He doesn’t now.
While the city whispered that he was lying low, I spent four weeks cutting through his spine one vertebra at a time. Not with headlines and not with theatrical hits. I took his accountants first, then the men who made his shell companies breathe. Nikolas and I pulled ledger trails through church restorations, road contracts, and medical supply fronts, and every time wefound a hinge, I had it removed. Quiet warrants through friendly offices. Frozen accounts through banks that owed me. Cargo delays in ports he paid to trust. Drivers offered safer routes under my protection. Brokers turned with cash and proof. Three crews folded after one missed payroll. Two more disappeared when their weapons shipments landed empty and their phones started ringing with my people instead of his.
Patrick built power on pressure and myth, and I starved both.
By week two, he was burning reserve cash to keep outer crews loyal.
By week three, he was sending boys to make noise while his experienced men stopped taking his calls in daylight.
By week four, he was a name moving through borrowed houses, issuing orders through intermediaries who charged him extra and lied about timing.
A man like Patrick always answers collapse the same way.
He reaches for revenge and calls it control.
That is why we are here.
“Nikolas,” I say, eyes still on the doors. “Status on outer ring.”
He taps the earpiece under his collar and listens while shots echo outside. “East wall secure. House team reports two vehicles disabled. One runner toward the lower road got dropped. South gate still active. Front push is almost done.”
“Any sign of their lead?”
Before he can answer, Conall’s voice comes over comms, rough with motion. “Rear pair neutralized. One dead, one wounded.And you were right, Saoirse, there was a second route. We’ve got two more in the pantry corridor, and one of them is Gavin.”
Everything in Saoirse goes still beside me.
“Alive?” I ask.
“For now. He tried to bite Murphy when they cuffed him.”
Declan barks a laugh from the pew line. “That sounds like him.”
Saoirse turns to me, and her voice lands flat and hard. “Don’t kill him yet.”
“I won’t,” I tell her. “Not until he talks.”
A final burst erupts outside the chapel, then another, then silence drops so suddenly, the ringing in my ears takes over. Smoke drifts in through the blown vestibule glass. Somewhere outside, one of my men shouts for a medic, and another answers with a location.
Nikolas rises first, checks his lane, and signals clear with two fingers. “Inside is done.”
I stand and pull Saoirse up with me, careful of her shoulder and the way she winces when she moves too fast. Her dress is ruined at the hem, her veil is torn, and there is glass in her hair. She looks like a bride who walked through a war and stayed on her feet.
Maeve pushes up beside us and points toward the side room. “Take her to the sacristy. I’ll get Mam.”
My mother stands on her own before anyone can help and smooths the front of her dress with one hand. “I am perfectly capable,” she says, then looks at Saoirse and softens. “Come here, Love.”
Saoirse goes to her, and for one brief second, in the wrecked middle of gun smoke and broken wood, my mother cups her face the same way she did the night Saoirse left my house. Saoirse closes her eyes and leans in, and then it is gone and we are moving again.
I turn to Nikolas. “Lock the grounds. Nobody leaves without being searched and photographed. Pull every weapon, every phone, every piece of paper. I want IDs before the hour is up.”
He nods. “Already started.”
“Good. Put medics on ours first, then theirs if they’re worth saving.”
“And the dead?”
“Line them along the south wall under tarps. I want Saoirse nowhere near that.”