Ciaran

It hurt like a son of a bitch. In fact, it was the pain that woke me up. It seared like fire across my shoulder as I felt metal tongs digging around in my flesh to find God knew what. My vision wavered between adrenaline fueled clarity and pain induced blackness. The clarity won out in the end, but only just barely.

I roared when the tongs moved around inside the hole in my shoulder and I finally jerked back unable to take it anymore. I moved just as someone said, “Got it. Damn, that was a bitch.”

I ended up rolling myself off the damn table and colliding with the floor, which I discovered was tiled. They’d moved me to the back room, which was set up kind of like a mixture between a bathroom and a mud room. There was a square walk-in shower with tiled flooring that drained at the middle.

I groaned, then tried pushing myself up off the floor. It took a minute, but I fought through the pain to clear my vision. Blood was slowly draining towards the center of the floor. My blood.

As I struggled to my feet, two strong hands offered their assistance. Mitch and Patrick. “Jesus, boss, trying to kill yourself today?” asked Patrick.

I shrugged off their hands. They hovered close anyway, trying to keep an eye on me, but I wasn’t interested in being overly cautious. My head was throbbing, my shoulder was burning, and I had the feeling that wasn’t the worst of it.

“What happened?” I demanded.

The last thing I’d seen was Elle being carried away by two of Shane’s goons. They’d raided the place. I didn’t know how in the hell they’d found it out, but I remembered Patrick had mentioned that some of our guys had jumped ship. I didn’t want to think any of them would have betrayed us like that, but they’d already left the Lucky Skulls, hadn’t they?

Not that any of that mattered now. All that mattered was Elle. And she wasn’t here. But she’s alive, I thought with fierce hope. If they’d wanted her dead, they would have just shot her, not carried her off like some princess being shoved in a tower. No, she was alive.

Probably because they wanted to get to me.

Not that they didn’t try their hand at killing me first. I moved my hand over my shoulder and fingered at the wound. It burned and pinched, ached like a son of a bitch, and when I pulled my hand back my finger was coated with blood.

But I was alive and I had dear old Doc to thank for that. I looked to him. He was washing the blood from his hands, but glanced back at me and gave me a nod.

It was Mitch who answered my question, though. “They fucking came out of nowhere, boss!” he exclaimed, fury burning in his eyes. “Like a fucking tornado! Guns blazing, people dying. Shit, lots of people dying.”

I frowned. “How many did we lose?”

Mitch ran a hand through his shaggy brown hair, then shook his head. “Did a quick count. We lost about half. The boys are moving the bodies now. We gotta get ’em out of the house in case, well, in case Shane tries sending his goons out way.”

Mitch was, of course, talking about the police. We wouldn’t call them since this was personal business, but there was a good chance Shane would. And with the murder of Ma already primed to be pinned on me, I could only guess how this massacre was going to go.

Half, I thought. I couldn’t believe it. And I definitely wasn’t looking forward to who had lived and who had died. That was going to be an experience I could already tell I’d rather spend my life without.

I could tell by Patrick’s silence that he didn’t like any of this. Not that I expected Mitch or Doc did either. I knew I sure as hell didn’t.

“What about Elle?” I demanded when Mitch made it clear that he was focusing on the men and not on the only woman I was interested in.

Mitch’s face went blank. He blinked at me and honestly looked damn confused. “Who?”

I made a frustrated noise, but before I snapped at him in a combination of worry, anger, fear, and pain, Patrick jumped in to answer both our questions. “Elle, the woman he brought with him?” Turning to me, he added, “I saw her at the stairs, but when you took one to the back, things went to shit. And if you recall, they hadn’t been that great before. By the time anyone got back to the second floor, they were gone. Out the window and probably drove away.”

“Probably?” I asked. Danger lurking in my tone.

Patrick swallowed, clearly uncomfortable, but held his ground. “We checked the area. We didn’t find any tracks, so we’re pretty sure they must have been farther out. We saw taillights in the distance.”

“And you didn’t go after them?” I roared in anger.

Patrick flinched, but to his credit he didn’t back down and he kept his cool through the whole thing. “With all due respect, boss, we’d just gotten our asses handed to us. We barely put a dent in their numbers and we lost almost half. When they pulled away, quite frankly, we were all fucking relieved. If they hadn’t, we’d probably all be dead. So, no, we didn’t go after them.”

I gritted my teeth. I wanted desperately to yell at him until I was hoarse and his eardrums felt crushed. But I held back because as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I knew he was right. We’d taken a serious hit and the only reason we hadn’t lost was because they pulled away. The question was why.

Frowning, I mulled it over in my head, then tried out the words. “They were here for Elle?”

Patrick shrugged. He was still tense, but doing well at hiding it. “Dunno. But if I had to wager, I’d say yeah. They left once they got her, even though they could have taken us. But why? What the hell do they want with her?”

I shook my head. I didn’t know. On the one hand, I was pretty sure they thought she was a direct line to me. And grudgingly, on the inside only, I admitted that was true. Sure, part of it was a responsibility. I had gotten her into this mess; that made it my responsibility to make sure she got out of it unscathed. I was having a pretty shit time of it, too. But the other part of it, that was more complicated.

I love you.

She’d told me that the last time we’d gotten lost in each other’s bodies. That physicality had been enough to make me lose myself for a minute, but the I love you...that pushed me over the edge. A girl like her had no business loving someone like me. She was an angel; I was a Skull.

An Lucky Skull.

No, I couldn’t ruin her life like that. She deserved to be happy and settle down with someone. And I wasn’t the settling type. Things change, a voice whispered in my head, but I ignored it. There were more pressing matters than trying to figure out what to do with this growing feeling inside my chest.

“Anyone see Shane?” I asked, adding another piece of the puzzle together.

All three of the men thought about it. Mitch shook his head. “I sure as hell didn’t. Might have missed him, but I doubt it. Bastards like that are hard to miss.”

I looked to Patrick, who shook his head. “No, boss. And I doubt anyone else did either or we’d have heard about it. We know how you feel about him.”

Fiery burning hatred, in other words..

There was a long pause as I thought about how things had shifted and changed so drastically between my brother and me. Or maybe not so drastically. He’d always been on the mean side, even cruel at times, but I’d hoped he’d grow out of it. I’d hoped it was only a reflex picked up from the hard days of our youth living on the streets. But that just wasn’t the case. In the end, this was about more than that. Something broken inside him that had been broken for a long time—and couldn’t be fixed.

I’d hoped once, but that was a long time ago it seemed like now. In fact, it seemed like plain old foolishness at this point.

I thought about it. If Shane hadn’t been there himself, which was how it seemed, then there was a good chance he hadn’t realized he could have taken the mill. He could have killed me. So he sent his goons to take Elle instead, knowing I would come running for her. It was clearly a trap. And yet I couldn’t deny that something didn’t quite track with that.

He had to know he had the numbers, right? He had to know I was in pretty rough shape after the other night where he’d left me for dead, right? So what the hell was his game?

I thought it over, mulling it around in my head until I came up with only two options. Either Shane was trying to torment me with Elle, which was right up that sick bastard’s alley, or he was hoping to gain something by capturing her in conjunction with the attack on the safe house. But what?

I knew it wasn’t simply that he wanted Elle. There was no connection to her other than me, and that meant that this didn’t have anything to do directly with her. But it had to do with something. I could see him using her to go after me, that was pretty damn easy, but how did he know I really felt anything for her? I’d barely admitted it to myself. Unless he merely assumed I’d want to do the right thing by her.

The thought was almost laughable, yet as I thought it over, I realized it wasn’t that far from the truth. Even if my emotions for her weren’t warring with themselves towards something both volatile and beautiful, I’d still feel responsible for what happened to her.

Still, my gut sensed more.

“You said we lost half?” I questioned Patrick.

He nodded. “Just about. I mean, I don’t think it’s exact, but we haven’t gotten a complete head count yet. Plus, you know we lost some to Shane’s crew.”

And that was it. His words triggered the answer to my questions. This was about not just getting to me through Elle, but about getting my men, too. He’d offered them a chance to switch sides before he annihilated the Lucky Skulls, but most had declined. This was his second offer. It didn’t seem like that on the surface, but I realized this was all a tactic for persuasion.

If he showed them how much power he had, they would come around. If he showed them how many he could so easily kill, they would fear him and then they would come to him. Because better to be a friend than a foe.

“Boss,” Patrick interrupted my thoughts. I jerked my gaze up to him. He looked nervous about something. He hesitated, clearly not thrilled with whatever he was thinking, but he must have sensed that he needed to tell me about whatever it was, because he let out an aggravated sigh and said, “Boss I think it’s time we start considering other options.”

I raised my eyebrows in question. “Other options? For what?” I honestly didn’t know what he was talking about.

Patrick swallowed thickly, making me think I wasn’t going to like this. When he finally managed to bite the words out, I found I most definitely did not like them. “For how to handle the Irish Hounds. I think it’s pretty clear we can’t handle them with force. We don’t have the men, the firepower. Hell, that bastard even has the cops on his side!”

“What’s your point, Patrick?” I demanded, feeling angry and short tempered. Not a good thing.

He shook his head. “My point is that I think we’ve lost Merrill, boss.”

I froze. Part of me couldn’t even believe that he’d uttered the words. How could he think we’d lost Merrill? More importantly, how the hell could he think for even a second that was fucking acceptable?

Before I could tear into him with the anger I felt surging through me, he uttered the last few words that made me want to punch him. “I think it’s time to leave for greener pastures, as they say. There’s nothing left for us here, boss.”

I cocked my arm back, fist clenched tightly, and was about to swing at him. He must have seen it coming, probably had the moment he started talking about Merrill, the only place I’d ever considered home. But he didn’t move. He just stood there and took it. No questions asked. No complaints. He just waited for it.

But before I could be a complete dick and hit my own friend, Doc caught my arm and jerked back on it. I uttered a frustrated, pained sound when I realized he’d jerked on the shoulder that was injured. The result was a feeling sort of like fire trying to swallow me up from the inside out.

“Sorry, sir, does that still hurt?” he asked mildly. “I needed to check how extensive the wounds were.”

He was full of shit. But he’d also done the right thing. That moment he gave me to consider things was just enough for me to realize that punching out my own man wasn’t the best way to go about this. It did only a very little to help cool my anger, but it was enough to keep from bludgeoning my friend and comrade to death, so that was something.

Jerking out of Doc’s grip, I sent him a glare, rotating my shoulder slightly in an effort to ease away some of the sharp and sudden pain. Not that it did much for me, but it was a nice thought.

Patrick remained calm and stoic, but I could see in his eyes that he was still waiting for me to take a swipe at him. But I decided there was no point. If these assholes wanted to leave, that was their own business. I wasn’t leaving. Not my home, and more importantly, not without Elle.

“I won’t stop you, Patrick,” I finally got out, and was amazed by the calm that radiated from my own voice. Certainly not something I had expected, and clearly no one else had either. The others eyed me suspiciously, but the calm remained, stemming from a place of focus. I needed to get to Elle. The rest be damned. “If you and the boys want to run, run. But I’m staying.”

Patrick and Doc shared a look while Mitch cursed under his breath, looking nervous. He ran his hands through his hair and muttered to himself. I mostly ignored him.

After a long pause, Doc cleared his throat and walked around so I could see both him and Patrick. “If this is about territory, there are other places we can set up,” he began in his most reasonable tone. “Towns that would welcome us. Or at least not run us out.” He tried to smile to soften the blow that was knowing he was probably right, but it didn’t matter.

“That’s not why I’m staying,” I said evenly.

Again, Doc and Patrick shared a glance between them. It spoke of uneasiness and worry. “Then why?” asked Patrick.

“Elle,” I said simply and honestly.

“The fucking girl?” Mitch demanded, then shook his head and started pacing. He muttered to himself again. I thought I heard “fucking crazy” in there somewhere, but couldn’t swear by it.

Patrick ignored him and said, “Boss, I think we need to consider maybe that’s not a very good idea.”

“I’m going after her,” I told them, not even acknowledging what Patrick had just said. I wouldn’t let him or anyone else talk me out of this. I was going. I would save her. Or I’d die trying.

Making a frustrated sound, Patrick tried again. “It’s probably a trap, Ciaran!” It said something that Patrick was using my first name instead of boss. We’d spent some of our youth together and he was a loyal man, but he, like Doc, was practical. He saw the value in running away to fight another day. I didn’t. Not this time.

I shook my head. “No one else has to go.”

“Jesus,” Patrick said, shaking his head. He took a step towards me. “It’s either a trap, or she’s already dead.”

My gaze shot to him in an instant and I knew my eyes flashed with anger. I was furious with him for even suggesting it, though somewhere tucked away inside I acknowledged that it was a possibility. No. If he wanted her dead, he’d have killed her in the raid. She’s still alive. He’s using her to get to me. I wasn’t sure if I was just doing my damnedest to use logic to reassure myself or if I was actually convinced she was okay, but I didn’t care. I’d take either at this point. “She’s not dead,” I told Patrick. “And I didn’t ask any of you fuckers to go. I’m going. The rest of you should listen to Patrick and bail.” I said this to Doc and Mitch, but the words were meant for any and all of my guys. It was as good as naming Patrick as new leader of the Lucky Skulls, and it was for the best. Because if this were a trap, I probably wasn’t getting out of it alive.

I didn’t wait for them to decide one way or the other. I headed towards the door, even as Doc yelled after me that I really needed a bandage over the wound. I didn’t listen. All I cared about was getting to Elle. She was the only thing on my mind right now, and damn it all if I wouldn’t save her one way or another.