Page 149 of Ruthless Reign

I double checked my clip and swore. I just needed one fucking bullet. I had zero. I felt around on my vest for a fresh clip, but the rough canvas fabric and bristle of velcro held nothing left to offer me.

I’d used up all three.

But as my fingers brushed against the hard cold steel of Aodhán’s knife, I knew there was still something I could do.

He taught me.

In Hardin and Kaleb’s fucking living room he taught me.

As if he knew it would all come down to this moment.

I motioned for Aodhán to keep him talking as I holstered my gun and moved forward, testing the grip of the switchblade in my palm. If I could just get close enough, I knew I could end this.

Séamas was wearing a vest, but Aodhán showed me how to get up under it. Where to stab to have my enemy die a slow, painful death.

I could do it.

Taking careful steps, I crept closer to where they stood, their words coming clearer the closer I got.

“You’re pathetic,” Séamas snarled at Aodhán, leaving his arm to bleed without even bothering to try and stem the blood flow from the bullet wound there.

Aodhán said nothing.

Séamas threw his arms wide, egging him on. “Just kill me, then, huh? I’d rather it be you than that American scum.”

He had a blade in his right hand, but no gun. Aodhán must’ve disarmed him, or he lost it in the chaos.

Séamas spit onto the floor as if he could spit on Damien himself.

I moved closer.

“Ye can’t do it, can ye, fuil ma chud fola?”

Aodhán’s eyes turned murderous, but he didn’t pull the trigger.

“You’re weak! You’ve always been weak.”

Closer.

“No, Da,” Aodhán said, lifting his chin. “A heart is not a weakness. It’s strength.”

“You sound like your damn Ma. She was weak, too. So weak she tried to kill me in my sleep!”

So he smothered her with a pillow in hers.

“At least she tried.” Séamas was screaming now, ranting at his son who showed no trace of emotion save for tension in the set of his jaw.

Closer.

He jabbed his fingers toward Aodhán. “She was strong enough at least to try to end me, but you, fuil ma chud fola,” he spat the Gaelic words as if they tasted rotten. “You were never strong enough. Not then and not now.”

My pulse thudded in my ears, and my hands shook as I steeled myself, holding my shuddering breaths.

“Maybe not,” Aodhán hissed. “But she is.”

I darted the last two steps, driving my knife hand up into Séamas’ back, right in that soft spot below the lip of his bulletproof vest. The blade slid in like I was cutting butter, too easy, too painless. I twisted it at the hilt, grinding the blade inside him as he stilled and then wrenched himself free of my grasp.

“Get down!”

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