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That little motion, indicative of their intimacy, proves my course of action is the right one.
I lift the gun without looking at Seamus, and pull the trigger.
Nothing happens.
I glance along the sights, straight into Seamus’s smiling face.
He raises his wrist to his mouth. “Come on in, boys. We’ve got him.”
Fuck.
****
This isn’t how I saw tonight going.
I stare at the inside of a jail cell and reconsider my life choices. Not the ones that matter, just the ones that got me here.
My gun wasn’t loaded.
Seamus set a trap, and I walked willingly into it.
He used my wife as a decoy.
I. Am. Predictable.
Rage brews deep in my heart. I let him trap me and was too busy planning my wife’s punishment that I failed to see the line of breadcrumbs right in front of me. That I’d been betrayed on two fronts ripped at me from the inside out.
Willow. Had she known more than she let on? She’d been part of my family for such a short time and yet left so many marks on us both.
Secondly, and more important … where the hell was Dom? He walked away the moment he failed to halt Seamus’s progress through my house. Dom had never failed me before. Not once. Before this, the only person he failed was Thalia, again and again. I knew it ate him up as much as the two-pronged assault on my empire ruined me.
That the man I despised made it to the top story of my home without anyone stopping him left me bereft. Where had I screwed with the loyalty I worked so hard to ensure of every man in the house? Is Regina safe? Roman? Sonja has an eye on him at the boarding school. Surely she would have reached out if there was an issue. Fuck, my house is still a goddam mess.
Willow…
I squeeze my hand into a fist until my knuckles crack.
“Gallo. You’re free.”
“Of course I am.” I don’t spare a glance at the tired police officer who unlocks the door and waves me through.
“We spend hours filling out paperwork for assholes like you that we know will be released. Money talks. Always,” the man complains, but there’s no heat in it, only exhaustion, but his apathy gives me pause.
“I’m sorry to have taken up your time,” I say softly, straightening and meeting his gaze with mine. Berring, his tag reads. Like the firearms. How apt. He must be my father’s age, before he was killed. “I’m sure your family is grateful for your support and efforts.”
He sends me a crooked smile. “My wife left with my ex-partner five years ago, Gallo. I can’t sleep when I get home at night. But men like you don’t have the same problems as fish like us.” He gestures me forward again, but I hold my ground a moment longer.
“You’d be surprised,” I tell him, leaning on the bars. “My wife betrayed me for a handler who groomed her perfectly. The man I banked on saving my ass—rather like your partner, I presume—left me exposed. Loyalty means the most to me, and yet tonight, I have none of that.”
“And I expect you’ll go home and raise hell right now, won’t you?” He shook his head, as though to say, We aren’t the same. “More paperwork for me.”
I smile slightly. “No. I will go home and consolidate my position. I will weave out any of the not so loyal, but you won’t see those from my house. They will be going on a little errand for me, to an old … friend’s house.” My smile grows as I imagine Konnor’s face when he sees what I’ll deliver next to his kin. Maybe we can rekindle that truce after all. “Then I will fuck my wife and make sure her reddened ass reminds her who owns her.”
The cop blinks at me. “Thought women were independent and shit these days,” he grumbles. “Get outta my precinct, Gallo. I don’t wanna hear more of your bullshit life story.”
If only you knew.
“It’s quite amusing sometimes. I have stories to tell.”
