Chapter 26
CHAPTER 26
CLOVER
W hen I woke up, I felt like I’d been hit by a bus—in the best possible way.
Everything was sore— everything —but all those aches and pains were just reminders of all the places Damien had kissed.
Or touched.
Or …
I smiled and burrowed deeper into the sheets, reliving my favorite moments from the night before.
Then, I added my heart to the list of body parts that were sore. It felt as if it might burst.
A ray of sunshine broke through the clouds, warming my face through one of the small attic windows. Rolling over, I reached for Damien, craving the solid grounding of his body, the intoxicating safety of his arms.
But all I found was a lumpy mattress, covered with a perfectly smooth patchwork quilt.
Sitting up, I squinted into the late morning light and found that Damien’s side of the bed looked untouched. The clothes Kate had laid out for him were gone, along with his gun, his scent, his warmth. It was as if it had all been a dream, and I was suddenly thrust back into the nightmare of my reality.
Running over to the window facing the harbor, I glanced at the water below and had to clutch the windowsill to stay upright.
They were gone.
Damien and the Pride of Howth were both gone.
Our fight from the night before rang in my ears as I slid to the floor and stared at the bed.
“Every second that I stay here, that your da’s boat sits in that harbor, is another second closer to them capturing you again! I can’t let that happen, Clo. I can’t—”
“You’re leaving me here?”
“It’s the only way to keep you safe.”
I wanted to feel shocked, to feel hurt and betrayed, but the only one who’d betrayed me was me. I knew that boys left as soon as they got what they wanted. I knew that having feelings for someone only meant they could hurt me more.
I knew that I wasn’t really lovable.
I’d done this to myself.
Damien had told me exactly what his plan was, and I’d ignored it.
With my elbows on my knees, I dropped my head into my hands and stared at the wooden floor between my scratched, bruised legs as a black hole of numbness chewed its way through my body like a cancer.
I had nothing.
I had no one.
I was nothing.
I was no one.
I didn’t feel the boards beneath my feet as I walked back over to the bed. Didn’t feel my bruises ache as I put on the yellow sundress Kate had left out for me. And I didn’t feel the scrapes and puncture wounds on my feet as I shoved them into a pair of dirty white runners.
I went through my morning routine mechanically, as if I were driving someone else’s body. Brushing someone else’s teeth. Washing someone else’s face. I straightened up the bathroom and shoved Damien’s wet trousers into the bin, but I couldn’t bear to leave his blazer. I might not have been able to feel the satin lining slide over my bare arms, but I could smell it—a heartbreaking mixture of sea and blood and him . A sharp pang of loss stabbed me in the heart, but the black hole swallowed that too.
Looking around, I realized that there was nothing left to do. No more distractions, no more tasks to be done. The urge to leave was overwhelming. To lock my feelings in that attic and run as far away from them as I could get.
I was so focused on getting out of there that I didn’t process the smells and sounds coming from the floor below until I was already halfway down the first flight of stairs.
The scent of blueberry muffins.
The unintelligible murmuring of a television newscaster.
Jack’s blunt but cautiously quiet voice, asking a question.
And a deep, masculine response that made my throat tighten and my eyes burn.
I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the cadence of Damien’s speech, his relaxed tone and timbre, indicated that he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
He’d stayed.
He’d actually stayed.
All the emotions I’d been running away from slammed into me as I stood there on the stairs—the worthlessness, the grief, the self-hatred, the shame. I was so embarrassed by my overreaction. So embarrassed that they were going to see how absolutely broken I was. But I needed to see Damien more than I wanted to hide from him, so with a shaky breath, I let my feet carry me the rest of the way down.
Sun filled the cozy sitting room, illuminating a treasure trove of photos and books and art and old furniture. And over in the open kitchen, huddled around the glowing screen of a tablet and a basket full of muffins, Kate, Jack, and Damien turned their heads and smiled at me.
And I immediately burst into tears.
“Oh, honey.”
“I told ya that bed was uncomfortable.”
“Angel …”
Before I could wipe my eyes, Damien had crossed the room, pulled me into his arms, and pressed his lips to the top of my head. He smelled like soap and felt like home.
“Shh …” he hushed, smoothing a hand over my hair.
“I …” I shook my head, burying my face in the white shirt he was wearing. “I thought you’d left.”
Holding me at arm’s length, Damien glared at me, but his gray eyes were softer than usual.
“After last night?” He smirked. “Impossible.”
That dimple was on full display now, making me realize that he’d shaved while I was asleep. I pictured him using one of Kate’s pink razors and laughed, wiping a mortified tear from the corner of my eye.
“I’m sor—”
“Don’t,” he warned. “Don’t even think it. Come on. Kate made breakfast.”
Kate gave me a sympathetic smile as Damien sat me in the empty chair next to his. “That dress looks nice on ya.”
Jack simply cleared her throat as she slid a mug of hot tea over to me.
“Thank you,” I said to both of them with a sniffle, feeling my cheeks flush as I lifted the mug.
“Damien told us … about your family.” Kate’s smile faded as her own eyes began to glisten. “You’re welcome to stay with us as long as ya like.”
“Are ya fuckin’ serious?” Jack mused. “As loud as these arseholes are? Kept us up half the night with their fuckin’ and fightin’.”
Now, Kate was blushing too.
“We’ll head out today.” Damien squeezed my leg. “You’ve been more than generous. Thank you.”
I stared at the side of his face in trepidation.
“Where are we gonna go?” I asked, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. “Where’s the boat?”
Jack snorted knowingly as she plucked a muffin from the basket.
“At the bottom of the harbor,” Damien stated, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.
I nearly spat out my tea.
“I sank it … early this mornin’.”
I blinked at him as I struggled to process what he was saying.
“Took longer than I’d expected, but she was all the way under by sunup.”
Reaching across the table, Kate clasped my hand. “He had to, love. It woulda led ’em right to ya.”
“To us ,” Jack added with her mouth full.
To us.
As much as it hurt to lose another part of myself, of my family, I looked around the table and realized that what I had gained was worth so much more than some rusty, old boat.
Squeezing Kate’s and Damien’s hands at the same time, I responded to his worried gaze with one of overwhelming gratitude.
“Thank you,” I whispered, feeling like an eejit. “I should have thought of that. Leaving that boat out there put everybody at risk. I’m so—”
“Breaking news in the war with Russia.” The British newscaster staring at us from the tablet on the table interrupted my apology even faster than Damien. “Officials report that the Irish death toll has just surpassed one thousand. Most of these casualties have been military personnel, which is a devastating blow to the already-depleted Irish Defence Forces. During last year’s conflict in Northern Ireland, it is estimated that the country’s total military strength was reduced to fewer than eight thousand active personnel.”
“Fuck!” Jack shoved her chair away from the table, causing the glowing tablet to fall forward on its face.
Kate gently propped it back up.
“The Irish Defence Forces have chosen to concentrate their efforts on maintaining control of Dublin, leaving all other major ports and cities undefended. Most residents in these areas have fled to rural villages that have yet to be invaded, but several of those who did not get out in time have been captured and taken to makeshift prison camps. According to our war correspondents, Irish detainees are being subjected to daily beatings and ill treatment.”
“Ill treatment,” Jack scoffed, pacing across the kitchen.
Damien slid my chair next to his and wrapped his arm around me.
“Because of Ireland’s unprovoked attack on UK soil last year,” the newscaster continued as scenes from the now-infamous Battle of Belfast played on a green screen behind him, “it has alienated itself from all of England’s allies. Thus, the majority of European and North American countries have closed their borders to Irish refugees.”
“What did I tell ya? What the fuck did I tell ya when the UIB took office?” Jack spat. “I said those gangsters were gonna run this place into the ground.”
“Shh!” Kate hushed, turning up the volume.
“However, in a bold act of defiance against the Crown, the mayor of Boston, Dr. Kendall Fitzpatrick, held a press conference yesterday to announce that she is opening her city to Irish refugees.”
The screen changed to a woman standing at a podium, wearing a helmet of strawberry-blonde hair and a red pantsuit that was just as stiff. A river, bridge, and cityscape glittered behind her.
Dr. Fitzpatrick smiled into the camera and spread her arms as wide as her suit would allow. “Ireland, look behind me. Everything you see here—every bridge, building, and byway—was built with the blood, sweat, and tears of Irish immigrants. Your ancestors came here by the thousands during the Great Famine, bravely forging a new life for themselves and their families. To this day, twenty percent of our citizens claim to be of Irish decent. One hundred percent on St. Patrick’s Day,” she added with a smirk. “So, your history is our history. Your blood runs in our veins. You are family, and you will always be welcome here in Boston.”
Tears welled in my eyes as they lifted and locked on to Damien’s.
Boston.
The idea was exhilarating and terrifying. I’d never even left the island before. I had no money. No friends in America. But we would be safe there, and there was nothing I wanted more than to curl up in Damien’s arms without the fear of being bombed or captured or killed.
“When asked to comment, American President Samuel Torres announced that he will not only allow Boston to accept Irish refugees, but he will facilitate the evacuation effort by sending his largest ships and military aircraft to transport those who wish to leave. In a statement directly following Mayor Fitzpatrick’s, President Torres said, quote, ‘What’s happening in Ireland is a humanitarian disaster that defies politics. We do not support the United Irish Brotherhood, nor do we recognize them as a legitimate political party. The UIB is an organized crime syndicate that has hijacked a country, akin to the Bratva in Russia. The conflict between these two countries is a glorified gang war, plain and simple, and our support lies solely with the innocent Irish people whose lives and livelihoods are at risk because of it.’ ”
Jack scoffed.
“And in what is only his second-recorded appearance since the invasion began, Taoiseach Séamus Rooney has also issued a statement.”
The screen cut to an image of Rooney, red-faced and sweatier than ever, sitting in some kind of windowless bunker. He was wearing a camouflage army uniform—as if he’d ever seen a second of any of the battles he had caused—and was lit as if he were under interrogation.
“People of Ireland,” Rooney sneered, “I speak on behalf of the United Irish Brotherhood, the brave men and women fightin’ on the front lines, and the generations of Irish rebels who came before ya when I say that we are disgusted by the way yous all have been actin’ since this little skirmish began.”
“Disgusted?” Jack snapped.
“Little skirmish,” I whispered, picturing scorched hills covered in dead sheep and leveled houses.
“Fleein’ yer cities. Runnin’ off to the country—or worse, America . After everything we just went through to unite our island again, yer just gonna roll over and let another colonizer take it from ya without a feckin’ fight?”
Jack laughed maniacally and pinched the bridge of her nose.
Rooney continued, “Yeah, sure, Abramov likes to brag that he’s got a two-million-man army. Ours might not be that big—”
“Not that big?! We’re down to eight thousand, ya fuckin’ muppet!”
“But we’ve got five million men, women, and children on this island who can all join the fight.”
“Children?” Kate echoed, shaking her head as she stared at the screen with sad, unfocused eyes.
“So, get yer arses to Dublin and bring all the weapons ya got. Yer country needs ya, ya bleep cowards!”
Pausing the broadcast, Kate looked at Jack. “What do we do?”
“You should get off the island,” Damien responded, his voice deep and commanding. “Right now, Abramov is focused on the capital, but as soon as there’s a Russian flag flyin’ over Dublin Castle, he’ll take the rest of the country.”
“How do ya know that?” Jack asked, coming to stand behind Kate.
Damien shrugged. “We have our sources.”
He was letting them believe he was in the Irish military, just like he’d done with me. I’d felt so betrayed by that omission, but now, I understood why’d he done it. Damien was one of us, no matter what the patches on his jacket said.
Shite.
I glanced down at the Russian flag on my arm and turned that side of my body farther away from our hosts.
“We’re not leavin’,” Jack stated bluntly, gripping the back of Kate’s chair. “This is my home, and I’m gonna defend it.”
“What are you gonna do?” Kate asked quietly.
She didn’t look at either of us, but I could tell that her question was directed at Damien. She behaved the same way around him that I had in the cave. Like it hurt her to look at him. Like it hurt her not to.
He opened his mouth to answer, but the next voice we heard wasn’t his.
And it wasn’t speaking English.
Damien and Jack locked eyes as the sound of two men laughing and speaking Russian echoed up the stairs from the bakery.
“Hide,” Damien whispered.
“No!” Jack hissed. “Nobody move. These floors squeak like rusty gates. They’ll hear ya.”
Kate’s eyes went wide with terror as they darted from Jack to Damien.
“Ya have a gun?” Damien asked.
“In the bedroom. Too far.”
Something shattered downstairs, like a plate or a pane of glass. The men laughed and broke something else.
“Motherfuckers,” Jack spat.
Kate’s hand began to shake in mine, but Damien was as calm and quiet as the harbor fog. Standing up in his chair, he pulled the gun from his waistband and stepped onto the table. It creaked a bit under his weight, but not enough to hear all the way downstairs. Crouching to keep from hitting his head on the ceiling, Damien stepped from the table to the counter, then over to the kitchen island. There, he dropped to his knees and silently lifted a barstool, placing it back down as far out as he could reach. With it, he bridged the gap between the kitchen and the sitting room, ending up on a blue velvet couch that sat across from the stairwell. Kneeling on the seat, Damien leaned over the back, staring down the barrel of his gun into the shadowy void below.
No, not Damien.
The lieutenant.
Someone was about to die.
The sound of things breaking downstairs stopped, and the laughter grew louder. Closer.
“Get down.” Jack motioned at Kate and me.
Kate complied immediately, her white hair disappearing below the table, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the man with the gun.
I’d only ever seen him bleeding, starving, disheveled, and exhausted, and even then I’d thought he was the most captivating creature on earth. But I’d had no idea. Seeing him cleaned up—a crisp white shirt stretched over hard muscle, his clean-shaven jaw clenched in concentration—made me realize what a force of nature he really was. Damien exuded power and confidence, filled the room with his perfectly composed potential to strike. It was like being in the presence of a king cobra—hypnotizingly beautiful and every bit as deadly.
So, when the voices grew louder and the stairs began to creak, I wasn’t afraid.
But I should have been.
Because after Damien fired his first shot and I heard a body tumble down the stairs, his gun only clicked.
Plaster exploded above his head as the second sailor returned fire. Damien ducked in front of the sofa as bullets spewed from the stairwell, disappearing around the far side of it as the Russian charged into the sitting room. The moment his boots hit the landing, Damien tackled him from the side.
My heart leaped into my throat as I watched him pound the man’s face with the butt of his pistol. The sound was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. A sick, dull crunching. I thought the man was already dead. I thought Damien was unleashing all of his training and torment on a corpse. But when I noticed the Russian’s arm move, my entire world narrowed to the size of the object in his hand.
“Damien!” I screamed. “Gun!”
The moment I said his name, Damien’s gaze cut over to mine, and like water on a blacksmith’s blade, every glowing ember of warmth I’d felt from him moments earlier was extinguished, blackened, honed into a weapon of solid steel. The Russian lifted his hand and shoved the barrel of his pistol under Damien’s chin, and in that split second, I thought the bullet was going to pierce my own heart. A scream lodged in my throat as Damien jerked the sailor’s hand away, his cold, calculating stare darting to something over my shoulder in the process.
A rush of air ruffled my hair as a butcher knife sailed past me, spinning end over end before sinking into the side of the sailor’s skull, causing his entire body to jerk and his gun to go off.
Plaster dust rained down on them as Damien stared at his attacker, chest heaving, fist squeezing the man’s wrist so hard that his knuckles turned white.
“Couldn’t let ya have all the fun now, could I?” Jack teased, walking over to him.
But Damien wasn’t looking at her. His gaze slid from the dead body beneath him over to me, and I knew that no matter how relieved and awestruck and grateful I felt, the only reaction he would see on my face was pure horror. I was sick to my stomach over almost losing him, over the focused, unflinching way he’d bashed that man’s skull in. I could still hear the crunching, Damien’s soft grunts of force, the sudden, wet chop of metal through bone.
But mostly, I was horrified because I knew we’d summoned another threat, one that filled me with more dread than our two unexpected visitors combined.
“Shh!” I called out as the hair on the back of my arms stood up. I felt the hum rather than heard it. Felt it in every bruise. Every knife scratch and nearly broken rib vibrated at the same frequency as the death machine coming to investigate. “Hide in the stairs! Now!”
Damien didn’t hesitate. As I grabbed Kate and ran to the stairwell, he and Jack dragged the body in behind us. I had to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from shrieking as his cleaved head bumped down the stairs next to me, butcher knife still lodged in place.
No sooner had his last boot disappeared into the shadows than a beam of light illuminated the spot where it had just been. The curtains were closed, but they were sheer enough that the drone hovering outside could no doubt see in. And so could the Russian surveillance team operating it.
I didn’t realize I was hyperventilating until Kate squeezed my shaking hands.
“Breathe,” she whispered. “It’s gone, love. It’s gone.”
I couldn’t speak. All I could do was shake my head and pray for someone to read my thoughts. My heart was racing, my breaths were ragged, and I was suddenly freezing. My whole body shivered as Damien appeared at my side.
Gasping for air, I reached for him, pushing two words out between my insufficient, panicked breaths. “Not … gone.”
Nodding, Damien pulled me into his lap and pressed his lips to my forehead. “She’s right,” he announced to the women. “If the drone’s here, that means they heard the shots. They’ll keep searchin’ till they find the source … and the bodies when they realize they’re missing.”
“I hate these fuckers.” Jack gave the body sprawled out on the stairs a kick.
Kate pressed her fingertips to her lips, a vacant look in her unfocused eyes. “What do we do?”
“We give ’em what they’re lookin’ for.” The steady tone of Damien’s voice had already begun to calm my terror. He would fix this.
He has to.
“Jack, find a mirror and a window where you can keep an eye on the drone without being seen. Give me a signal if it comes back.”
Jack answered with a salute.
“Kate, I need ya to clean up the blood and find a damn good hiding spot in case any more troops come through here.”
Kate nodded as she stared at the unmoving chest of the man sprawled out between us.
“Clo …” Damien stood and helped me to my feet as well, keeping a steady hand on my body the entire time. “Pack us a bag and get ready to run.”
“With a fuckin’ drone on the loose?” Jack whispered.
“Yes,” Damien stated. “I’m gonna move the bodies to the pub through the back door. The front window’s already broken, so once they start lookin’ for the missing sailors, the drone will be able to fly right in and find them. If their surveillance catches us fleein’ the city, they’ll assume we killed the bastards, and you two will stay off their radar.”
Damien’s backlit face turned toward mine, and I felt the temperature drop ten degrees. “Or you three , if ya wanna stay here.”
I shook my head, clenching my teeth to keep them from chattering. Trying to outrun a drone sounded like a suicide mission, but as much as it shocked me, I trusted Damien. Without him, I would have died a thousand deaths already.
Without him, I would have welcomed them all.
Pressing his lips to mine, Damien stole what little breath I’d gotten back before moving past me down the stairs. “Jack, tell me when the coast is clear. I’m gonna move these bodies next door.”
“Wait!” I whisper-shouted, grabbing him by the shirt and turning him to face me. With trembling fingers, I reached up and unfastened his top button. “Ya can’t get blood on this shirt too. It’s the only one you’ve got.”