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Fifteen
Declan
I was supposedto wait for her on the jet.
Not happening.
I couldn’t do it. I didn’t care if it was crazy, but I needed to be close by.
I had the worst fucking feeling, and I knew I was being paranoid, but nothing about the last twelve months had been easy. The world was crumbling down around us and my woman had just waltzed into the epicenter of the crisis to shake hands on a business deal.
A fucking business deal.
First Ladies didn’t invite artists to state functions the day before the event.
They didn’t discuss business at said state functions.
They danced with dignitaries.
They talked bullshit with politicians from across the globe.
They ate fancy food and drank fancy champagne while plastering on a fakefancysmile.
They did not discuss glassware with a woman whom the Secret Service must have identified as having ties with the Five Points.
Acuig and the O’Donnellys were slowly and steadily becoming mainstream, but fooling a bunch of Manhattan socialites was one thing. The president? The Secret Service?
No.
They knew what and who we were.
But I’d let her go anyway.
“You fucking idiot,” I rasped under my breath, scrubbing a hand over my face as I waited for her to come back to me. As I waited, like Chicken goddamn Little, for the sky to fall around me.
In a car a block away from Pennsylvania Avenue, contained within the limo’s confines, a stranger driving us, more strangers guarding us, I felt like a pressure cooker about to go off.
After burning off some of my frustrations with Cillian Donahue, I should have been feeling triumphant. The bastard had ruined my life, and I’d ended his. But the buzz from torturing him, from working with Finn to make the fucker’s final hours as excruciating as physically possible, had faded.
Instead of feeling the glory of righteous satisfaction, I was left feeling like I was going through the early stages of a heart attack.
The driver’s cell buzzed. My gaze darted over to his in the rearview mirror as he answered it.
To me, he said, “She’s in the limo, sir.”
Nostrils flaring, I dipped my chin, refusing to feel relieved until she was in the back of the limo with me.
Keeping my expression blank was next to impossible, but I didn’t need the driver knowing how whipped I was. Any more than was already clear, at any rate.
Cracking my knuckles, I waited.
And I waited.
And I goddamn waited.
Every second that passed, dread filled me.
Between the White House and here, there were guards stationed, but that didn’t mean some Sparrows weren’t out seeking blood tonight.
