The Mafia Wife's Revenge novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Fire

They came through the bay doors at two in the morning.

The brick had been a signal, and I had been lying in the dark waiting for the next one.

I heard the lock go and I was already out of bed.

Maeve's room was across the landing.

I pulled her up by the arm, and she woke swearing.

"How many?" she said.

I looked down the stairs through the rail.

Eight men in black masks had spread across the engine bay, and the one in front carried a rope.

A man with a lisp stood among them.

I knew his voice even through a mask.

"The girl first," he said. "Nobody else gets hurt if she walks."

Cillian came out of the shadows by the stove, barefoot, with a pistol low at his side.

"Walk where?" he said.

"Keane's guardianship order is signed," the lisping man said. "We take her home. That's the law."

"It isn't the law," Cillian said. "It's a theft."

He raised the gun, and three men raised theirs.

I was already running down the back stairs.

On the wall beside the old fire pole hung a brass bell as big as a bucket, the original alarm of the firehouse.

Beside it was a red lever marked with a faded sign.

I pulled it with both hands.

The bell clanged so loud it shook dust from the ceiling.

Water burst out of the sprinklers all at once, a cold roaring rain across the engine bay.

The masked men yelled, and they could not see.

The floor became a slick of black water.

One of them slid across it on his back and fired at nothing.

Cillian moved.

I had never watched a man fight, and I understood why Damian trusted him with his dirtiest work.

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