“Hello,” Robbie said. “We meet again.”
Robbie watched the girl as she glared at him from the corner of the backseat.
“Now, now,” he soothed. “No need to be upset. No one’s going to hurt you, I just need you to take my hospitality for a few days while I discipline my boys a bit. They’re young, and I’m afraid I spoiled them. Sometimes leverage is the only tool a parent has.” He smiled, and noticed her cringe as she looked at him.
“Where are you taking me?”
Robbie watched the shadowy scenery go by outside the tinted windows. “Not far,” he answered.
“He’ll find me, you know.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll try, but he’s never been able to outsmart me. Now won’t be the time he does.”
The pretty hacker laughed at him, and Robbie felt his anger flare to life.
“He’s never been able to outsmart you? Have you seen Connor lately?”
He was livid now, but kept his composure as they neared the road where they needed to turn off. He waited, not responding, not giving her any clue as to what was coming next. He could see her smug expression turn to fear as the last few minutes of their journey ticked by.
Then they were pulling up to the perfect spot to store a disobedient employee like Lila.
When the car finally stopped, Robbie leaned toward her. “I know it wasn’t Cian who hid my son from me.” He laced his words with menace. “He never could have done it without you, and now I’m going to make sure you understand what happens to people who take something that’s mine.”
Lila felt bile rise in her throat as she stared at Robbie and the sick smile that cut across his face. But before she could answer him, the door next to her opened, and a hand wrapped around her upper arm.
That was when she panicked, kicking and screaming, arms flying, feet scrabbling for purchase against her assailant’s attack. She felt her leg scrape against the ground as she was pulled from the car, and then she heard Robbie’s voice. “She’s got more fire than my son. Do what you have to.”
A beefy arm wrapped around her throat, and Lila’s mind flashed back to the day Xavier Rossi held her windpipe in his hand, crushing the life out of her. She brought an elbow back hard into the assailant’s gut, and he loosened his hold just a touch, giving her all the room she needed to get her teeth bared and bite down hard on his forearm. She tasted blood just as she heard him shout, “Bitch!” Then she was whirled around while he held on to her upper arm. She didn’t recognize the man, but his face was a mask of fury as he shook out his wounded arm.
“Get control of her,” she heard Robbie instruct before his footsteps echoed away across gravel and dried grass.
“Gladly,” the man holding her said. He threw her against the side of the car, the door handle jamming into her lower back and sending a shockwave of pain up her spine.
“You need to keep your teeth to yourself,” he snarled before backhanding her across the cheek.
Her eyes watered, and she tasted blood again, this time from her own mouth. She lifted her knee, intending to nail him in the balls, but he was too fast, grabbing her leg and pulling her so she fell onto the ground hard, her head bouncing off the dirt, pieces of gravel lodging in her scalp.
And that was when she realized what was about to happen. She saw it coming, and knew she’d lost. No matter how hard she fought, these men would beat her—in every sense of the word. She thought about Cian and what he’d tried to teach her, about how worried he’d been for her safety these last few months, how he’d kept her guarded every moment, day and night. She thought about how he’d tried to explain to her his world was one of no forgiveness, no mercy. But even Cian hadn’t understood that no matter what he did, the biggest threat of all came from inside his own house, his own family. She didn’t think Cian had any idea that the man who would finally get them all was his own father.
So Lila watched as the man hired by Robbie MacFarlane drew back his foot and swung at her head.
Cian got the summons from his father while he was waiting at the airport for Liam to arrive. It was almost time for Liam and Finn to set the plan in motion, and the last thing he needed was to hear his father’s bullshit. But when a second text came demanding he respond immediately, he knew he was going to have to report. The quicker he took care of whatever his father wanted, the sooner he’d be able to get back to handling the real business of the night.
Fifteen minutes later, he climbed out of his car, telling the driver to stay close, they wouldn’t be there long. He strode into the house, noticing most of the lights were off. His mother must already be in bed, which was good because he didn’t have a lot of patience for his father this evening. If they came to blows, it was better she wasn’t around to see it.
He’d started down the hallway to his father’s office when he heard the old man’s voice from the living room. Cian turned and walked into the darkened room, where Robbie sat nursing a glass of whiskey.
“Have a seat,” Robbie instructed.
Fuck. Cian did not have time for this.
“I’ll stand,” he answered. “What do you need?”
Robbie chuckled, and Cian’s muscles tensed.
“I wanted you to be here for the show,” Robbie said. “It’s going to be lots of fun, and I wouldn’t want you to miss it.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Cian asked, crossing his arms and widening his stance.
Robbie stood and began to amble slowly around the room. “I think you neglected to tell me something…son.”
Cian’s eyes narrowed.
“About a little meeting you have set up this evening?”
Cian managed not to blink. “I figured I’d tell you after we had the Russians all cleaned up and out of the way,” Cian said.
“Mm-hmm,” Robbie murmured. “It’s not the Russians I’m thinking about.”
Cian’s hand clenched involuntarily.
“Because here’s the thing, I think if this little meeting were just about the Russians, you would have told me what you were up to. It’s what happens after the Russians are tidied up that you didn’t want me to know.”
“What are you talking about?” Cian asked, his mind racing for a way out of this.
“I’m talking about you running off another of your brothers.”
Cian had no options but full disclosure. He braced himself. “He needs to get away from the Bratva. They’re not going to stop hunting him.”
“Then he shouldn’t have taken the whore in the first place.” Robbie’s voice was deadly cold.
Cian’s head hammered. “But he did, so now we have to do what we need to to keep him safe.”
Robbie tossed back the rest of his whiskey, then slammed it down on the nearest hard surface, which happened to be Cian’s mother’s prized grand piano. “No son of mine will run like a fucking pussy. He started this. He’ll end it. He’ll stay and fight like a man.”
“And no brother of mine will be used as live bait to start a war we have no chance of winning,” Cian answered, taking a step toward Robbie.
Robbie pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked at the time. “We’ll see about that,” he said, swiping the screen and punching numbers.
He put it on speaker as the phone began to ring, and Cian moved toward him again, but this time, the old man pulled a gun from his waistband and gestured at Cian with it. “I wouldn’t if I were you,” he said.
The phone call connected, and Cian heard a voice on the other end say, “That you, Robbie?”
Cian stared at his father, frozen with confusion and rage and some sort of misplaced idea that he couldn’t actually take the old man down, no matter what Robbie might be up to.
“Officer O’Brian” Robbie said congenially as Cian’s heart sank. O’Brian was his father’s favorite inside man in the CPD. “I have that tip I was telling you about. You’ll want to go to warehouse four. You’ll find two men and a dead body there. You’ll want to arrest them both. They’ve been h
iding that corpse for several days, and they’re involved in all manner of illegal activities.”
“Well,” said the officer on the other end of the line, “thank you so much for that information. I’ll pass on this anonymous tip right away and have all the cars in the area head there now.”
Robbie smiled, then disconnected the call.
“They have a way out, you know,” Cian told him, his heart racing in spite of his determination not to panic.
Robbie chuckled again.
“You mean the boat that Louis will have waiting?”
And that was when Cian knew his brothers were screwed. And also that someone had betrayed him to his father.
“Yeah,” Robbie continued. “Louis won’t be there. I have him helping out with a little something for me.”
Cian didn’t hesitate, merely reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone. Robbie raised the gun.
“Go ahead,” Cian said, hardly sparing him a glance. “Then explain to my mother how it happened.”
Robbie hesitated, and Cian took the chance, pressing the speed dial for Liam. Robbie watched him as he did it.
Liam answered on the first ring, and before he could even say hello, Cian growled one word.
“Run.”
Chapter 17
Liam stared at the phone in his hand. Cian had said one word, then disconnected, and it was taking Liam a moment to process it. A moment that was one too many, apparently, as the distant sound of sirens came rushing to his consciousness.
“Fuck!” he snapped, shoving the phone in his pocket. “Someone tipped the cops off. We have to go!”
Finn frantically tried to stuff the USB drive in Nadja’s hand. The corpse hadn’t been kept on ice, and it wouldn’t be long before bloat set in. It was also still partially in rigor mortis, and Finn struggled to open the clenched fingers.
“Forget that,” Liam commanded, cursing his brother’s insistence on the details of things. “We have to go—now.”
They heard the scattering of gravel as police cars peeled to a halt in front of the building.
“Go!” Finn yelled, and followed as Liam started running for the back door that would lead them to the docks and the waiting boat.
They skidded to a stop at the back door, trying to listen even as they heard police crashing through the front of the building.
“We’ve got one body!” someone shouted. “Fan out. They can’t be far!”
“Let’s hope they’re not out back,” Liam muttered before he pushed on the door. It protested, and Liam cursed before elbowing Finn back so he could kick the damn thing open.
As his foot made contact with the metal and the door ripped open, he heard someone shout, “Hands up! Don’t move!” Liam looked over his shoulder as he saw Finn’s arms lift into the air. No. No. No.
Liam froze, Finn’s body in front of him, screening him from the police, the door—and freedom—behind him.
“Go,” Finn said so softly only Liam could hear him.
“Never,” Liam answered, reaching into his waistband to remove his gun.
“Yes,” Finn murmured. “I’ve got this. Take your chance, and your girl, and go.”
Time slowed to a stop, and Liam stood, gun in hand, faced with the hardest choice of his life. Run. Fight. Or give up.
He’d been a fighter most of his life. A role he’d taken on voluntarily, a part he’d played to make sure his brother and his father didn’t kill each other. And it had taken its toll on him. Had made him a man he wasn’t sure he was always proud of. It had also made him a survivor. He could live through anything—but did he want to?
He didn’t, and that was why giving up wasn’t an option. Could he survive prison again? Yeah. But he’d rather die.
So now he had to decide—be the fighter he always had been, or leave and become someone new, someone a little kinder, a little gentler, and maybe a little happier as well. He loved his brothers. The last thing he wanted to do was leave them in this mess. It terrified him to think of Finn in prison, but he wasn’t sure he could keep being the man they’d come to expect from him.
Now he was a man who had someone else who needed him. Someone who thought he was more than an enforcer, more than a cold-blooded killer. Someone who’d forgiven him even when he left her to be tortured and raped. He owed Cian his life, but he owed Katya his humanity.
And right now, he owed Finn his respect, because the brother he’d thought couldn’t handle the worst of who they were was telling Liam that he did, in fact, have what it took.
“Slán abhaile,” Finn whispered as the cop began yelling instructions about getting on the floor.
“Slán abhaile,” Liam repeated, his heart a swollen rock inside his chest.
Then he ran.
Liam’s breath came in quick huffs as he waited inside the brothel. He knew the Russians would be returning soon since the meeting place was now crawling with cops. He’d managed to make his way through the labyrinth of warehouses and docks until he found a parking garage, where he’d hotwired an old pickup truck and driven straight here. Time was running short, and he hadn’t yet stopped to grab a phone and call Cian, but he had one last task to complete before he left town, and he was damned if he was going to skip it.
He saw the dark sedan pull up and felt all his instincts kick in at once. He waited quietly in the small, dank room as he watched through the window while Sergei climbed from the car.
One of the men with Sergei exited as well, while the other one sped off in the car. Once the men had entered the building, Liam turned his attention to listening to the sounds below. He’d come in on the second floor, a different window, but same general area as when he’d first found Katya.
He could hear orders being shouted in Russian on the floor below him and wished he had Katya’s knowledge of the language so he knew what they were saying. They probably assumed the MacFarlanes had been arrested and were preparing to celebrate.
“Not on my watch,” he murmured to himself.
It took him almost ten minutes to make his way down the stairs and into the long hallway that ran the width of the building. As he slid along the corridor, the sounds of voices got closer. Most of the doors looked exactly the same, and he knew they held rooms like the one he’d been placed in when he came looking to purchase “a thin blonde” for the night.
But then he saw one that had a padlock on the outside. He didn’t hesitate, pulling out his lockpicking kit and popping the simple lock open in moments. When he swung the door open, the light from the hallway lit the room. Staring back at him with dead eyes were about ten young women, disheveled, exhausted, some of them high, others nearly catatonic. A few gasped as he stood in the doorway watching them.
All he could see was Katya and Nadja, and he knew this moment would define them all for the rest of their lives.
He quietly pulled the door shut behind him, then took out his wallet, extracting a few hundred dollars and a business card.
“Here,” he said, holding out the items to the nearest woman.
She stared at him, not responding, not moving.
“Do any of you speak English?” he asked.
“I do,” answered a woman from the back of the room.
“This is enough money to get all of you to safety. Go to a hotel, get only one room, but don’t let them see all of you. Then call the number on this card. Ask for Cian, tell him Liam gave you the number. Tell him you were being held with Katya. He’ll find a way to help you.”
The woman who spoke English stood and took the card and the money from him.
“Where are they?” she asked in fear.
“I’m going to handle them. Wait five minutes, then run. Take a left out of this room and head straight down the hall to the exit.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“Because you deserve to be free.”
A few minutes later, he pulled the silencer out of his pocket and screwed it onto the barrel of the gun. He peeked out the
door of the room where the women were kept and saw no one. After making his way down the hall, he turned a corner, and there was the first guard he’d encountered. Before the guy even had a chance to open his mouth, Liam had shot him point-blank in the forehead. The man slumped to the floor, blood running down his face and onto the white dress shirt he wore.
Liam put his ear to the door and heard two voices speaking rapidly in Russian. Once he was satisfied no one else was in the room, he stepped back from the door and knocked loudly once. It swung open, and he repeated the kill tactic by shooting the guy square in the head. As the man’s eyes went instantly dead, Liam shoved the body hard before it even had a chance to fall to the floor. He kept a gun in each hand as his gaze tracked rapidly across the room, looking for the other occupant.
“Liam MacFarlane,” the accented voice said as Liam’s gaze fell on the older man where he stood, pointing his own gun dead center at Liam’s chest.
“You must be Sergei,” Liam said, stepping farther into the room. “I heard you’ve been looking for me.”
Sergei smiled coldly. “I have. You’ve stolen something of mine.”
Liam kicked the door shut behind him. “That’s funny. I didn’t think it was possible to have something stolen that never belonged to you.”
Sergei nodded slightly. “Be that as it may, I can’t have you coming in here all the time and simply taking whatever you fancy.”
Liam made a tsking sound. “And I can’t have you using humans as possessions in my town. So it appears one of us is going to have to give.”
Sergei lifted his gun slightly higher. “I can guarantee it will not be me.”
Liam didn’t wait, he just shot with both weapons, one winging Sergei’s gun hand so his aim was off when he fired the return shot. The other bullet Liam shot was aimed true. It sank into Sergei’s chest, and he doubled over, his gun falling from his wounded hand as blood poured from his chest.
Liam walked over and kicked the gun away as Sergei fell to his knees.
Brush of Despair (Dublin Devils Book 2) Page 18