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“We never shoulda stayed here,” he muttered to himself, pumping round after round into the chamber. “We shoulda left the country when we had the fuckin’ chance. I knew you loved this place, and I couldn’t make ya leave”—he snapped the barrel closed and ran a hand over his freshly buzzed head, pushing curls back that no longer existed—“but I shoulda made you fuckin’ leave.”
“Kellen, what are you talking about? We’re happy here.”
“But we’re not fuckin’ safe!” He slammed his hand on the table, his irate expression immediately contorting into remorse over my startled response.
I could feel my heartbeat pounding in my throat, behind my eyes, deep inside my spinning head. “I … I don’t understand. I thought we were safe. I thought The Butcher was keeping us off the grid.”
“The Butcher’s fuckin’ dead.”
The ground beneath my feet began to tilt.
“Found him myself. He hadn’t been answerin’ my calls, so I paid him a little visit while I was in Dublin this mornin’.” Kellen shoved the sawed-off shotgun into the bag and zipped it up. “The place had been ransacked. Doors blasted open. Dead guards. Missin’ computers. Found him on the floor of the server room, shot in the back.”
My hand flew to my mouth as the gravity of this new information set in. The Butcher had our entire lives filed away on those computers—our birth certificates, passports, marriage license, address. If that information got into the wrong hands …
“Who did it?” I asked, feeling the blood draining from my face. “The UIB?”
“Worse.” Kellen slung the heavy backpack over one shoulder and came around the table, extending his hand toward me as he approached. “I’ll tell ya ’bout it in the car. Right now, we gotta—”
A deafening blast rang out behind me, peppering my back with shards of wood as I ducked and covered my head.
When the ringing in my ears finally stopped, I opened my eyes to find my laptop on the ground again. But this time, Kellen didn’t come to pick it up.
I looked up and found him standing a few feet away, gun drawn, teeth clenched, eyes wild, like a cornered animal, darting back and forth between the people I heard shuffling in behind me.
The click of a pistol being cocked next to my head explained Kellen’s reluctance to shoot, and the deep, sinister chuckle that echoed through the rafters told me exactly who was holding the gun.
Alexi Abramov.
A Bratva leader who’d been so hell-bent on revenge for the murder of his uncle that he vowed war against the United Irish Brotherhood unless they handed over the hit man who’d done the job—the notorious Devil of Dublin. And the UIB, the only family Kellen had ever known, agreed. For days, Kellen and I had raced across Ireland, running from both the UIB and the Bratva, until one wrong move on my part got us both captured. But I’d learned from the best. The Devil of Dublin had taught me to fight back, to take control, to use every resource I had, so after escaping from the UIB and framing their leader, Séamus Rooney, for the death of my fiancé, I’d enlisted my detective uncle to help me rescue Kellen and take down both Alexi and Séamus at the same time.
Alexi had been given three consecutive life sentences—one for false imprisonment and attempted human trafficking, one for possession of contraband guns with the intent to distribute, and one for the murder of four police officers during the shoot-out.
Séamus had been given eighty years.
I should have known that it was just a matter of time until the Bratva found a way to get him out.
I should have listened when Kellen told me we needed to leave the country.
I should have asked him what was going on days ago instead of dismissing his behavior as paranoid.
But as I stood, staring at my husband’s beautiful, hateful, fearful face, I couldn’t bring myself to regret it.
There would never be any other life for me. Glenshire was my home just as much as Kellen was. As much as this little person inside of me. And all three of them were worth fighting for.
“Devil,” Alexi purred with that thick Russian accent. “Ve meet again.” Cold metal pressed against the back of my head as another chuckle rumbled through the air. “Be good boy. Drop zhe gun. You shoot vone of us, ve shoot zhe girl …”
Kellen’s pupils were trained on Alexi’s face like a pair of laser scopes as he lowered the gun to the ground.
“Nikolai, take zhat … and zhe bag.”
A machine gun–carrying henchman with a shaved head and a black tracksuit darted over to Kellen and jerked the backpack off his shoulder. He cursed and said something in Russian, obviously surprised by the weight as he hoisted it onto his own shoulder.
“Two years, I sit in cell … zhinking of vays to keel you. Torture you. Make you scream. But now, I see you …” I could almost hear the smile on Alexi’s ruddy, evil, pockmarked face. “I zhink of new vay.”
The barrel of Alexi’s gun disappeared from my head, but before I could sigh in relief, pain exploded through my right inner thigh. It was so intense that I couldn’t hear, couldn’t see. It was just darkness and screaming, mind-erasing agony as my senses lost all contact with the outside world. I must have been falling because the next thing I felt was Kellen’s arms catching me, cradling me to his chest as he slid to his knees at Alexi’s feet.
“Torture begin now.”
