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Page 10 of A Trap So Flawless (Titans and Tyrants #4)

Darragh

“ M essy,” Amos says, his eyes flicking over Jim Shaw’s fingerless, eyeless, tongueless body.

“Rowan will sort it,” I growl.

“No need,” he replies, his voice all smooth smoke. “I’ll have my people deal with it. A show of respect for you. For this city. And for the working relationship I hope we can have going forward.”

I don’t know what relationship he’s expecting to have with me considering all the businesses I was meant to inherit are now suddenly being held just out of reach.

I won’t even be in Dublin tomorrow. I’ll be in Montréal, putting Vincenzo Titone’s head on a fucking spike. Followed by Salvatore Di Mauro.

I guess her name is Valentina Di Mauro now.

I throw my knife, a violent snap of my wrist. The blade thunks into Shaw’s lifeless chest, just below his sternum.

He never told us why he did it. Never told us who hired him.

When I find out, I’ll come back and cut their fucking guts out.

But first, I have to go to Canada.

“What’s Tommy said? Any updates?”

“Nothing new,” Rowan says, checking his phone. “The last update was still the one from a few hours ago, saying that she was at that restaurant with Salvatore and her parents and the other guests for what looked like the reception.”

I grind my molars. Tommy is supposed to be keeping me updated. What she eats for her entrée? I want to know. She stops to blow her cute little fucking nose? I want to know that, too.

She goes home with her new husband?

I need that fucking address.

“What time is it?” I ask. I’ve been slicing my way through a blood-red haze. I could have been here for hours or days. I’m covered in blood, absolutely stinking with it.

“It’s a little after two in the morning,” Rowan replies. “Nine in the evening in Montréal.”

“Call him,” I growl. Rowan nods. But before he has the chance to do it, the phone lights up.

“It’s Tommy.”

“Give it to me.”

Rowan eyes my bloody hands, but knows better than to argue. I snatch it from him, leaving a crimson smear on the screen when I accept the call.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

“Sorry, boss,” Tommy says. “I only narrowly avoided getting nabbed by the cops. I’ve had to keep clear of the area for a bit. There was an incident. Bikers showed up. Crashed the reception.”

Bikers. I know they’ve been giving Vinny trouble lately. They’ve been making moves on the streets and at the port. It’s why he wanted Halifax.

If they showed up…

“What happened?” I don’t recognize my own voice. “Where is she?”

I should never have left her.

“Right now, she’s in a cab. I’m following. She’s unharmed.”

Relief, like sweet whiskey, pours through my veins. I breathe in and out, in and out, not knowing how badly I needed to hear those words. She’s unharmed.

She never should have been in fucking Montréal.

And I never should have been here.

“Can’t say the same for her da, though,” Tommy is saying now. “He took a hit. Looked like it was right to the fucking heart. The Di Mauro boss got hit in the head. Curse Titone took two bikers down. Then the sirens started up and everybody scattered.”

Her father and her husband both got shot, probably fatally. She must have been sitting with them. Maybe even between them.

The first time I saw her on the rooftop, when I realized who she was, when I realized she was choking, I remember briefly thinking, What a goddamn miracle. I get to watch a Titone die tonight.

Now, I think it’s a miracle she’s still alive. Salvatore took a shot to the head…

One wrong move, one minute misfire, the slightest shift of fate, and Valentina would be the one with a bullet in her brain right now.

The mere thought makes me feel like my very inner being is being unspooled. Like someone’s taken hold of my spine and is unwinding it nerve by nerve. Until there’s nothing left.

“Where is she going? Who is she with?” I ask, forcing myself to focus on reality. The reality where she’s alive, but her husband isn’t…

“She’s alone in the cab,” Tommy says. “Her mother is at the hospital. Curse and a bunch of others are with the cops.”

My pet, alone and unprotected in the city. My little lamb. Lost in a labyrinth.

But then again, Valentina’s never been a lamb.

“We’re pulling up to the airport. She’s going inside. I’ll follow.”

The airport?

Fuck.

She could end up anywhere.

“Don’t let her out of your fucking sight,” I hiss into the phone. “I’ll be on the next flight to Montréal.”

But the flight is almost seven hours long.

She’ll be long gone by then.

“She’s at one of the desks. Looks like she’s booking a flight. I’ll get closer.”

No fucking shit, she’s booking a flight. Why the hell else would she have gone to the airport?

My clever Valentina saw an opportunity, what with her daddy and her husband dead as fucking doornails and me out of the country.

She’s going to goddamn run.

“Shit. I thought maybe she was getting on that flight to Dublin,” Tommy says. “It leaves in less than half an hour. But she booked a flight to London.”

London. I could be there to meet her. I’d arrive before she did.

But no…

I have a better idea.

“She’s not going to London, Tommy.” I say it with a silken sort of certainty. “She’s coming to Dublin. And you’re going to be the one to get her on that flight.”

“How-”

“I don’t give a fuck how you make it happen,” I interrupt him viciously. “But if Valentina isn’t on that goddamn plane when it lands here, then you’d better start running now and you’d better never fucking stop. Because you have no idea what I will do to you if you lose her on me.”

A shaky inhale. Then, “Understood.”

The line goes dead.

The next time Tommy updates me, it’s to let me know Valentina has successfully boarded the Dublin flight.