Chapter 14 #2
“I did,” I rasp, the words tasting like dust. “Just not this fast.”
The yard has dissolved into a nightmare of movement.
Smoke from a ruptured cargo crate mingles with the rising mist from the water, blurring the lines between friend and foe.
I step out from the edge of the steel, the world narrowing to the sight of a van door.
I fire twice, the recoil a sharp, honest jolt up my arm.
An attacker drops, his body dragged back behind the chassis by his shadows.
This was designed to bleed me, to show the city that my new empire comes with a tax paid in bone and breath.
A scream cuts through the din—sharp, young, and full of a terror that doesn't belong on my docks. It’s one of the new boys. I move toward it instinctively, and that's when the world punches me.
It’s a violent, white-hot impact just below my ribs, a force that hurls me back against the container wall with a thud that rattles my teeth.
Heat floods outward from the wound, a sickening, wet warmth that soaks into my shirt instantly.
I don’t fall—I refuse to fall—but the horizon tilts on its axis.
Roarke is there in a heartbeat, his heavy hand shoving me lower, his body a shield between me and the vans. “You’re hit,” he snaps, his eyes raking over me with a professional's detachment.
“Through?” I manage to choke out.
He glances at my side, then shakes his head, his jaw tight. “Grazed. But you’re leaking, Cillian. Stay down.”
“Hold the line!” he shouts to the men, his voice carrying over the crackle of fire.
Then, he does something catastrophic. He rises.
He steps into the open ground, his tall frame a deliberate target, drawing the shooters’ eyes away from the wounded men trapped near the inspection lane.
It’s a trade—his life for their seconds.
He’s always been the one to buy us time, but time is a currency we're running out of.
I push up, ignoring the fire licking at my ribs, and move to flank the second van. My men follow, our return fire becoming a measured, punishing flow that forces the attackers into a tighter, desperate circle. We have them. We almost have them.
Then the world shifts again.
Roarke reaches for the youngest crew member, his hand outstretched to drag the boy behind a stack of barrels.
The shot doesn't come from the vans. It’s higher, sharper—a third position near the warehouse roofline that I missed.
I see Roarke jerk, a sudden, unnatural snap of his shoulders as if an invisible wire had yanked him from behind.
He simply folds. It should be biologically wrong for a man this huge to crumple like a piece of paper…
Roarke, my invincible Roarke. Time becomes a viscous, agonizing stretch of grey.
The world narrows to the sight of him hitting the concrete, his blood a dark, spreading ink that stains the pier I worked so hard to claim.
“Roarke!” The name is a raw shard in my throat.
I move without a thought for the lead biting into the metal behind me. I drop beside him, my boots skidding in his blood, and grab the lapels of his jacket. I haul him toward the shadow of a crate, my side screaming in protest, but I don't feel it. I only feel the fading heat of him.
His eyes are open, focused on the grey sky, but the light behind them is flickering.
“Stay with me,” I command, my voice breaking. “Roarke, stay with me.”
His mouth moves, a faint, wet sound. I lean in, my ear near his lips. “Finish it,” he whispers, the words a final, iron instruction. He isn't asking for a priest or a medic. He’s giving an order.
The sniper fires again, the bullet sparking off the concrete an inch from my knee.
I look up, my vision sharpening into a cold, lethal clarity.
I track the muzzle flash near the roofline.
I breathe out, the world going still. I fire once.
Twice. The figure above stumbles, silhouetted against the sun for a fraction of a second before vanishing into the dark of the rafters.
Behind me, the yard is being reclaimed. My men are advancing with a redirected fury, forcing the vans into a frantic, screeching retreat. But the victory tastes like ash.
Roarke’s breathing is shallow, a series of ragged, wet hitches. I press my hand against the wound in his chest, feeling the life-force of the man who raised me, who stood by me when I buried my father, flooding between my fingers.
“Cillian,” he whispers, a ghost of a smirk touching his blood-slicked lips, “Keep making me proud.”
His hand, which had been gripping my sleeve, goes slack. The weight of him changes, becoming a heavy, hollow thing that anchors me to the pier.
The yard grows quiet in stages.
First the gunfire stops, then the shouting thins, then the only sound left is the slap of water against the pier and the faint hiss of something still burning near the loading bay.
Smoke drifts low across the concrete and out over the harbor, and one of my men calls out that the shooters have pulled back beyond the east exit.
“Pier’s secure,” someone says.
Secure.
I’m still on my knees beside Roarke when the meaning of it settles in.
My hands are pressed hard against him, blood slick and dark between my fingers, and for a second I forget to breathe.
His eyes are open but unseeing, fixed on the gray sky above the warehouse roofline, and there’s a question frozen in them that I’ll never get to answer.
He died facing forward.
He died standing.
He died because he stepped into open ground to drag a boy half his size out of fire that wasn’t his.
I sit back slowly on my heels. The concrete is wet beneath me, and my shirt is soaked through on one side where the bullet grazed me, but I barely feel it. The pain is distant, like it belongs to someone else. “He’s gone,” one of the men says quietly.
I nod once.
Kinsella stands a few yards away, his coat half-buttoned, coffee cup shattered somewhere near his office door. His face is ashen, and when he looks at Roarke, his mouth trembles before he clamps it shut. He takes a step forward, then stops, like he isn’t sure whether he’s allowed to approach.
“This wasn’t supposed to—” he begins, and the words die in his throat.
I rise slowly to my feet. The world tilts for half a second and then steadies. My side burns now, the warmth spreading under my jacket, but I ignore it.
Kinsella walks toward me with measured steps, his boots crunching over broken glass. When he reaches Roarke’s body, he kneels without ceremony, not touching him, just lowering himself as if the weight of the moment demands it.
He was neutral once.
He isn’t now.
Kinsella exhales hard through his nose, and his eyes shine. He doesn’t look at me at first. He looks at Roarke, at the man who enforced my lines and held the pier when others wavered.
“I didn’t call them,” Kinsella says, voice rough. “You have my word.”
I believe him.
Patrick doesn’t share information like this with middlemen before he makes a point.
This wasn’t a leak from Kinsella’s office.
Kinsella wipes at his face with the back of his hand, and when he looks up at me, there are tears in his eyes.
Not hysterical. Not weak. Just the kind that come when something breaks that can’t be rebuilt.
“He stood in front of me,” Kinsella says quietly. “Pulled one of mine down when the first shots hit.”
I nod once. “He didn’t have to,” Kinsella adds, voice cracking just slightly before he steadies it again. “He could’ve stayed behind cover.”
Roarke never stayed behind cover.
Kinsella’s mouth shakes. “You fold this pier in,” he says, and his tone has changed now, stripped of negotiation. “You do it fully. No half-measures. You want it? It’s yours.”
“It already was,” I reply.
“Then make it mean something,” he says, and his eyes fill again, tears spilling over despite his effort to hold them back. “Don’t let him die on ground that goes back to being a loophole.”
I hold his gaze. “It won’t,” I say.
Behind us, my men are already moving with grim efficiency. Weapons collected. Perimeter locked down. Injured loaded into vehicles. Two of the younger ones look shaken, their hands unsteady as they wipe blood from their sleeves.
Roarke had been their anchor.
He’d trained half of them.
He’d never raised his voice without reason.
And now he’s lying on a pier I claimed ten minutes before the first shot was fired.
I crouch again briefly and close his eyes with my thumbs. It’s a small gesture, almost archaic, but it matters. The salt air moves across the yard, and the smoke thins into the harbor wind.
I stand.
The wound in my side throbs harder now, each heartbeat sending a dull ache through my ribs, but it’s nothing compared to the hollow space opening in my chest. It feels like something fundamental has been removed, like a beam pulled from the center of a structure I thought was stable.
“Lock it down,” I say.
My voice is low, but it carries. There’s no shouting in it. No rage. “No trucks leave without clearance. Every manifest reviewed twice. Cameras up on the east roof by nightfall. And I want names.”
They nod.
No one questions me.
Kinsella rises slowly beside me. “You’ll have my cooperation,” he says, and there’s no hesitation now. “Fully.”
He swallows once, hard, then looks at Roarke again. “I’ll attend,” he adds quietly. “When you bury him.”
I nod once.
The drive back to the estate is silent. No one turns on the radio. No one speaks unless it’s necessary. Roarke’s body is in the second vehicle, and his absence fills the space heavier than any presence could.
I sit in the back of the SUV, jacket pressed against the wound at my side, and stare out at the city as we pass through it, ignoring the burn in my eyes. The sun is lowering over the water, turning the skyline gold in a way that feels almost obscene against the gray of the day.
He should be in the front seat, making some dry comment about escalation. When the gates open and the estate comes into view, warm lights glowing in the windows, everything looks disgustingly normal. I don’t stop walking until I reach Riley’s workstation. She stands as soon as she sees me.
By this point, the burn in my eyes feels like a living, breathing torment. “Roarke is dead,” I say, and my voice doesn’t break even once. “And you’re going to help me kill the man who did this to him.”
Riley’s eyes widen, and then she comes closer. There are faces around us. But I can’t see anyone beyond her. “Can I…?”
I nod and let her pull me into an embrace. When my head is level with her shoulder, I let the tears come. I’ve cried for very few people in this life. But Roarke deserved to be one of them.
This has gone beyond the point of negotiations. This is war.
And I don’t lose wars.