He’s still following me.
My lungs are about to burst out of my chest. The pain is searing into my limbs and slowing me down.
Then I feel him grab my arm and twist me around hard.
“No!”
I try and fight him, but he pushes me into a narrow alleyway and pins me up against the wall.
I can smell garbage and urine and the strong body odor rising off the Kinahan thug who’s got me captive.
“Stop…! Please…”
“‘Please’ don’t work on me, baby,” he snarls with a sickly smile. “You’re in a fuck-load of trouble. Your boy just killed ours.”
“He tried to attack us.”
“Attacks happen all the time in this city,” he tells me. “Murders are a whole other ballgame.”
Fear skitters across my body.
But this time, it’s not for me.
It’s for Cillian.
“Let me go!”
“I will. Just as soon as you spread those sweet—”
My reaction is immediate and completely unplanned. The moment it becomes clear exactly what his intentions are, I knee him in the groin as hard as I can.
Instant, sickening crunch.
His ugly face scrunches up with pain.
“Fuuuuck!” he stammers, the pain preventing him from screaming.
I push him off me and he crumples to the ground in a fetal position.
Serves the motherfucker right.
I don’t bother to stay and gloat. I leap over his folded body and run out of the alleyway, then zig-zag through the streets until I find a quiet corner in the middle of one of the little public gardens that pepper Dublin.
I sit down and try to calm myself.
My hands are red and clammy and I’m sweating profusely.
I run my hands down my face, trying desperately to get my bearings.
It takes a good fifteen minutes for my breathing to come back to normal. Even then, I can’t shake off the panic that’s coursing through me like poison.
I wrap my arms around my body trying to curb the shaking.
It doesn’t stop.
“Cillian…”
Even whispering his name is painful.