Page 90 of Ruthless Reign

The betrayal didn’t sit with me easily. It felt wrong. Like I was hurting myself instead of him.

But then I had only to remember her face. The bruises. The cuts. The pain in her eyes where the normally warm brown of her irises had somehow turned dull and distant.

I’d fix it.

This was how.

The largest storage locker at the very end had a sliver of light coming from beneath the metal roll-up door. As I drew nearer, I heard the low hum of Gaelic conversation on the other side. The metallic clicking of bullets being loaded into magazines. The smell of cold steel and gunpowder.

I kicked the base of the door and the whole pane wavered.

“Open the fucking door,” I said in a deadpan tone despite the surge of adrenaline licking up my spine and stinging in my fingertips.

There was a pause and my hand twitched toward my gun, but then the lock clicked and the door rolled up noisily to reveal Angus and Tommy in the middle of packing up.

They had everything loaded onto pallets in neat stacks, ready for transport.

“Aodhán,” Tommy said, not bothering to hide his surprise at seeing me. I was Da’s quiet assassin. His ace in the hole when everything else failed. I didn’t coordinate transport or pass along orders.

“Is there a problem?” Angus asked, pushing his long brown hair away from his face as he tried to see down the corridor behind me as if he expected Da to slip from the shadows with his next breath.

“There is now.”

They didn’t have time to react. Neither could do more than widen their eyes and part their lips before the bullets meant for their heads struck flesh and bone, their bodies slumping to the ground as the silenced shots rang in my ears.

I closed the storage room door, careful to step around the pool of Angus’ blood that was going to start leaking out into the hall in seconds.

It took longer than it should’ve to find the C4, and even longer to rig it as I kept stripping fuses. Angus and Tommy’s radios had chirped four times already, the three beep check-in code coming in every couple of minutes now instead of every thirty.

They would be coming.

They could already be here.

By the time everything was set, I knew I wouldn’t be making it out without a fight and reloaded with a fresh clip, so I took Tommy’s gun as a spare tucked into the back of my jeans.

I took a moment to center myself, breathing deeply, filling my lungs, blowing out the nervous tension the way Da taught me until there was only the weapon, and me, only an extension of it.

Time to go.

I tapped the timer switch on the side of the hub and numbers blinked to life on the small screen. Five minutes.

Enough time to get out and stop anyone from coming in to disable it.

I set another timer on my phone and wrenched the door open, stalking out into the hall, skin tingling over my shoulders and down my back.

Booted feet, thirty feet and closing.

Right corridor.

I flattened myself against the edge of the wall, counting the footsteps. Five men.

None of them Da.

“Spread out,” one growled in Gaelic and the men dispersed.

Two continued up the hallway toward me, and I waited until the worn black toes of their boots were visible as I stepped into my territory before slinking into the space behind them.

Two clean slices to the backs of their knees. Two more bullets before a sound could pass their lips.

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