Chapter 15
Dervla
Isla stands inside the doorway and looks at me sitting at the head of the table like I’ve dragged a corpse into her breakfast.
Her expression tightens.
“Well,” she says eventually when no one else says anything. “You make yourself comfortable.”
I smile without warmth. “You’re late.”
“I’m on time at this ungodly hour.”
Roisin makes a bored sound. Gallagher doesn’t move.
I keep my eyes on Isla. Her blonde hair is immaculate despite the rain. She wears a cream blouse under a dark coat. A string of pearls. Of course. She looks like the kind of woman who files complaints in duplicate and thinks that counts as courage.
“Sit.”
For a second, I think she might refuse on principle.
Then she walks in and takes a chair two seats to my left with the air of a woman accepting a seat at a plague banquet.
Liam Fitzgerald enters the chapel, older, narrow-faced, carrying a leather folio under one arm as if this is a normal institutional inconvenience and not a crisis meeting called after a public execution and the murder of the Vice-Chancellor.
Connor Ryan follows him, broad and red-cheeked and already annoyed to be awake and moving.
Then Ronan Murphy fills the doorway. I sneer at him.
He sneers back.
There is no hesitation, no curiosity, no boredom, only arrogance. He is up to something, and it’s not good.
Not that I’m ruling out any of them being up to something. I’m ready to move if this goes the way I expect it will.
Everyone is assembled.
Roisin takes her seat next to me, Gallagher on the other side. That shows a united front without drawing attention to it. Liam, Connor and Ronan fill the remaining three seats.
Seven seats, all filled.
I place both hands on the table and let the silence sit until it starts to itch under their skin.
“Right,” I say. “Vice-Chancellor Whitmore is dead. He was murdered in his office yesterday afternoon. The campus is compromised. The Board is compromised. Ireland is currently exploding in places that matter to people with money and secrets. So let’s not waste my time pretending this is a routine emergency session. ”
Connor shifts in his chair. Liam sets his folio down with too much care. Isla looks offended that reality has entered the room in muddy boots.
Ronan just watches me like he’d enjoy seeing whether I bleed as much as everyone else.
“I object to the tone already,” Isla says.
“Noted,” I say. “Ignored.”
Her mouth hardens.
Roisin opens her folder. “Emergency session convened under exceptional security and governance circumstances following the death of the Vice-Chancellor. Attendance recorded. Quorum met.”
Liam clears his throat. “First order of business should be securing a new VC.”
“Already taken care of,” I say before anyone else can weigh in. “Spoiler alert. It’s me.”
“What?” Isla asks, looking like someone kicked her in the cunt. “You can’t just—”
“I just did. Anyone who wants to try to stop me… now’s your chance.” I rise, hand going around my back where Henrietta is stashed. My gaze is on Isla, but I know it’s going to come from Ronan. He is exuding assassination energy right now.
Ronan smiles.
Not big. Not friendly. Just enough to show me he thinks he has already made peace with how this ends.
Too bad he has no idea he is the one who will be ended.
I pull Henrietta out, feeling the hilt of the blade cold in my palm.
Before anyone can move, I fling her straight at Ronan.
He grunts as the blade buries into his neck, blood spurting out as his hand goes up, shock in his eyes as he keels over, falling out of his chair, gurgling.
“My God!” Isla cries. “What have you done?”
Liam is already moving, gun out, but his hand is shaking.
Gallagher is fast. His weapon levels at Liam’s chest before the man can find his aim.
I don’t look at either of them. I walk to Ronan, crouch over him, take Henrietta by the hilt and pull her free.
The sound it makes is wet and final. He’s still twitching.
I search him while he dies. Gun. Grenade.
Three blades. I shove the gun into the back of my jeans and throw the blades towards Roisin. She leaves them on the ground.
“Looks like he came looking for a fight,” I say, tossing the grenade up in the air and catching it as I rise.
Isla gasps. “This is insane!”
“And you’re next, you vicious bitch.” I’m already behind her. One hand in her immaculate hair, Henrietta across her throat in a single draw. “I didn’t kill my father,” I say. “But I have killed you.”
I feel her go.
Liam fires. It goes wide. Gallagher puts him down.
That leaves Connor. He has gone white.
Not with shock. With calculation.
That matters.
He is not horrified by three bodies on the chapel stone. He is horrified that the script has changed, and he no longer knows his line.
I lift the grenade slightly. “Think very fucking carefully.”
His hands come up, slow, palms out. “I’m not armed.”
“Stand up.”
He does.
Gallagher keeps his gun trained on Connor, expression flat as carved slate.
I let Isla drop out of my grip and step away from the blood spreading under her chair legs.
The room feels sharper than it did five minutes ago. Cleaner. The decision has been made. The first cut always clarifies.
Connor swallows hard. “What the fuck is this?”
“This,” I say, lowering the blade to my side, “is a hostile takeover.”
Connor looks at Ronan bleeding out on the chapel floor, then at Liam, then at Isla, and finally at me.
He understands.
Not morally. Not politically. Just mechanically.
The old order is dead in front of him. Quite literally. The only question left is whether he wants to join it.
“You’ve lost your fucking mind,” he says, but his voice is thin.
“No,” I reply. “I found it.”
“Sit back down,” Roisin says to Connor.
He doesn’t move.
Gallagher tilts the gun a fraction higher. “That was not optional.”
Connor sits.
I take my chair again at the head of the table, Henrietta still in my hand, and set the grenade down in front of me with deliberate care. Connor’s eyes stick to it.
“For or against the declaration that I become Vice-Chancellor of St. Augustine’s?” I ask him.
His gaze darts to mine. “What? You can’t just do this! There are protocols.”
“Wrong answer,” I say, pulling the gun out and aim. I’m not great with guns, but the shot lands at close range, embedded in his chest.
He looks down, first in surprise, then in anger. “You little cunt.”
“And there is the face you were hiding. Looks like cleaning house was the right move.”
He topples without another word, twitching as he bleeds out.
“Well, this was fun,” Roisin drawls. “Who’s going to tidy all this mess up?”
“Séamus’ guards,” I say without thinking.
“I expected this to be a longer process,” Gallagher says, putting his gun away, and he stares down at Connor. “We’ve only been here five minutes.”
“Why waste time?” I ask with a shrug. “They all had to go. Next is every last one of the staff instilled in St. Aug’s.” I look up at Gallagher. “Except you, of course, Kevin.”
His eyes narrow as I call him by his first name. “Of course,” he mutters.
The chapel doors slam open a second later.
Declan comes in first, then Cormac, then Aidan, all three of them armed and visibly ready to turn the room into a butcher’s yard if they have to. Séamus’ men are right behind them, and for one bright, savage second, I am thoroughly pleased with myself.
Then I realise how this looks.
Four bodies. Blood on the stone. Me at the head of the table with a knife in front of me, a gun in the other, and a grenade sitting in front of me like a centrepiece decor.
Aidan stops dead.
Declan’s eyes flick over the room once, taking inventory with brutal speed.
Cormac looks at the dead, then at me. “You all right?”
“Yes,” I say.
Roisin shuts her folder. “For the record, the emergency session has concluded.”
Darragh mutters, “For fuck’s sake. I’m guessing you want us to clean this up?”
“If you would, that would be great,” I say with a big beam that probably looks slightly unhinged.
Gallagher turns to them with the calm authority of a man who has long since stopped finding corpses remarkable. “We need removal and sanitisation.”
“On it,” Darragh says and snaps his fingers. The other guard gets on the phone immediately.
“Good girl,” Aidan says, coming close enough to cup the back of my neck and pull me to him. His lips brush my forehead. “I knew you’d figure it out.”
“Figure what out?”
“Troy came with a message that Ronan was planning something. I made the call not to tell you. I trusted you to sort your shit out, and you did.”
I blink. That lands somewhere interesting. “If you had told me, I’d have played this differently,” I say out loud, just to sort through it in my head.
“Yes.”
I nod, accepting that. “Where is Troy now?”
“Probably crying into the bullet hole in his hand,” he replies with a smirk.
I raise an eyebrow. “For me?”
“Always, pixie,” he murmurs and steps back.
“Now what?” Declan asks.
“Now, I go to Whitmore’s office, make myself at home and then fire everyone.”
“Nice,” Cormac snorts. “You know that will bring the Romans straight to your doorstep, right?”
I grin at him. “That’s what I’m hoping for.”