She runs.
I look out the window and my heart pounds.
They were sending out word we’d be back, but I never expected they’d act so soon. Where’s Tiernan?
Why didn’t he come when I called him?
A knock comes at the door. My heart pounds so fast it nearly hurts, the blood rushing to my head making me dizzy. I have to face this problem head on. I can’t run from my fears any longer. The lives of literally everyone in the world who matter to me at all are at stake. I open the door to find Cian standing at the door, his hands shoved in his pockets. It’s odd. Why didn’t he just barge in? Why knock and then enter like this?
“Fancy a visit?” he says, his beady eyes focused on me.
He isn’t alone. Half a dozen other men come in with him.
Where are the others? Nolan said we wouldn’t be alone, that we’d have protection. Are they letting us be taken for a reason? Why did Nolan himself get captured?
“What do you want with me, Cian?” I ask, backing away as if I’m afraid, when what I’m really trying to do is not poke his fucking eyes out.
“Just you,” he says. “You here alone?”
“Of course.”
He rears back and slaps me across the face. Pain explodes across my cheek and my eyes blur with tears. “You fucking lying bitch,” he says. He grabs the back of my head and drags me out, followed by the others. “Your brother came, too, didn’t he?”
If they get Fiona and the baby… my God… what will happen to them?
They have to be safe. I have to trust the McCarthys. Nolan told me they’d be safe.
I’m dragged out of the house and shoved into a car beside Tiernan. I wait for someone to come and help, but no one does. Tiernan’s gagged, so he can’t speak to me. A moment later, I face the same fate. We careen through the streets, my thoughts on Nolan, Fiona, and baby Sam. Would the O’Gregors stoop so low as to take them, too?
It’s a damn good thing I’m gagged. Otherwise, I’d curse these men out and my mouth would get us in trouble again. I recognize where they’re going, where they’re taking us, to the abandoned church I used to visit when I was younger. This feels like a nightmare I can’t wake up from. I want this to end.
We’re taken out roughly, dragged along, and brought into the side door of the old church. This isn’t the place it was in its heyday, long since abandoned and left to ruin. The stained glass windows are brilliant against the streams of moonlight, even as the rest of the church has fallen into a state of disrepair. And somehow, some way, the colors that fall on the ground before us give me hope, like the stripes of a rainbow after a rainstorm.
I can do this.
I have to trust the McCarthys.
They promised me protection and now I have to trust they’ll give us just that.
But I’ve never trusted anyone in my life before. I don’t know how to trust. The only way I’ve ever brought myself out of my misery was with my own two hands, and now… now I’m being forced to do something I’ve never done before.
But I can do this.
I think of Fiona and baby Sam, smiling and laughing in the garden with Maeve. The way Tiernan came alive with the men of The Clan, how he took up the challenges they presented him and gave it his all. They did it, damn it. They faced their fears and trusted. So now, I have to do the same.
We’re brought into a room, and few words are spoken. Cian looks like he’s lowest on the totem pole here, thank fucking God, because he takes orders from all the others. He jeers at me when I’m dragged forward and placed on a burgundy carpet before an old, dusty altar.
“Take her gag off,” a cold voice says. I look up to see a man I don’t recognize. He’s tall and thin like Cian, so close in resemblance it’s uncanny, but much older. They’re related, then?
They take my gag off and shove me to the floor so I can’t get up.
“Bring him in, then?” Cian asks.
“Aye.”
The older man with the cold black eyes lights up a smoke and eyes me. “So you’re the pretty little bitch who likes to interfere with mafia, eh?”
Cian brings in Nolan. Relief and pain flood me at the sight of him.
I look at Nolan, and I’m grateful to see there’s no serious signs of assault. His jaw is tight and his body rigid as they drag him in, as if he’s prepared to spring from these snares at the very first chance he can. He hasn’t been weakened at all. They’ve underestimated him. His eyes meet mine across the wooden benches between us and he gives me a smile and a wink, so quick I wonder at first if I imagined it.