30. Declan

DECLAN

I wakeup hungover and more pissed off than ever, and I head out of the house immediately, not waiting for Gray. He catches up to me in the driveway, though, looking exasperated.

"You can't just go off by yourself," he says. "Not after what happened."

"Doesn't matter," I mutter.

I don't much care if I live or die at this point. Maybe that's dramatic, but Cillian was right—I have big feelings.

It's annoying, especially for a guy who tries to fight those feelings. I've been fighting my feelings for Bree for weeks now, and I'm tired. Tired of being angry at her. Tired of feeling hurt. And all the whiskey I poured down my throat last night didn't help matters.

I grunt to Gray, and he rolls his eyes and gets into the passenger side of my car. We take off, and I can't even appreciate opening the car up on the highway, driving it as James Dean must have.

I used to love this car, used to love the adrenaline of going a hundred miles an hour, but now, I can't muster up any feeling but irritation and, deep down, hurt.

It's not so much that Bree sent her father a message. It's that she did so without me knowing. Sneaky, behind my back.

"Are you going to talk or just grunt at me this whole time?"

I grunt at him.

Gray raises an eyebrow. "What was that?"

"I said I don't want to talk."

"That much is clear."

"Well, then shut up."

We have a full day today, including visiting Paige at her new home to see how she is adjusting after moving out a couple of days ago. Dad gave both me and Gray keys to her place. It was either that and a man stationed outside her house twenty-four-seven or she would not be allowed to move out.

She was not happy.

I'm glad we are keeping busy today. I need to have my mind away from Bree and all this fucking hurt I can't seem to shake off. This need to still be with her all the time, even after she confessed she betrayed me.

I hate being this weak.

We arrive at the first warehouse to drop off money and grab our guns.

Gray huffs out a breath and gets out of the car, taking a crowbar to the first of the crates while I back the car up to put the guns in the trunk. It's not many this time, just some handguns and a few kilos of dust. Usually, we bring a truck to big shipments, but right now, we're running small.

Mostly because of Murphy.

She'd told him what day we'd be out of the house, and though she had no idea where we would be, that nugget of information had still nearly gotten me killed. It pisses me off all over again just to think about it.

Gray and I hit up the second warehouse, this time just picking up money from the Bratva. It's about two hundred thousand dollars short, and Gray curses.

"Fucking Russians."

"Da isn't going to care about a couple hundred thousand. A couple million, maybe."

There's a rustle in the back of the warehouse, and I freeze as Gray draws his gun. I draw mine from the small of my back, walking toward the back, and as I do, something darts out over my feet.

"Fuck!" I yell, but I don't pull the trigger. "It's a fucking cat."

"Kittens, too," Gray points out, gesturing toward the litter.

I curse in Gaelic and jerk my head toward the door. "Let's go. We'll call animal control on the way out."

Once the cats are handled, we head to the next warehouse, where we meet with Jimmy.

"Anything else stolen?" I bark, and Jimmy shakes his head.

"No sign of Murphy. I think it was a fluke."

I scoff but don't explain that it was my wife who ratted us out. I don't want to say anything like that in front of Jimmy. It's embarrassing to have your wife betray you, after all.

The worst part of all of this is that I'm not just mad. If I was just mad, if I just hated her, this would be so much easier. But I'm hurt, and I feel betrayed, and I don't know if I can forgive her.

Even though in her situation, I might have done worse.

Can I really blame her for sending a simple message to her father? Wouldn't I have done the same? I probably would have already tried to escape, would have fought tooth and nail for my family. Can I blame her for doing the same?

We're about to leave the third warehouse when I catch sight of a familiar car—Paige"s little red Corvette, parked down the street. I can tell it is hers because of her license plate—PBURKE.

We are meeting her later at her place, so I ignore it, but Gray has other ideas.

"There's Paige," Gray points out. "Should we call her? Go to lunch together? Maybe we can head to her place after that?"

I'm not really in the mood to go to lunch, not feeling like this, and I open my mouth to tell him so but then Jimmy stiffens.

"Who's that?"

I look toward where his gaze is and three big men are walking toward Paige.

One of them has a red beard, and I recognize him as one of Murphy's men—Conan O'Leary. He's called Redbeard because of not only his beard, but because he only has one eye. He's pretty hard to miss with an eyepatch like a pirate.

I curse, taking off running toward her on the street. It seems to take me an hour to get there, and I draw my gun, right there in the street.

Jimmy and Gray flank me, and Paige turns around when I shout her name, looking at me with wide eyes.

"Get down! Get the fuck out of the way!" I yell at her, and it takes her a moment to process but she hits the deck, covering her face with her hands.

Gunshots ring out, one, two, three.

Paige tries crawling toward me, but Conan grabs her around the ankles, dragging her to him before grabbing her by the hair.

Fuck, no!

She screams, and I know her knees must be bloody because she is being dragged instead of walking toward a van.

She thrashes and fights, and the sonofabitch punches her on the face.

I grit my teeth, advancing toward Conan, but he's fast as well as big, dragging her to the door of the van before I reach them.

Three gunshots ring out, and Jimmy cries out. I turn to him, and he's been hit high up in the upper thigh and blood is flowing down his pants.

"Fuck!" If we don't do something fast, Paige will be taken, and Jimmy will die of blood loss. "Are you good, Gray? Are you hit?"

"Good." He advances toward the men, shooting one in the throat and the other in the kneecap. The third man gets away, sprinting toward the van where Paige is still fighting hard not to be hauled into.

I chase him down, tackling him around the waist and his chin hits the ground, making him spit blood.

I kick him in the ribs before shooting him in the upper thigh.

He screams, and I contemplate shooting him again. "That's where you got my friend, you sonofabitch." I kick him in the ribs. "If you survive, tell Niall Murphy he just signed his death warrant."

I run toward Paige. I need to save her. Now. She is already half inside the van.

Gray shoots Conan in the head.

I get to my sister and haul her up.

She wilts against me. "Is it safe?"

I look around. Gray is already getting Jimmy back to the car, trusting me to take care of Paige.

"Let's not wait to find out."

We jog to where Gray and Jimmy are and get inside the car, Paige in the back with Jimmy before we rush him to Doc.

Doc lives downtown, and it"ll be quicker to get Jimmy there instead of waiting for Doc to show up at home. Jimmy's hit close to his femoral artery, and I'm terrified that he's going to bleed out before we get there.

Paige has her small hand clamped around Jimmy's thigh, and he seems in and out of consciousness.

I double park on the street, and we file out of the car, with me and Gray carrying Jimmy inside and Paige trembling, still holding his thigh to try and slow down his bleeding.

I bang on Doc's door, and he opens it with his dark, curly hair all mussed, his brown eyes wide.

"Oh, fuck me sideways," he mutters and helps us get Jimmy to the couch. He cuts off Jimmy's jeans leg with a pocketknife, cursing under his breath.

"How bad is it, Doc?" Gray asks.

"Shut up and let me work. Hand me my bag," Doc barks to Paige, and she picks it up, but it falls to the floor because she's trembling so much.

I pick it up, handing it to Doc, and turn to comfort Paige, pulling her into my arms. She sobs against my chest, and I stroke her hair.

"Come on, let's sit down for a second, okay?"

I lead her to the couch and sit beside her before releasing her and taking a couple of alcohol swabs from Liam's bag to start cleaning up her bloody knees. She winces, still crying.

Her eye is turning purple, so I stop for a second, get her some ice for it before I continue taking care of her knees.

Doc is still working on Jimmy, and I watch with a grimace as he dives a pair of small tweezers into Jimmy's flesh.

"The bullet's still in there," Doc mutters. "Hold him down, Gray."

"Sorry about this, Jim." Gray's face almost a testament to his name as he holds Jimmy down.

Jimmy starts jerking around and I reach out to do my part to help hold Jimmy's leg as still as I can as Doc does his thing.

"Got it."

The bullet clinks on the glass coffee table as Doc discards it, and then he starts to stitch Jimmy up.

Jimmy's sobbing at this point, no longer screaming, and I'm proud of Paige when she crouches next to him and takes his hand.

"You're okay," she croaks. "We're both okay."

Doc wipes his brow when he's finished, leaving a trail of blood across his forehead.

"He should be all right, but he's lost a lot of blood. Might be touch-and-go for a bit. I'm going to give him some saline, but I don't have any O neg blood lying around."

Gray sets his jaw. "I'm O negative. Can I help?"

Soon enough, Doc sets Gray up in some kind of ex-army medic contraption with a needle in his vein and his blood going into a bag.

When the bag is over half full, Doc disconnects Gray, shakes the bag a couple of times before hooking it to Jimmy, and brings Gray a cookie afterward, like it's a real blood donation.

Gray still looks pale, but otherwise none the worse for wear.

"Leave him here for tonight. Call his family," Doc says. "Just in case."

Fuck.

It must be worse than he let on.

I nod. "I'll call his sister."

She answers on the first ring because I call from my personal phone.

"Jesus, what happened?"

I close my eyes, hating this part of the job.

"Jimmy's been shot. Upper thigh. He's lost a lot of blood."

She's quiet for a moment before she sobs. "Where is he?"

"Doc's. He says he'll probably pull through but... just in case."

Doc takes the phone from me. "I'm giving him a transfusion now, but he's out. He'll want a familiar face when he wakes up, yeah?"

Elena responds, her voice sounding tinny to me, and Doc hangs up, handing me the phone back.

Gray looks at me and then at Paige, and then back at me. "We should go home."

I hate leaving Jimmy like this. He's been a loyal member of the Burke clan for all his life, but Paige needs to come home with us tonight and be surrounded by the whole family.

I take Paige's arm and look at Doc. "Call me if anything changes. Anything."

He nods solemnly, and I lead Paige back out to the car.

She climbs in the backseat while Gray gets in the passenger seat and the ride home is silent and uncomfortable.

When we arrive back at the mansion, I help Paige out of the car, and she's still trembling.

"I'm okay," she mumbles. "I'm okay."

"You're okay, a'stor," I promise her. "And I'll make sure you stay that way."

Lara meets us at the door, her brow furrowed, and I know the second she notices Paige's black eye.

"What the hell happened?"

Paige throws herself into our older sister's arms, sobbing.

I sigh. "Fucking Murphy happened."

Bree comes down the stairs, her hazel eyes wide and worried.

"Paige? Are you okay?"

I grit my teeth, wanting to say something, wanting to be angry, but all I can feel is this stupid ache in my heart.

Paige moves from Lara's arms to Bree's, hugging her tightly.

"There was so much shooting, and Jimmy... Jimmy got hurt."

Lara takes my arm. "Is he going to be okay?"

I pull away gently. "Doc says probably. Gray gave some blood."

Lara hugs Gray quickly. "I'm sure he'll appreciate it."

Gray just nods, and my father comes down from his office, thunderous rage on his face.

"Niall Murphy better count his days."

Bree looks up at him when he says it, and I think that she might protest, but her face is blank and serious.

"Anyone have a problem with that?"

I am looking right at her, challenging her to say something, but she just looks right at me, her face expressionless.

She doesn't say a word.

Paige is safe, but Jimmy is touch and go.

And Niall Murphy's days are numbered. The only question now is on whose side his daughter will stand. Ours or his.