I ignore him, going around for a look inside, half tempted to slash the tape.
But even from the doorway, it’s obvious what’s gone down. The state of the room speaks for itself. Two bodies lay rigid on the floor, sheets strewn over them.
Then there’s Seamus, who’s still in his hospital bed… with a pillow covering his face. Suffocated and probably far too weak to even fight back.
More disturbing is the message scribbled in blood on the pillowcase.
til you give her back
we take whats yours
I turn away from the hospital room doorway and toward Ronan and Cian.
“Who the fuck did this? In a hospital of all places?”
“You think if we had a name we’d be standing here?” Ronan asks irritably. “The staff’s refusing to answer our questions. The police are claiming no info’s allowed to be given now that it’s an investigation. Real convenient, right?”
“There’s got to be cameras,” I say. My eyes sweep up toward the ceiling. “They expect us to believe somebody managed to sneak up to the ICU and inside a roomthat was guarded by private security—killed all three fucking men no less—and got out with nobody seeing or hearing a thing?”
“You need to move,” says the same uniformed asshole. He’s stepped toward us, cutting into the conversation as if somebody important. “This is the scene of an official police investigation.”
I round on him, teeth gritted and fists curled. “So I’ve heard. Do I look like I give a fuck?”
His chest puffs up. “Look, pal. I don’t care who you people are or what kind of pull you think you have. There are rules, and I’m not about to let a bunch of mobsters contaminate my scene.”
“How about I smash your face in and contaminate your fucking crime scene that way? You want to end up in a room on this floor? I can make it happen?—”
“Kill,” Ronan grits out. “Not here.”
I hold the cop’s gaze for another few seconds before I back off, shoulder-checking him as I do. I follow Ronan and Cian further down the corridor, safely out of earshot from any of the boys in blue on the scene.
“We’ve got bigger problem than some beat cop with a chip on his shoulder,” Ronan says once we’re alone. “The Bratva played us for fools last night. They knew we’d go for the girl. I called in all the buttonmen. Everybody except a handful I left for security, like here.”
“They guessed right,” Cian sighs, shaking his head.
“I asked you to do that,” I say. “I thought Jhene?—”
“I know what you were thinking. Obviously so did the Bratva. We’re gonna need to regain our foothold. Right now, they’re running circles around us,” Ronan says. “They’ve fucking killed my father. Not just my father—the patriarch of the family. Thefaceof our family.”
Tension beats through me as I dig my nails into the palmof my clenched-shut hands. It’s out of anger and frustration that everything Ronan’s said is right.
…and much of what’s gone on is my fault.
I’m the one who demanded he put the clan’s resources into finding Jhene last night. He pulled men away from various security points to make it happen, leaving only two men on Seamus.
Obviously, the Raguzins are aware of how much Jhene means to me…
The question still remains, why did they let her go? If they want her back so badly, why not take herandkill Seamus Callahan?
“This is war,” Ronan says after a beat of silence. “If it wasn’t before, it is now. No more rules. No more holding back. They took my father, which means I’m gonna take everything that’s theirs.”
The clan enters a new phase in the coming days.
This war with the Bratva’s officially escalated to new heights.
The last time things got this bad between our families, it was back in the early 2000s.
Seamus and Fedorov went head to head over some territory disputes in Brooklyn. The feud dragged on for years, with the Irish ultimately coming out on top, and an uneasy truce was brokered.
