Chapter 27
RONAN
I'm pulled from sleep by the sound that every man in my position learns to fear—the sharp crack of gunfire cutting through the night. My body reacts before my mind fully processes what's happening, sitting up with a jolt as I listen keenly for another sound.
Leila stirs beside me, her voice sleepy as she speaks. We finally went to bed after one in the morning, when she was too exhausted to stay awake any longer. "Ronan? What was that?"
"Stay down." I'm already moving, rolling out of bed and grabbing a gun from the nightstand drawer. "Get in the bathroom and lock the door."
There are more gunshots, closer now, followed by shouting. Male voices, speaking rapid Italian. My blood turns to ice.
Rocco's men. Here. In the place where I thought they wouldn’t follow.
"Ronan, what's happening?" Leila sits up, her hair tangled around her face, eyes wide with fear.
"Rocco, I think. He’s figured out where you are." I reach for my clothes, keeping the gun close. "The bathroom, Leila. Now."
To my utter relief, she doesn’t argue or waste time asking questions.
She scrambles from the bed and starts to head quickly toward the bathroom, but before she reaches the door, our bedroom window explodes inward in a shower of glass and gunfire.
Someone is at the back of the house, shooting up into the windows.
I move faster than I thought possible, grabbing her and taking her down to the floor with me, covering her body with mine as bullets tear through the space where she’d been standing seconds before.
She makes a small sound of pain beneath me, and I pray it's just from hitting the hardwood and not from something worse.
“You need to get to an interior room,” I say sharply, breathing hard as the gunfire dies down.
“Stay low. Come on.” I reach for her, helping her up as we quickly move toward the door.
“The smaller library room, or the sitting room without windows. Or any room large enough that you can stay away from them.”
"What about you?" Leila gasps as we exit into the hall. I can hear the sounds of shouting from the front courtyard, the rattle of gunfire.
“I have to find out what’s happening. But then I’ll be right behind you. Go.”
She looks like she wants to argue this time. But we both know that I can’t hide with her while my men fight off Rocco’s. I don’t want to, as much as I want to keep her close.
I want to kill any man who had the fucking audacity to walk onto my estate and threaten my wife.
This isn’t going to happen again. Not while I’m here to do something about it.
Another burst of gunfire, this one from inside the house. My security team is fighting back, but I can hear the distinctive sound of semi-automatic weapons that my men don't carry on them for guard rotations. Rocco came prepared for war.
"Go," I tell Leila, helping her to her feet. "Stay low. Move fast."
She nods, and I watch her slip out of the room, keeping to the shadows along the wall.
Pride and fear tangle together in my chest as I watch her go for a brief moment.
She’s brave and smart and doing what needs to be done.
My wife, I think, my chest tightening, and then I shake my head, moving quickly toward the servant's stairs that lead directly to the security office.
Colin is there, barking orders as he looks at the security feed from outside.
“What’s going on?” I snap, and he turns to face me.
“Fifteen men, possibly more. They came over the south wall during the shift change." His jaw clenches. "They’ve been watching. They knew exactly when we'd be most vulnerable."
Another rattle of gunfire. “They’re inside the house?”
"At least four of them. The others are keeping our perimeter team busy. I was about to come find you. We need to—"
I’m already grabbing another gun from the locker in the security room when I hear Colin make a startled sound. I turn to see the security cameras that watch the east wing of the house—the wing where Leila is headed—go dark.
“Fuck!” I curse aloud. “Colin, get every man we have on these fuckers. I want them all dead. If you can keep one alive for me to question, do. If not, don’t let a single fucking one get away.”
He nods sharply. “Where are you going?”
I'm already moving toward the door. "I'm going to get my wife."
The hallways I've walked since I was young feel foreign in the darkness, transformed into a maze of potential ambush points. I move carefully but quickly, the weight of the gun familiar in my hand. Every shadow could hide an enemy. If they’re in the house, there’s no telling if there’s men lying in wait—although that doesn’t seem to be the style for this attack.
It seems like Rocco told them to hit fast and hard.
He clearly has no care for the lives of the men working for him. Only whether or not he can get what he wants, and bring me low in the process.
I’m halfway down the hall where I left Leila when I hear a sudden sound—a woman's voice, sharp with defiance, coming from the direction of the library.
"I said, get away from me!"
Leila.
Panic floods through me, but I force myself to keep my steady pace instead of blindly running toward the sound, even as every cell in my body demands that I break into a run and get to her as soon as possible. If they have her, charging in will only get us both killed.
The door is open, and the moment I reach the doorway, I see the scene inside, illuminated in the moonlight.
Two men in black tactical gear have Leila cornered near the far wall, but she's not cowering.
She's holding something large and heavy that glints glasslike in the dim light, her stance defensive but ready to fight.
One of the men has blood running down his face—she's already connected at least once.
"The boss wants you alive, bitch," one of them snarls in accented English. "But he didn't say you had to be unmarked."
"Then try to come get me," Leila spits back, and I've never been more proud or more terrified in my life.
The man laughs and reaches for her. She swings the object in her hand with vicious accuracy, catching him across the temple. He staggers back, cursing in Italian, while his partner raises his weapon.
I don't think. I just act.
My first shot takes the armed man in the chest, dropping him instantly. The second man spins toward me, going for his own gun, but Leila doesn't give him the chance. She launches herself at him furiously, clawing at his face while he tries to throw her off.
They go down together in a tangle of limbs, and I can't get a clear shot without risking hitting her. I'm moving toward them when the third man I didn't see steps out from behind a bookshelf, his weapon trained on me.
"Drop it, O'Malley."
I freeze, weighing my options. On the floor, Leila and her attacker are still struggling, but he's bigger and stronger, trained for this kind of combat. She's fighting with everything she has, but it's not going to be enough.
"I said drop it." The barrel doesn't waver.
I let the pistol I’m carrying fall from my fingers, raising my hands slowly. "Let her go. Your quarrel is with me."
"Our quarrel is with anyone who stands between Don De Luca and what belongs to him."
The man on the floor finally manages to pin Leila's arms, blood streaming from the scratches she left on his face. But as he hauls her to her feet, I see something that stops my heart.
Blood. On her thin tank top, spreading across her ribs. Too much blood.
"You're hurt.” I can hear the raw panic in my own voice, carrying across the space between us. Leila looks at me, fear in her eyes as she sees I’m being held at gunpoint.
"I'm fine," she gasps, but she's not. I can see the way she's favoring her left side, the paleness of her skin in the moonlight streaming through the windows.
"She's bleeding," I tell the man with the gun trained on me. "She needs medical attention."
"She'll get it when we deliver her to the don." He grins. “It can’t be that bad. The bitch is still barking.”
I hear more gunfire from downstairs, cursing in Italian and Gaelic. The man glances toward the door. "Time to go," he snaps to his companion. “We take them both. Rocco wants them both alive. We’ll find a way out while the rest are kept busy.”
"You're not taking her anywhere." I take a step forward, and he swings the gun toward me.
"Another step, and I put a bullet in your head. I’ll tell De Luca it wasn’t me. Someone else shot you. He can take it out on the skin of someone else."
"Then do it." I take another step. "But you're not leaving with my wife."
The standoff stretches for what feels like an eternity, but is probably only a few seconds. And then Leila makes the decision for all of us.
She drives her elbow backward into her captor's solar plexus with enough force to double him over, then throws herself sideways toward a heavy oak table. The gunman's attention splits for just an instant—enough for me to dive for my dropped weapon.
Gunshots explode through the library, glass shattering and paper flying, splinters of wood spraying across the room. I roll behind an overturned chair and come up firing, but I'm shooting blind, trying to keep them occupied while Leila gets to cover.
When the shooting stops, the silence is deafening. I can hear my own heartbeat, my ragged breathing, but nothing else. No movement, no voices.
"Leila?" I call softly.
There’s no answer. I realize there’s silence from downstairs now, too. The shooting has stopped.
Terror like I've never known floods through me as I rise from cover, sweeping the room with my gun raised. Both intruders are down—one motionless, the other groaning softly as blood pools beneath him. But Leila…
I find her behind the overturned table, curled on her side, one hand pressed to her ribs where the bloodstain has spread wider. Her eyes are open but glazed with pain and shock.
"Hey," I whisper, dropping to my knees beside her. "Hey, look at me."
Her eyes focus on my face with visible effort. "Are they gone?" I hear the sound of my men coming up the stairs, and I hope with everything in me that Colin managed to keep one alive for me to question.
If he did, I’m going to make sure those questions fucking hurt.
"They're gone." I carefully move her hand to assess the damage. The wound is in her side, bleeding faster than it should. It doesn’t look like a bullet directly—maybe a graze from a ricochet or a fragment from something splintering. "We need to get you to a hospital."
She lets out a low moan of pain. "The baby—"
"The baby's going to be fine. You're both going to be fine." I'm saying it as much for myself as for her, trying to will it into being true through sheer force of belief.
But as I lift her carefully in my arms, as I feel how fragile she is against my chest, all I can think about is Siobhan.
About how I wasn’t there, how I wasn’t enough to keep her and our child safe.
I wasn’t ever enough for her, in any way.
And while I never wanted her as my wife, she didn’t deserve to die.
I failed to keep them alive. I failed at the one thing that, above all else, I should do.
History is repeating itself. I'm going to lose them both, and this time it will destroy me because this time I love her. This time she's not just an arranged bride—she's the woman I chose over my father’s will, over my desire for him to be proud of me, to love me.
She’s the woman that I’ve realized I’d burn everything down for if it meant I could keep her safe.
And I didn’t tell her. I haven’t told her. Even now, I can’t make the words spill from my lips. I don’t think I know how to say I love you. I can’t remember if I ever have.
"I'm scared,” Leila whispers, her voice fainter now, and I feel the sound of it tear at my heart.
"Don't be scared." I press my lips to her forehead as I carry her toward the door, toward the promise of getting her to a hospital, to someone who can help her better than I can, now. "I've got you. I'm not going to let anything happen to you."
“Promise me you’ll take care of my mom,” she whispers. “If I don’t… if I—”
"Stop. Nothing's going to happen to you." I feel her get heavier in my arms as I say it, and I realize she’s passed out. Fear coils through me, cold as ice, and I shout for Colin as I step out into the hall.
“She needs a hospital. Now. Get a car—” I start barking orders, already moving past my men, heading for the front door and a vehicle that better be fucking waiting for me to get my wife to someone who can save her.
As I get into the car, still cradling her, all I can think is that this will be the thing Rocco will regret most in whatever remains of his very short life. I don’t care what plans my father has or how strategic I’m meant to be about this.
I’m not going to wait any longer.
I’m going to fucking kill him.