“But Declan Blake said?—”
“Declan Blake says many things. Most of them are lies.” Giovanni shrugs. “If he told you we were hunting his son, he was mistaken. Or lying.”
The pieces start falling into placewith sickening clarity that I don’t want to acknowledge. “You’re saying there was never a Tribunal threat?”
“Correct. Though we understand there was a vault incident some time ago. Our vault.”
Kingston’s jaw tightens. “And?”
“And we’re curious about what Declan Blake plans to do with the intelligence his daughter obtained. It must have been quite valuable to risk such an operation.”
“He’s using it as leverage,” I say. “For protection.”
“Ah. So he fabricated a threat from us to motivate the theft, then used the stolen intelligence to negotiate actual protection. Clever.”
“His daughter had no idea,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Not our concern. But we’ll be watching to see how this plays out, especially now that you are key players seeing as how one of you has married the Blake girl.” Carlo stands. “Out of respect, we want you to know that any threats the Blake family faces, they don’t come from us. We have bigger concerns than petty Irish criminals.”
The meeting ends there, but the damage is done. Everything we believed was a lie. Tierney broke into their vault based on a bullshit threat, and Declan is still holding that intelligence over our heads.
When we leave, Kingston is bubbling with anger. “Declan Blake played us like fucking morons.”
I pull out my phone and text Connor.
Is Tierney with you?
His response comes quickly.
She’s in the gym then we're having dinner together after. Why?
“Let’s go to the penthouse,” I tell them. “We need to figure out how to handle this without Tierney finding out yet.”
I text him back.
Don’t mention anything we talked about with her.
Got it.
I lean back against the seat, a deep sigh shuddering my chest.
The Murphys want Declan's blood money - two million euros he doesn't have. And they've threatened to kill both his children as payment.
Which means they'll come for Tierney.
My wife. And that makes this a Viacava problem now.
Kingston's going to want answers about how we protect Tierney without starting a war with an Irish crime family over Declan Blake's debts.
The woman who laughed in my arms this morning just became a target.
And she has no fucking clue.
27
TIERNEY
The elevator doors glide open onto the penthouse level, and I step out with the faint burn of exertion still humming through my muscles, my skin damp beneath my workout clothes, hair pulled back in a braid.
