Chapter 4
Cormac
“Well, that was… interesting.”
“I don’t know what to think.” She looks at me with those eyes, and I want to light the match that sets everyone who hurts her on fire.
“It’s hard to know,” Declan muses. “Whitmore was quite clear.”
“Since when did we all start acting like Whitmore’s word was king?”
“Since Séamus told you to take the call,” I point out.
Dervla drags both hands through her damp hair and starts pacing the room in short, sharp lines. “That does not make him infallible.”
“No,” I say. “It makes him useful.”
She stops at the foot of the bed and looks between the three of us like she wants one answer and hates that there isn’t one.
“Gallagher and Roisin say the woman killed Dad,” she says.
“Whitmore says someone will come claiming they know who killed him, and I shouldn’t believe them.
So either Whitmore is wrong, Gallagher is wrong, or everyone is telling versions of the truth that still get me killed. ”
“Probably the third one,” Declan says.
I nod once. “Most likely.”
Aidan picks up his phone again, scrolling with clipped movements. “Did they say where she is now?”
“No. Just that she’s moving.”
Declan’s expression hardens. “Then we work on the assumption she’s already on the way.”
“Call Whitmore back. Tell him what Gallagher and Roisin just did,” I say. It’s the bluntest, most direct way. I hate beating around the bush.
She nods and reaches for her phone, scrolling to the number that called her minutes ago. “Whitmore?”
“Miss Callaghan?”
“It’s Cormac,” I cut in, taking the phone from her hand before she can start fencing with him. “Gallagher and Roisin just called. They’ve named the woman they think killed Cillian.”
A beat.
Whitmore’s voice loses what little dryness it had. “Gallagher?” he asks quietly.
“Yeah. So, which is it? Can we trust him or not because he just did the one thing we were warned against?”
“I’ll call you back,” he says and hangs up.
“Gee, that was helpful,” Dervla says, taking her phone from me.
Aidan looks up from his phone. “If he’s rattled, that’s useful.”
“It’s not useful if it means he’s about to confirm we’re fucked,” Dervla snaps.
“You’re assuming we weren’t already,” Declan says.
She turns on him with enough force to cut. “Can nobody in this house say one thing that isn’t infuriating for five fucking minutes?”
“No,” I say. “Probably not.”
The phone rings again. Dervla answers. “Someone better have answers.”
“Why did you hang up?” Roisin asks.
“Because we don’t trust you,” I state. “Whitmore told us not to believe anyone who came to Dervla with her father’s killer’s name.”
Dervla grimaces, but I’m done with this bullshit.
“I don’t think that was meant to include us,” Gallagher says.
“Yeah, well, we don’t know that.”
There is a weighted pause. Dervla chews her lip.
“Look,” Gallagher says. “I understand—”
“You understand nothing,” I interrupt. “If you knew who killed Cillian, why didn’t you say before now?”
Dervla’s eyes shoot to mine. It’s exactly what she’s thinking.
Gallagher lets out a slow breath down the line. “Because I didn’t know enough to hand it to her without getting her killed faster.”
“Bullshit,” Dervla says.
“No,” I say, because the tone is wrong for bullshit. Too flat. Too tired. “Keep talking.”
Dervla stares at the phone like she could drag the truth out of it by force. Her face has gone pale under the bruising. Not weak. Just furious enough to burn through skin.
“I had a name,” Gallagher says. “Not proof. Not chain. Not motive I could stand over. A name in this world is not a kindness unless you can protect the person you give it to.”
“And now?” Dervla asks, voice sharp as wire. “What changed in the last ten fucking minutes?”
Roisin answers this time. “Movement. She’s surfaced because everything’s on fire. She thinks the chaos gives her cover.”
I take the phone from Dervla again before this turns into another circle. “Where is she?”
“We don’t know exactly,” Gallagher says. “We know she made contact through an old channel Cillian used once and regretted. We know she is asking about you, the men, you coming here.”
“That still doesn’t prove anything,” I say, just to push this further.
“I will kill her before she sets foot anywhere near Dervla,” Gallagher states. “That is why we are here. If she thinks she can get away with all of this shit, she has another thing coming. She will be burned in every sense of the word.”
“And if she didn’t do it?”
“She did. But if you want a verbal confession before she rattles out her last breath, so be it.”
I hold the phone tighter. “That’s a very dramatic answer for a man asking us to trust him.”
“It isn’t trust,” Gallagher says. “It’s urgency.”
Roisin cuts in. “Argue later. Listen now. If Maeve makes contact, she will not come in hard. She’ll come in wounded, informed, useful. She’ll offer something you want too badly to ignore.”
Dervla laughs once. It is ugly and stripped bare. “What I want is to put my hands around her throat.”
“That too,” Roisin says. “But first you’ll want answers.”
I already know that. So does everyone in this room. That is the problem.
“Seeing as you know so much about this already. Why did she kill him?”
There is another lengthy pause, and it’s starting to piss me off. “These long stretches of you two not talking is not exactly filling me with confidence here,” I say.
“We understand that. There is something we know that we aren’t sure you know, and we don’t want to throw petrol on the fire.”
“Yeah? Well. We know something you aren’t sure you know, so how about that?”
“Jesus,” Dervla snaps and snatches the phone from me. “Are you talking about the hard drive?”
Aidan lets out a low growl as I roll my eyes.
Roisin goes quiet.
That silence says enough on its own.
Dervla’s face changes. Not shock. Recognition. Fury with somewhere to land now.
Gallagher answers first, cautious in a way I do not like from grown men with weapons and secrets. “It’s part of it.”
Aidan’s head comes up sharply. “Part?”
“The hard drive is not just about St. Augustine’s,” Roisin says. “You know that already. What you might not know is that Maeve thought Cillian was going to use it to burn more than one network. Not just expose people. End them. End her.”
Dervla’s fingers tighten around the phone. “That still isn’t motive.”
“No,” Gallagher says. “It’s pressure. Motive is older.”
I take one step closer to Dervla. “Then fucking say it.”
He does.
“Because she was his sister.”
For a second, nobody in the room says a fucking word.
I stare at the phone in Dervla’s hand like it might have misspoken.
Dervla blinks once. “What?”
Gallagher’s voice comes back flat. Resigned. “Half-sister. Different mothers. Same father. Cillian kept it buried because the family that raised her had ties he didn’t want touching you.”
Dervla laughs, but there’s nothing sane in it.
“No. No, you do not get to drop that into the middle of this and expect me to just—” She cuts herself off and presses the heel of her hand to her forehead.
“Fucking hell. Does Alanna know?” she spits out and then shakes her head.
“Of course she knows her husband was a lying, cheating piece of shit.”
“Not exactly. Maeve was born before he and Alanna married. Illegitimate, of course, never acknowledged.”
“And that’s why she hated Cillian,” I say, catching on quick. “It’s a bit of cliché, really, isn’t it.”
Roisin snorts. “You could say that. But also valid. She wanted what Cillian had, what he was building. Someone leaked it, she went to him and shot him. She obviously didn’t find the hard drive.”
“No, because no one could’ve found it except me,” Dervla mutters. “Dad made sure of that.”
“Does Séamus know all of this?” I ask, even though I’m fairly sure he does.
“We don’t know. Assume he does.”
“And he didn’t say, neither did Alanna, and I asked her outright if she knew who killed Dad,” Dervla says. “Is anyone telling the truth around here? Anyone at all?”
“She probably lied to protect you, or to delay telling you, as opposed to being malicious,” Roisin says.
“Shut up,” Dervla growls. “Don’t defend her.”
“I’m not. I’m stating what I think. If she had told you all of this, would you have sat down and waited, or would you have tried to find her and probably get yourself killed in the process?”
I blink and look at Dervla. “She has a point.”
Her gaze flashes to mine with a warning. “Don’t,” she snaps.
I step into her space before she can take that warning and turn it into a blade. “I’m not saying Roisin is right. I’m saying if Alanna sat on it, there was a reason.”
“That reason being everybody in this fucking family thinks I need to be managed,” Dervla bites out.
“Probably,” Declan says.
She rounds on him. “You’re trying very hard to die today.”
Before things can escalate further, I grit out. “What is Maeve’s endgame with Dervla? To kill her too?”
That brings everything back into a cold, hard clarity. “Pretty much,” Roisin says. “But like Gallagher said, we are here waiting for her to show. We will get to her even before Séamus’ men do. She has a lot to answer for.”
“Why do you care so much?” Dervla asks, suddenly looking defeated.
“Because Cillian was my best friend,” Gallagher says softly.
“And he was my mentor,” Roisin says. “I loved him. Maeve will die for what she did.”
“You had better be right about this theory,” I say, taking the phone back from Dervla. “If you have come to Dervla today with the wrong name, you will pay screaming. Are we clear?”
“We’re clear,” Gallagher says.
I end the call before he can add anything else.
The room drops into a silence that feels armed.
“My father had a secret half-sister, she murdered him, and now she’s coming here to murder me,” Dervla says.
“That is what they are saying.”
“Don’t you believe them?” she asks.
“Oh, I believe them. I also think that everyone kept this from you for the exact reasons Roisin said. I just don’t want you to stab me for saying it.”
“You think I’d run off after this woman and potentially give her what she hopes for?” Her gaze bores into mine.
“Yes.”
She hisses, but then she runs her hands through her hair. “It’s a fair assessment. I probably would’ve,” she says stiffly.
“I know. So you can be mad at Alanna and Séamus all you like, but I get why they didn’t tell you.”
Her shoulders sag. “I get it too. In a way. But I still had a right to know all of this.”
“You did,” I say, moving to her to cup her cheek. Declan and Aidan are silent witnesses to this moment, but they need to be. She is overwhelmed right now. Her face is warm under my palm.
For one second, she just stands there and lets me do it, eyes bright with too much. Rage. Grief. Shock. A whole family tree of poison dropped in her lap before lunch.
Then she catches my wrist and pulls my hand away. Not rough. Just enough to remind both of us what she does when things get too close.
“That’s the bit that keeps pissing me off. I need to call Alanna. Alone.”
“Of course,” I say and step back after putting her phone in her hand.
Aidan gives her a long look, then nods once.
“Eat something before you start another war,” Declan says.
She gives him a shaky smile, and we leave.
The door shuts behind me with a sharp click that lands in my spine like a warning.
The landing feels too narrow all of a sudden. Too exposed. Declan plants himself by the bannister and scrubs a hand over his face. Aidan stands opposite the door, jaw set hard enough to crack enamel.
None of us speaks.