Page 12 of While You Sleep

“Oh god.”

“What is it?”

“He got in. He’s in the building.”

“Fuck,” Dean bit out. “Lock yourself in the bathroom, and don’t come out until I call.”

He disconnected, and a second later Brian was banging on my door. I ran for the bathroom, slamming it shut, and locked myself in. Dad owned this apartment and only let me live here because it was safe. The main door was steel, the bathroom door as well, with a hefty lock.

I shrieked when I heard the main door crash open. How the hell had he gotten in? A moment later he was banging on the bathroom door.

“Open the fucking door, Sophia!”

I sat on the floor, my back pressed to the door and my feet braced against the tub, while he kicked it, screaming at me to let him in.

* * *

Cillian

I ran up the stairs, pulling my gun from the holster at my back as I went.

The door was open. He’d shot out the lock using a silencer.

Brian spun to face me when I walked in and strode straight for him.

He pulled out his gun, and I knocked it from his hand. The kid was green, had no idea what he was doing, but he was determined. I’d watched him with Sophia, he wanted her and he would have hurt her if he’d gotten the chance. I slammed the butt of my gun into his head when he swung at me, then grabbing his skull, I smashed it into the door, once, twice, a third time, and lights out. Shoving my gun in the waistband of my pants, I fisted his hair and wrenched back his head, exposing his throat—

“Hall’s clear, cameras are out,” Declan said, striding into the apartment. “What the fuck are you doing? You can’t kill him, Cillian.”

I froze, staring down at the unconscious fuck on the floor. I barely remembered pulling my knife free, but it was gripped tight in my hand. I wanted to slit his throat, badly. Unfortunately, Dec was right. We were still in Sophia’s apartment for one, but that wasn’t the only reason I couldn’t kill the prick.

“Cillian?”

I’d lost control.

I nodded and put away my knife. I couldn’t let that happen again. We quickly wrapped him in the tarp Dec had brought with him and carried him down the stairwell. We needed to get him out before he regained consciousness. Con was waiting, trunk open. We tossed him in. “Find his car, deal with it, then take him to the warehouse. I’ll be there soon as I can.”

Declan nodded, and they took off. I headed back upstairs.

It turned out Sophia’s boyfriend wasn’t just some random asshole. No, he was Alto Leone’s fucking nephew. Paolo Amato. It took us a minute to ID the kid because no one had seen him before.

He’d been living in New York until recently, and as far as I could tell, he hadn’t had much to do with the family business—until now.

I strode back into the apartment. “Soph, it’s me. Open up.”

“How do I know it’s you?” she called back.

I took a pic of me standing by the bathroom door and sent it. “He’s gone. I promise.”

The door cracked open a minute later, and she peered through the gap. As soon as she saw me, she threw the door wide and ran at me. I caught her on instinct, wrapping my arms around her in return because it’s what she’d expect Dean to do. She hung on tight.

“I was so scared,” she said, her voice muffled against my chest.

The last person to hug me had been my mother. I’d been five years old. I remembered it because in those five years she’d never hugged me. Most of the time she ignored me, even avoided me. Seamus told me later that she’d hated me, that she thought I was evil. But that night, she’d kissed Declan good night like she always did, then she’d surprised me with a quick hug good night as well, before she’d put me to bed.

I’d been shaken awake an hour later. Seamus’s hands had still been covered in her blood. Declan had only been two at the time, and I remembered one of Seamus’s men carrying him, still sleeping, out to the car, while I stared at our dead mother, lying in a heap on the floor. I’d been shoved into the car as well, and we’d been shipped off to one of Seamus’s cousins in Ireland that very night.

No, Seamus had never claimed us as his, not publicly, not even when he’d sent for us ten years later, but he had used it to manipulate us, to turn us into good little soldiers.

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