"You knew." My voice is flat. Dead. "You knew and you got me out and you left everyone else to die."
"Yes."
My mind spins so fast I think I’m either going to throw up or pass out. I’m clawing up onto the seat, looking for some form of stability that I don’t find.
"Aoife." William's voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts from the driver's seat.
I don't want to answer. Don't want to acknowledge him. Don't want to face the man who saved me and damned me in the same breath.
The SUV finally slows. Turns onto what sounds like a gravel drive. Stones crunching under the tires.
"We're here," William says.
I don't ask where here is.
Don't care.
The SUV stops. The engine cuts off. In the sudden silence, I can hear my own breathing. Fast and shallow. On the edge of hyperventilating again.
William opens his door. Cold air rushes in. "Come on."
I don't move.
Can't move.
If I get out of this SUV, I have to face whatever comes next. Have to exist in a world where my brother is dead. Have to figure out how to keep breathing when every breath feels like betrayal.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
William
THE SAFE HOUSE appears in my headlights.
Stone walls. Slate roof. Windows dark and unwelcoming. It sits at the end of a gravel drive that cuts through farmland, isolated enough that no one asks questions, close enough to the city that I can get here in under an hour when I need to disappear.
I've been here too many times.
More than I should. More than is smart. But when the Murphy estate becomes too much, when the weight of Father's ghost and my brothers' expectations and the cocaine calling my name gets unbearable, this is where I come.
To this cold stone house in the middle of nowhere.
To silence and darkness and the illusion of peace.
I check the mirrors one last time. Nothing but empty road behind us. No headlights. No tail. Frank's intelligence was good. Viktor's people weren't subtle, no snipers, no precision hits. The Bratva brought bazookas. Launched rockets at the Murphy house like they were leveling a military target. They wanted spectacle. Wanted to send a message. They saw the explosion. Saw the bodies we left for them to find.
They think everyone's dead.
That's the point.
I kill the engine. Sit in the sudden silence. Behind me, I can hear Aoife's breathing. Ragged. Broken. The sound of someone who's cried until there's nothing left.
She thinks her brother is dead.
She thinks everyone is dead.
Because I let her believe it.
The guilt sits heavy in my chest, mixing with the adrenaline that's still coursing through my veins. We made it out. The plan worked. Frank came through with the intelligence, and I got everyone underground before Viktor's bombs turned the Murphy house into an inferno.
