Chapter 13
Dervla
I’m jolted awake by being cold and alone. I fell asleep on Aidan, but he has left the bed. It’s dark, and I fumble for my phone before remembering I turned it off. I wait for it to turn back on so I can check the time.
I sit up, hair a mess, the sheets tangled around my legs.
Voices carry faintly from downstairs.
So much for being done for the day.
I drag on some clothes and open the bedroom door. The landing is dark, lit only by the light downstairs. I pause for half a second, listening.
Declan’s voice. Aidan’s. Cormac’s lower than both of them.
I head down.
They are all in the sitting room when I walk in. Declan is standing by the fireplace with his phone still in his hand. Cormac is in the armchair, elbows on knees. Aidan is by the window, looking out through the gap in the curtain like he expects the night itself to make a move.
Three heads turn towards me.
“That looks like a face configuration that means my sleep is over.”
Aidan lets the curtain fall back into place. “You were meant to stay asleep.”
“And yet here I am. What happened now?”
Declan runs a hand through his hair. “Aidan and I spoke to our dads about the Romans and other things.”
“Okay. Did you find anything out?”
“Yes. Sit.”
I sit and listen to everything Declan says about what his dad told him.
“Call a Board meeting and fire everyone,” I say at the end. “I can do that.”
“But by fire, you need to use literal fire,” Cormac snorts.
“I can also do that.”
“What about O’Connell?” I ask, turning to Aidan. “Anything to add that Declan’s dad didn’t already say?”
Aidan turns from the window and studies me for a second too long, like he is deciding how much to tell me and whether I am going to sprint towards danger the second he does.
“Yes,” he says at last. “A few things.”
“Hit me.”
“My father agrees with Declan’s. The Romans don’t move like a family. They move like a machine. Quiet routes. Quiet people. They make institutions rot from the inside and then take them over.”
“Does that mean St. Aug’s has fallen already?”
Aidan’s expression stays unreadable. “Not yet. But it’s compromised enough that walking in blind would be stupid.”
“Compromised how?” I ask.
“Admin routes, maintenance, hiring chains, records access, transport links, accounts. The unsexy parts that keep a place alive,” Aidan says.
“If the Romans have people inside those systems, they can move information, lock doors, erase paper trails, redirect deliveries, create alibis, make people vanish on paper before they do it in person.”
I sit back and absorb that. “So not fallen. Infested.”
“Exactly,” Declan says.
“Whitmore knew some of it,” Cormac adds. “Maybe a lot of it. He’s dead now. That leaves gaps.”
“Gaps I get to fill.” I look between them.
“Precisely. Board meeting first. Both our dads agreed you can trust Gallagher, Roisin, and Maeve,” Declan says.
“Maeve. Are you absolutely sure about that?”
Declan shifts his weight by the fireplace. “Maeve was meant to be positioned at St. Augustine’s before your dad died. Cillian was bringing her in to protect you. That part lines up with what she told us on the phone.”
Aidan adds, “She had utility because she could move in spaces Cillian and Séamus couldn’t without setting alarms off.
She is unaffiliated with Séamus.” He comes away from the window and perches on the arm of the sofa opposite me.
“The point is not whether Maeve deserves your trust. The point is whether she is useful in the next forty-eight hours.”
“Which she is,” I say, because that much is obvious. “Fine. Board meeting tomorrow,” I say and get up. “I’ll call Roisin first.”
The guys nod as I leave the room and head back upstairs. I snatch up my phone from the bedside table and dial before I can overthink it.
Roisin answers on the third ring. “You do know it’s after ten?”
“You say that like the country isn’t currently on fire.”
“That’s true,” she says. “What do you want?”
“A Board meeting tomorrow.”
A short pause. Then, “Bold.”
“Yes. Are you free to be useful, or are you busy lurking in hedges with Gallagher?”
“I can multitask. What time?”
“Morning. Early enough that anyone trying to dodge has less room to do it.”
“That’ll irritate everyone.”
“Good.”
I hear a car door shut on her end, then Gallagher’s muffled voice saying something too low for me to catch. Roisin comes back clearer. “Do you want formal notice or pressure first?”
“Both. Formal notice so no one can claim the process wasn’t followed. Pressure so no one thinks they can ignore it.”
“All right. I’ll draft language and send it through. Emergency Board session due to security compromise and the death of the Vice-Chancellor, 7 am?”
“Jesus. When you say it like that, it sounds dramatic.”
“It is dramatic. A man was murdered in his office.”
“True enough. Thanks.”
“Do you want to be the one to send it?”
I think about it for a second. “No,” I say slowly. “It will look like a power play. I want them off their guard when I pounce. Blood will spill, and the only three people left standing will be us.”
“Yeah, you don’t want to announce that.”
“Exactly. Thanks, Roisin. Sorry for kicking your arse.”
“Don’t be. I let you.” She hangs up.
I scowl and give the phone the finger. Board meeting down.
Next to claim the VC chair like it’s been mine all along, and Whitmore’s arse has just been keeping it warm for me.
I can do that. I can then rip everyone else a new one and untrue these Roman fuckers from St. Aug’s like the cockroaches they are.
Hopefully, all before Séamus pulls the plug on layer two.
I crawl back into bed fully clothed and decide sleep needs to be had before I attempt any of this. I close my eyes and pull the duvet over my head, blocking out the world.
* * *
The strong smell of coffee and a bacon sandwich hits my nose, and I crack an eye open to see Declan crouched next to me with breakfast balanced on a tray.
“Time?” I groan.
“Five am. Roisin called and said to make sure you were up and fed, ready for the meeting at seven.”
I push the duvet off my face and squint at him. “Five in the fucking morning is a hate crime.”
Declan grins and sets the tray on the bed. “Take it up with Roisin. She sounded deeply committed to your well-being in a very threatening way.”
I drag myself upright and take the coffee first with a painkiller chaser. It is hot, black, and strong enough to count as medical intervention.
The bacon is salty, the bread still warm, and the normality of it lands strangely in my chest. My life is detonating in stages, and Declan is crouched by my bed, feeding me breakfast before I go to war in a Board meeting.
“Did Roisin say anything else?” I ask around a bite.
“No,” he says, moving to sit on the bed. “She was her usual curt self.”
“I’m going to enjoy sliding Henrietta into that big fucker that shoved me into the chair in the boathouse after the gauntlet,” I mumble.
“I’m going to enjoy seeing it.” He gives me a stare as if he expects me to tell him he’s not coming.
I wouldn’t dare.
The gloves are off with Aidan after our chat yesterday, and I can see that he has passed this on to his band of men.
I swallow the last of the coffee and hand him the empty mug. “Good. Because I’m not going in there to play nice while you lot sit at home and think supportive thoughts.”
His eyes flash, and he gives me that slow half-smile that fires up my lust engines.
Bad timing.
I finish the sandwich, wipe my fingers on a napkin, shove the tray aside and climb out of bed, heading for the shower. “I don’t need an audience. You can go.”
“Ouch,” he mutters, but his smile tells me he isn’t offended. He simply picks up the tray and leaves.
If I didn’t already love him, I definitely would now.
The shower helps. Not enough, but enough that I stop feeling like a corpse dragged upright by caffeine and painkillers.
I scrub yesterday off my skin and stand under the water until the steam clears my head into something usable. I get out, get dressed in nothing special and head downstairs. The house is already awake in the way battlefields are awake. Quiet. Intentional. Charged.
Cormac is in the kitchen finishing his coffee.
Aidan stands by the back door in dark clothes with a blade of morning light cutting across one side of him.
Declan is at the table, scrolling through his phone with the sort of expression that suggests somebody somewhere is about to have a terrible day.
All three of them look up when I walk in.
“Ready?” I ask because I’m not fucking about. I want to get there and complete the first part of our plan.
“Let’s go,” Aidan says and opens the back door.
We file out, going around the side of the house and trying our best to ignore Séamus’ guards.
Of course two of them follow us.
I don’t really want Séamus to know what I’m doing in case he decides to stop me. So I give the guys a warning glance to keep their mouths shut. They do.
I also try to convey that I need them to handle this while I slip into this meeting. I don’t even know where it is, but I take a stab in the dark and head for the old chapel where I was summoned on my first night.
I’m right.
The chapel doors are unlocked. St. Augustine’s loves symbolism too much to keep its little seats of power hidden somewhere practical.
The old chapel is half-sacred, half-administrative. Rows of benches are shoved back. A long table is set beneath the high arched windows. Seven chairs sit around the table.
Roisin is already here.
She stands near the table in a dark coat with a folder in one hand and a coffee in the other, like she was born to deliver bad news in gothic architecture. Gallagher is beside her, broad and immovable, one hand in his coat pocket, expression giving away nothing.
“You all wait outside,” I say to the men.
My three guys grimace but accept this is a Board thing, and they are not Board. Séamus’ men, on the other hand, are not impressed.
“I said wait outside. Don’t make me say it again.”
The one called Darragh gives me a fierce glare, probably debating if he should ignore my orders, but decides against it.
Which shocks me. I was expecting a fight on my hands.
The men back out, and I’m left alone with Roisin and Kevin.
My senses sharpen because I’m not altogether trusting now that I’m alone with them.
Neither of them appears to be threatening or plotting against me, but they probably wouldn’t.
“Did everyone confirm?”
“Confirm is generous,” she says. “Two objected to the hour. One objected to the venue. One objected to your existence, which felt on brand. They are all still coming.”
I move to the table and look at the seven chairs. One is mine. “Isla Flanagan. Liam Fitzgerald, Connor Ryan and that big fucker whose name I can never remember.”
“Ronan Murphy,” Gallagher supplies helpfully.
“Right. Which ones objected to my existence?”
“Ronan,” Roisin snorts.
“Then he dies first.”
Roisin cuts off her mirth immediately. “You are serious about this.”
It’s not a question. “Yes,” I say.
The chapel feels colder after that. Morning light spills pale through the high windows and turns the dust in the air into something churchlike and false. There is nothing holy about this room now. Just a table, seven chairs, and the sort of quiet that comes before a blade leaves its sheath.
Gallagher studies me for a beat and then nods.
Roisin sets her coffee down on the table. “Then let’s be clear before they arrive. You do not threaten murder in the first ten seconds.”
“I wasn’t planning to be that obvious.”
“In the first twenty, either.”
I give her a flat look. “You’re no fun.”
“I’m a delight. Sit down.”
I pull out the chair that feels most like mine and sit at the head of the table without asking whether it is.
It is now. The wood is old and scarred under my hands.
My dad is dead. Whitmore is dead. Half the country is on fire because my father built a map made of petrol and secrets.
If anyone in this room expected me to arrive humble, they have badly misread the day.
“You don’t want to appear as if you’re standing around waiting to kill them,” Roisin points out.
“Fair enough. Even though I am.”
“They’re late,” Gallagher says a beat later.
“If they don’t show, they’re deader than just dead,” I grit out just as the door opens and that Isla bitch who accused me of murdering my dad strides in.