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There was no need.
It hadn’t been easy to reach him. We had to be sure that Lina didn’t intercept any messages. If she did, we’d all be dead, and so would Bailey.
Fuck.
Bailey.
I could tell from Kiernan’s downcast look that the guilt over what had happened to her was overwhelming him. Ava had reamed him, no doubt spurring the feeling of regret even further. I’d counseled him against handing her over, but he’d been sure that nothing would happen to her. That he and Seamus could easily get to her once Crowe’s indiscretions were revealed.
He didn’t know the man like I did.
Didn’t know what he was capable of.
For once, I wished I hadn’t let my son learn from the consequences of his own actions. I’d always allowed them to experience what it meant to fail. Unless it would harm them physically. And even then, I wasn’t too worried about a few bruises or broken bones. They needed to learn that every action had a reaction. Sometimes it was good, but other times there were real consequences.
He was feeling that now.
Kiernan couldn’t have known what would happen to her, but he should have thought about the worst-case scenario. He knew Crowe wasn’t a good man. He was aware of what had happened to Bailey in the past. I’d explained to him what she’d told me the night she broke into the safe.
Still, he chose to move forward.
And I did nothing.
Now I stood with my sons in a warehouse that time had frozen. Nothing had changed since the night of the massacre. Nothing was out of place. You could still see the bloodstains clinging to what was left of the rotted wood floors. Bullet holes riddled the metal walls, allowing the sun to sneak through and cast an ethereal light over the darkened room.
And there he stood, in the middle of it all, the one man I’d grown to hate more than any other. I’d been so blinded by rage and hatred that I never bothered to dig up the truth behind the hits. Even after all these years, I still made mistakes. Ava’s mother once said I was ruled by my emotion. My men were family to me. Not just pawns to be manipulated and used as cannon fodder.
“You came.” I stopped a few feet from him. He’d come alone as requested, but I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that he didn’t have some kind of backup.
“You sent me a photo of my daughter,” he rumbled. “Said you had a plan to take down Crowe. I’d be stupid to ignore that.”
“Thank you for listening.” Seamus spoke up. “We need all the help we can get, and so do you.”
The corners of Eriksen’s lips turned up in a sneer. “I’ve been trying to get my daughter out from beneath Crowe’s thumb since she was three,” he spat. “What makes you think you can? And why would you care?”
“Bailey was under our care for some time,” I admitted to him. “We didn’t know she was your daughter. She doesn’t even know she’s your daughter. We used her to gain access to some confidential information that was on Crowe’s laptop.”
“Was she caught?” he growled, taking a threatening step forward. “Did he find out?”
Kiernan cleared his throat awkwardly. “I handed her over to him,” he admitted. “My plan was to get him to trust us by turning her in. I gave him a fake drive, thinking that he’d never truly hurt her. I didn’t know—”
“Where is she?”
“We don’t know,” he admitted. “That’s why we need your help.”
Eriksen narrowed his eyes at my son, but I could see the gears in his head turning.
“My wife is good at tracking people down,” he admitted.
“You shouldn’t—” I started, but Seamus beat me to it.
“There was a reason we asked you to come alone,” he said. “And why we had to go through such crazy channels to contact you.”
Eriksen’s gaze flickered between us suspiciously.
“You might want to brace yourself for this,” I told him. “It’s not pretty.”
“Your so-called wife works for Crowe,” Kiernan informed him. “And she isn’t the only one.”
