Page 27 of Bloody Knuckles

The color drains from him. "Aoife, you don't understand?—"

"I understand perfectly. You've been playing both sides. The question is, for how long?"

A woman passes nearby, casting a curious glance our way. I smile pleasantly until she moves on.

"Three years," Murphy admits finally. "It started small. Information exchange. Keeping the peace."

"By betraying my father." My voice hardens. "By getting Donovan men killed, which justified my kidnapping."

"Your kidnapping wasn't part of any plan," he insists. "Cormac went rogue after the Westmoreland shipment was hit. Nobody expected him to take you."

"Yet here we are." I press the gun harder against his side. "Finn's dead, Danny. Cormac executed him last night. Made me watch."

Horror washes over him. "Jesus."

"You're next on his list. He knows about the partnership with Finn."

"That's impossible. We were careful."

"Not careful enough." I allow a hint of sympathy to enter my tone. "But you can fix this. Tell me everything—dates, times, what information you shared. I'll take it to my father before Cormac gets you."

Hope flickers across him. "You'd do that? After what I did?"

"Family loyalty matters to me. If you help me now, I'll convince my father that Finn manipulated you. That you had no choice."

His shoulders slump in relief. "What do you need to know?"

"Everything. Starting with who else is involved."

For fifteen minutes, Murphy confesses his sins against the Gallagher family. Names. Dates. Bank accounts. Each detail damning him further to hell, while providing me the ammunition I need.

"There's one more thing," I say when he finishes. "The ambush on the O'Connell shipment where two Donovan men died. Was that planned?"

Murphy hesitates. "Not the dead bodies. That was Liam's call in the moment. Finn was furious."

"And my brother? How deep is he involved?"

"Deep enough. The whole thing was his idea originally—playing the Donovan’s against themselves while we?—"

The crack of a gunshot cuts him off. Murphy jerks, crimson stain blossoming across his chest. His mouth opens in surprise before he crumples to the stone floor.

Screams erupt throughout the cathedral. Tourists scatter, diving behind pews. I drop to the ground, frantically looking for the source of the shot.

Three men move through the panicking crowd. Not Donovan men—their movements don’t have the disciplined restraint Cormac enforces. These are Cassidy soldiers, rivals to both our families.

I scramble behind a stone pillar as bullets chip ancient masonry. Connor's gun feels inadequate against multiple attackers. The nearest exit is thirty meters away, across open space.

"Find the Gallagher bitch!" a voice shouts over the chaos. "Brennan wants her alive!"

Sean Brennan—the Cassidy underboss who's been pushing for war with both the Donovan’s and Gallaghers. If he orchestrated this, he must have had someone watching Murphy. Someone who recognized me.

I fire blindly around the pillar, buying seconds to think. The cathedral's layout offers few escape routes. The crypt maybe, or?—

A hand clamps over my mouth from behind, an arm like iron around my waist. I drive my elbow backward, connecting with solid muscle that doesn't yield.

"Stop fighting," Cormac's voice hisses in my ear. "Unless you’d prefer to try the Cassidy’s' hospitality over mine."

Relief floods through me, followed instantly by dread. Cormac's presence means he discovered my escape. Discovered and tracked me. He knows I drugged his man, I betrayed him—and I know what that means.

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