Her eyes are flint. “Let’s get Siobhan back.”
CHAPTER 31
A FLOWER
Caitríona
The hangar yawns open like a mouth about to swallow a secret. I stand at the entrance, willing my heartrate to normalize. I focus on anything but the gnawing fear that Tiernan has Siobhan. My gaze sweeps over the neon lights that paint everything the color of old coins, the jet’s polished wing, the wet tarmac, and Leo’s square silhouette in the corner. The sight of the Gemini guard makes me uneasy despite Matteo’s repeated assurances. His head tips in my direction with a look that says he’s done worse for less.
Headlights rake the fence line, drawing my attention. Donal’s sedan noses through the service gate and rolls to a stop with the engine still growling. He’s out before the door finishes opening, his head on a swivel and dark coat flaring like a warning.
“Cáit.” His voice cracks across the space. “Where the fuck have you been and where is?—”
I walk toward him fast enough to force his focus. I fold every wild thing inside me into one narrow expression. “It doesn’tmatter,” I bark, all business and all blade. “We don’t have time. I’ve got the body now and that’s all that’s important.”
He reaches for me, checking the line of my jaw with his thumb like he’s counting bruises. As if he actually cares. “Tiernan’s moving Siobhan. I’ve got a line on her location but—” His gaze darts past me to the jet. “Whose plane is this?”
“Mine,” I lie. “We take off in five so let’s talk inside.”
He hesitates, nostrils flaring. “You trust the crew?”
“No, but I trust myself.”
That lands. He nods once, grim, and turns his head to spit a curse into the rain. “Fine. Move.”
I pivot so he has to walk at my shoulder. Behind us, Matteo’s footfalls melt into the hum of the hangar fans. Leo shifts beneath the hangar, casual, and ghosts along the edge of the light.
At the entrance of the hangar, Donal pauses, his eyes on the door like it might bite. “After you,” he grunts.
I should feel guilt, a hint of remorse… something, anything as we walk toward the jet. But there’s nothing as I angle my body to block Donal’s view and stretch up as if to whisper in his ear. “Where does Tiernan have her?”
Matteo steps up from his blind side and the butt of his pistol kisses the base of Donal’s skull with surgical precision. My brother’s eyes flash surprise, then fury, then nothing. He crumples into Matteo’s arms the way a mountain chooses the quickest path downhill.
“Easy,” Matteo mutters, lowering him to the tarmac like he’s worth something to someone. Which, God help me, he is to me. Or at least, he used to be.
By the time I blink, Leo is already there. He uncaps the syringe, expression unreadable. “Twenty-four hours,” he mumbles to Matteo, finding a vein with the kind of care only a man who’s done this too many times affords. “He’ll dream of better places.”
I swallow hard and push the image of my brother dreaming anywhere out of my head. Leo hauls him over his shoulder, then marches up the steps like he’s carrying a ragdoll. We follow behind. Matteo and Leo cuff my brother, then strap him into a rear seat like any other passenger getting on a flight.
Matteo squeezes my shoulder when it’s done. “Go sit up front,” he says softly.
I nod and my feet are moving on autopilot. I drop into the plush leather seat and close my eyes. Matteo sinks in beside me a moment later, a quiet exhale the only sound between us. The cabin swallows us. Doors seal and engines roar. The runway lights bleed into a horizon I can’t quite reach.
Then my stomach drops and we’re hurtling faster and faster, until we finally catch flight. I don’t speak as New Jersey falls away, as the ocean takes the windows and refuses to give them back. I can’t stop thinking of my sister. Of those freckles, her soft laugh, and the hands that never learned the weight of our family name because I helped keep it from her. I’d insisted on boarding school in London so she could be ordinary. And now Tiernan had her. Because of me.
Because of Matteo… and this thing between us. Guilt rolls over me, flooding every inch of my body until I can’t breathe.
The cabin hums, and I sneak a peek through slitted lids. Leo pretends to busy himself with a manifest that doesn’t exist, eyes flicking between Matteo and me like even he can taste the awkward in the air.
I wonder what Matteo told him about me, about us.
“Drink?” Matteo asks finally. The bottle appears from a drawer beneath the window I didn’t clock, the label stubbornly Irish.
I nod because I need the quiet numbness. If I open my mouth, I’ll break. He pours, and I throw back a shot. It hits likea match, warming the ice in my veins. He pours again. I don’t thank him for knowing exactly what I needed.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Keep pouring.”
