I want to tell him I don’t give a shit, but his hand is pressed firmly down against my mouth. So firmly, in fact, that I can barely even growl at him.
“Fuck…”
His tone sounds alarm bells in my head.
Instinctively, I go still. Cillian’s hand relaxes slightly, though he still keeps it clamped over my mouth.
“What is it?” I manage to whisper into his palm.
To my surprise, he lets me go and flips me around to face him.
“I need you to lie low, okay?” he instructs in a voice completely stripped of laughter. “A group of men just pulled up outside your house and they’re not the friendly kind.”
“Who are they?” I ask.
“They’re Kinahans.”
I can feel the blood drain from my face.
“Kinahan… as in the Kinahans? The mafia?” I stammer.
“The bastards is more like it,” he growls. “But yes. Them’s the lads.” He’s peering around the corner of the house where the front garden is on display.
I can see the vehicle parked outside now. Three beefy men get out, their feet hitting the cracked pavement with violent intent.
“Don’t worry, a ghrá,” he tells me. “I’ve got this.”
He looks so fucking confident right now.
Which can only mean one thing: he’s insane.
Because there’s no one in Dublin that messes with the Kinahans.
No one.
“Are you out of your damn mind?” I gasp, grabbing his arm without thinking and pulling him back behind the house. “If they’re Kinahans, they’re dangerous.”
“Not compared to me.”
I raise my eyebrows and shake my head. “Who do you think you are exactly?” I demand. “A fucking O’Sullivan? Because they’re the only other men in the city that have gone up against the Kinahans and lived to talk about it.”
His grin gets wider as Kinahan voices carry over to the garden.
“I can see our reputation precedes us.”
I stare at him for a moment.
“What…”
“Cillian O’Sullivan,” he reveals with a gratuitous bow. “At your service.”
Then he throws me a careless wink and leaves me standing alone in the shadows of the garden.