🐎 The Horsewoman Who Hid the Bullet Meant for the Mafia Boss

Chapter 14 - Inside the Horse

At first, Rowan thought Cormac was delirious.

Inside the horse.

It sounded impossible, obscene even, the kind of fevered phrase a wounded man might drag up from guilt and blood loss.

Then she remembered.

Not inside Midnight Reel’s body.

Inside the horse.

The bronze statue.

In the main hall of Ashgrove stood a life-sized bronze racehorse commissioned by Finbar Kavanagh after his first Derby winner. Rowan had passed it twice. A proud useless monument with one lifted foreleg and a plaque polished so often the horse’s name had nearly worn away.

Declan understood at the same moment she did.

His head turned toward the house.

Brennan, who had been sitting under guard beside the front row, was gone.

The next hour shattered into pursuit.

Paramedics took Cormac. He lived long enough to apologize to Midnight Reel from the stretcher, which was ridiculous and exactly the kind of thing Rowan would have mocked if it had not made her throat close.

Federal agents secured Padraig.

Moira disappeared with three men toward the north road.

Declan and Rowan ran for the house.

“Your arm,” he said.

“Still attached.”

“You always answer like that when you’re in pain?”

“Only when men ask questions instead of opening doors.”

He opened the door.

The grand hall was dark except for the chandelier above the bronze horse. Rain hammered the windows. Somewhere in the house, an alarm pulsed softly, warning everyone too late.

Brennan stood beside the statue with a hammer in one hand and a pistol in the other.

At his feet lay the loosened bronze plaque.

Behind it was a hollow compartment.

Empty.

Brennan smiled.

“You’re late.”

Declan stepped in front of Rowan.

Brennan laughed. “Still protecting strays. Finbar would be disgusted.”

“Finbar is very busy being dead.”

“Yes. And yet we’re all still choking on him.”

Rowan saw the envelope then.

Not in Brennan’s hand.

Tucked beneath the cuff of his jacket.

He had not had time to hide it properly.

“Whatever is in that paper,” she said, “won’t make you less afraid.”

Brennan’s eyes snapped to her.

“You people are insufferable. Stable girls. Dead trainers. Bleeding maids with opinions.”

“I’m an equine rehabilitation specialist.”

Declan, absurdly, said, “She gets particular about that.”

Brennan’s face twisted.

“You think this ends with evidence? Padraig built half the men coming to arrest him. He’ll be out before your horse stops limping.”

“Maybe,” Declan said. “But you won’t.”

Brennan lifted the gun.

Rowan moved.

Not toward him.

Toward the chandelier switch.

The sudden darkness broke his aim.

Declan lunged.

A shot fired into the ceiling.

Glass rained down like hard glitter.

Rowan hit the floor, rolled beneath the bronze horse, and grabbed the fallen plaque. Brennan cursed. Declan struck him once, twice, and the gun clattered across marble.

When the lights came back under emergency power, Brennan was face down with Declan’s knee between his shoulders.

Rowan sat beneath the statue, breathing hard, the real trust document in her lap.

It had been taped to the underside of the bronze belly.

“Inside the horse,” she said, and laughed once, because exhaustion had finally turned language into nonsense.

Declan looked at the paper.

Then at her.

His face altered slowly.

Not relief.

Something more dangerous to his guarded life.

Wonder.

“You found it.”

“No.”