Page 18 of Midnight Between Us (The Timberbridge Brothers #4)

Chapter Fifteen

Finnegan

I was reborn in the belly of a syndicate. Not because they saved me—don’t romanticize it. They kept me alive because I had something they wanted information. Without it, I’d be rotting in a ditch somewhere off the Amazon, my name carved into the dirt by time and bugs.

Did I spend years trying to dismantle that same syndicate once I escaped from their grasp? Fuck, yes.

Was it worth the blood on my hands? Every drop.

The world sleeps easier because they’re gone.

You’re welcome. And I didn’t stop there.

I continue taking down groups like that.

It’s not some twisted obsession like some like to believe.

It’s purpose. A fire I walk through willingly—because if I don’t, someone else gets burned.

It’s a duty, what I was made for, whether I like it or not.

Though, my job doesn’t come first.

They do. Piper and Derek, my wife and husband, and our four kids with their crooked grins and messy room.

The busy mornings, syrup-sticky fingers, and never-ending questions are my favorite—my priority.

They come first. My old man and my siblings—they matter too.

My entire family is too fucking loud, but we’re tangled into a very supportive family. All of them are mine.

Still, I have a job to do, and when something threatens the balance, I move. I strike before it blooms into something vile.

I do my best to strike before it spreads.

Before it latches onto borders, ports, and governments.

Before it hides behind flags and laws. Syndicates like to think they’re invisible once they blend in.

But I was raised inside their rot. I know how to expose their lies, how to dismantle them from the inside out.

The Hollow syndicate though . . . fuck, they’re really starting to piss me off.

I’ve been trying to play nice so that this doesn’t become bloody but they keep exploding things, and setting things on fire.

That means we’re going to war. I just need my people to be better positioned and a little more time.

You know what I don’t need?

A fucking family feud in the middle of this operation.

I’m on the phone with Malerick Timberbridge, who is demanding I let his brother go for the protection of CQS.

First, I get a text from Simone telling me to deal with the fucking Timberbridge brothers.

Then . . . I get fucking Malerick on the phone.

“So he remembers what happened to him?” I ask because that’s really what matters. I don’t give to fucks about their feelings. They can fix their broken family on their own time, not mine.

“It seems like it. Of course, he doesn’t know who it was. He swears the buyer was a company trying to gentrify Birchwood Springs.”

I laugh. Gentrify, huh? That’s what they’re calling criminal colonization now?

There’s a static hiss on the line, the kind that sneaks in when someone’s about to lose their temper but is still pretending they haven’t.

“You don’t understand,” Malerick says, voice tight like he’s clenching his jaw around the words. “He’s my brother. I can take care of him. I’m a fucking FBI agent.”

“No. The FBI no longer employs you. You’re now the sheriff in town.

” What is with these people forgetting their place?

Like, fuck, I can’t be babysitting everyone.

I swear, my six-year-old daughter is a lot more responsible than these clowns.

When was the last time we had to tell her to pick up her room?

I have no idea because she knows the routine.

You’d think adults would be a lot more responsible, right? Yet, here we are.

“Keir Timberbridge is now my responsibility.” Hopefully, that’s the last of it and we can move on to more important issues.

Instead of a yes or something, there’s silence on the other side of the line.

It’s probably not because he agrees with the fact that I’m in charge of his brother.

Nope. Malerick Timberbridge doesn’t settle that easily.

He’s probably trying to figure out what he can say next without pissing me off more than he already has.

I let the pause stretch.

“You want to keep him isolated,” he finally says, tone-clipped. “In a house with a woman who clearly can’t stand him. Who’s already emotionally compromised. That doesn’t sound like protection to me.”

I lean back in my chair, glance toward the security monitors in my home office. Tate, our middle child, is running around the backyard half-dressed with Ronald and Helsey, our puppies. Tate’s covered in mud. My husband’s trying to get him back inside with a towel and a juice box.

Piper is out with Rhea, who’s getting ready for her first recital.

Of course our daughter had to be like her mother, a musical prodigy.

I’m just glad the other two are taking a nap or this conversation would be finished and .

. . fuck, the last thing I need is a feud for some mangled greedy man who tried to sell his family business because it sounded like a fucking good idea.

“Simone’s personal history with Keir is irrelevant,” I say . “She’s the best trauma doctor I’ve got. You know how many people I trust to keep a ghost alive without triggering every tripwire in our system? One.”

“She’s angry?—”

“She’s competent,” I cut in. “And angry is good. Angry doesn’t mean fragile. Angry means she won’t let him die on her watch.”

I let that land.

“But—” Malerick starts.

“No,” I say again, more firmly now. “You don’t get to argue feelings with me, Timberbridge.

You want to talk loyalty? I have agents whose families were wiped off the map.

People who buried siblings in closed caskets because someone flinched too early.

So please don’t come to me with guilt and brotherly instinct.

You want him alive? You leave him with her. ”

“I can protect him.”

“You weren’t there when they zipped him into that trunk,” I say, voice low.

“You weren’t there when she brought him back twice.

You weren’t the one cleaning him up while the rest of the world assumed he was a corpse with no name.

So no—you don’t get to protect him now just because you fucking said so. ”

Malerick exhales hard into the phone. “You don’t understand our family?—”

“Then, you don’t understand what we’re up against,” I snap.

“You think this is just about family? This is about what happens when we underestimate how long the Hollow Syndicate’s reach has grown.

This is about Birchwood turning into a smokescreen for something bigger.

If Keir dies, we lose our last link to what triggered this.

I need to find the heir . . . that’s an important piece.

You want to play hero? Do it in uniform, from the perimeter. ”

Another silence.

“How long.”

I can almost hear the gears grinding in his head as he swallows the loss.

“I don’t fucking know.”

“That’s vague as hell,” Malerick mutters.

“You’ll live.” I clear my throat. “I want you away from them, do you understand?”

“And if I show up?”

“You’ll get to say hello,” I tell him. “From the other side of the gate. If Simone lets you. But if you try to bring him back into your world before I say so . . . I need you to get on with the program, Malerick. Do you remember why you’re the fucking sheriff?”

I hear him swallow that. “Fine, but if something happens to him?—”

“Nothing will happen and you know why?” I try not to sound sarcastic, but fuck he’s pissing me off, and sarcastic is better than angry asshole, right? “Because you’ll stay the fuck away.”

The call ends. He’s probably angrier than I am, but that’s fucking fine by me. Let him simmer. Let them all burn a little while I buy us the time and space we need to do this right. I’ve lost too many people to fractured loyalties and emotional interference.

Keir Timberbridge may be a brother, a fuck-up, a mystery—but right now, he’s leverage. And if I have to use Simone’s unresolved heartbreak to keep him alive, then so be it.

He’ll thank me later.

They all do.

Eventually.