Page 129 of Vengeful Vows

Gray and I hit up the second warehouse, this time just picking up money from the Bratva. It’s about two hundred thousand dollars short, and Gray curses.

“Fucking Russians.”

“Da isn’t going to care about a couple hundred thousand. A couple million, maybe.”

There’s a rustle in the back of the warehouse, and I freeze as Gray draws his gun. I draw mine from the small of my back, walking toward the back, and as I do, something darts out over my feet.

“Fuck!” I yell, but I don’t pull the trigger. “It’s a fucking cat.”

“Kittens, too,” Gray points out, gesturing toward the litter.

I curse in Gaelic and jerk my head toward the door. “Let’s go. We’ll call animal control on the way out.”

Once the cats are handled, we head to the next warehouse, where we meet with Jimmy.

“Anything else stolen?” I bark, and Jimmy shakes his head.

“No sign of Murphy. I think it was a fluke.”

I scoff but don’t explain that it was my wife who ratted us out. I don’t want to say anything like that in front of Jimmy. It’s embarrassing to have your wife betray you, after all.

The worst part of all of this is that I’m not just mad. If I was just mad, if I just hated her, this would be so much easier. But I’m hurt, and I feel betrayed, and I don’t know if I can forgive her.

Even though in her situation, I might have done worse.

Can I really blame her for sending a simple message to her father? Wouldn’t I have done the same? I probably would have already tried to escape, would have fought tooth and nail for my family. Can I blame her for doing the same?

We’re about to leave the third warehouse when I catch sight of a familiar car—Paige's little red Corvette, parked down the street. I can tell it is hers because of her license plate—PBURKE.

We are meeting her later at her place, so I ignore it, but Gray has other ideas.

“There’s Paige," Gray points out. “Should we call her? Go to lunch together? Maybe we can head to her place after that?”

I’m not really in the mood to go to lunch, not feeling like this, and I open my mouth to tell him so but then Jimmy stiffens.

“Who’s that?”

I look toward where his gaze is and three big men are walking toward Paige.

One of them has a red beard, and I recognize him as one of Murphy’s men—Conan O’Leary. He’s called Redbeard because of not only his beard, but because he only has one eye. He’s pretty hard to miss with an eyepatch like a pirate.

I curse, taking off running toward her on the street. It seems to take me an hour to get there, and I draw my gun, right there in the street.

Jimmy and Gray flank me, and Paige turns around when I shout her name, looking at me with wide eyes.

“Get down! Get the fuck out of the way!” I yell at her, and it takes her a moment to process but she hits the deck, covering her face with her hands.

Gunshots ring out, one, two, three.

Paige tries crawling toward me, but Conan grabs her around the ankles, dragging her to him before grabbing her by the hair.

Fuck, no!

She screams, and I know her knees must be bloody because she is being dragged instead of walking toward a van.

She thrashes and fights, and the sonofabitch punches her on the face.

I grit my teeth, advancing toward Conan, but he’s fast as well as big, dragging her to the door of the van before I reach them.

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