Twenty

Flynn

“I fold,” Emmett called, tossin’ the cards on the table. With all the shite stirrin’ with the Russians and Sean’s death, we decided to lay low a few nights. We were at the Golden Shamrock at our usual corner booth, tossin’ back Guinness and good Irish Whiskey while playin’ a few hands of poker.

Lax moments such as these were few and far between these days, and when I thought about all the shite we’d dealt with lately, I wondered if it was all worth it. To carry out my father’s namesake and uphold the syndicate he’d built from the ground up with his own blood, sweat, and tears. There was no room for mistakes in this business, but it seemed that’s all we’d been faced with lately was one monumental fuck up after the other.

But I knew, moments like this would pass. The more I lingered on the thought, I was sure there was a rat bastard among my crew, but fuckin’ who? Who would be so ruefully intent on bringing us down that they’d work against us? And better yet, why?

Colin shuffled the cards and began dealing out another hand. My phone buzzed against the table, and I considered ignoring it, but ya never know when business calls.

We have something of yours.

The text message came in from an unknown number. I looked at it, confused at first. And when I tried to reply, the phone was already out of service. Obviously, a burner. Which meant that I was dealing with somebody who wanted to stay off the radar. Something I could relate to. I stared at the message, trying to figure out who’d sent it to me and what they had that was mine. I was confused and had no answers to the million questions swirling about in my head. I looked around the table at the men surrounding me: Colin, Red, Emmett, and four other soldiers.

“Colin, have you talked to Aidan?”

“Aye, boss. He was busy workin’ on a case, so he didn’t have anythin’ to say,” he grunted out.

What the fuck did they have—and better yet—who the hell was I dealin’ with?

My phone rang a few minutes later. Another unknown number. Another burner phone. Obviously, the same person who’d sent me the text. I was curious and had a growing sense of unease settling down around me. There was something ominous about those words, and I had a strong feeling I wasn’t going to like what they had to say.

“Talk,” I answered.

“We don’t have much time.” The accent was Russian. Mother fucker. “We have your girlfriend.”

My heart raced. “Ava? You have Ava? Why? What the fuck are you doing?” I darted up from the table, knocking glasses over, spilling whiskey over the cards and cash that was on top of the table.

“Fuckin’ hell, Flynn, what’s bloody got into ya?” Red barked, but I didn’t have time for his fuckin’ nonsense. The Russians had Ava.

“Yes, the redhead at the pier,” the voice sounded with a sneer. “Very pretty, that one. I have to say, you’re an asshole, but you have good taste.”

“I’ll fuckin’ kill ya!” I shouted without considering my audience. Red and Colin’s ears immediately perked up as their bodies tensed, watching my demeanor go from calm to nuclear within seconds.

“Temper, Mr. O’Brien. I’d tread cautiously, we do have someone very precious to you, after all.”

“What the fuck do you want?”

“We want you, Flynn,” he said. “You’ll get a message with an address on it in two minutes. If you’re not there in fifteen minutes, the pretty little redhead will die. So, don’t be late. She’s depending on you.”

The line went dead.

I held the phone in my hand, looking at it and shaking as I waited. My gut was twisting into knots that were constricting painfully. They had Ava. Or so they said. What if they didn’t? What if this was some elaborate ruse? Maybe they were lying. But to what end? What was the goal here? Why would they be lying and why would they claim to have Ava?

All they knew was…she was a redhead and she was at the pier–had they been watching us? As I waited for the text, I used my personal phone to call Ava.

Straight to voicemail.

Shit.

“Boss, what’s bloody gotten into ya? Is it the Russians?” Emmett asked, but I ignored his inquisition, dialing Ava’s number again.

Voicemail. Motherfucker.

I raked my hands through my hair, considering the severity of the situation with an unlevel head. My brothers could sense my agitation, and my silence only strengthened the urgency that whatever the fuck I was dealing with was huge.

“Flynn, the hell is goin’ on?”

“The fuckin’ Russians have Ava!” I seethed, trying to keep my voice calm and steady, but my blood was boiling.

Suddenly, the burner phone buzzed. I opened the text message screen and found that there was indeed an address.

It buzzed again.

In case you didn’t believe us.

And there was Ava. Tied up and gagged, blood seeping from her nose. Her eyes were closed as if she was asleep or unconscious. Hell, or even dead. I squeezed the phone tightly, clenching it in my fist to the point something cracked.

I tried to calm myself. To keep my head straight.

“Calm down, Flynn. We’ll get her back,” Red declared.

No matter what, I had to save her. It was my duty to protect her, and I swore to myself that I would.

***

When I pulled up outside the warehouse that matched the address I’d been given, I checked to make sure my guns were ready to go. I had a knife strapped to each of my ankles as well. There was no way I was going in there to face God knew what without being heavily armed. And there was most certainly no way in hell I was going down without a fight.

Taking a deep breath, I walked toward the warehouse with four minutes to spare. As soon as I stepped up to the doorway, Alexei opened it up. I looked at him in shock and fought down the urge to take one of my knives and stab him in the forehead.

“Weapons,” he demanded, his hand outstretched.

I handed him the most obvious gun.

“The others, too,” he said, almost sounding bored when he spoke. “Must we really play this game? I know you have more weapons. You know you have more weapons. Let’s cut the bullshit, Ian.”

“That’s it–”

“Bullshit,” he said, turning me around and patting me down. He found my other gun and both knives, dropping them on the floor inside the warehouse before giving me a look of strained patience and irritation for me having lied to him.

Perhaps just to be a dick, he made sure to check me over a second time very thoroughly.

“Aren’t you going to check my asshole, too. Just in case?” I asked, the sarcasm dripping off my tongue like honey. “Because I could be hiding a machine gun somewhere on my body, it’s just concealed really well.”

“Do I need to check you again?” Alexei asked, sounding a little less bored and more irritated than anything. “Because I think we can arrange that.”

“Smartass,” I muttered to myself.

After Alexei was sure I was clear of any weapons, he bound my hands behind my back.

“Really? You have all the fucking guns and you’re binding my hands? Am I that big of a threat?” I asked. “What am I, a ninja or something?”

He didn’t respond to my insults. Instead, he just pushed me through the doorway and into a dark corridor where armed men stood guard. I couldn’t see much, but I could tell we were headed toward the back of the warehouse, to an office I assumed.

Isaak opened the door to the office as we arrived, revealing Ava sitting in the chair she’d been photographed in. Her eyes were wide and afraid, but she was alive. Thank God, she was alive.

“I don’t know what the fuck is going on here,” I started, “but whatever it is, she had nothing to do with any of this. What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Isaak?”

He backhanded me across the face, snapping my head backward with enough force that I heard my neck crack. But I’d been through worse. I didn’t even cry out when the big Russian had landed the blow, even though my face burned and I felt the swelling in my cheek and jaw begin immediately.

“You think you’re so fucking smart, Irishman,” Isaak said. “Thought we wouldn’t find out who the snitch was?”

“If you know, I’d really like to know, too–”

He smacked me again. This time, something cracked in my face and blood flowed from my nose.

“She wouldn’t tell us anything, but if you think we’re going to buy your little story–that you didn’t know–when someone has been working for the cops, you’re in for a big fucking surprise.”

“I don’t really like surprises,” I stammered.

Suddenly, all fuckin’ hell broke loose. Footsteps trudged heavily through the warehouse, which surprised Isaak and Alexei. Alexei grasped the base of my head in his hand and smashed me to the floor. Thankfully, I somehow managed to avoid breaking out all of my teeth, but my nose cracked, breaking my fall, and I felt the blood flowing. His boot-clad foot slammed into my ribs, and I rolled to my side, sucking in a heaving breath. He tore the office door open and rushed through the warehouse where all-out war seemed to be taking place. Gunshots resonated through the space, and the harrowing sound of death fell all around us.

I managed to lift my head to look at Ava and whisper, “Don’t be afraid,” I said. “It’s all going to be okay.” Isaak began to pace the floor, listening to the mayhem erupting beyond the office walls. I could sense he was weighing the decision to go fight beside his men or stay in the safety of his office until the violence ceased. But in this life, violence, hatred and death were all around us.

As the sound of mass destruction drew closer, Isaak cocked his gun and escaped out the door, giving me the opportunity to make it over to Ava. If the war came to us, I could at least shield her with my body. There was no way in hell I was going to let her take a bullet—especially not for me.

“Are you okay?” I asked, my heart breaking as I saw bruises and dried blood on her face and neck.

I worried that whatever they had done to her had damaged her, broken her, and left her sitting there in tears. But when she looked up at me, there was a light in her eyes. Some small shred of hope.

She nodded, unable to speak with the gag in place.

“You’re going to be okay, I promise,” I said softly. “My guys are here, they’re going to save us. Just sit tight and do your best to keep your head down, sweetheart.”

As the firing ceased, I could hear the heavy thudding of boots clapping against the floor, doors smacking against walls then finally, Red and Emmett burst into the room.

“Feckin’ hell, what a bloody mess we’re in,” he snorted as he holstered his gun and set to work on the bindings on my hands. As soon as I was free, I released the gag tied around Ava’s face, all the while preparing for the onslaught of questions.

They didn’t come. I looked at her for a long moment before I started working on the knots in the rope on her wrists and ankles. “Say something, sweetheart, anythin’,” I pleaded.

Finally free from the bindings, she slowly tried to stand up from the chair, but she fell into me. I caught her, holding her head close to my chest.

“We got em,” Red said. “All of them.”

“Even Isaak?” I asked.

“Yes, that rat bastard is dead,” Emmett said, though he didn’t sound pleased. “You know, this is going to come back to bite us, don’t you? You don’t just feckin’ off a bunch of Russians without some serious blowback.”

“I know,” I said. “But it’s not like I asked for any of this. I have no idea what the fuck he was thinking. Or why he did what he did.”

“I know, Flynn,” Red said.

As soon as he said my name, I tensed. I looked down at Ava, but her eyes were expressionless. I hoped that she was in too much shock to comprehend what we were talking about, and I sure as hell hoped she didn’t hear Red using my name. I didn’t want to have to explain everything right then and there. Hell, I didn’t want to have to explain anything at all. But given the events of the day, I knew there would be a shitload of questions and eventually, I was going to have to face the music and cop to everything with her.

But not now. At the moment, we needed to focus on surviving.

“We need to get out of here,” I said.

She nodded, finally speaking, “Yes, we do.”

I took her hand in mine, and with my men, we left the warehouse behind. We passed Isaak’s body, a gunshot wound to the chest and the head. Damn, he deserved a more drawn out suffering than a quick end.

The deaths of these Russians were going to come back on us, and things around town were going to get super-heated and super ugly, real fast.

Like it or not, it looked like our deal with the Russians was off. And worst yet, they’d launched an all-out war. We were going to have no choice but to respond in kind.

But Ava was safe, and in that moment, that’s all I could think about. That was all I cared about. That’s all that mattered to me. After I’d loaded her into my car, we took off. But not before Red had pulled me off to the side.

“They’re after you, man,” he’d told me. “I don’t know why, but they think you’re the snitch. Hang low, get out of town. You and your woman get out of here for a while. Just until the dust settles.”

“Sounds like a plan, brother,” I said.