Destroy Me - Ella Sheridan Page 0,79

giving his friend an amused look. The man was engaged; no doubt he had experience at this too. Fionn would learn.

With someone else. This is about over for you, isn’t it, Lyse?

Could you tell yourself to stuff it and still be sane? Of course, sane was relative.

“That was one helluva cleanup crew,” Deacon said when Fionn hung up the phone. The three of them sat in the hotel room Lyse and Fionn had slept in the night before. On a nearby radio, the sound of Mack’s voice came through as he liaised with the local garda in the aftermath of the fight between Andre Sonaro’s crew and Ferrina’s men. Casualties had been as minimal as they could make them, though only a few of Ferrina’s men had escaped. Sonaro had been serious about guarding his territory, and Ferrina’s incursion had angered not only him but several other crime lords in Europe. The prestige of taking care of their problem had been worth the risk of the head of the Grasseri Syndicate carrying out a hit on foreign soil.

Not that he’d carried out the hit on Ferrina. Fionn had.

Lyse’s heart had been in her throat as she’d listened to Fionn’s conversation through her earpiece earlier in the day. When she heard that single gunshot, despite knowing their plan, panic had flowered deep in her gut, nearly paralyzing her. She’d finally managed to make herself move, to get down the back stairs to meet Fionn and escape, but when he’d arrived…

God, the look in his eyes.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Maybe conflict? She’d certainly spent plenty of time, both before and after the act, agonizing about what she’d had to do at Global First. But at that moment, staring up at him… There’d been nothing in Fionn’s eyes—no emotion, no regret, no nothing. Just a blank wall.

It had taken a couple of hours for that blankness to dissipate.

“Yeah, Sonaro means business,” Fionn said, pacing the length of the room, phone still in his hand. “We had a couple of run-ins not long after I left Ireland, in the Middle East. I didn’t tell him about the gold or this situation might’ve turned out very differently.”

The gold would be handed over to the garda. Lyse wasn’t sure exactly what tale Mack was spinning to mesh all of this together and have it make sense, but she knew whatever he was saying was working. The garda weren’t looking for Fionn. Sonaro and his men had melted into the forest as if by magic. All in all, it had worked out exactly as they’d planned.

So why didn’t she feel satisfied? Relieved? She should be glad their mission had succeeded, but that sense that she could lose herself crying for the next week and a half wasn’t going away.

“Was Siobhan all right?” she asked.

“Fine,” Fionn said absently. “King’s taking her back to Mack’s.”

She’d known that—she’d been standing right here as he talked to her—but really what Lyse wanted was Fionn’s focus, not his answer. Unfortunately his focus was on Mack, as it should be, not on babying her over the emotional hump she’d somehow face-planted into.

Unable to keep the calm facade intact a moment longer, she crossed the room and began to rummage in her bag. “I’m gonna take a shower.”

Both men nodded her way, barely seeming to register her words. Lyse slipped into the bathroom, locked the door, and leaned against it.

The first tear slid down her cheek.

With shaking hands she stripped off the clothes she’d worn in the woods and kicked them into the corner. With every tug, every pull, another tear fell and the lump in her throat got bigger. The throbbing at her temples beat at her, hounded her, refused to let her think about anything but the rhythm that echoed in her head, the racing of her heart. When she climbed into the tub, hot water hit her thighs, belly, chest, face, and she closed her eyes, letting it pour over her, cleanse her of the dirt and sweat and fear and adrenaline. The tears she couldn’t seem to control. She stuffed her fist hard into her mouth and let everything out, and yet, even when she could breathe again, she didn’t feel relief.

Water was supposed to wash away dirt. Why couldn’t it wash away sins? Or consequences? Why couldn’t they go back a year and let her gather her courage in both hands and approach the man she’d always wanted? Have a soft place to land when threats had