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“I heard what ya said yesterday, about him not being alone this time. But, darlin’, Kellen wasn’t alone; he had Darby. He had you.”
The wave of emotion I’d been dreading came crashing down at her words, but it didn’t drown me in grief, like I’d feared. Instead, it filled me with hope.
He has me.
That was it. That’s what was missing.
Since the moment we met, Damien and I had kept each other alive.
And I’d sent him out there without me.
Giving Kate a kiss on the cheek, I jumped up and scrambled over to the altar, taking stock of everything they’d left behind.
“Clo … what are ya doin’?” Kate asked, a worried tremor in her voice.
“Taking care of our boy,” I said with a smile.
CHAPTER 47
DAMIEN
The plan was fucked.
Every aspect, literally blown to shreds. The buildings our lads were supposed to be sniping from were just hollowed-out shells with hardly any cover. Every road leading into the city center was buried under piles of rubble. And it was going to be real fucking hard to meet Alexi in the middle of the Ha’penny Bridge when most of the Ha’penny Bridge was at the bottom of the fucking Liffey.
We’d gotten there early to take our positions without being seen, but there’d been no point. The place was a goddamn ghost town. No cars could get through. No buildings were inhabitable. There was no mobile network or electricity. The occasional drone flew overhead, which we were able to avoid, but other than that, the only sounds in the city were the soft clanking of metal debris floating in the river and the occasional crash as another chunk of bricks fell off a building.
Even the birds had abandoned Dublin.
“Nothin’.” Jack shook her head as she reattached a CB radio to her shoulder.
Jack and I had ducked into Merchant’s Arch to wait for noon. It was a narrow stone tunnel across from the Ha’penny Bridge with decent coverage and good visibility of the meeting point.
If the meeting point still existed.
Jack had been on the radio all morning, hoping to get in touch with some active-duty Irish soldiers who might be willing to go rogue and help us out or at least provide us with some intel about Alexi’s whereabouts in the city, but the channels were all dead.
There was no more fighting. No more bombing. No more Dublin. Jack and her team had considered themselves to be patriots—Ireland’s last line of defense—but looking around, there was nothing left to defend. We were too late. And Alexi wasn’t fucking coming anyway.
Slapping a hand on my shoulder, Jack squinted into the sun-drenched wasteland outside. “Looks like it’s just us, pretty boy.”
I nodded slowly. I’d expected the worst, but what I hadn’t expected was … nothing.
“He’s not comin’,” I muttered, and as soon as the words left my mouth, I realized that was the real reason why my stomach was knots and my heart was in my throat. Not because I was afraid Alexi would come, but because I was afraid that he wouldn’t. I was afraid that I was so insignificant to him that my abduction wasn’t worth leaving his precious Kremlin over.
“Ahh, cheer up.” Jack gave my shoulder a shake. “He’ll be here. Ya matter more than ya think, Lenin.”
Then, she stared out at the blue sky over the battered city and took a deep breath. “Beautiful day to kill a cunt.”
A small light flashed three times from the exposed third story of the building across the river from us. Oscar was giving the signal that it was twelve o’clock. Everyone was in position.
Jack grinned. “Showtime, VP.”
Shielding my eyes from the sun, I walked across Aston Quay and up the steps to what was left of the Ha’penny Bridge. It felt like I was walking the plank. The end of the bridge was jagged and scorched, and below it, just beneath the surface of the water, were the pointed white arches that I was supposed to be standing under.
Glancing at the buildings across the river where Oscar, Wheezy, and Paul were stationed, I exhaled heavily. I knew they were in hiding, but part of me had hoped to catch a glimpse of one of them. To see some sign that I wasn’t completely alone.
That sign came in the form of a scream.
