by Henry, Jane
My logic seems to be returning, though. I try to piece it all together.
The man holding me’s Keenan.
The man who rescued me is Tiernan.
They’re taking Tiernan to the bunker because he killed a man and his life could be forfeit. And me?
I don’t know what the bloody hell they’re doing with me.
Chapter 5
Tiernan
“Let me fucking go, Lachlan.”
I try to shrug him off. Like Nolan, he’s both my Clan brother and my brother-in-law, so we have a bond unlike I do with the others. Every member of the Clan takes vows of loyalty, but Nolan and Lachlan are different. They know me more intimately than the others.
“Not on your fucking life,” Lachlan mutters. “And if you keep fighting me, I’ll call in back-up.”
I’m trying to get away from him, but he holds me fast and shoves me into an awaiting car.
“Bunker,” he says to the driver. I look to see it’s Boner.
“He’s our fucking driver tonight?”
“Aye,” Lachlan mutters. “Feckin’ bunker won’t save us from that.”
I want to laugh, but it ends on a sigh.
“Jesus, Tiernan, what the bloody hell were you thinking?”
I swivel my gaze to his. Is he serious?
“If you heard Fiona screaming, and you came running, and you found a man who was trying to rape her who also promised he’d find her and kill her, what would you do? Hmm?” I glare at him. “Gently suggest anger counseling?”
He growls, the visual I painted clearly inciting fury. “I’d tear off his dick and shove it up his arse before I murdered him with my bare hands.”
“Course you would,” I say. “So you understand, then.”
He gives me a withering look. “That girl is no Fiona to you, though, Tiernan.” He’s been married to my sister for several years, and the two of them were damn near fated to be together.
He’s right, but I’m not in the mood. How do I fucking know what came over me?
“Shut it, Lach. I don’t want your fucking lecture.”
He raises his brows and opens his mouth, then closes it again quickly.
“You’re right,” he says with annoying patience. “I’ll save that for Keenan.” He narrows his eyes on me. “But I hope he assigns me your bloody fucking punishment.”
My stomach actually tightens at that. If Keenan sentences me for punishment for my reckless behavior, there will be no fighting back. I’ll take it, as I’m meant to.
Will he, though?
I blow out a breath and look out the window. “Fucking worth it,” I mutter.
“The bastard came there to kill you,” Boner says while he navigates the streets like a drunken race car driver.
“Oh? What gave you that fucking idea, Sherlock? And Christ, will you please watch how you’re fucking driving before you bloody kill us?”
He rolls his eyes at me. “We’re fine. Good as gold, here. So what the fuck did you do to him to earn him pulling a weapon on you in the middle of the match? Were you set up?”
“Something like,” I say, my anger fading as I try to piece it together. And it serves no purpose for me to attack my Clan brothers now. They’re the ones on my fucking side.
“Who invited you?” Lachlan asks.
“Danny Cook.”
Lachlan scowls. “He’s not the type to get involved. Not very likely someone put him up to it. Bet he just wanted you back in the ring.”
I nod. “Aye.”
“But once word got out you were the one fighting, Cage packed a fucking weapon.”
“Not only packed it, but security let him get away with it.”
Lachlan nods. “Aye. So let’s name your enemies, then.”
I snort. “Name my fucking enemies, Lach? You out of your bloody mind? Keenan’s had me going from Boston to Bangkok, Paris to Malaysia. I’m fucking Clan enforcer, brother. I’ve punished and killed, and stacked enemies from fucking coast to coast.”
Boner nods. “That he does. Right proud of you, son.”
I roll my eyes. “Oh fuck off, Boner.”
He chortles with laughter, the wanker.
Lachlan blows out a breath. “Well, now you’ve got yourself another.”
“Thanks, Lach, whose fucking side are y’on anyway?”
He’s usually got a sense of humor, but tonight there’s not a trace. He’s older than I am. They all are. But he’s the one that’s really taken me under his wing, showed me the ways of the Clan. He taught me to rein in my temper and use it for good, to abide by Clan code.
“I feel goddamn responsible,” he mutters.
I smack his shoulder. “Oh shut it, will you? What the feck are you going on about?”
He smacks me back, and it bloody hurts. “I was the one that taught you to fight that good!”
I actually laugh out loud, and finally feel a bit of the tension seep out of me.
“Oh, that’s right. Then it’s totally your fucking fault. If you’d just left me a gangly, ragey teen with a chip on his shoulder, none of this would’ve happened!”
“Not sure why everyone’s so uptight here,” Boner says. “I mean, it’s not like what Tiernan did is that out of the ordinary, is it? I mean this is why we have a Clan doctor, Clan lawyers, connections on the police force and even the fucking Church.”
Lachlan sighs. “You don’t have a fucking clue who he was, do you?”
Fuck.
Lachlan looks at me, and he shakes his head. “Motherfucker, you don’t either, do you, Tiernan?”
I shake my head. Waiting for his answer feels like waiting for the axe to drop. I swallow hard.
“Fucking son of the Prime Minister, Tiernan.”
A cold, prickly awareness travels over my neck, down my spine, and settles in my belly.
“No fucking foolin’, Lach?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose and looks out the window. His silence underscores how serious he is.
Christ, but I’ve fucked up royally here.
“We have any witnesses?”
He gives me a withering look. “I had Carson run the specs and interrogate. No cameras in there. We have one witness and you bloody well know who she is. She’s secured at the mansion.”
“You know who that girl is?” I ask him.
He sighs again. “Course I do. Aisling.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t let Fiona see, but there will be no hiding it now.” His gaze on me sharpens. “Have you had anything to do with her, Tiernan?”
I shake my head. “I haven’t,” I tell him honestly. “Swear to fucking God, Lach.”
His voice hardens again. “And just like that, out of nowhere, you kill a man for her?”
I sigh. “I don’t know how to explain it. She was like a sister to me, back when she and Fiona were mates, you know? If a man attacked Fiona, I’d have done the same.”
Lachlan scowls out the window, thinking, before he looks back to me. “What the hell has she done with herself? Looks like she’s fucking aged a decade since I saw her last, and can’t be more than a few years?”
I shake my head. “I only know what Keenan told me. Mum and dad divorced, mum took off with a man in America and left her with nothing. Dad shot himself last year, she’s been scraping to get by.”
Boner looks at us in the rearview mirror.
“And she was sitting with the line of Vivian’s girls, now, wasn’t she?”
I feel my body tighten, my anger surging. “If you fucking touched her, Boner…”
“Swear to God, mate! I didn’t. Came straight to Keenan. I knew she was Vivian’s, though.”
I growl under my breath but let it go.
Lachlan blows out a whistle. “Mother of God,” he mutters. “Jesus, that’s terrible.”
It is.
We make it to the bunker, mostly in silence this time. The weight of what happened tonight, what I did, hangs over all of us like a storm cloud.
This is why Keenan has me comi
ng to the bunker, the safest place we have, to make sure everything’s secured before I return home.
Lachlan and Boner leave me, and I enter the cold room underground with the dread of a prisoner entering a cell. I flick on the dim overhead light and smile to myself when the light illuminates the small room.
Someone’s come in here with a feminine touch since the last time I was here. The bed is made with a nice duvet, and they’ve even hung up some wall art. A small vase of plastic flowers sits on the bedside table. I open the cabinet where we keep the emergency food store, suddenly ravenous. I put the kettle on, and make myself a hot cup of tea, some tuna, and eat it with crackers.
Sebastian, the Clan doctor arrives, and looks over my minor injuries. He pronounces me fine, and tells me Keenan’s on his way.
“I’ll see you later tonight at home,” Sebastian says, leading me to believe that I’m likely not spending the night here.
Keenan arrives an hour or so later, after I’ve damn near worn a hole in the floor pacing.
“Hey.” I’m lying on the bed watching the news. There’s nothing on the telly and nothing online about his death. Maybe it hasn’t made the news yet.
Keenan jerks his chin in greeting. Cormac and Nolan come in behind him. They take up most of the interior of the bunker, sitting heavily on the little loveseat and folding chairs.
“Y’alright, Tiernan?” Nolan asks. I swallow hard, weirdly overcome with emotion at his concern.
“Fine. Look, I’m fucking sorry—”
Keenan holds up his hand to stop me. “You will not apologize for killing a man who tried to assault a woman who’s friends with the Clan.”
I blink and look at him in surprise. Aisling hasn’t been friends with the Clan for ages, but as I think on it, he’s right. Fiona would still be fucking crushed if anything happened to her, I know she would.
“I’d have done the same myself,” he says, but then he winces. “Might not have done it exactly at that location, but lucky for you, Carson and Tully are experts in the art of body disposal, and so far no one’s any wiser for it.”
So far.
I swallow and nod. “Thanks for that, Keenan. Lachlan lectured the fuck out of me on the way here.”
Nolan chuckles. “Of course he did. Bloody worried about you, lad.”
I’ll be sixty years old and Nolan will still call me “lad.”
My chest warms a little. He’s right. Lachlan’s worried. And even though I don’t like what’s happened tonight and didn’t like being lectured by Lachlan, I can rest easy in the comfort of this knowledge: these men are my brothers, loyal to the death.
“Tomorrow, we’ll have to form a plan,” Keenan says. “We’ll have to bury evidence and see to it his disappearance doesn’t circle back to us. Walsh is already on it, and we’ll have Sheena work on the papers as well.”
My sister’s job as investigative reporter comes in handy for times like these.
“And if we play this right, seems like none will be the wiser for it, Tiernan.” Keenan strokes the beard at his chin and shrugs. “But there are what you might call natural consequences for something like this.”
I blow out a breath and give him a curious look. “Natural consequences?”
Not out of the doghouse yet, then. Fuck.
“Aye,” Keenan says sagely. “Like telling a child not to touch the stove, and when they do, they get burned.”
I wait in silence. Here it comes.
“There’s a very angry woman in a state of deep withdrawal back at the compound.”
I blink. “State of withdrawal?”
Bloody fucking hell.
He nods. “Sebastian says she’s strung out and coming down from a high, will be looking for a fix in the morning, if not sooner.”
“Yeah?”
“Aye. You killed a man for her tonight, Tiernan. It’ll be your job to keep her. She’s your responsibility now.”
“Keep her?”
“She fucking witnessed the murder,” Keenan says. “You have no bloody choice, Tiernan. All she has to do is report you, and you’re fucked.” He sighs. “We all are.”
There are only so many things we can cover up.
I blow out a breath, my elbows hitting my knees as I lean over on the bed and mull this over.
Keep her.
Aisling. That gorgeous, feisty girl’s all grown up now, but honest to God, she’s a fucking mess.
Why does that appeal to me somehow?
“You have to make it clear she will not report you,” Keenan says. “And since you made this bed, you’ll have to sleep in it.”
He isn’t finished. I wait.
“She’ll be bloody hard to manage the next couple of days or so, but Sebastian can help you. And in the end, she’ll be better for it.”
“You’re punishing me by giving me babysitting duties?”
Keenan’s lips twitch. “Something like.”
I sigh.
“Let’s go,” Keenan says. “Your lady awaits.”
We all get to our feet. The other men don’t speak to me, and I’m glad of it, for I’m trying to process this. What does it mean to keep her? What the hell is she addicted to that would already cause withdrawal? What will Fiona say?
We get back to the mansion, and as I exit the car, I hear a high-pitched scream.
“What the bloody hell is that?” I ask Keenan.
He gives me a doleful smile. “Your new charge.”
I blink and look up at the mansion again.
“Sounds like a fucking wounded animal.”
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
Keenan’s gaze grows sober. “I think you’re not far from the truth.”
That hits me straight in the chest. What’s happened to her? What happened to the happy-go-lucky girl who was best mates with my sister? The girl who never hesitated to flirt with me, toss her pretty blonde curls, and even wink at me if given the chance. Never gave her a second glance when she was younger, but bloody hell… I can’t get the image of her out of my mind.
I walk up the stone pathway then take the steps two at a time. If she’s my charge, I want to get a handle on this as quickly as I can. I don’t like that she’s disturbing the entire peace of the house with her howling and screams. What’s she going on about, anyway?
Anger surges in me as we approach the door, and her screams intensify. She’ll scare the bloody wits out of anyone and everyone on site.
Keenan snorts. “She’ll need a firm hand, Tiernan.”
“Oh, aye. I think she needs more than that.”
She needs a good bloody spanking for this tantrum. Still, a part of me feels badly for her. Something’s happened to the innocent girl I once knew.
“Where is she?” I ask, surprised by the sounds that emanate from the mansion that she isn’t right here in the damn entryway.
“Library. You sure you’re well enough to see her now?”
I give Keenan a look that makes him laugh out loud and clap me on the shoulder. “Give Tiernan Hurston a fucking job, and stand out of the fucking way.”
“Oh, aye,” Nolan says with unmistakable pride. “Could have his feckin’ arm hanging on by a tendon and a gun wound, he’d still get the job done, aye?”
I hide my face so they can’t see me smile. The approval of my two older Clan brothers means more to me than the fucking world.
“She have any kin?” I ask in a low voice, so no one hears.
Keenan shakes his head. “Nay, lad.”
“And isn’t that part of the fucking problem,” Nolan mutters with a sigh. It is.
They take their leave at the library entrance. I square my shoulders and enter the room, just as another high-pitched scream rents the air, peppered with vulgar words that should never come out of the mouth of a pretty girl.
The room’s darkened, the shades pulled. Aisling’s tied to a chair in the center of the room, facing away from me. Rope’s lashed about her body, and anger suddenly surges within me. Who the
bloody hell roped her here?
That’s my job.
Cormac’s sitting at a desk chair, his feet propped up, reading a book. He smiles when I enter, and places the book on the table.
“Tiernan, y’alright?”
I jerk my head at him, because I’m watching her reaction. She stills at the sound of my name and tries to crane her head to look at me, but she can’t see me from where she sits.
“Oh, I’m good, brother. You?”
“Right as rain,” he says with a grin.
“You the one who brought her here?”
Cormac sobers, looks to the girl, then nods. He doesn’t meet my eyes, but watches her.
“Aye. Keenan’s orders, brother.” His tone is apologetic. No doubt Keenan told him my purpose, and Cormac knows I’d have preferred being the one who brought her here.
“Sorry, mate,” he says, scrubbing a hand across his brow.
I shrug. “Keenan’s orders, you had no choice.” But my tone holds an edge I can’t control. “But you tell the others, Cormac.” His brows rise. I rarely give the others orders, but I fucking mean it now. “I’m the only one that lays a hand on her from here on out.”
Cormac nods. “Aye, brother, you have my word.”
His word. The Clan’s most powerful verbal contract.
“Tell all of them. The guards. Our brothers. She’s my charge now.”
“I’m no one’s bloody charge!” she screams.
I smile at Cormac and nod toward the door. “I’ll take it from here, brother.”
Cormac pushes away from the desk and heads to the door.
“Sideboard’s recently filled.” Cormac looks with concern at my injuries. “Could use a drop of the good stuff, aye?”
I nod. “Will do, thanks.”
He leaves. The door shuts behind him, and I throw the deadbolt.
She’s fuming, muttering under her breath, as I take out my phone and text my brothers.
I’ve got her in the library. Please ensure we aren’t disturbed. Where will I bring her when we’re finished here?
A few responses come back immediately.
Lachlan: Good luck, brother
Nolan: Aye, no disturbing the peace
Keenan: Your room will be prepared.
I smile grimly. Thank you.