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Chapter Eighteen

TORIN

I wake mid-swing.

My fist connects with thin air, but I'm already on my feet before I understand what's happening, my heart hammering, my throat closed. The room is wrong, too big, too quiet, and for ten full seconds I have no idea where I am.

My hands reach for something solid, fingers spread wide, before my eyes adjust. I let out a breath.

Cold plaster. Real. I lean into it and breathe.

Ballyhock. The house. You're out.

I thought I was over this.

The body doesn't care. The body is still in the cell at three a.m., with Doyle's hands around my throat and nothing to swing at but the dark.

Cold sweat pools between my shoulder blades.

I sit back down on the edge of the bed. My pillow is on the floor somewhere. I don't remember putting it there.

The fury drains the way it always does: slowly, leaving nothing clean behind. It’s just the room, the dark, and the particular silence of a house full of people who don't know I'm sitting here, shaking.

I don't lie back down.

It takes me a few seconds to reorient before I toss the pillow back on the bed and stare up at the ceiling.

The first time a bloke grabbed me in the middle of the night was the last time. Gave him such a solid beating, I spent three weeks in solitary for it, but it was worth it. Word got out. They knew not to touch me. They knew not to come anywhere near me.

But I never slept through the night again.

Until her. It doesn’t make sense.

Wide awake, I walk to the window, as if to remind myself I'm free… I'm here. It's strange having this much privacy and space. I hardly know what to do with myself. Floodlights illuminate the drive, where our guard stands vigil. The Irish Sea is coal black beyond the cliff’s edge. I watch it the way I used to watch the small square of sky through the cell window.

I run a hand through my hair.

I go through the mental list of names. It's what I always do, what I learned in prison: assess, plan, control. Let the anger have somewhere to go.

Donnell O'Brien. His son was meant to take his place. The man who planted the evidence that kept me inside an extra fourteen months. I know what he looks like. I know where he drinks. The man who decided the way to stop the Esposito-McCarthy alliance was to burn Valentina's name, put me in a box, and wait. He's been waiting. So have I. The difference is that I know what I'm waiting for, and he doesn't know I'm coming.

And above all of them, the one with the shamrock tattoo between his thumb and forefinger. The one who put his hands on her. I save him for last because last means I'll have time to be thorough.

I pull on a T-shirt and check through the open door to Valentina’s room. The heap of blankets doesn’t stir. She sleeps the way she does everything, on her own terms, taking up exactly as much space as she needs and no more. Both hands are tucked under her cheek. Dead asleep.

I stand there longer than I should.

In Boston, I knew what she was. An extraction that had gone complicated. I knew what she believed about me, and I kept it from her anyway because the operation required it. That was the frame.

I don't have that frame anymore. Ballyhock doesn't give it back.

In Ballyhock, she's a woman sleeping in my house who will wake up in the morning, and we’ll be that much closer to the part where this is over. When her family is confirmed clean or otherwise, the threat is managed, and there's no operational reason for her to be here.

I head downstairs.

Footsteps creak on the stairs above me.

My body moves before my brain catches up. Years of sleeping with one eye open, and I'm already at the bottom of the landing. Someone in a black hoodie sweatshirt is coming down the stairs.