I reach out, snatching the phone back from Paddy, reading out the address to Connor, who pulls it up on his phone as I type a message back.
SEAMUS: Are you okayleannan?
TIG: It’s spelled Ylenia. You should probably learn that if you want this marriage to work.
“Tiggy’s not the one texting,” Connor says as I read the message aloud.
“How can you be so sure?” Paddy snorts, raising an eyebrow.
Connor shrugs. “She asked me a couple of months ago whatleannánmeant. I figured Fitzy here was getting mouthy when he fucked her and told her it meant sweetheart.”
“I meantbeloved,” I correct him. Connor smirks, shrugging again.
“At the time, I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. So I said sweetheart,” he replies easily. “The point is, if she were the one texting, she wouldn’t think you were butchering her weird-ass name.” He squints at his phone. “I’ll make a call and see if we can get eyes on this place. It’s about twenty minutes out.”
“Saddle up, lads,” I snap, stalking to the weapons cabinet in my den, pulling out the guns I want, as the other lads follow suit.
Connor walks back into the room, snatching up two guns as he nods to me.
“Eyes on it. It’s a warehouse, so we are looking through the CCTV from across the road.”
“Let’s go.”
Ronan slides into the front of one SUV, Connor into the other. Niall and Liam join Ronan while Paddy and I climb into Connor’s vehicle.
“Seamus,” Paddy starts, falling silent as I shoot a lethal glare at him.
“I don’t want to fucking hear it right now, Paddy,” I snap back. The tires squeal as Connor pulls away from the curb, throwing his phone into my lap. Plucking it up, I stare at the CCTV footage. Occasionally an armed guard will walk into view. Eastern European, by the looks of things.
“Bulgarian?” Paddy asks, craning his neck to look at the phone screen.
“Maybe,” I grunt back, assessing how many guards there might be.
We park down the road, grabbing our weapons and moving stealthily until we are flanking the warehouse gates. At my signal,Niall and Ronan make easy work of the guards out the front of the warehouse.
“Romanian,” Niall says, nudging the head of one of the dead men with his toe. Romanian. Jesus fuck.
“It’s a fucking trap,” Paddy hisses. No fucking shit.
“They’re texting me pretending to be my wife. Of course it’s a fucking trap, genius,” I hiss back. “We’re still getting my wife back. If you’re not up for it, you can take a fucking walk.”
Paddy glares at me for a long beat, cocking his gun.
“Let’s fucking do this.”
That’s what I want to hear. We move through the warehouse, taking out guards as quietly as possible. Jesus fuck, they have an entire fucking army amassed. This isn’t just to hold Tig. This is to try to take us out.
As we slide into the large, airy main warehouse space, a scream catches my attention.
“Seamus, no! It’s a trap!”Tig screams at me.
She’s standing on one side of the room, facing five men with guns trained on her. She bolts, running straight for me, and it feels like all my blood has been replaced with ice as the sound of cocking guns fills the air. Jesus fucking Christ.
“Hold your fire!”
Tig leaps at me, wrapping her arms around me tightly, burying her face into my chest, sobbing, as her father steps out from behind the line of armed men, having given the order to stay their hands.
Paddy’s gun is trained on Marius fucking Albescu’s face, while the other four keep their weapons on the armed men, who aim at us now.