“He presses that button and we’re all gone,” I point out. “I have to do this.”
“Kian—”
“Cillian. Sometimes, even decent men must do terrible things for the greater good.”
He clenches his jaw. And then he bows his head and I know I’ve won. We clasp hands for a moment before I round the table and catch up to Renata.
The two of us walk towards the Greeks, but when we’re halfway there, Rokiades holds up his hand.
“Stop,” he says. “Renata, take his gun.”
She turns to me, but she makes no move to take my gun. In this case though, I’m more than willing to hurry things along. I grab her hand and shove the gun into her palm. “Give it to him.”
“That leaves you unarmed.”
“That’s the point,” I tell her with a wry laugh. “Give my gun to Rokiades. And remember… he won’t be prepared for what he doesn’t see coming.”
She nods slowly, careful to keep her expression appropriately destroyed as her fingers close around the gun.
“Good girl,” Rokiades commends her. “Now, come to me. O’Sullivan, you can stay where you are.”
Renata walks away from me, leaving me standing alone in the gulf between the Irish and the Greeks. The position is a vulnerable one. But I don’t feel vulnerable at all.
Because control is an illusion.
Sometimes, the men who think they have it are mistaken.
Sometimes, the women who think they have nothing have it all.
Renata walks right up to Rokiades and hands him my gun. “How poetic,” Yannis comments, “to be killed with your own weapon.”
He pushes Renata back towards his men and then he approaches me with my gun. The expression on his face is both perverse and manic.
“Any final words?” he asks me.
My eyes meet Renata’s over his shoulder. “She’s stronger than you think,” I tell him.
“Don’t worry,” he replies. “I’ll beat the strength right out of her. And I’m going to enjoy doing it.”
On the last word, he pulls the trigger. The click is loud.
But the bullet never comes.
And the second it takes him to realize that my gun is empty is the second Renata uses to pull out the scalpel I’d pressed into her palm along with the firearm.
Before any of Rokiades’s men can stop her, she steps forward and buries it in the side of his neck.
His body collapses instantly. But before he even hits the ground, I lunge forward and grab the detonator in his hand.
Greek loyalists rush forward and grab Renata, disarming her in a matter of seconds, but I raise the detonator above my head.
“Enough!” I roar. “Let her fucking go now. Or we all die.”
The men holding her release her instantly. She runs towards me, her arms engulfing my body tightly.
“Drop your weapons,” I instruct all of them.
Only after they do as I ordered do I wrap my arm around Renata and pull her back towards the safety of the Clan. As we round the table, I make eye contact with my brother.