Chapter 5 - Iron in the Parlor
The private study on the third floor of Ashgrove Manor did not resemble the home of an equine enthusiast.
The walls were paneled in dark bog oak, lined not with racing trophies, but with surveillance monitors displaying silent, flickering green feeds of the estate's seven perimeter gates, the approach roads, and the marshlands bordering the river.
Declan kicked the heavy double doors shut and set Rowan down on a leather Chesterfield sofa in front of a roaring peat fire.
He vanished into an adjoining washroom and returned thirty seconds later with a metal basin filled with steaming water, a bottle of medical-grade surgical disinfectant, clean curved needles, surgical silk, and a heavy bottle of uncut pot-still whiskey.
He didn't ask questions. Not yet.
He knelt beside the sofa, his sleeves rolled past his elbows, his forearms corded with muscle and crisscrossed with faded, jagged white scars that had nothing to do with horses.
"Drink," he ordered, setting the whiskey bottle against her lips.
Rowan turned her head away. "I need to keep my head clear."
"You need to not go into shock while I debride this wound," Declan said, his voice flat and uncompromising. "Drink half of it, or I'll hold your nose and pour it down your throat."
She glared at him, grabbed the neck of the bottle with her right hand, and took three deep, burning swallows. The liquor hit her empty stomach like liquid napalm, sending an immediate wave of warmth into her extremities.
Declan took a pair of surgical shears and sliced away the rest of her undershirt, exposing her pale torso to the firelight. He dipped a clean towel into the scalding water and began wiping away the caked blood.
His touch was not gentle, but it was extraordinarily practiced. There was no hesitation in his hands. He worked with the detached efficiency of a field surgeon who had closed up bullet wounds in basements, warehouses, and the backs of speeding vans.
"Who taught you to sew monofilament?" he asked, using forceps to pull the first frayed blue knot from her skin.
Rowan clamped her teeth together, a groan vibrating in her chest. "My father."
"Your father was a poacher or a criminal."
"Both," she gasped, her knuckles turning white where she gripped the leather cushion. "He was a mechanic for the Westies in South Boston."
Declan paused, the forceps hovering over her shoulder. "South Boston. That explains the accent you try so hard to swallow."
He pulled the stitch free. Rowan’s back arched off the sofa, her vision exploding into blinding white stars. A low, ragged scream tore from her throat before she could swallow it.
Declan placed one heavy, calloused hand flat against her sternum, holding her down against the leather with effortless dominance.
"Breathe through it, Rowan. Look at me. Eyes on me."
She forced her eyelids open.
Declan was looking down at her, not with pity, but with an intense, burning focus that seemed to anchor her to reality.
"You took a hollow point," he said softly, cleaning the exposed crater with iodine. "It expanded when it hit the bone, but it didn't shatter the scapula. You got lucky. Or the man who pulled the trigger was using cheap ammunition."
"It was a Beretta 92," Rowan whispered, shivering violently as the fever peaked. "Subsonic rounds. Suppressed."
Declan’s jaw hardened until the muscle jumped beneath his skin. "Viktor Vance."
Rowan’s eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated terror.
She tried to push herself up, but Declan’s hand remained glued to her chest, unmovable as stone.
"How do you know that name?" she breathed.
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"Because," Declan murmured, threading a curved needle with black surgical thread, "Viktor Vance owes me two million euros from a bloodstock syndicate that went bad in Antwerp three years ago. And because two of his scouts have been sitting in a gray Audi at the crossroads three miles from my gate since Tuesday."
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