Page 22 of Irish Daddies
A second location.
I slip the shirt on over my head and slap my palms against my thighs in resignation. “Okay, I’m dressed to kill,” I joke, but it falls flat against the dark moment.
Declan grabs my arm. His grip is too tight, and when I flinch, he only tightens it. Rian says nothing. Kellan looks away.
They lead me down a hallway and out into the sharp night. There’s a car parked at the bottom of the steps. Black. Unmarked.
I dig my heels into the ground. I don’t even think about it. My body just reacts. Declan jerks me forward.
“Where are you taking me?”
No answer.
“Where are you taking me?” I repeat, louder, panic cracking my voice.
Rian opens the back door.
I look at him. I try to find that man from the café. The one who smiled like maybe I was more than a single mother with peanut butter on her shirt.
But that man doesn’t exist.
“Get in,” he says.
So, I do.
But not because I’m done fighting. Or thinking or lying. If they think they’ve scared me into submission, they really don’t know me at all. I will burn every bridge, use every weakness, say every name they’ve ever told me not to say, to get back to my kids.
And if Rian really did see me, then I’ll make damn sure he regrets it.
14
KELLAN
The hotel smellslike disinfectant and old sins. It’s one of our safe houses—a front that looks like a forgotten roadside inn, but with steel-reinforced walls and bulletproof windows. Sometimes, unsuspecting travelers wander in here, and they share the night with mafia members and prisoners.
Declan insisted we use it to camp out. Said it was time to stop pretending this girl wasn’t a threat. He means Caroline. But he says “this girl” like she’s a stray dog that bit him. She angered him, elbowing his nose. He thinks if she could catch him off guard like that, she’s a danger. He won’t yet acknowledge the ways she’s caught us all off guard.
She doesn’t look like a threat now. She looks like she hasn’t slept in days, like the silence in the car was a leash pulled too tight. I watch her walk into the room slowly, her bare feet soundless on the laminate floor. Rian avoids looking at her. Declan doesn’t bother hiding the way he scowls at her like he’s already picturing her dead.
She’s not crying. Not begging. That scares me more than anything. She’s holding something in, and that kind of quiet isdangerous. She swallows when the door opens, and that’s it. It’s the smallest of reactions, but I see it.
Declan presses the key into my hand and taps the gun on my hip underneath my shirt, reminding me of the power I wield. “You’re on watch tonight. If she tries anything, don’t wait.”
Then he’s gone, but his presence echoes in the silence between us. I catch Caroline’s glance toward the door he exited through, and her breath catches like she thinks he might come back. Rian hesitates at the threshold. His eyes linger on Caroline a little too long, but she doesn’t look back. He glances at me and nods—all the things unsaid stuck between us. We both know a truth that Declan doesn’t. And neither of us is sure why we won’t share it yet.
It’s leverage—but why do we need it? We could kill her and take her children. But it’s something else. She’s not just a witness—she’s a mother to our children. Killing her is asking us to be real monsters, not just the pretend ones we play when we kill bad guys.
Now it’s just me. And her.
The room isn’t big. A couch and a bed. Too clean. Too sharp. The kind of room that was never meant for rest. No direction as to who’s supposed to be comfortable, and who’s not.
Caroline stands in the doorway and waits for me to tell her where to go. “Get comfortable. We’ll be here all night,” I tell her, sitting on the couch, taking the choice from her. She should have the bed for a night. It’s the least I can do.
She stays standing for a moment too long, waiting to see if it’s a trick. Finally, she walks toward the bathroom and turns to look at me, questioning. I nod at her, and she starts to close the doorbehind her. “Leave it,” I say. She flinches, like I struck her, and she leaves it open as she disappears deeper into the bathroom.
The shower turns on. Sobs float through the crack in the door, just audible over the running water, and for a second, I feel a tug at my heart. A knot forms in my throat. None of us chose this, but her least of all. She’s built a life for herself. She’s birthed children. She’s raised them alone, running scared from us, and now we’re proving her right.
I look down at the gun in my hand, knowing that this can only end one way. Listening to her cries, I cross over to the suitcase we brought. She hasn’t been curious about it, hasn’t looked in it once. I don’t blame her—she isn’t touching things she doesn’t know are expressly hers. Not around us.
