Chapter 46
ROWAN
The warehouse smells like oil, rust, and something metallic that shouldn’t be there. Blood, probably, if the stains on the floor are anything to go by. It’s not the same as the one Liam took me to a few days ago. The one where he killed that man.
I fight a shudder as we step inside and pull my coat closer around me.
Thank goodness Liam thought to bring me warm clothes and boots.
The roller door screeches as it closes behind us, sealing the night out.
The echo of metal on metal vibrates through my bones.
Darragh stands near a steel table, sleeves already rolled up to his elbows.
Liam walks beside me rather than ahead of me like I’d expected him to.
It’s the smallest and most ridiculous thing to notice given the fact I‘m pretty sure I’m about to watch a man getting tortured, but something about how his warm body keeps pace with mine brings me comfort.
Brian is on display, tied to a chair in the center of the floor.
Someone has patched up the cut to his neck with white gauze.
His mouth curves when he sees me. The same smirk from the last five years.
It’s as though he thinks he’s won something or got the upper hand on something I haven’t realized yet.
I don’t fight the tremor that rolls through me, and I hope my face conveys just how repulsed by him I am.
“You never could stay away.”
The words slide over my skin like sandpaper.
Liam shifts beside me. Tension rolls off him in forceful waves. It’s coiled, his violence lingering below the surface, waiting for permission to unleash. The more this fucker talks, the more I’m inclined to encourage Liam’s violence to come out and have a field day.
“Stop looking at me like that.” My voice is quiet, shaky, and feels a little pathetic. My cheeks burn, but I don’t give Brian the satisfaction of taking my eyes off him.
“Like what?” He tips his head to the side, taunting smirk still in place.
“Like I’m going to shatter.”
Silence stretches between everyone in the warehouse. And to Liam’s credit—and Darragh and Jeff standing a few feet away—no one rushes me. In fact, no one even looks impatient.
It’s like this is their entire purpose for the here and now. No one’s got anywhere else to be. Something about that makes my spine straighten a little.
I step forward on my own. Up close, Brian looks older, weaker, not as untouchable as he thought he was when he dragged me out of my life and locked me into his.
“You stole five years.” My voice is still quiet and shaky, but something hot and fierce surges through my blood. I resist the urge to look at Liam, for stability, comfort, or strength. This is something I need to face by myself.
His jaw flexes. “I saved you.” He sounds bored as he rolls his eyes.
A laugh bubbles out of me before I can stop it. It doesn’t sound like me, and yet, it feels like the me I’m maybe supposed to be. The me I would have been were it not for him stealing a massive chunk of my life.
“Saved me?” I glance back at Liam, who’s watching with intense fury burning in his eyes as he tongues the inside of his scarred cheek. “He thinks he saved me, mo rún.”
Take that, Brian you fucker. We’ve picked up right where we left off. Your plan didn’t work. Our love defies the fucking ages, arsehole.
Brian’s eyes flicker between us, always assessing. A slow, almost pitying smile spreads across his face. “Look at her, Liam.”
My stomach drops.
“I gave her five years of peace. Of safety.” Brian’s gaze drags over me. “Erin never would have stepped into a place like this.”
Liam goes still beside me, tension holding every one of his muscles hostage.
“But two weeks back with you?” Brian huffs a broken laugh.
“And she’s standing in a warehouse, where you’ve carved men apart if these blood stains are any indication.
” His eyes snap to mine. “I didn’t just hide you.
” His voice sharpens, laced with glee and superiority.
“I proved that he’s the poison. Until he came along, you were a good girl.
And now look at where you are. You were wasting yourself with him, Erin. You never did belong in his world.”
Something drives me to slap his smug face. “It’s Rowan. And you don’t get to decide where I belong.” I tilt my head. “Your world is better? Drugging me? Isolating me? Telling me lies? And all because you believe Liam killed your sister.”
His smile falters. There it is. The truth he never shared with me.
“I don’t know what you think you know, Brian, but Liam had nothing to do with Aisling’s death.”
Brian’s eyes harden, turning cold. Darragh shifts to my right. Liam still hasn’t moved. He’s letting me lead, and it makes me love him a little more.
“I never lied,” Brian snaps. “And lover boy there had my sister run off the road.” He turns his glare to Liam. “Product was moving that night, cars where they shouldn’t have been. You think I didn’t put it together?”
Liam’s jaw tightens, but he stays quiet.
“I had proof, enough to know exactly who was to blame. You took my sister away from me. You didn’t have a sister to take, so I stole the next best thing.” He drags his tongue over his top lip as he sweeps his gaze over me.
As a woman, I know what’s coming next. He’s going to use the fact that we slept together to annoy Liam. And he’ll probably get a broken nose for his trouble.
I can see that train coming a mile off, but considering I want to break his nose myself, I’m not coming to his aid.
“She was definitely worth taking.” Brian’s sneer makes my skin crawl.
“The beating I arranged wasn’t supposed to kill you.
” His voice is ice cold. “It was supposed to be a reminder of everything you lost. That every time you looked in the mirror, you’d see a scar, a reminder that the woman you loved betrayed you, and you’d hate her for it. ”
Liam steps forward slowly. “Go on.” His voice is freakishly even. I’ve never seen him so controlled, so lethal. “Tell her how that night really went. Tell her the fucking truth.”
Brian’s breathing changes. It’s shallower, faster.
“My sister was killed in an accident.” He jerks his chin at Liam.
“Accident. That’s what you told the Gards to say.
That’s what the paper said. But your piece of shit mafia boyfriend is to blame.
She was caught in the crossfire of some turf war with those McCarthys.
” His lips twitch. “At least those fuckers knew how to run a mafia.”
“Careful.” Darragh offers the first warning. The tension in the air ratchets up a little higher at Darragh’s family loyalty surging to the surface.
Liam doesn’t react outwardly. But I feel the air change around us. Sharpening.
“Is that how you get your kicks, Mad Dog? Killing off high school students with their whole lives ahead of them?” Grief laces his tone. “Pregnant high school students.”
Brian locks his gaze on me. “Bet he didn’t tell you that, did he? Didn’t tell you that he knocked up my sister while he was with you. That the last word she ever spoke was his name. Not mine. Not Ma’s or Da’s. His.”
His statement is a thunderbolt to my chest. It can’t be true. I shoot my attention to Liam. His stunned expression tells me everything I need to know.
“I hardly knew your sister.” Liam shakes his head. “If she was pregnant, then it had nothing to do with me. Nor did the car crash she died in. You can believe what you like, but I know the fucking truth.”
It’s easy to sound genuine when you’re telling the truth.
In Brian’s silence, five years rearrange themselves in my head. All the guilt he planted in me. All the hatred he fed me. All the nights I lay believing Liam was the one who needed protecting, the one I needed to run from.
Brian took my time, my love, my identity. Something deep inside me stills.
“You let me hate myself for everything I saw,” I whisper, blinking back tears I refuse to let fall.
Brian holds my gaze like he thinks I might be his ally. He’s dead wrong. “He would have destroyed you like he destroyed Aisling.”
“You destroyed me.” I shove my finger at his face.
“And now, I’ll destroy them.” His gaze flashes to Liam then back to me. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me. They can’t stop what’s coming. I’ve got it all set up. He can’t outrun what’s coming.”
Darragh chuckles. “Good Lord, man. You really do live in a dream world, don’t you?
Thinking my brother defiled your teenage sister, had her run off the road.
And now you believe that your insurance policy is still in place, when the reality is, it’s nothing but ash.
” His grin broadens. “This is what happens when an amateur deals with a professional.”
Brian’s supreme confidence stutters. “You’re lying. It’s all you Mahoneys know how to do.”
“I mean, you can believe that if you want.” Darragh pretends to study his hands, then meets Brian’s gaze. “It isn’t true, but go ahead and believe it. You’ve spent years believing lies, so why change now.”
Brian keeps talking, keeps spinning his conspiracy theories, keeps trying to convince me he’s the victim, but when he doesn’t get the reaction he hoped for, he turns to talking about my naked body, taunting Liam until the noise gets unbearable.
“For fuck’s sake.” My nerves are shredded. I drag a hand down my face, but it does little to ease the spike in my heart rate. “Do you hear him?” I’m not sure who I’m asking, but no one fucking answers. “He’s not going to stop.” I gesture a hand at the prisoner who’s still trying to rant over me.
“He’s going to keep rewriting history, twisting the truth until it fits his narrative.” My voice hardens. “He doesn’t get to do that anymore.” I pinch the bridge of my nose.
Liam looks at me.
“This isn’t about revenge. It’s about control. For five years, he weaponized his voice.” My throat tightens, but I hold myself together. “If he keeps talking, he’s in control.”
Liam tilts his head to the side, a beat of silence hanging between us.
I smile. “So take it from him.”
He doesn’t ask if I’m sure. He doesn’t try to talk me down. He doesn’t call me hysterical or try to gaslight me. He makes me feel strong and, because of that, I don’t look away. I don’t even flinch.
Brian is still spewing his lies when Liam steps in front of him, shouting louder, like he knows exactly what’s coming, like he needs to get the last word out before he can’t speak anymore.
But Liam doesn’t let him, there’s a flash of metal followed by a quick movement.
The sound that follows is wet and choked.
Brian jerks violently in the chair, a guttural howl echoing off the tin walls of the warehouse.
Liam drops Brian’s tongue on the dirty warehouse floor, the sound like a piece of luncheon meat slapped onto the kitchen counter.
My pulse is steady. I expected to feel sick. Instead, I feel… relieved. I’ll never have to hear that man’s voice again.
“You don’t get to speak anymore.” I step closer to the bloody-faced man, who now has eyes so wide they’re mostly white. “You don’t get to twist anything else. You don’t get to rewrite my life. You don’t get to decide what those five years meant.”
Brian’s eyes blaze with fear, blood dripping to the concrete in slow drops.
And Liam watches me more than he watches Brian. “Rowan.” It doesn’t sound like a warning.
“He stole five years. That doesn’t get forgiven.” Five years we’ll never get back. I glance back at Liam. His nostrils flare. Something shifts between us, an understanding. Darragh exhales slowly, like he’s witnessing something inevitable happen.
“Anything else you want to ask him?” Liam says.
I crouch in front of Brian. Close enough that he has to look at me. “Do you believe that Liam didn’t kill your sister? That he wasn’t the one who got her pregnant.”
He gurgles and there’s a fractional hesitation before he shakes his head. He’s refusing to let go of the narrative that served him, that justified everything he did to me.
“Could Patrick have ordered a hit on her?” The words are out of my mouth before I can filter them. It doesn’t explain the pregnancy, but I suppose she could have found herself caught up in something she wasn’t prepared for.
Liam’s eyes sharpen, but there must have been enough to my question because he pulls out his phone, presumably to check. He puts Patrick on speaker and asks but gets the same answer. It was a legitimate accident.
The social media post I recall reading comes back to me. Aisling had some kind of a crush on Liam, a man who barely knew she existed. Maybe knowing she was pregnant, she was looking for a fairy tale, a rescue from a mafia family who could make the shame go away. We’ll never know the full story.
Liam doesn’t look at me like I’ve betrayed him by questioning Patrick, he looks at me like I’ve just proven I belong here.
“You never cared for me,” I tell Brian. “You loved owning me, the control it gave you over someone else’s life. Your files are gone. You’re not a hero with a back-up plan. You’re just a man in a chair with no one left to call.”
His hands strain uselessly against the cable ties, helplessness filling his eyes as his mouth moves, unable to say whatever it is he’s trying to convey.
I stand. “He doesn’t get to walk away from this and do this to anyone else.” My voice isn’t quiet or shaky anymore. “Make sure of it.”
Liam studies me for one long second, searching for doubts he won’t find. Because this isn’t about becoming something new, somebody new.
It’s about taking back what was stolen. Not Erin, not the girl he stole from Liam, but me. Rebel.