Page 98 of Irish Brute
I shudder. I’m afraid I would have frozen if I’d seen the threat. All my self-defense training, all my practice on shooting ranges… None of it would have mattered when I realized I was the target.
Taking a breath that shakes with equal parts of relief and frustration, I say, “I can’t believe Russo was so brazen.”
“Russo?” Braiden sounds surprised. “That shitehawk wasn’t from Russo.”
“How do you know?”
“We’re under a truce. After the summit, we both swore to back off.”
“And you think that will last forever? Someone always fires first.”
“Not the someone who has the financial upper hand. Russo has everything to gain from the new state of things. He wouldn’t risk Scuderi getting involved.”
The entire drive home, I’ve been terrified by the notion that Russo put out a contract on my life. Braiden’s words open me up to an entirely new kind of horror. “But if Russo didn’t hire that man, then who did?”
Braiden’s eyes narrow. “I don’t know. Maybe someone who’s been following the news about that night on the mountain. The family of the man who died? Someone looking to avenge your cousins?”
I shake my head. “There isn’t anyone. The man was homeless, a vagrant. He had no ID, nothing. And my cousins… Eliza was my last remaining family.”
“Then maybe it was someone taking the law into their own hands. Someone who doesn’t want to wait for the courts to decide what happens to you.”
That doesn’t make sense either. “Most people don’t have hitmen on their contact lists.”
Braiden doesn’t contradict me, even though I’m sure his own phone has listings for more numerous killers. “I should have waited,” he says. “I should have gotten more information.”
I close my eyes, hearing the man scream as Braiden tore his ear. I hear the gun rattle against his teeth. I hear the explosion as the back of his head is blown away.
“Samantha,” Braiden breathes, turning the three syllables of my name into an entire encyclopedia of apology. He’s the only person who calls me Samantha—to the rest of the world I’mSam. I love the way my name sounds on his lips. He makes me complete. Makes me whole.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. The weight of those three words tells me he’s apologizing for so much more than killing the man who targeted me. He’s sorry for the last five weeks of tortured loneliness. He’s sorry for throwing me out of the Rittenhouse suite. He’s sorry for all the things he said.
I cover his hand with mine. “I’m sorry too.”
He closes his eyes for a moment as if he’s praying. Or as if I just answered his prayer. When he looks at me again, he’s an ocean of newfound calm. “Come inside?”
I don’t have to. He’d take me to the Rittenhouse right now, if I asked him to. He’d drive me all the way back to Delaware.
But I think of that moment in the freeport tent when he stepped away from me, when he thought I was rejecting him forever. I think of the chill as his body left mine. I think of the darkness, when I realized he was leaving.
I nod. “Let’s go.”
I’m steady enough to manage my own car door. He gestures me into the house as if I’m an honored guest arriving for the very first time. He lets me lead the way upstairs. I feel the heat of his hand, hovering over the small of my back, ready to catch me if I slip, if I fall.
The door to Aiofe’s room is closed. I wonder how late it is. How long she’s been asleep.
I hesitate outside the guest room. Braiden and I are both exhausted. He’s bleeding. I’m barely able to stay on my feet. We’ve spent five weeks apart. What’s one night more?
“Not on your feckin’ life,” Braiden says, lacing his fingers between mine.
So I walk with him into our bedroom.
43
BRAIDEN
As I turn the lock on our bedroom door, my arm stings like I’ve dipped it in petrol. I push aside the torn fabric of my sleeve to see a long groove carved through the heart of my childhood scar. When I flex my arm, I swear, but it’s nothing serious, nothing I need to call Doc Kelleher for.
Still, I look like I’ve been through the wars, and a fair-minded woman would wonder if I won or lost. I pull my shirt over my head and use it to staunch the wound once again.
