Page 52
I freeze, my finger easing off the trigger as my eyes lock onto her.
She isn't wearing the modest gray habit that she wore in New York. The ridiculous wimple is gone, revealing a thick mane of ink-black curls falling around high, sharp cheekbones and fierce slate-gray eyes. She wears black combat trousers, heavy boots, and a torn dark wool sweater that clings to the lush curves of her breasts and hips.
The faint shadow of an old bruise still marks the curve of her left cheekbone, exactly like the night Romeo and I kicked open the cathedral doors in Manhattan.
The woman from the altar. The one who shielded the teenage acolyte boy and fled through the priest's quarters while bullets chewed the pews to splinters.
She isn't a nun. She never was.
She moves like a feral alley cat with a taste for blood.
"Stay down, you sick old bastard," she snarls in a husky, melodic Dublin brogue, raising the iron poker above Alistair's skull.
"Elizabeth!" Alistair whimpers from the floor, crawling on his elbows away from her. "You ungrateful little bitch! After all the church did to keep your brother alive!"
"You put a bullet in my brother's head two days ago in Glasgow, Alistair," she spits, her voice trembling with venom. "You lied to me for three fucking years while you made me play the pious little sister in your torture chambers."
She swings the iron poker, cracking Alistair across his good shoulder with a sickening thud. Howling in agony, the priest curls into the fetal position on the flagstones.
A low, appreciative whistle leaves my lips.
Her head whips in my direction. Those slate-gray eyes lock onto mine, wild, calculating, and completely devoid of fear. She raises the bloody poker toward my chest, her knuckles pale, her chest heaving beneath the torn black wool.
"Who the fuck are you?" she demands, backing up half a step until her shoulders hit the stone wall. "Another one of Alistair's hired guns?"
I lower the barrel of the Benelli by three inches, letting a slow, dangerous smirk spread across my face.
"Do I look like a priest to you, sweetheart?" I ask, my thick Boston brogue rolling over the syllables.
Her eyes flick down to my red hair, to the blood-spattered Barbour coat, and then to the family crest ring on my right hand. Recognition flashes across her features, sharp and electric.
"O'Connor," she breathes, lowering the poker by a fraction. "Jamie O'Connor. You were in the cathedral that night. With the Messina Don."
"Guilty as charged," I say, stepping past the groaning guards on the floor, stopping four feet in front of her.
Close up, the woman is breathtaking. She has dirt smudged across her jaw, blood on her knuckles, and a fierce, unbroken pride in her spine that reminds me entirely too much of my sister Iris. The scent of her cuts through the smoke: rain water, lavender soap, and the sharp, metallic tang of pure adrenaline.
"I was wondering what happened to the little nun who ran out the side door," I murmur, my gaze roaming over the curves her habit had hidden so well.
"I was never a nun," she snaps, her chin tilting up in defiance. "My name is Elizabeth Byrne. The bishop framed my father for warehouse embezzlement five years ago and forced me into the diocese to pay his debt. They told me if I stepped out of line, they'd murder my younger brother."
She glances down at Alistair with cold disgust. "They murdered him anyway."
My blood turns to liquid fire.
My father was a coward who traded his daughter away, but these church bastards made an art form out of preying on families and breaking women under their holy boots.
I step past Elizabeth, grab Alistair by the front of his clerical collar, and haul the priest off the floor with one arm.
"You authorized the bounty on my sister, Iris," I state, my voice dropping into that chilling, flat register that makes men pray for quick deaths. "And you used this girl as your slave."
Alistair gasps, his spit flying onto my cheek. "The church... the church will endure, O'Connor! You cannot slaughter the flock!"
"I'm not here to slaughter the flock, Father," I whisper, drawing the eight-inch pig sticker from my boot. "I'm here to slaughter the butcher."
I don't look back at Elizabeth as I drive the blade deep into Alistair's throat.
The priest gurgles, his body convulsing as his hot blood coats my forearm and splashes across the stone flagstones. I let his dead weight drop to the floor in a heap.
