel to tilt Una’s chin up, forcing her to look at me. To really look.
Her breath shudders out of her, shoulders trembling. “Safe,” she says quickly. “Alive. Hidden.”
“Liar,” Da growls, the word pressed right into her ear.
His face twists with revulsion at being this close to her, like her very presence disgusts him.
“You sold them. Just like you planned to sell Lily. Over my dead fucking body do you touch a hair on that girl’s head.
Now start talking before I snap your fucking neck like I should have years ago. ”
A sound slips from Lily—small, broken, and so full of grief it nearly brings me to my knees. I reach for her, but she’s still locked on Isabella, knife trembling against her skin.
Her voice is quiet when she speaks. Too quiet. Dangerous in a way that has me inching closer to her.
“Tell me where they sent them,” she says, each word carved from grief and fury. “Now.”
Isabella’s knees buckle. “I-I don’t know. I swear. They never told me. I just… I just got the girls down in the basement ready. I don’t know where they go after that, I swear!”
I catch Lily’s wrist just before she opens Isabella’s throat, my arm hooking around her waist and dragging her backward against me, the knife clattering to the ground as I force her to let it go. She kicks, claws, snarls, like an animal crawling out of hell.
“Lily, stop,” I plead, voice breaking. “Let us handle it. Let me handle it.”
Her sob tears through me
“Why?” she whispers, shaking so hard her teeth chatter. “Why would she do this to me?”
Isabella’s lips tremble, tears spilling freely now.
“She said you mattered too much to him,” she whispers. “That as long as you were breathing, he’d never go through with the marriage.”
Her voice breaks.
“She said you had to disappear if I ever wanted to have a family.”
Something in me snaps so hard I taste blood.
“That’s enough,” I growl, stepping forward, still holding Lily tight against my chest as she shakes, her eyes locked on Una with a kind of haunted fury that will never leave her. “You touched her. You hurt her. That makes it personal.”
Una lifts her chin, composure snapping back into place like armour. “Matthew. You don’t understand—”
“No,” I whisper, my voice shaking with a rage I can barely breathe through. “I understand exactly who you are.”
Da uses his grip on her to force her back against the wall, while Liam drags Antonio up from the table, his forearm locked tight around his throat as he shoves him forward.
He doesn’t stop until Antonio is forced shoulder to shoulder with Una, until the last two remaining architects of this ring are lined up side by side, backs against the wall, with nowhere left to run.
Jonathan and Aidan advance in unison, lethal and deliberate, just as Owen and the others come through the doorway.
The movement forces Isabella to retreat a few steps farther into the room, her back hitting the wall softly.
One glance around the room. One shared look between men who don’t need words, then they close in. No questions asked.
Uncle Bren is covered head to toe in blood—even his glasses have splatters on them—casually twirling his favourite meat cleaver between his hands like this is nothing more than another night’s work.
Seamus and Declan exchange dark, satisfied looks as they spot Una, neither of them ever bothered hiding how they felt about her betrayal of Da.
Owen pauses at my side, gently prying Lily from my grip and pulling her into his arms. She goes willingly this time, her strength finally giving out. After a moment, she pulls back and looks at me—really looks at me—then tips her chin toward the line of men and steps away.
Owen and I close ranks as Lily moves toward Niamh, who’s watching everything with wide, frightened eyes. And just beyond her, pressed flat against the wall, I see Isabella—small now. Stripped of certainty. Watching the wreckage of a world she thought she understood.
This fight has dragged on too long.
Too many lies. Too many missing girls.
Too much blood spilled for power and profit.
Every man in this room is done listening to excuses.
Done negotiating.
Done pretending monsters deserve courtesy.
Antonio senses it, the collapse of his empire. His eyes flick across the faces of the men blocking his exit, the guns, the blades, the silence that feels like a noose.
He lifts his hands, voice cracking, “Wait—wait, we can negotiate—”
Bren doesn’t even pretend to consider it.
“You have nothing we want,” he says, tone flat as steel, meat cleaver dangling from his fingers like a promise.
Una makes one last desperate attempt, lunging—not at me, not at the men holding guns on her—but aiming for Lily.
One last pathetic grasp for control.
That seals her fate.
Six guns fire at once. Jonathan. Aidan. Da. Liam. Owen. Mine.
The room erupts. The recoil bites into my palm, the flash burning white across my vision. The sound shatters the air—one deafening, definitive end to a legacy built on blood and stolen childhoods.
Una jerks back, her body folding before her brain has time to process she’s already gone.
Antonio barely gets a gasp out.
He stumbles forward—maybe to run, maybe to bargain again—but the next volley tears through him, ripping through arrogance, through legacy, through every secret he thought he’d die with.
He collapses beside her, blood pooling across the concrete, seeping out around him.
Like all the toxic toxins he carried are finally being wiped out.
Isabella lets out a sharp, broken sob, the sound of someone realising too late that the ground beneath her has vanished.
Aidan turns toward her, voice low and controlled. “You’re not going anywhere.”
She shakes her head, hands lifting instinctively. “I-I can explain—”
Before anyone else can speak, Lily’s voice cuts through the room.
Quiet, raw, and shaking. But steady in a way that sends a chill through every man standing.
“Take her to the Pit.”
Every head turns to her, but Lily’s eyes stay locked on Isabella, unblinking. Like she knows the second she looks away, Isabella will find another knife and bury it in her back.
“She’s going to tell us everything she knows,” Lily whispers, each word trembling, but unbreakable. “And then we’ll decide what to do with her.”
The silence that follows is heavy with expectation.
And God help Isabella because the men in this room aren’t the only ones she should be afraid of now.