Chapter Forty-Three

Adele

I stumble back to the bedroom, every step a reminder of the fight for my life. Collapsing at the foot of the bed, I find myself unable to tear my eyes from Sean's motionless body. What if he's just stunned? My breath catches with each imagined twitch.

Cradling my throbbing shoulder, I shift into a position that dulls the pain from excruciating to merely agonizing. But it's not just my shoulder—every inch of my body screams in protest.

My training never covered killing a perp only to end up trapped in a basement with his corpse. So I wait. And pray. For death. For a miracle. For an oblivion that never comes because suddenly, there is a soft knock on the door.

"My King, are you okay?" A woman's voice floats through the other side. "I heard . . . something."

Mezhen.

Had she been standing right outside the door all this time?

The knock continues for a full five minutes, by which time I can hear her heart-wrenching sobs. It's as if she knows he's dead. "Please . . . Sean," she whimpers. "Please be okay."

Fucking hell. Shouldn't she be jumping for joy? Stockholm much?

I'm dimly aware that might not be the most relevant thought considering I'm about to be found out, but I can't exactly focus on anything else.

With my good arm, I reach for the scrap of lace caught under Sean's massive body and pull it free. I'm not about to make my execution more exciting by having my tits out. I slip on the blood-soaked bra, pulling it over my injured arm first, then the other. After managing only one clasp, I give up.

And Mezhen is still sobbing like her heart is breaking.

Shit. I may have just killed the man she loves. But I have no other choice. I can sit here and get killed. Or do something and get killed.

I move to the door. "Mezhen?" I call out tentatively.

"Is . . . Is h–he . . .?" She trails off.

"He's sleeping," I say quickly. "But I'm . . . hurt. He hurt me. I'm ah, bleeding. Can you help me?"

"Liar," she spits.

Yep, she was pressed to the door the whole time.

"I swear. I just need . . . like a tampon, please." I have no idea what I'll do once I open the door and let her in, but both of us in here has to be better than her out there bawling her eyes out and alerting the guards.

After about a minute she finally says, "I go get one for you."

"Thank you," I sigh, then slide down the wall in relief.

Not even five minutes later, the banging starts. Shit. I guess Mezhen didn't buy the tampon story. I close my eyes, resigned to my fate. A few more seconds of banging, followed by loud pops and splintering wood, and then half a dozen pale-faced men pour into the room, including Benjamin.

There are shouts, groans, and colorful swearing before rough, cruel hands haul me up by my hair, jostling my injured arm. This time, I retreat into myself, letting the heightened emotions of the moment roll off my back without hitting home.

I vaguely register Benjamin and me being dragged down the hallway Sean and I came through what feels like a lifetime ago. Then we're forced up two flights of stairs.

"Do you realize what the hell you've done, Adele?" Benjamin screams at me in Gaelic. The abject horror on his face is unlike anything I've seen before. He's pale, sweating bullets, and his entire body trembles. He looks like a man facing death, and I realize this is likely the end for him.

For both of us, actually.

I shrug with my good arm, my teeth chattering against the sudden chill that envelops me. "Stopped the war?"

His shoulders sag as if resigned to his fate. "You fucking Italians are traitors. All of you," he mutters, profound regret in his tone.

A stupid, pointless pride wells up in me at his final acknowledgment of who I am.

Then we're shoved into a large lounge filled with more men. The first thing I notice is the wall of windows. The second is the man in the middle of the room. He looks exactly like Sean, except that he's bald. He's got the black eye thing going too.

And there's a gun in his hand and a bottle of vodka in the other,

A couple of beefy men lay Sean's naked body at his feet. I hadn't even realized they'd carried him up from the basement. Suddenly, I'm glad I made the effort to put on a bra. Lopsided as it is, it's better than nothing. If these savages couldn't be bothered to cover up their gang leader, I doubt they'd offer any courtesy to the traitor who mutilated him.

The Sean look-alike spits a glob of phlegm onto the floor. "Killed by a weak-ass and fucking lame woman," he sneers, his eyes roving over me with so much animosity that I take an involuntary step back, only to be roughly shoved forward by the goon behind me, my hair yanked tight enough to twist my neck.

"I warned my brother not to trust these Irishmen." He gestures with his gun toward Benjamin.

And right in front of me, Benjamin is forced to his knees.

Immediately, he starts to babble. "I swear I had no idea. The Italians got to her. She just told me now she's working with them—"

"Is she not your daughter?" He takes several gulps of his vodka right out of the bottle.

"She is. But you must understand that she has been brainwashed to side with the Italians. She betrayed me."

"So, you brought us a traitor."

"I can fix this. Give me a chance to. I could—"

Benjamin doesn't finish.

He doesn't finish because a single shot rings out from Sean's brother's gun.

A warm mist of blood splatters on my hair, the side of my face, and my neck.

And then the man who had been my father for eighteen years crumples to the floor.

I look down, my jaw slack with horror to see the clean shot to his temple. The sight yanks me out of my numb trance, and I start to scream.

"Oh, you'll scream alright, bitch." He snarls. "You will scream, broken and begging to die. And I will not let you."

For the first time since waking up in that sterile room, it becomes crystal clear to me that I'm truly in way over my head.

There is a fate much worse than death.

It's hell.