Page 89 of Ruthless Reign

“I’m sorry.”

No doubt Hardin was relaying that vital new piece of information to Damien right now, to prevent him from doing any more damage than he already had. He’d want to know how we found out. I wondered if Hardin would come clean about Aodhán to his dad, too. I said they could if they needed to, but they didn’t want to give Damien hope—or a reason to be even more on edge than he already was—until they knew what the outcome would be here tonight.

Kaleb and I sat quietly for a minute and then he turned to me, his gunmetal gray-blue eyes finding mine in the dim light. “I can see why you like him, Vixen.”

“I don’t?—”

“Uh, uh,” he chided, giving me a pointed look. “We said no more lies.”

I clamped my mouth shut and Kaleb surprised me by reaching over to gently curl his fingers around my nape, tugging me close to kiss me.

I sighed into the kiss, reveling in the feel of him. Alive. Still here. Mine.

“I should go talk to Hardin. Come inside?”

He helped me stand, coaxing me to put my weight on him despite my protests as we went inside to face the music.

He hurt her.

Knowing it was an eventual possibility and seeing the evidence of Da’s brutality were two very different things. I thought I could keep him from her, but I should’ve known better. As soon as I told him who she was, there was no chance he wasn’t going to use the information to hurt Damien.

This was on me.

All of it.

And whether I survived or not, I owed it to her to try to make things right.

Ma agreed with me. It was her phantom words whispering in my ears to finally, finally carve out my own path and detach myself from Da’s shadow.

Options weren’t a thing I was ever offered.

It was never this or that. Just this and nothing else.

I wasn’t fool enough to think that the Saints would take me in. But she wanted me to stay. Gave me a choice. Mo mhuirnín.

It was enough. More than enough.

As I walked down the narrow walkway lined with storage lockers, I let the entire evening roll off my back, letting my mask slide back into the place. The mask of Séamas O’Sullivan’s son.

If Da knew what I’d done at Gilligan’s Finch and suspected me of more it could only mean one thing that he hadn’t confronted me yet: he wanted to make it a spectacle. I had no doubt he would kill me himself. As his blood, he wasn’t likely to draw it out. My death would be swift, but it would come. And it would serve as a reminder to every one of his followers that there was nothing that could exempt them from his wrath.

None would even consider disloyalty after he was through with me.

I wondered if this was what he had planned for me all along. Ever since I was a boy and he realized that no matter how hard he tried, I couldn’t seem to give up that one last piece of myself to him.

The polished silver of Ma’s clover charm necklace warmed between my fingers as I brought it to my lips for a kiss, promising her the vengeance she never got for the life that was stolen from her.

I wouldn’t be able to get close to Da, not now that he knew I couldn’t be trusted, but I could make things harder for him before I was finished.

To my knowledge, this warehouse was where we were storing the majority of our ammunition. If I could destroy it, it would take Da time to replenish before he could mount any sort of major attack against the Saints. He could pick them off, but there could be no outright war until he replaced what was destroyed.

And that might be difficult, considering I just slipped a tip to the new police chief indicating where he might find over twenty bars of stolen Irish gold buried in the canyons. It was Da’s failsafe in case things went black. I might not know his current movements, but I knew he wouldn’t have touched the gold yet. Not with the watchful eyes of Santa Clarita PD tracking his every movement for the Saints.

It felt…liberating.

Even with my gut churning at every step I took away from him and toward something better.

I was raised to be a good soldier. A good son.

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