"Well, did she fucking call him?"
I scowl. "No, he called her."
"And are the FBI surrounding the beach house right now and hauling you away in irons?"
"That's not the point, Liam."
"No, that's exactly the point, Con," he tosses back at me. "Marlow's been crawling up people's asses the last few weeks, you know that. This is exactly his style. He tried to bribe that chick Damien's been screwing with fucking jewelry the other day to put a bug in his car. Ian Galway's grandmother told Marlow to go fuck himself when he tried to tell her what a bad little apple Ian's been."
I snort at that one. Greta Galway is old-school Dark Saints, and the idea of Agent Marlow trying to somehow "enlighten" her about her grandson's wicked ways is actually comical to imagine.
"Dude, this is just part of the game, you know that," my brother says with a sigh. "And they're getting bolder and antsier right now because they know that sooner than later, Aela's going to move us to strictly legit business dealings, and the window for putting our pasty, drunk little Southie asses in jail starts to close. Look, so Marlow fucking cornered her and gave her a phone. She didn't call him, she obviously didn't give you up. So what's the fucking problem?"
"Everything," I snap. "She's nothing like this life, and I had no business bringing her into this shit. She's too fucking innocent, and too smart, and too young, and-"
"Young? Do I need to be worried here?"
I roll my eyes. "I'm not Damien. She's twenty-three."
"Hardly robbing the cradle, Con."
"Regardless, she's got no business getting mixed up in what we do."
"So cut her loose. If this is no big deal and just some little piece on the side for you, let her go."
I bristled, my jaw tightening. "I never said she and I were-"
"Fucking?" Liam makes a tsking sound with his teeth. "Tell me I'm wrong."
I'm silent, scowling out at the water.
"Yeah, exactly. So, if you're just screwing her and you're this bent out of shape about all of the ways she's not a Southie chick, then let it go."
"And if she goes straight to the FBI and starts talking?"
"About what, how small your dick is or that you like to cry while making love?"
"Motherfucker."
Liam laughs. "Con, I don't say this often because I know that being wound so tight is kind of your thing, and it's what makes you fucking great at what you do. But as your brother and not a fellow captain?"
"What," I growl.
"You need to cool the fuck down. Relax, man. What does she even know? Where you live? Yeah, so does Marlow, apparently."
"She watched me shoot a man, Liam," I spit.
"One witness, who was drunk, and who is now completely unusable by any prosecutor in the world because she's been fucking you, which means she's compromised."
We sit in silence for a second, me just staring out at the ocean.
"Been a while since I heard you talking about someone like this, man."
"It's nothing," I growl.
"No, the girls you usually spend all of an hour or two banging - at their place and then never calling again are nothing."
"She's just-"
"Connor."
"What."
"You can lie to yourself all you want, but don't lie to me."
I sigh. "Aela around? I should fill her in on-"
"Don't worry about Aela. I'll catch her up."
"I mean Aela our boss, not Aela your fiancée."
"Blurred lines, man."
I grin. "Fine."
"Look, I can't tell you what to do here, but I know that in this life of ours, you gotta hang onto the good parts. Jesus, Connor, you need to accept that sometimes, good shit will happen to you. I think you've probably forgotten that because you've spent the last twenty years fixing everything around you just like I was fighting it all until Aela."
"It's family or her, Liam."
He swears. "It's not that black and white, you fucker. Nothing is."
We're quiet for another minute.
"Sometimes it is," I finally say quietly.
Liam sighs. "Same old stubborn asshole," he mutters.
"Like you said, it's why I'm good at what I do."
"You deserve something good, Con," my brother says quietly. "She's not Sheila."
I close my eyes, my jaw clenching painfully tight. "I know that."
"What was going on with her was bigger than something you could just fix."
"I know th-"
"Do you? You can't fix the world, Connor."
"But I can stop making mistakes that mess it up more," I say evenly.
Mistakes like bringing someone like Sierra into a world like this. Mistakes like letting fucking emotions and my bullshit heart call the shots instead of my head. Instead of reason.
Because the truth of it is, there is no good reason for a girl like that to be anything with a guy like me. I'm too broken, too dirty.
Too dangerous.
And she's good. She's good manifested in beautiful, perfect, kind, loving, human form. And being this close to me will only destroy her.
I'll only destroy her, and there'll be no fixing things after that. But right there, sitting against the side of the lighthouse I used to explore as a kid, I know what the fix is here. As much as it fucking digs at me, and as much as it claws at something inside of me, I know what the fix is to this problem.
Letting her go.
If I want to protect her, and if I want to save her from the thunderstorm of my life that'll only twist and drown her, I have to cut her loose.
And that fucking burns.
I say goodbye to my brother as I head back to the car. I pull my boots on over sandy feet - the city-boy armor going back on. I drive more like a normal person back to the house - less squealing tires and wild speeds this time. The kitchen light is still on as I pull in and shut off the engine, stepping from the car and heading for the porch.
There's a tightness in my chest, but I know what I have to do.
I kick sand from my boots as I climb the stairs to the porch and head for the kitchen door, when I suddenly stop, frowning.
The door's ajar.
I know it's nothing - I know it's just that Sierra doesn't have the same shit as me where closing and locking a door just becomes second nature, even if it is a completely safe beach house way out on the dunes like this. But it doesn't stop that tingling sensation at the back of my neck, or the fact that I'm suddenly on edge.
I step inside, glancing around.
"Sierra?"
She might be asleep, which somehow irks me even more that she's got the door ajar. I take a step towards the stairs when my eyes land on the kitchen floor.
And something turns cold inside of me.
There's shattered glass on the floor, and water pooling across the linoleum.
Water tinged pink.
With blood.
There's a blinding pain inside, like a bullet moving in slow motion through my chest, tearing its way through me and leaving a gaping wound in its wake. I glance wildly around the small living room, as if I've somehow missed her, sitting in a corner or something, or waiting for me on the couch. Something tugs at the corners of my vision, blinding me, and there's a feeling of weight pushing down on me.
I can't breathe.
"Sierra!" I roar, thundering through the rest of the downstairs, kicking open closets and almost tearing the bathroom door off it's goddamn hinges. I storm upstairs and do the same, bellowing her name, but I already know I'm not going to find anything.
Part of me wants to hope she's just left. Part of me wants to hope that she's gotten tired of this shit, or that I pushed her too hard about the fucking phone. Or that she's just decided on her own what I was going to tell her myself when I got back here: that this life is no place for her, and being near me is only going to get her hurt.
I want to believe all that, but I know there's no truth to it.
The ajar door says otherwise.
The glass shattered on the ground reminds me that's bullshit.
The blood is a fist to the gut, telling me exactly how fucking wrong I am.
I grab the guns I've stashed behind the vacuum cleaner in the hallway closet and stagger outside to the porch. That ripping feeling is still tearing at my chest, making me work to suck in a breath of air as I look wildly around as if still trying to spot her.
But she's gone, and I think I've got a real good fucking idea who's taken her from me.
And just like that, everything I've just been saying to myself, and to Liam over the phone just fucking shatters like the flimsy bullshit it always was. All my huffing and puffing about "letting her go" and "keeping her away from me" goes up like fucking smoke.
Because someone's taken what's mine away from me. Someone's taken away the one good thing I've felt in fucking years.
My eyes narrow, my pulse thunders, and my hand grips the cold metal of the gun in my hands tight.
Anton's stepped over the line, and taken what belongs to me.
And now it's time to start a war.
Now it's time to act.
Now it's time to move heaven and hell to get her back.
Because she's mine, and I'm not ready to let her go.
I'm about to storm off for the car when my eyes land on something black and metal on the sand by the steps to the porch.
The fucking burner phone.
I glare at it, every intention of putting the heel of my boot through the top of it when I suddenly freeze. The bag drops to my feet, and I grab the goddamn thing out of the sand, flip it open, and scroll to the one damn number programmed.