Chapter 21
ROWAN
Liam’s parting shot of “this conversation isn’t over,” makes my knees shake. Which is why, after he leaves, I stumble down the hallway to my room, my territory, although it’s laughable that I think of it as mine.
I’m unravelling. It’s the only explanation for such a deep crack appearing in my facade. My hands shake, and I can’t quite tell if it’s from fear of Sorcha landing me in it, or rage at myself for slipping up.
After she hands Liam his balls on a plate, Sorcha is coming back up those stairs.
When she does, she’s going to demand answers.
There’s no way out of this situation with her that doesn’t involve lying through my teeth.
It’s barely working with Liam, and there’s something about Sorcha that says she’s equal parts trustworthy and dangerous.
But if Sorcha gives him that phone, I don’t just lose my cover, I lose any control I might have had left.
If she’s kept my secret, then I need to give her something.
I strain at the door to hear their conversation downstairs.
One thing’s for certain, that woman has a titanium spine.
Even when we were younger, most people flinched and backed down from Liam first. He’s terrifying, and has the strength and skills to back it up.
He was always the first man in on a fight and could hold his own.
But Sorcha just straightens her spine, rolls her eyes at him, and bites back.
I’m so fucking jealous.
It’s getting harder and harder to bite my tongue when I talk to Liam. He’s pushing all my buttons because he knows exactly where to find them. The only thing keeping me on the right side of losing my shit is the fact that he wants me to crack. And I’m nothing if not a stubborn mule.
But with Sorcha, it feels different. She feels different.
There’s a soft knock on the door. “Erin? It’s me.
Are you in there? Can I come in?” Ah. Good Cop has arrived to chat about the contraband burner in her pocket.
The fact she’s here alone tells me she hasn’t blabbed to Liam about the phone, or he’d have already torn the door off its hinges to yell at me some more.
“It’s open.” I giggle because the irony of that sentence isn’t lost on me, and maybe a little because I’m inching closer to hysteria. Which is always good when you’re trying to make friends with a mafia boss’s badass mafia wife.
Get it to-fucking-gether, Rowan.
Sorcha opens the door and crosses the room to where I’m sitting on the bed. “What’s so funny?” Her eyes sear into my skin as she assesses my face.
I gesture around the room. “Absolutely nothing, but if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.” I tilt my head. “Okay, it’s a little funny that the lock is on the outside of my door, and I cooed ‘it’s open’ as though I have any control over it actually being open.”
She nods as she angles herself toward me, her eyes not quite filling with sympathy but definitely softening a little. “You want to tell me why a bartender needs a burner?” She waves my burner at me.
Loose ends always get tied up. Brian’s voice echoes in my mind, threats I wasn’t sure were real or just his vivid imagination.
Not just tied up—cataloged, copied, filed away like he’s waiting for his day in court.
For years, he’s been building his case against them.
Names and routes and payments… enough to burn the Mahoneys to the ground without even breaking a sweat.
I swallow down the fear, the anxiety, the possibility that I’m staring down the barrel of a loaded gun by what I’m about to do, but I believe all the way to the core of my being that this is the right move.
Men like Liam don’t get warned. They get erased.
Not by bullets but by headlines, middle-of-the-night raids by the peelers, by accounts frozen mid-transaction and shipments that never make it past customs.
A shiver skates down my spine, my heart stuttering as the memory of the murder I witnessed assaults me all over again. Brian’s voice has lived in my head for years. It’s the only thing that’s kept me away, kept me safe.
Kept Liam safe.
I open my mouth to speak, to tell her she needs to stop Liam from poking his nose into this before he gets himself killed, but my jaw simply trembles as much as my hands.
Blinking back tears doesn’t stop them from falling, and when my whole body vibrates, she tucks the phone away and squeezes my hand.
“I know you’re afraid, Rowan. But you need to talk to me, tell me what’s going on. We can’t fight what we can’t see. We can’t help you if we don’t know what you’re into. Did he hurt you? Liam?”
Jerking away from her so quickly makes my vision blur. I scan her face for traces of humor, but there are none. She’s genuinely asking if I’m lying because he hurt me, when the reality is I loved him enough to believe my absence was the only way he’d live.
I shake my head, which makes her release a huge breath, like she’s relieved her brother-in-law isn’t the problem.
“Then I’m going to need you to talk to me. We can fix whatever it is.”
A flicker of hope ignites in my chest at her words. Could they? Could they really make it all go away?
The murderers who know what I look like? Brian? People with badges? Could the Mahoneys help me live a normal life again?
The thoughts sour in my mind because it’s a pipe dream. Brian was so damn sure, so insistent, and over the years, I’ve had a couple of close calls. I didn’t dream up this threat, it’s real, it’s constant, and I’m not sure even the Mighty Mahoneys can save me from the jaws of this monster.
A man knowing my name.
A car burning on my street.
A knife flashing where I was supposed to be standing.
Each time, Brian moved me. Each time, things went quiet again.
Complicity means peace for all of us. In the beginning, when I wanted to look for Liam, to tell him what happened, Brian would warn me by lashing out against the Mahoneys.
First was a customs hold that cost them a week and a fortune, then a tip-off that had Gardaí sniffing around one of their smaller shipments.
Each time, just enough damage to prove a point. Never enough to start a war or get on Patrick’s shit list.
I shake my head at Sorcha again. “You can’t fix this.” My voice is barely a whisper as the words tumble out of my lips.
“We’re Mahoneys, hon. Fixing is what we do.” She bumps her knee against mine, drawing my gaze to hers. “You have to start trusting someone, Rowan. You’re clearly not ready for it to be Liam. So, how about you try me?”
“They’ll kill Liam.” I gasp and clap a hand over my mouth to stop anything else from falling out.
Her brows twitch but, to her credit, she doesn’t pale or pass out. She holds up the burner. “The people on this?”
She doesn’t need to know all the details: about the murder I saw, Brian’s involvement, witness protection.
She just needs to know that if I don’t check in with the person on the phone, people will suffer, so I nod.
“Someone who won’t let me go.” I swallow, reminding myself Sorcha knows who the Mahoneys are just like I do. “Not without a fight.”
She closes her hand over mine and squeezes, making my chest ache from her silent solidarity. “You’re done handling this alone.”
Tears stream down my face as I shake my head. “I-I need it back. If I don’t message him tomorrow…” I swallow down a sharp intake of breath.
“Then, what?”
“Then all hell will break loose, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.” A bitter laugh slips out. “You don’t understand. He’s already used his leverage. Small things, just enough to prove he can.” I shake my head. “He told me next time it wouldn’t be small.”
She stares at me for a long moment, the air getting thinner in the room as my palms grow sweatier. I’ve broken my silence. I’ve given her more information than I’ve ever dared to tell anyone. And right now, Sorcha Mahoney holds my life in the pocket of her very expensive jeans.
“Please, Sorcha. He’ll come and it won’t be alone. He’ll come armed with warrants, evidence, with everything he needs to destroy Liam. To destroy all of you.”
She jerks her chin at me as her eyes harden. “Let him fuckin’ try.”