Pride (Kings of St. Bartholomew’s #2)

Chapter 1

Sorcha

My limbs feel like they’re made of lead, and every movement sends sharp pains shooting through my skull. I try to fight, but my body isn’t responding properly. The world tilts and spins around me as I’m carried away from the chaos.

Through the ringing in my ears, I catch fragments of shouting behind me.

Ciar’s voice, raw with fury. Cillian is roaring my name.

Axl is swearing like a sailor. The sound of violence, of fists hitting flesh, something heavy crashing to the ground.

They’re fighting for me, but I can’t tell if they’re winning.

My vision clears just enough to see we’re outside now, rain hitting my face like cold slaps. There’s a van waiting, its back doors already open like a hungry mouth. Terror claws at my throat as I realise what’s happening.

I’m being taken.

The bastard carrying me places me gently into the back of the van, which makes my head spin even more. I’d been bracing for a thumping landing. He moves around to the front of the van and gets in the passenger side. “Drive,” he barks, and the van lurches forward as the side door slams shut.

I force myself to roll onto my side, blinking hard to clear my vision. There are three men in the van with me, all dressed in black, all wearing balaclavas. Professional. This isn’t some random snatch-and-grab.

“She’s awake,” one of them says, his accent thick Irish.

“Good.”

My blood runs cold.

The guy in the front who’d abducted me turns around and pulls the balaclava off his head.

“You,” I hiss at my half-brother. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Saving you from yourself,” Cian growls. “Don’t think I don’t know about this Ahearne connection, Sorcha. You are up to your fecking neck in it.”

I struggle to sit up, my head still pounding like someone’s using it as a drum. “Saving me? By blowing up a fucking kitchen and abducting me?”

“The kitchen was a distraction,” Cian says, his ice-blue eyes—so much like mine—boring into me with an intensity that makes my skin crawl. “We needed to get you out before they did.”

“They?” I spit, fury giving me strength despite the concussion rattling my brain. “The only ‘they’ I see here are you and your masked arseholes.”

“She’s got a mouth on her,” one of them snickers. “Good luck with this one, Cian.”

“Fuck you,” I growl.

“The Ahearnes,” Cian interrupts, like I’m a child who needs things explained slowly. “Liam was just the beginning. They’ve been circling you for months, apparently, so under the radar that even I didn’t see it, and now they’re making their move.”

“You didn’t see it?” I roar, ignoring the pounding in my head. “You’ve been tracking me?”

“You picking up the Gannon legacy painted a target on the entire Gannon name.” His voice is cold, matter of fact. “You think this is just about you? Every family in Ireland and England is watching to see how this plays out.”

The van takes a sharp turn, and I brace myself against the wall.

Through the front windscreen, I catch a glimpse of the countryside flying by.

We’re leaving campus, leaving the city. Leaving the three men who’ve become my entire world in the span of days.

Are they hurt? Are they alive? The explosion was meant as a distraction, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t caught in the blast. If Cian is the one who abducted me, who called me to warn me?

“You bastard,” I hiss at Cian. “If you’ve hurt them—”

“They’re fine,” he cuts me off, but there’s something in his tone that makes me wonder if he’s telling the truth. “Bruised egos, maybe, but they’ll live.”

“You had no right.”

“I had every right.” His voice hardens. “You’re my sister. My blood. That trumps whatever claim the Cerberus Order thinks they have on you.”

Sister. There’s that word again. The one he keeps using like it means something, like it gives him ownership over me. “Half-sister,” I correct through gritted teeth. “And I’m not yours to save.”

“You are when you’re too stubborn to save yourself.” He turns back to face the front as the van picks up speed. “The Ahearnes aren’t playing games, Sorcha. They want you, and they’ll go through anyone to get you. Not to mention the rest. You have become the goose that lays the golden egg, Sorcha.”

“Yeah? Well, this goose got herself an affiliation, and it isn’t with you, so I’d appreciate it if you took me home,” I growl.

His eyes flash dangerously as he turns back around. “You fucking didn’t?”

I give him a triumphant glare. “Oh, I fucking did. You are looking at the newest member of the Cerberus Order. An Order, I might remind you, that has not one, but three uber powerful, old Irish families backing it.”

“Jaysus fecking Christ,” he mutters, rubbing his hand over his face, his Irish accent more pronounced in his utter disbelief that I, apparently, could be so stupid.

“That’s right,” I say, leaning back against the van wall despite the throbbing in my skull.

The silence that follows is deafening. Even the masked men seem to hold their breath. Cian’s knuckles go white where he’s gripping the back of his seat.

“You think they give a shit about you beyond what you can do for them?”

“And what about what they can do for me? Did that ever cross your mind?”

The van hits a pothole, and I have to grab onto the van wall to keep from sliding. My head feels like it’s been split open with an axe, but I force myself to stay focused. I need to figure out where we’re going, how to get back to Ciar, Cillian, and Axl.

“Where are you taking me?” I demand.

“Somewhere safe.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Cian turns around to face front, dismissing me.

“It’s an answer. You just don’t like it.”

I want to throttle him. My own blood, and he’s treating me like cargo to be moved around at his convenience. “They will come for me.”

“I know,” he spits out. “That’s the whole problem, Sorcha!”

I give him a confused stare and then roll my eyes. “I mean my guys, you thick fuck. Ciar, Cillian and Axl will find me, and then you will wish you hadn’t tried to play god with their queen.”

His jaw ticks at the word ‘queen’ and I see the exact moment he realises just how deep I’ve fallen into their world. How deep they’ve fallen into mine.

“You’ve known them for what, a week? And you think they’ll tear apart half of Ireland to get you back?”

“I know they will,” I say with absolute certainty, because I do know. I felt it in every possessive touch, every protective gesture, every time one of them looked at me like I was their missing piece. “You have no idea what you’ve just started.”

“I have every idea what you started,” he counters.

“Me,” I scoff. “Try our dad. He couldn’t keep it in his pants, and here I am. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask to be born on the outside, and I definitely didn’t ask to be born a Gannon.”

“Yet when it suits you, you use my family name.”

“Your family name. Oh, like that is it? What happened to calling me your sister?”

He glares at me. I glare back. This is fruitless.

This is… family.

Dammit. I didn’t want to think of him that way. I didn’t want to think that I could be part of it when it was clear I was an inconvenience they had to put up with because of the sins of our father.

“You know what pisses me off the most?” I say, my voice hoarse. “It’s not that you abducted me. It’s not even that you blew up my boyfriends’ kitchen.”

“Boyfriend?” Cian’s voice is sharp.

“Boyfriends, plural. Keep up.” I lean my head back against the van wall, closing my eyes against the throbbing. “What pisses me off is that you think you know what’s best for me when you don’t know me at all.”

“I know enough.”

“You know nothing.” I open my eyes, fixing him with a stare that could melt steel. “You don’t know that I’ve been taking care of myself since I was eight. You don’t know that I’ve survived things that would break most people. You don’t know my reasons for choosing to use the Gannon name.”

“I don’t need to know. What I do know is that this clusterfuck has put all of us on a watch list. You need to break that affiliation and swear allegiance to me and your family.”

“They are my family,” I say, meaning it with my whole heart.

“No!” he roars, slamming his fist on the back of the seat. “They are not. They are our enemies, Sorcha. You don’t know how this shit works. This isn’t some random street fight, this is the fucking mafia.”

“I’m aware,” I grit out.

“If you are so fucking aware, you know that only I can save you. Only this family can save you. You are being targeted because you are alone.”

“Not anymo—”

“Fucking shut up and listen,” he growls. “You are a lone Gannon female making fucking waves in the criminal underworld. I can count over a dozen families that would want to stake a claim on you.”

“So why come for me now?” I ask. “Why let me go through all of this?”

“I’ve been watching you, watching the reports. Nothing was happening, no one was moving. I was hoping the realisation would come to you and you’d come to me.”

“You wanted me to realise on my own that I was a target?”

He sighs, “Not exactly. I didn’t want to force you to become something you didn’t want to be.” His face hardens again. “But that time has passed. You are in danger, you’re putting all of us in the limelight to see who will do what and when. This was my mistake, and I won’t make it again.”

“So your solution is to lock me away now?”

“Who said anything about locking you away?” he asks, shaking his head. “Jesus, Sorcha, haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve been saying?”

“No, not really,” I drawl.

He closes his eyes and breathes in deeply through his nose as if he is trying to calm himself. His eyes snap open and fix on mine. “One more time for the people in the back. You swear your allegiance to me, to our branch of the family. No one will fucking touch you.”

“No one will fucking touch me anyway when they know I’m affiliated with the Cerberus Order,” I counter.

“You don’t get it, do you? You don’t see the bigger picture. All that means is that all of you will become targets. They will be forced out of the way, one way or another, and you are then left vulnerable.”

“How is that any different to me becoming affiliated with you?” It’s a serious question. He needs to explain this to me like I’m challenged, because to me, it makes no difference.

“Because I’m not just some heir to a crime family, Sorcha. I’m the head of it. The Gannon name carries weight that the Cerberus Order, powerful as they are, despite who their families are, can’t match. When you’re mine, you’re untouchable.”

“When I’m yours?” I laugh, the sound bitter and sharp. “I’m not property, Cian.”

“In this world, you are.” His words hit like a slap.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I? Tell me now, and I will turn around and drop you back off if one of them, any of them, doesn’t matter which, has offered to marry you?

To make you their wife, their equal? Offered you that undeniable attachment to you that cannot be challenged under the old laws?

Hmm? Or are you a little girl on the side, still alone in every way that counts in this world? ”

The words hit their mark, and I hate that they do. Heat floods my cheeks, part shame, part rage. “Fuck you.”

“That’s what I thought.” He sits back and stares out the window as I struggle to say something, anything, that will make him see this as it is.

But he’s not wrong. I can sing all day long about how I’m part of the Cerberus Order, but I’m still a single Gannon female and as much as I hate the archaicness of that, Cian is right about the old laws.

Right now, I’m still fair game. If I step under my brother’s protection, under the family protection, I will be safe.

If I stay with the guys without a formal Catholic wedding, I’m toast. It never even crossed my mind.

I’ve never wanted to get married and have kids.

Who does in this life? I mean, really? People do it for alliances, for heirs, for the legacy.

What’s my legacy? A bastard nobody wanted who clawed her way up from the gutter and claimed a name that didn’t belong to her.

I close my eyes, the weight of his words settling like stones in my chest. He’s right, and I fucking hate him for it.

The guys never once mentioned marriage. They talked about ownership, possession, claiming—but never the one thing that would actually protect me in this world.

The one thing that would make me untouchable.

My pride is in tatters, and my heart is barely holding together.

“You’re a bastard,” I whisper, but there’s no heat in it now. Just exhaustion.

“That would be you,” he corrects. “And because of it, I’m trying to keep you alive.”

“Jesus,” I mutter. “Way to slam home exactly what you think of me.”

The van slows, turns onto gravel, and pulls to a stop.

“You have a choice to make, Sorcha. I know I’ve been harsh tonight.

I know I’ve told you things you didn’t want to hear.

But all of that aside, you are my sister, and if the families are gearing up to place you at the front of a bidding war, I will take my last breath protecting you, even if you don’t swear allegiance. ”

Tears prick my eyes. “You’re an arsehole, then.”

He gets out of the van and slams the door, lighting up a cigarette in the dark.