Chapter 42 #2
Another strike of lightning, accompanied by thunder, sparked through the sky, and the downpour hit with a flourish.
We all ran to the car, with Erel and two others piling into the back seat, while Cillian waited to get in for me to crawl over the center console from the driver’s side to the passenger’s seat.
Maeve’s voice seemed to echo in the enclosed space of the car.
“Come on. Be alright. Come on, come on. Pick up the phone, Al. Pick up the phone, or I swear I’m going to murder that husband of yours.”
I chuckled. No one worried about me quite like Maeve did.
I contorted in my seat and mouthed to Erel, “How much did you tell her?”
“Almost nothing,” he mouthed back.
I glared at him as he stuck an earphone in one ear, the guy next to him using the other. Maeve deserved better than that. No wonder she was so panicked.
“Maeve?” I answered.
“Oh my god, it’s you. Tell me you’re okay. Tell me you’re not hurt. Did Erel get to you alright? Everything’s going to be fine, right? I was so worried. Do you need a hospital? Please tell me you don’t need a hospital.”
I smiled and twisted around to face the window for some privacy. “If you’d let me speak, I’d say I’m fine. Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t heal.”
“Really? That’s it? Nothing else?”
“Really. I have a few bruises, but no broken bones. No bullet holes. I might need a few stitches, but I’m not sure.”
“Stitches?” Her voice turned shrill. “Make sure you get the best of the best doctors. Don’t let just anyone do it. And make sure they answer all your questions. Don’t let them gaslight you.”
“Maeve, ma belle.” I lowered my voice, trying to soothe her.
This was a trigger for her. She’d always had a thing about doctors and hospitals ever since we met.
It got worse after her mother passed away three months after being diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer, despite being followed for treatment for issues in her lower abdominal tract after falling through a window and being impaled by glass over a year before that.
“Don’t worry. Everything will be fine. Cillian will be with me the whole time.” His hand found mine and gave it a comforting squeeze.
“This is because of him, isn’t it? He’s poison, Alizé. You need to get away from him. You’re not safe.”
I took a gander at Cillian in case he’d heard, but his focus remained fixed on the screen. Surprisingly, the trio in the back seat kept quiet too. One of them kept an eye out while Erel and the third man watched the same dual video as Cillian on another tablet.
“I promise, he won’t hurt me. He loves me. Actually, I won our bet,” I said in the hopes of distracting her.
“Really? Oh, that’s fantastic. Great. We’ll get you a lawyer tomorrow. Then you can divorce the asshole and get as far away from him as you can.”
Rain hammered against the car roof and plunked against the windows. I plugged my other ear with my finger to hear her clearly.
“I love him, Maeve. I’m not leaving him.”
“No, babe. You don’t. He’s brainwashed you. He’ll hurt you. Trust me on this. That’s what O’Learys do. You have to get away from him.”
“You don’t know him like I do.”
“That’s a crap argument, and you know it.”
I sighed and rubbed my finger across beads of water accumulated over the window trim where the rubber weatherstripping was cracked.
“Well then, get to know him. Come over to Cillian’s and my place. Tomorrow for lunch.” That got some twitchy side-eye from Cillian, but no words of protest, so I powered on. “Bring Erel. We’ll make it a double date. You’ll see. He’s really not that bad.”
“Those aren’t the words of endorsement you think they are.”
“Just give it a try. At the very least, I want the two people who mean the most to me not to hate each other.”
She grumbled between huffs and puffs but seemed to consider her answer for a few seconds.
“Fine. But…” she warned, and I imagined her wagging her finger at me. “You better remember I’m your person. Not some asshole who abandons you and only deigns to give you attention because you’ve been sexing him up.”
I dropped my forehead to the warm window with an amused headshake, my cheeks bunched up high.
“It’s not like that. Well, maybe a little bit, but I swear there’s much more to it.”
“We’ll see. Tomorrow. And you better not be worse off than you told me. Don’t you lie to me, Alizé De Villier.”
She was probably making a threatening ‘I’m watching you’ gesture as she said that.
“I’m not. See you tomorrow.”
As soon as the click ending the call signaled, I huffed out a burst of pent-up air. It fogged up against the window and blurred away the splats of rain droplets and the banana stalks outside.
I’d expected Maeve’s vehemence against Cillian to cool down along with mine, but that was foolish of me.
For seven years, we berated him together, and she had yet to spend any time with the man I now knew him to be.
Well, starting tomorrow, that changed. It might take some time, but she’d come around.
“He’s all yours, Liam,” Cillian stated coldly, breaking through the humdrum of my thoughts.
On screen, the two teams seemed to have converged into a large living room with furnishings that might have been white an hour ago but were now stained with blood.
In the center of the room knelt a middle-aged man with his hands up.
His long hair was tied at the back of his nape, and his lips were pulled back in a snarl.
A gun was pressed to his head. Liam’s response garbled inaudibly through Cillian’s single earphone.
His hands clenched around the tablet, and the tips of his fingers turned white from the pressure. His cheek twitched over the tension in his jaw.
“Do it,” Cillian ground out. “I’m good where I am.”
With one heavily muffled shot, the man’s head burst backward, and his body collapsed.
Within the next minute, both Cillian and the men in the back seat clicked off their devices and removed their headsets.
Some of the anger and tension leaked out of Cillian’s shoulders once he put the car in drive.
Yet when he backed us out of my impromptu parking spot and then the offshoot, he did so without a word.
As he turned onto the main dirt road and drove away from the cartel’s compound, his silence, exacerbated by Erel’s and his men’s, morphed into suffocating oppression.
He watched the road and our surroundings with undeterred focus, gaze flicking left and right every few seconds.
His fingers rapped against the steering wheel as if ready to reach for a weapon if need be.
Within minutes, three heavy-duty SUVs filed in behind us, one after the other.
“Thank you for staying with me,” I said in an effort to break through the loaded silence.
The strain contorting his features eased, but the determination remained. “Always, love. Always. Nothing I’d rather do.”
“I’m not listening to this sentimental shit,” Erel groused.
“No one asked you to,” I snapped back, then turned to Cillian. “Sosa’s dead?”
He nodded with a heavy, almost growly sigh. “It’s done. The Urabá cartel has officially been wiped off the map…with Endgame’s contribution.”
It sounded like that last part smarted to say, but no one commented.
I let out a heavy exhale and slumped into my seat. At least, this was one less thing to worry about.
“You don’t regret not being the one to take the shot?”
“No.” Our fingers locked together over the center console. “But we’re not out of this yet. Not until we’re on the plane homebound, and I know you’re safe.”