Page 126 of The Endless Want

The words feel like a blade sliding beneath my ribs and twisting. The thought of them relocating her—drugging her, moving her, selling her as leverage—makes the room tilt. I steady myself on the wall.

Liam takes a slow breath. “Then we plan fast.”

The metal door opens behind him, and cold night air spills in. I step out into the darkness. Men stand ready, tense, watching us with the quiet dread reserved for wars you know you might not return from.

Liam joins my side, his tone all leadership again. “I want a map of the property on the screens. Every civilian house within three miles flagged. I want the Italians looped in but not leading. This is our hit.”

Men scatter to complete the orders.

I stay frozen in place, staring into the distance where the vans fled, trying to imagine her somewhere beyond that black horizon. I hate that I can’t hear her voice. I hate that I wasn’t there when she needed me. But most of all, I hate the certainty building in my chest: that the Russians didn’t take her as leverage against the Irish.

They took her as leverage against me.

Liam touches my shoulder, his voice pitched low. “Declan. You lead the rescue. I won’t take that from you. But you’ll do it with a structured team, and you’ll do it smart. ”

I breathe once, hard. “I’m getting her back.”

“You will,” he says. “But not alone.”

His certainty steadies something in me I didn’t realize had started to shake.

We walk toward the temporary strategy tent where screens are lighting up with satellite views and border maps. But under it all, a single truth pulses steady and sharp as a heartbeat: Ailish is alive. And I am coming.

Inside the strategy tent, the hum of generators competes with the low murmur of men assembling gear. Folding tables are covered with blueprints, maps, and equipment manifests. The overhead lights cast a sterile glow over everything, the kind that makes even polished metal look like bone. Screens flicker with satellite overlays of a stretch along the state border—wooded land, sparse buildings, a road that barely qualifies as such.

One of Liam’s tech analysts zooms in, stabilizing the aerial view. My jaw locks as the estate comes into focus. A long main building, two outlying sheds, and a fenced perimeter that gleams faintly with coils of barbed wire. The place is built for containment, not comfort. They didn’t choose it at random. They chose it because no one escapes without leaving pieces behind.

I force that thought back into the dark place it crawled from.

Liam steps up beside me. His posture is the same one he wears before high-stakes meetings with the Italians—back straight, arms relaxed, but eyes scanning for any sign of weakness around him. He’s steady, and that steadiness creates a pocket of stability in the chaos. It’s why men follow him without question. It’s why I do, even when I pretend otherwise.

The analyst points to the northern quadrant. “This is the access road the trucks likely used. There’s a gate here. We think it’s padlocked chains, not electrified. Two guard towers, but they’re unmanned in the older photos.”

I shake my head. “They’re manned now. They know we’ll come.”

Liam nods. “They have Ailish. They’re preparing for leverage.” His voice tightens. “Or for a message.”

A sharp ache pulses behind my sternum—fear, rage, something poisonous. “We’re not giving them time to send it.”

I lean over the table, studying the layout, tracing the outer fence with my fingertip. It feels too open in some ways, too exposed in others. They chose the estate well; I’ll give them that. No easy angles. No blind spots worth using. But everything fragile in this world has a crack somewhere. You just have to think sideways to find it.

Liam gestures toward the map’s southern edge. “Woods here provide cover, but terrain is uneven. Hard to move fast.”

“We’re not going fast,” I counter. “We’re going quiet.”

He raises a brow. “And when the quiet fails?”

“Then we go loud.”

For a moment, the smallest flicker of brotherly acknowledgment crosses his face. It’s the same look he used to give me when we were younger and planning stupid things together, the kind that required lying to our father, bribing a door guard, and probably dodging bullets by dawn.

Only this time, the stakes are Ailish. And the life she carries.

He clears his throat. “We’ll need two teams. One at the perimeter to draw attention. One inside to extract.”

“I’ll lead the inside team.”

He doesn’t argue. “I’ll lead the outer.”