"I know."
"You could die," Cormac says.
"I know."
"So why are we doing it?"
I look at them. My brother. Her brothers. The men who have bled and lost and built something fragile between families that spent decades treating each other as convenient enemies. The alliance that started as strategy and became real somewhere between a wedding and a war.
"Because I love her. And I was too afraid to admit it until I sent her away. I was too proud to treat her as a partner and too broken to trust what she offered. I controlled her instead of trusting her and she was right about everything she said, and I can't undo that. But I can get her back. And I'm not going to lose her because I was a coward."
The room is quiet. Not the silence of men who have nothing to say. The silence of men recalibrating. Cormac stops pacing. He nods. Slow. The nod of a man who has watched a crimeboss strip himself bare in a room full of soldiers and found the honesty more persuasive than any weapon.
Lex. My brother. The man who says nothing and sees everything and carries more inside his silence than most men carry in their loudest hour. He meets my eyes with an expression I can't fully read: not anger, not accusation. Understanding. The understanding of a man who has lived beside the cost of this world long enough to recognize when a new bill is being written. He may not know the specifics. He knows something is coming.
"Then let's go get her back."
Weapons. Vehicles. Body armor. The choreography of men preparing for an operation that is either a rescue or a funeral. I strap the Glock to my thigh, knowing I'll hand it to Lex before I walk through the factory door. Viktor demanded unarmed. I'll comply. I'll walk into a room full of men who want to kill me with nothing but the words in my mouth and the hope that Dmitri Reznikov kept his word.
The plan is that I enter alone. Buy time. The brothers and a combined Greek-Irish force position around the perimeter. If Dmitri pulled Viktor's reinforcements, we breach on my signal. If he didn't, if the Bratva backup is still in place, we're outgunned three to one and this becomes a night that ends differently.
The uncertainty is everything.
Engines start. Weapons check. The alliance moves south toward Springfield and a factory where a woman is tied to a chair working zip ties against metal and waiting for the man who exiled her to prove he's worth coming back to.
I don't know if I am. But I know I'll die trying.
Chapter 33
Siobhan
The Factory
* * *
Six hours in this chair.
I know because I've been counting.
Not the way a captive counts — desperately, losing track, starting over. The way I count is systematically. Breaths per minute to manage the nausea. Seconds between guard rotations to map the pattern. Minutes since Viktor’s last speaking time to calculate his attention cycles. Hours since they tied me down to estimate the fatigue curve of the men watching me.
Six hours. Three hundred and sixty minutes. Twenty-one thousand, six hundred seconds of friction between the zip tie and the metal armrest.
The factory is industrial. Concrete floor, pitted and stained. High ceiling lost in shadow beyond the reach of the single overhead light that makes a yellow pool around my chair. Viktor's staging: theatrical, deliberate, designed to make the captive feel small and exposed under the spotlight while the threat lives in the dark. I catalog instead of cowering.
Four exits. Main door, east wall. Loading dock, south. Service entrance, west, partially obstructed by rusted machinery. Fire escape stairs, northwest corner, leading to an overhead walkway. I've watched men move through all four.
Six guards. Two at the main door. Two at the loading dock. Two roam on a circuit that takes approximately four minutes, which means there's a ninety-second window when the northwest corner is unmonitored. One sniper on the walkway. His weapon is a rifle with a scope that's excessive for this distance, which tells me he was posted for perimeter surveillance, not interior threat.
Viktor makes eight. His weapon: a Makarov pistol, Russian military issue, carried with the casual comfort of a man who grew up with it in his hand. He favors his right side when he draws it. The holster sits slightly too high on his hip, which means his draw is a fraction slower than it should be.
I file everything. Ward Risk Advisory, operational even in a zip tie.
The ties are wearing. The metal armrest has an edge where a weld joint creates a ridge, not sharp enough to cut but abrasive enough to fray plastic. I've been working my wrists in micro-movements for six hours. Invisible to anyone watching. The plastic is thinning. I can feel the difference in tension when I flex. Hours of work for seconds of freedom. I'll take the trade.
My body is a separate catalog. Nausea: constant, manageable, cresting every forty minutes. Cramps in my lower abdomen, could be the position, could be dehydration, could be the pregnancy. I can't distinguish and the inability to distinguish is its own kind of terror. I breathe through each wave. When Viktor's back is turned, my bound hands press against my stomach. The only conversation I can have with my child: pressure. Presence. I'm here. We're here. Hold on.
Viktor paces. He's been talking for hours. Not to me, exactly. To himself, with me as audience. The monologue of a man constructing his own narrative, needing to hear it aloud because the version in his head hasn't solidified enough to believe.