CHAPTER 35 #2
I circle twice, searching for a sign—an oil drop, a torn bumper, shattered glass—but the road is clean. Too clean. They swapped cars. They prepared. They anticipated someone would follow.
My pulse thunders in my ears as I pull into the mouth of an alley and kill the engine.
For a moment, I sit there with my hands gripping the handlebar, chest heaving, mind screaming.
Every thought collides into another—what they’ll do to her, how terrified she must be, how she will try to protect the baby even while being dragged into a van.
I see her face in my mind, the fear in her eyes, the way she clutches her belly unconsciously whenever she feels threatened.
She’ll be counting. That’s the thing that guts me. She’ll be counting turns and minutes and how many voices, filing it all away the way she files everything, because that’s what she does when she’s frightened. She’s better at this than they know.
And she’s five months pregnant, and there were four SUVs, and being better at it has never once been enough against numbers.
I slam my fist against the handlebar, the pain ricocheting through my bones and grounding me just enough to think. Liam needs to know. Not in an hour. Not when the Italians finish their panic-laced calls.
Now.
I pull out my phone and dial. He answers on the second ring.
“Declan, what’s going—”
“They took her.” My voice fractures on the words. “Ailish. They took her.”
Silence. Thick and heavy.
“When?” he asks, his tone low and deadly.
“Ten minutes ago. The convoy was ambushed. Italians down. They boxed them in and grabbed her.”
“Where are you now?”
“East side. They switched vehicles.”
More silence. Then:
“Come back. Now.”
“I’m going after her.”
“No.” His voice sharpens. “Declan, listen to me. You go alone, you’ll die. And then she’s lost. Get back here. We regroup.”
I stare at the end of the alley, the sun dropping behind the buildings like a curtain lowering over a stage.
She’s out there in the growing dark, terrified, hurt, running out of time.
Every instinct in my body screams to ignore him—to run, to tear the city apart barehanded, to find her no matter what stands in my way.
But he’s right. If I rush into this blind, I’m not saving her. I’m joining her.
I swallow hard, forcing air into my lungs. “I’m on my way.”
I hang up before I can change my mind and rev the bike. As I shoot back into traffic, the last thing I see in the rearview mirror is the empty alley behind me—a narrow, quiet stretch of concrete and shadow where I feel, for the first time in years, completely and utterly helpless.
Ailish is gone.
And I’m going to burn the world down to get her back.
The compound gates slam open the second I approach, and Rory waves me through with a grim expression that tells me he already knows something has gone very, very wrong.
Word always travels fast in our world, faster than bullets, faster than sense.
I park the bike so hard the tires chirp, and I nearly forget to kill the engine before swinging off it.
Inside the main room, Liam stands at the head of the long table, arms braced against the wood, shoulders tight.
Nadia sits on the couch with her phone in hand, talking fast and low to someone in Russian.
Conor paces like a caged animal, hands clenched in fists.
Ronan checks weapons. Everyone moves, talks, prepares.
Everyone except me.
The moment I step in, everything in me locks up.
Liam looks up. His eyes are calm. Too calm. That kind of calm always means the world is about to break.
“Tell me everything.”
His voice is controlled, but underneath it lays something molten—fear, fury, guilt, I don’t know.
Maybe all of it. I swallow, then force my brain to replay what happens, detail by detail.
I list the number of SUVs. The precision of the ambush.
How they knew the route and where to hit hardest. How Ailish was dragged kicking, screaming, fighting harder than any pregnant woman should have to.
Nadia closes her eyes when I say that last part, and her hand tightens around her phone until her knuckles whiten.
I force myself to stay upright and not punch the wall until plaster rains down. “Any communication yet?” I ask.
Rory shakes his head. “Nothing. No calls. No messages. No sightings.”
Liam watches me with a stare that feels like being examined under a bright light. Clinical. Careful. “Sit down.”
I don’t. “I’m not sitting.”
“It wasn’t a request.”
My pulse throbs in my temples. “We don’t have time for this.”
“We do, actually,” he says, still maddeningly calm. “Ailish hasn’t been taken to kill her. If they wanted her dead, none of your Italians would’ve been alive long enough to confirm anything.”
The accuracy of that statement makes nausea twist in my gut.
Ronan clears his throat. “They’ll move her twice. Maybe three times. They’ll clean the route behind them. They’ll use a different group to interrogate. They don’t let the takers do the questioning. Weak link problem.”
Liam straightens, fixing me with a look that forces the air back into my lungs whether I want it or not. “Declan. Sit.”
Something in his tone—brother, leader, man barely holding himself in check—breaks through the panic boiling inside me. I drop into the chair, elbows braced on my knees. My vision tunnels briefly, then clears.
He takes the seat across from me. His voice lowers.
“I need a clear head from you. I need your instincts. But I can’t use you if you’re pacing the ceiling.”
I hate how rational he sounds when everything in me feels feral.
“I shouldn’t have let her go,” I say, the words ripped from somewhere deep. “She kissed me goodbye, and I let her get into that damn SUV.”
Liam doesn’t blink. “Ailish made that choice. And it was the right one. She needed to prove she could operate again.”
“Not like this.” My voice cracks like something is giving way beneath it.
Conor grabs a map from the wall and spreads it on the table. “They’ll need a secondary holding location—close enough for transfer, far enough to avoid heat.”
Ronan loads another clip. “We hit all the usual Russian rat-nests. They can’t hide her everywhere.”
The room spins into motion. But I stay seated, unable to shake the image of Ailish being thrown into a van, arms reaching for help she never got because I didn’t arrive fast enough. I press my palms to my face, dragging in a breath that scrapes my insides like broken glass.
Liam sits beside me, lowering his voice so only I can hear. “Declan.”
I can’t look at him.
“She’s coming back,” he says.
“You don’t know that.”
His voice hardens. “I do. Because I won’t let this become another grave we visit in silence.”
My chest tightens painfully. Memories of funerals, gunshots, hospital rooms, the hollow ache of loss—it all collides against me at once. Liam places his hand on the table, just close enough that I can see it steady.
“You told me once you were ready to bleed for her,” he says. “This is where you prove it. Not with rage. With discipline.”
I force myself to meet his eyes. “I’m going after her. No matter what the Russians want.”
“And you’ll have an army behind you.” He exhales slowly. “But you cannot lose your mind. Not now. You lose it now, and they win before we even find her.”
I swallow hard. “I know.”
“Say it again.”
“I. Know.”
His nod is small, but real.
Then Nadia says, “I have something,” and the moment shatters.
She holds up her phone. A man’s voice on the other end speaks fast Russian. Her expression changes—first flattening into concentration, then twisting slightly into disgust.
She ends the call. “They know she’s Irish-adjacent. They know she’s connected to Liam. But now—”
She looks at me.
“—they know she’s connected to you.”
My stomach drops.
“That’s why they took her,” she continues. “Not because she’s Liam’s adviser. Because she’s yours.”
The realization hits like a sledgehammer. The Russians have been watching me more closely than I realized. They’ve seen how I move around her. How I look at her. How I react when anyone else gets too close.
“They think she’s your weakness,” Nadia finishes. “And they are right.”
Liam doesn’t flinch. He just nods once. “Then we use that. They think Declan will come running. They think we’ll panic. Good. Let them.”
He looks at me again—sharp, determined, unblinking.
“We’re going to tear their pipeline apart piece by piece,” he says. “We’re going to hit every warehouse, every safehouse, every rat hole they crawl into. We’re going to make them regret breathing in her direction.”
He stands.
“Gear up. All of you.”
Chairs scrape. Weapons are collected. Plans are formed before the map even settles on the table.
I remain seated one more second, letting the reality settle inside me like metal cooling in a forge. Ailish is somewhere in this city—terrified, hurting, maybe trying to stay calm for the small life growing inside her. She’s counting on us.
Counting on me.
I stand slowly.
The shaking in my hands has stopped.
The panic has burned itself into something colder, sharper, lethal.
“They’re not keeping her,” I say. “Not for an hour longer than it takes me to find them.”
Liam claps a hand on my shoulder. “Then let’s go.”
We move as one—Irish, Italians, loyalists, shadows, and soldiers alike—toward the vehicles waiting outside. Engines turn over. Weapons load. Radios buzz with coordinates.
And as I step into the night, the only thought in my mind is a promise I’ve never spoken aloud but feel down to the marrow:
I’m coming for you, Ailish. And God help anyone who stands between us.