Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Simone
The shock doesn’t fade for seconds to come. My ears are still ringing as my gaze pans from Fionn’s body slumped in the seat to Eddie and his gun.
This isn’t happening; this can’t possibly be happening.
Eddie’s pressed the gas. The towncar rolls forward, coasting down some Manhattan street lined with tall buildings and businesses; some typical street that looks like any other in New York City and further disorients me.
My head’s swimming. I feel like I’ve entered some horrible nightmare, and I don’t know what to do.
“You’re… you’re crazy,” I sputter out finally. It’s barely above a whisper, about as loud as I can manage through the thick wall of shock encasing me.
Eddie merely cackles from the driver’s seat. He’s driving with one hand loose on the steering wheel and the other casually gripping his gun. As if he wants to make it clear he’s not above pulling the trigger a second time.
“Yeah, well… let’s hope you behave yourself, or you might be on the receiving end of that crazy,” he retorts.
Fionn’s phone starts buzzing from inside his leather jacket.
Eddie ignores it at first, but the buzzing only grows louder and more insistent. Whoever’s reaching out to him is going to continue calling, refusing to give up.
With a heavy, inconvenienced sigh, Eddie rolls his eyes and reaches over for Fionn’s phone.
“Fionn can’t come to the phone right now.”
The voice on the other end sounds muffled from where I’m sitting, though I vaguely recognize it as Ronan’s.
A couple seconds later, I’m proven right as Eddie’s cheeks spread in a grin and he says, “No, Uncle Ronan, you don’t understand. Fionn can’t come to the phone right now because he’s dead.”
Ronan’s shouting. I can make out how his voice rises in anger. Probably questioning what the hell Eddie’s talking about.
“I killed him,” he confesses.
Instead of more shouting, Eddie’s confession is met with silence. It seems even Ronan’s thrown by what he’s said.
“But don’t worry,” he says. “I’m still driving your precious wife. She’s coming with me on a detour. So if you want her to make it out alive, I suggest that, for once, uncle, you listen to what the fuck I have to say.”
“Ronan!” I blurt out from the backseat. “Ronan, we’re on Amsterdam Avenue! We’re… we’re headed north—”
“That’s enough!” Eddie yells over me. “You wait for further instructions, uncle. Me and my boss will be in touch.”
He hangs up without waiting for an answer from Ronan then glares at me in the mirror. No signs of his cocky grin are to be found; it’s been wiped off his face altogether.
A cold chill racks through me as our gazes meet, and I realize Ronan’s nephew isn’t some harmless twenty-year-old college kid. He’s as ruthless of a gangster as any of the other Callahans.
“What did I say?” he snarls. “What did I tell you about behaving yourself, princess? Yet you’re already being a difficult little brat. You might get away with that with my uncle, but you won’t with me. You got that?”
“Let me out of this car!” I scream. I’ve unclicked my seatbelt and crawled across the seats to the opposite door. My fingers grapple for the door handle and desperately pull and yank at it to no avail.
The doors are locked, and Eddie has no intention of unlocking them anytime soon.
“Hey!” he snaps. “Hey, stop that!”
But I’m operating on adrenaline now. The shock has dissipated from outright desperation. For my will to survive and somehow find a way out of this.
I dive forward, coming up directly behind the driver’s seat, and I do the only thing I can in a situation like this—I sink my nails into Eddie’s face from behind.
“ARGH!” he howls.
The car immediately jerks left then right, narrowly missing a taxicab in the next lane over. Eddie drops Fionn’s phone and clamps both hands on the wheel to correct himself. Difficult to do when I’m gouging at him.
The car swerving makes me slide along with it, but I grit my teeth and slash my nails some more, getting any bit of him I can.
His cheek. His jaw. At one point my nail sinks into his eye, and his loudest yowl yet leaves him.
“YOU FUCKING CRAZY BITCH!”
I’m aware we might crash. I’m aware this could heavily backfire and we’ll end up in a fatal wreck. But it’s better than sitting obediently and letting him drive me to who knows where.
As my nail scrapes against his eyeball, he finally snaps. He slams on the brakes and then twists in the driver’s seat, his balled fist raising up. He punches me in the face, his knuckles slamming into my cheekbone and sending me crashing backward onto the seats.
I’ve never been hit before. Let alone in the face. Let alone by a man.
It’s such a shock to my system I gasp instead of whine in pain. I’m sent tumbling back as pressure rushes across the left side of my face. It’s as though my cheek’s already swelling up from the blow.
Deep, intense throbbing follows. My eyes are watering, and the entire towncar feels like it’s spinning. All spatial orientation has been disrupted as I fight to simply sit back up.
“Keep it up!” Eddie barks. “Keep acting out and find out what happens! You know what? Let’s fix this right now.”
I have no idea what the hell he’s even talking about as he shoves the driver’s side door open and gets out. He rushes to the trunk, popping it open and digging inside.
We’ve pulled over on the side of the street. My eyes are so itchy and watery I can’t even make out the street name this time.
But instincts scream at me to run. Get the hell out of here.
I scramble over the front seats, lunging for the driver’s side door. I’m half a second too slow. Eddie catches me before I can make it. He shoves me back inside the car then follows up with a sharp backhand across the face.
Things get… ugly.
I throw blind punches and kicks at him. He retaliates ten times harder, making me see stars as his fist comes down on my temple, and then he’s pinning me to the seat.
“HELP! HELP!” I shriek in hysterics, my voice breaking. “I’M BEING KIDNAPPED! PLEASE HELP!”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
If I had any hopes someone would miraculously come to my rescue, those hopes are dashed when he wraps the coarse rope he grabbed from the trunk around my wrists and jams a rag in my mouth.
“Fuck,” he sighs, wiping sweat from his brow. “How the hell did Uncle Ronan ever put up with you for this long? You would’ve been swimming at the bottom of the Hudson already if you were my wife.”
I scream at him some more, though it quickly proves useless—the filthy rag muffles any sound I make and tastes like motor oil on my tongue.
Eddie slides back into the driver’s seat and, within seconds, we’re back on the streets, driving through the city like nothing happened.
My chest has filled up with panic.
The only thing that remotely keeps me calm enough not to start sobbing is the thought that Ronan knows I’ve been kidnapped.
He knows Eddie’s taken me.
Which means he’ll have to save me, won’t he?
My heart thumps extra hard as I close my eyes and pray my husband will come through for me. That he’ll prove he’s the same man who shoved me down when the assassin on the bike started shooting at us.
He’ll show me that’s the real Ronan Callahan. Not the man who’s treated me like his enemy.
All I have left is faith. I have to believe…
My cheek is throbbing, and I have a splitting headache from the blows I’ve taken. My fingers have quickly gone numb from the coarse rope cutting off my circulation, and the dress I’m wearing has partially ridden down, almost exposing my breasts.
I look and feel like a mess.
But Eddie’s back to his cocky antics.
“You know what’s funny?” he asks conversationally as we reach another red light.
“Everybody’s been so busy suspecting your family.
The Langstons this, the Langstons that. Malcolm must be the traitor.
Simone must be a double agent.” He shakes his head and laughs.
“I helped plant a lot of those seeds myself. Dropped little hints here and there. Put the idea in Ronan and Grandpa Seamus’s heads you weren’t trustworthy.
Sabotaged Malcolm’s shipment. Tipped the Albanians off to what we were up to. Nobody suspected a thing.”
“That’s because you’re irrelevant, you asshole!” I snarl at him through the rag.
It comes out as more muffled gibberish, to which he laughs.
“That must piss you off, huh? That I basically framed you and your family. You were just a convenient scapegoat, princess. A distraction while I did the real work.”
“Why!?”
It’s possibly the only word I’ve spoken that’s somewhat intelligible.
He grins as if happy to answer. “Because my father rotted in a prison cell while Grandpa Seamus sat in his fancy house playing king.
While Uncle Ronan got to take over the clan when he was never supposed to in the first place!
My dad gave his all to them, and what did it get him in the end?
Nothing! He was left to take the fall for everybody.
“You think it’s fair to let Uncle Ronan take what was ours?
My dad was the heir, and I was his heir!
The heir to the fucking heir!” he rants, gripping tighter at the steering wheel.
“Now it’s time to retake our rightful spot again.
The clan is ours, even if we’ve got to burn it down to the ground first. It’s what they deserve. ”
Before I can ask more questions—or do my best to with the oily rag in my mouth—he turns down a street that’s darker and more desolate than any of the others. The kind of street where half the streetlamps aren’t working and there’s an abandoned car or two parked against the curb.
We’ve left Manhattan altogether, and I’d been so distressed I hardly noticed. By the looks of it, we’re in Mott Haven.
Eddie gets out of the car and props open the rear door before he drags me out to more protests on my end. I’m squirming and jerking against his hold as he forcibly pulls me to my feet and clamps a hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t make me pull my gun,” he threatens. “’Cuz if that’s what it takes to keep you in line, I will, princess.”
I’m practically perp-walked from the towncar toward what looks like an old warehouse.
My mind immediately goes to Ronan. He has to be on his way by now, right?
What if he’s not able to track me down to this place?
The panic inside my chest only grows as Eddie shoves me through the doors.
We step through a dark entryway and then come out on the other side to a dank and dingy warehouse floor, lit only by flickering bulbs in the ceiling.
The room itself is full of old, water-stained crates and machinery that looks as if it hasn’t been used in years.
Other male voices meet my ears. But they’re not speaking in English.
They’re speaking in a language I don’t immediately recognize. Then I remember the huge, hulking man who had accosted me in a boutique a few weeks ago.
He was Albanian. He was from the same family Dad was having tensions with in the black market. Part of the reason he even agreed to Seamus’s proposal to marry me off in the first place…
As Eddie and I walk deeper into the warehouse, I’m able to place faces to the voices. We come around a stack of crates to a group of men who are gathered. Each one as menacing and unnerving as the next.
Dren Kosovo and his minions.
He’s what I imagine a boss of an underground crime syndicate would be—broad and bald and exuding blood thirst.
He’s flanked by his men as the gag is finally removed and I’m shoved toward him. His amber-hued eyes rake over me as if assessing whether I’ve been worth the trouble they’ve gone through. Then he grunts out a thick laugh.
“Ah. The princess has arrived,” he says. “She has come a little rough around the edges.”
“I had to teach her place,” Eddie answers. He gestures to the slashes on his face. “She might not look it, but she’s a little firecracker, this one.”
Dren grunts again then steps closer. So close I question if he’s about to sniff or touch me. I force myself not to flinch as he hovers so close I can hear his ragged breaths. Smell them as they enter the air surrounding us.
“You and your boss have done excellent work,” he says. “The Callahans had no idea they had a snake in their midst.”
“It wasn’t hard,” Eddie says smugly. “They were too busy suspecting everybody else to look at what was right in front of them.”
Dren chuckles. “Yes, well… your boss will be pleased too. He will be rewarded handsomely. This is exactly what he promised. Both the Langstons and the Callahans, served up on a platter.”
My brows knit as I question what’s going on. Who is Eddie’s boss if not Dren and the Albanians? How can I possibly escape this situation, and is there a way to even warn Ronan about this?
Most alarming of all, what are their plans for me?
They’ve said it themselves—I’m just some sheltered princess. Some pawn in this war. Are they about to use me as a bargaining chip of some sort?
I have my answer only a couple seconds later as Dren goes on.
“With the Langstons out of the picture, the weapons black market will be wide open for us to claim,” he explains. “With the Callahans destroyed, the Irish will no longer rule this city’s underworld. A new era will begin.”
He snaps his finger at one of the men to his right. He’s younger than the others. Possibly teenaged, if I had to guess. The more I stare at him, the more I notice a resemblance between him and Dren. His son maybe?
The young man produces a phone that he takes and puts on speaker.
We stand where we are, listening to the rings on the other end as what I assume to be Dren’s son places his call. I still have no idea what’s going on until the person finally answers.
“You fucking bastard!” Ronan rages. “You’re going to give my wife back. Then I’m going to fill you with lead!”
Dren flashes an ugly grin, grunting out a laugh. “Ah, Ronan… you sound as pleasant as always. But you are not the one with the leverage here. I am. I have your pretty little wife here with me, hand delivered by your own nephew.”
“You motherfucker! This is between us!”
“On the contrary,” Dren interrupts, “she has everything to do with it. She’s the reason you’re going to do exactly what I say. See? Leverage.”
“What the fuck do you want? Spit it out.”
“Patience, Ronan. I realize the Irish aren’t known for it, but you will have to play by my rules.” His gaze hooks mine as his lips stretch into a cruel smirk, and my stomach pits. “You’re going to come to me. Alone. Unarmed. You’re going to turn yourself over in exchange for your wife’s life.”