Sinful Empire (Mount Trilogy #3)

Or am I dreaming again?

I can’t separate reality from nightmares anymore. At least, until I lift my head and a flashlight beam blinds me.

“Keira!”

“Lachlan?”

He reaches inside and his hand wraps around mine. “Don’t you f*cking die on me, hellion. Not now. Not ever.”

I blink, and his panicked gaze spears me through the heart as mine seems to give out. Black spots obscure his face, and I croak out one final request.

“Mags. Save Mags too.”





Mount





Fear. It’s not a feeling I’ve had in years, but it grips me like a demon from hell as Keira’s eyes roll back in her head and I haul her out of a pile of dead bodies in Hope’s mausoleum.

I can’t process what I’m seeing right now. It’s not f*cking possible. J couldn’t have done this. Or could she?

I rip off my jacket, using it to staunch the flow of Keira’s blood.

Mags. Keira said her name as she passed out, and I yell at Z.

“See if the madam is in there. I’m calling nine-one-one.”

In thirty years, I’ve never gone to a hospital or called the police for help. But for Keira, I would do anything.

The operator’s voice sounds tinny in my ear, but maybe it’s the blood rushing through it that makes things sound strange as I put pressure on the hole in Keira’s shoulder.

Needing to stay calm, I compartmentalize. One part of me loses my goddamned mind at the thought of my wife bleeding out in front of me, while the other recites our location down to the f*cking GPS coordinates, issuing threats if they don’t get here fast enough. When the dispatcher tells me to hang on the line, I hang up and call the cavalry.

V’s phone picks up the call, but he doesn’t speak.

“I have her, and I’m not going to lose her.” I give him the same directions I did the 911 operator.

As I disconnect the call, Z walks out of the tomb holding the madam’s limp body in his arms.

“She dead?”

Z lowers her to the ground beside Keira and feels for a pulse. “Almost. But not yet.”

“f*ck!”

For the first time in my life, I pray for sirens to be louder, come faster, because my entire world is crumbling. Keira’s blood looks almost black in the moonlight as it stains the grass, regardless of the pressure I keep on the wound.

“This is not f*cking happening! You will live, goddammit! Don’t you f*cking leave me! I love you!”





Mount





I thought hell was the foster care system or living on the streets. I was wrong. Hell is a hospital waiting room, not knowing if the only woman you’ve ever loved will live or die.

I offer everything I have—including my own f*cking life—to God, the devil, and any higher power who will listen if they’ll just let her live.

Why wouldn’t you take me? I’m the piece of shit who doesn’t deserve to touch someone as good as her.

Maybe there are some souls that are too black for even hell to want.

I hit my knees, and for the first time in over thirty years, wetness slides down my cheeks as I pray.





Keira





“Wake up, honey. Just open your eyes for me. Please, Keira.” The voice invades my consciousness.

My eyelids are so heavy. I draw in a breath, but a weight sits on my chest. “Uhhh.”

“Keira! Honey! Come back to us. Please.”

A hand grips mine and squeezes. My vision blurs around the edges as I force my eyes open.

I want to ask, What happened? But it comes out more like “Whaaarrrppp?”

“You’re okay. You’re going to be fine, Keira. Just fine.”

My throat hurts. My shoulder hurts. My head hurts. Everything hurts. I feel like I never want to move again.

I swear I’ve felt like this before.

White walls. Antiseptic. Beeping.

Am I dreaming?

A voice in my head yells at me to wake the hell up, and I blink twice before my sight clears.

But the face in front of mine isn’t the one I expected to see.

I jerk up in the hospital bed, my head swiveling from side to side. There’s no empty bed beside mine this time.

I groan, trying to force another sound from my throat, but it comes out as a scratchy moan.

Where is he? That’s the first thought that enters my brain. Where is Lachlan?

But it’s not the question that leaves my lips.

“Mom?”

“Thank God. Don’t you ever scare us like that again.” Her green eyes, a shade darker than my own, fill with tears, and her face looks years older than it did in the last picture I saw of her.

“Sweet Jesus. Thank you, Lord.” My dad’s deep voice overpowers hers as he steps into my field of vision.

“Dad?” It doesn’t make sense. How did my parents get here? And where is Lachlan? “How—”

“Shhh, honey. Don’t talk. They had you under for hours in surgery. They said your throat would hurt from the breathing tube. Jesus Christ, when we got the call from the alarm company and then you didn’t answer, and then Millie called a few hours later saying you’d come in alone in an ambulance—” Alone? My mom’s voice breaks. “We broke every law to get here as fast as we could. She didn’t know if you were going to make it.”

Millie? My brain is slow to start chugging along as I search the room again, looking beyond them for the one face I need to see but know I won’t find.

Millie. My mom’s cousin, and an ER nurse. That explains how my parents found out . . . but alone?

“What happened?” I ask again, my brain fuzzy from whatever drugs they’ve pumped through me. “Where—”

“You were shot,” my dad says. “EMTs and the ambulance that brought you in are missing. What the f*ck happened to you, girl?” My dad’s tone is layered with anger and fear, and more emotion that I’ve heard from him in a long time.

When I swallow and my lips crack, my mom springs into action.

“Water. You need water.” She has the bendy straw to my mouth before I can reply.

I take a sip, and it trickles down my throat with cool relief. “Shot?”

“Shhh, honey. It’s okay. You don’t need to worry right now. Just . . . rest. We’re just so happy to see your pretty eyes. Let me call for the nurse.”

“I need to know who the hell hurt my little girl, so I can get my shotgun and shovel and take care of business.” My dad’s gruff words pull me further out of the haze.

“I don’t know,” I murmur, and close my eyes. They’re still so freaking heavy.

“Anything. Name. Place. Hair color. I’ll hunt them down myself.”

“Shhh, David. Stop it.”

“Don’t tell me to stop it, Kath. Someone shot my little girl.”

I keep my eyes closed while my parents argue quietly. My lungs draw in and release one shallow breath at a time, and I focus on that because nothing else makes sense.

My memory is so fuzzy. Worse than the morning I woke up in Dublin.

Dublin.

“Dance with me, Lachlan. Dance with me in Dublin.”

“Where is he?” My croaking question rivals a bullfrog in the swamp.

“Who?” my dad demands. “The man who did this?”

I try to shake my head, but moving it makes me too dizzy. Is that a bandage wrapped around it?