Page 6 of The Warrior's Salvation

"Picket line got hit again yesterday…" Connor is keeping tabs on what’s happening with the Doyles and the way they're pushing in on our territory. They want the docks because it means they can control imports and exports in Dublin, at least part of them. But knowing Ronan, they'll come to full-scale war before he allows that to happen.

"I heard." Nodding at Siphon who delivers my drink, I look down and take it, and he gets the point. He's not oblivious to who I am or the fact that this is a family-owned establishment. But he is smart enough to know when to avoid a conversation.

"Ro thinks they're gonna go after O'Connor again." Connor speaks out of the side of his mouth before slurping a large drink of beer. I don't want to hear about the front line, the way Doyle and his men are assaulting legitimate labor strikes to push our buttons. I want to get wasted and fucked and pass out so I don't have to feel so damn angry.

"Yeah, well I'm benched, so tell someone who fecking cares." The whiskey goes down smoothly, burning my throat, warming my gut, and Connor scoffs and shakes his head.

"What the hell is wrong with you? You came home from overseas and you were fine. Then all of a sudden, you turn into this raging maniac. You know why Ro benched you. You're a hothead. Look at the way you flung poor Evie O'Leary out the side door like a two-bit whore who bit your cock." Connor isn't ready for me to launch off the chair and pin him to the wall by his neck, and I'm surprised by my own swift action. My jaw is clenched, hand wrapped around his neck at the mere mention of my treatment of Evelyn.

"You have no right," I growl, blinking rapidly in a frantic attempt to rein in my temper. "Draco put me in charge of her safety and you feckin’ saw who she was dancing with."

My chest heaves. I loosen my grip, and Connor shoves me away, then jerks his jacket back into place. He's angry with me, and maybe he has a right to be, but I can't shirk my duty to protect Evie.

"You need to get a grip, Loch." My younger brother steps up to me and presses his chest against mine, staring me down like he's going to put me in my place. "You know if you blow your lid the way you did two weeks ago again, Ro will send you away. He won't have you fecking up with so much on the line."

My mind races, anger swirling around my thoughts and hooking in with barbs that tear at my conscience. My memories are all jumbled—seeing Maelyn walk into that building, seeing Evie pass out on Jasper's back seat. I was her partner, tasked with keeping her out of the line of fire. It was my job and I failed.

"I'm…" I can't speak right now. Words don't come. Connor puts a finger into my chest and his nostrils flare.

"I saw it in your eyes when you heard about Siobhan being taken… You're not right up there." His finger taps my temple, and I swat his hand away. "You gotta back the feck off."

Shoving him hard, I let out a roar, and people scatter around us. He slams into the wall and comes back at me with his shoulder lowered, readying to ram my gut, but I sidestep him and stick out my foot and he goes tumbling into a group of people dancing. They gasp and move away, and I stalk toward him as he gets up, but he holds up his hands in surrender and shakes his head.

"I'm out… I'm done with this shit, Loch. Get your head out of your ass before you hurt someone or yourself." Connor dusts his hands and moves toward the front of the club, and people around me are staring.

Blocking them out, I turn and head back to the bar where my drink sits. Maybe he's right and I'm out of control, but how am I supposed to somehow magically get in control?

He's right. When our brother's partner was kidnapped by the Doyles, I had some sort of break from reality. I lost it, nearly shot the chief, and now I'm paying for it. Poor Evie probably didn't deserve the way I grabbed her and dragged her out, but something inside me saw a red flag fly and I had to protect her at all costs.

"Give me another," I grunt at Siphon, and he nods at me, turning to refill my glass. Now I'm going to drink until I can't stand straight and hopefully pass out so I'm out of my misery. If not, I'm going to end up hurting someone just like Connor said. And that'll only make me look even less reliable.

5

EVIE

My hands shake as I type on my keyboard. A second email was in my inbox this morning when I arrived at work. I've been feeling sick to my stomach ever since. I'm not sure what to do with it because this one is more threatening than the last one, and Lochlan keeps hovering, walking past my desk like he's watching me or something. I don’t know if he saw my screen when I opened it, but I don’t want him knowing what's going on.

As much as I want to think I can handle this myself, I know I can't. This is way outside my comfort zone, and I'm not paid enough to deal with things like this. But my brother’s nonchalance about it has me stopping to consider whether I'm just freaking out over nothing. He said things like this happen all the time, that people in the industry don’t like unions and will push the small dog around to get their way.

It's the reason the workers are even out on the picket line now, because factories and businesses don't value workers' time and efforts. They strike to make their voices be heard, and right now, their voice is loud and clear. I suck in a deep breath and click the email open again to reassure myself that this is nothing more than some empty threat to rattle my father, though the sender doesn’t realize I'm receiving his email right now. They just want him frustrated or scared.

If Da would handle this, I can handle this. I just feel nervous that Lochlan will stick his nose into family business and gather the wrong assumption—that my da really is dirty like him, that he's weak or that the O'Rourke clan can push him around. Da is a smart man, but I worry that a man like Lochlan may gain an advantage over him by manipulating a weakness.

"Everything okay?" Lochlan asks as he makes another pass by my desk, and I nod but scowl at him. I haven't forgotten the way he jerked me off the dancefloor so abruptly that it ruined my night. I may have passed out in Jasper's back seat and woken up in my bed in the middle of the night, but I'm never going to forget how Lochlan treated me like he's my boss.

"I'm fine," I say curtly, smiling professionally at him as he skulks away. He already apologized once, but I am too upset. Yes, he may have saved me from something nefarious that man may have wanted to do—or he may have just interrupted a hot moment that could've quenched the lust I've been trying to douse for days.

Either way, I ended up passed out way too early. Part of me wonders if that bartender slipped something in my drink, but if Lochlan's family owns the club, wouldn't that make him complicit?

"Alright, well if you need anything…" His voice trails off as he walks away, shutting himself into Da's office, and my hand on my mouse maneuvers to open my email client again.

The screen flashes and I see three new emails, one of them from the same strange email address. I glance up at the door, shut with the curtain drawn, and sigh as I feel my chest constricting again. These bastards are relentless, which explains why Da and Jasper are still out there four days later still dealing with picketing and the damn assholes who like to stir up conflict on the picket line.

My eyes rake over the new emails and I choose to read the one I know will be more threats first. The others are just business, things I can handle when my mind is clear. But this one has several attachments, images by the looks of it. I open the email and scan the contents, more threats about paying better attention to whoever this is or there will be "hell to pay."

Then I wait for the virus scanner to finish checking the attachments and start opening them. One by one, the images flash on my screen—a picture of Mum and Da's house, Jasper's car, my apartment. There are stills of Da on the picket line looking angry, one where he has his handgun in his grip staring off into the distance. I can see the picketers behind him and I know he's brought that gun there for protection. Mum hates it, but I understand why he does it.

It makes me shudder in fear, though, to see these images. Why would they take pictures of my family and my home? Why try to push me this far, and for what reason? This doesn’t seem like the run-of-the-mill sort of empty threat Jasper told me happens all the time. This seems more serious.

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