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“One.”
Throwing the keys on the ground, I turned and ran. The smoke and rubble in my path seemed to part for me, clearing the way so that every step landed sure and true. I heard the drone open fire behind me, felt the whoosh of bullets zipping past, but I wasn’t afraid. I saw the bushes engulfed in flames up ahead, but I knew they wouldn’t burn me. A sense of peace, of rightness, that I’d never felt before pulled me toward the cliff like a siren song. And every cell in my body listened, pushing me to get there faster. I never doubted, never wavered, and when I reached the cliff’s edge, I pictured my prince waiting to catch me below, arms outstretched, an impish smirk softening the hard angles of his face. I didn’t care if I lived or died beyond that leap.
And evidently, I wasn’t the only one.
As soon as I pushed off from the rocks—suspended and weightless in a spray of bullets—my gaze locked on to a moving shadow directly across the water. With my heart in my throat, I watched the figure jump off the top deck of the warship at the exact same time as me. Their body was just a black silhouette against the ghastly white of that death machine, but I could tell that we were facing one another as we fell.
And for one brief moment, I didn’t feel so alone.
CHAPTER 6
DAMIEN
THIRTY MINUTES EARLIER
Iwas on autopilot. No thoughts. No feelings. Just action, authority, and indifference. That was how I’d survived in the Kletka, and that was how I would survive this.
They couldn’t break something that didn’t exist.
I focused on the task at hand, spoke as little as possible, and instructed my men to load and prepare the artillery. When we got the signal, it was my platoon that fired first.
Striking the Howth Harbour lighthouse dead fucking center.
The relic exploded like a firework, spewing fire and shooting three-hundred-year-old granite in all directions.
It was the first strike against Ireland, a declaration of war, and I might as well have pulled the trigger myself.
But I felt nothing.
As the crew cheered, I watched my childhood crumble and fall into the sea through a cold, impenetrable shield. Detached. Devoid. And completely fucking alone.
That lighthouse broke the seal. Within seconds, every gun on the deck was pumping out missiles, rockets, or shells as fast as their crews could get them loaded and aimed. The deck of the ship filled with smoke and shuddered with every deafening blast, along with my heart, which felt like it might seize at any moment from the brutal concussions pounding through my chest.
And for possibly the first time in my life, I wished that it would. My obsession with finding my way back home had kept me alive, kept me going all those years in the Kletka. But now that Ireland was disappearing before my eyes, being consumed, bite by bite, by the same machine that had consumed me, what was left to live for?
These were the morbid thoughts going through my head as my gunners worked their way from the harbor to the cliffs. Building by building, house by house, it was like shooting cans off a fence post. But at least they were empty cans.
Or so I’d thought.
The smoke and flames climbing up the cliffs from the harbor had become so thick that I needed binoculars to make sure my gunners were hitting their targets. I swept over the coastline, confirming each hit, but when I looked farther ahead at what hadn’t been struck yet, what I saw broke through my mask of indifference like a hammer through a sheet of ice.
The next house in the line of fire was a tiny white thing—as old as the cliffs themselves—with a bright yellow door. The color was what stopped me. It seemed so familiar, just like the woman who stepped out of it, dripping with luggage and holding a baby boy.
I couldn’t make out her features, but she was thin with dark hair and fair skin.
Just like my ma.
My reaction was immediate and involuntary. With both hands, I shoved the crew member to my right away from the artillery, but I was too late. He’d already pulled the lanyard, and the blast felt like a sledgehammer against my skull. Fire tore through the smoke-filled sky. And all I could do was watch in horror as the white house with the yellow door—and the mother and child in front of it—were consumed by a billowing fireball of death.
“What are you doing?” I screamed, thrashing against the meaty hands holding me in place as a second Bratva soldier entered through the front door of our apartment.
He stomped toward my mother, who was standing on the other side of our tiny sitting room.
“Let him go!” she shouted, holding her ground as the goon approached. She was off work that day, so her long, dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail and the purple bags under her eyes weren’t hidden beneath a centimeter of makeup. Neither was her terror. I could feel it in the air. “We had a deal,” she said, glancing from them to me.
The soldier made no attempt to argue with her. He simply placed his hands on either side of her face and jerked her head to the side so hard that her neck snapped. I’d never forget the sound. That sudden, unexpected crunch.
“Deal’s off.” He chuckled, tossing her lifeless body onto the couch.
