Moving inside, he doesn’t stop to look at the men being tackled to the ground, or take in the body on the floor. His gaze locks on me and everything else falls away.
For one stupid, fragile second, it almost undoes me. Butthis is a show of power and strength in their territory. Nothing more.
He kills the distance in long, confident strides, stepping over the man at my feet as if he’s nothing more than debris, his hands already reaching for me, cupping my face, sliding to my neck, my shoulders, probably checking for injuries.
“Are you hurt?” His voice is rough, threaded with an urgency that tightens low in my belly.
I feel the pull. The fire inside me fuels a hunger for him while I fight the instinct to lean in. Because his intentions for our marriage are clear now, and that has done more damage than my da’s betrayal ever could.
I step back and slap his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
His hands hover where I left them, his expression tightening. “Tierney?—”
“Back off. We have nothing to say to each other.”
My voice comes steadier than I expect, even as my pulse kicks hard in my neck. I tug at the wedding band and twist it off my finger. The absence of it seems immediate, and my stomach drops.
I take his hand and press the ring into his palm.
“Our marriage is over,” I say, holding his gaze now, making sure he hears every word. “We don’t need to pretend anymore.”
As the armed men wrestle the two Irish men, darkness passes behind his eyes.
“I wasn’t,” he says. “And neither were you.”
I shake my head.
“I’m going home to Dublin,” I continue, even as my ribs ache from the pain in my chest. “Back to my old life. To my ex… if he’ll have me.”
His jaw flexes.
“To someone who’d never mess with my emotions to get what he wants.”
Bronx closes his hand around the ring for a beat, then uncurls his fingers and holds it out in the space between us.
“Put your wedding ring back on, Mrs Viacava,” he orders. “Now.”
“That’s not my ring anymore.” I clear my throat. “Give it to another woman. Someone you care about.”
I shove the gun into the waistband of my jeans and drag my hair over my shoulder.
“What we had was fake,” I tell him. “I don’t care about you, Bronx. I know how to survive, and that’s all I was doing in our marriage. None of it mattered.”
The words scrape on the way out, but I don’t stop there.
“Sure, we fucked a few times. You’re a decent looking guy so it wasn’t a hardship. I told you from the beginning we’d last six months at the most. I’m done.”
Something flickers across his face as if I’ve hit a nerve.
When he steps into me, the smell of his cologne threatens to drag me under.
“Tierney—”
But that very second, there’s movement behind him and my focus snaps past his shoulder.
The man I shot is dragging himself upright, blood soaking through his shirt, one hand braced against the wall while the other raises above his head with a blade catching in the light, ready to stab Bronx in the neck any second.
Without weighing it up, I move.
