30. Cormac
Chapter Thirty
CORMAC
Fiona is quiet this morning. Not the shy kind of quiet I’ve come to expect the morning after we’ve spent the night together. No, this is different. She’s distracted, almost… withdrawn.
I watch her pick at her toast like she’s trying to keep her hands busy.
The Friday morning sun spills across the dining table, making her hair shine like pale gold, but she barely looks up from her plate.
She hasn’t really looked at me since she sat down.
I give her another minute. Then another.
By the time I’ve finished half my coffee, I’ve had enough. “You’re distant. Why?”
Her head jerks up like she forgot I was sitting across from her. “Distant? I… I’m not distant.”
I level my gaze at her across the table. “Yes, you are. And you have been ever since we got back from the hotel. Did you not enjoy yourself?”
A faint flush creeps up her neck as she offers me a forced smile. “It’s not you. Really. I’m happy with…with how things are going.”
I hate that tiny stutter. Not because it bothers me, but because it’s so unlike her.
Fiona is confident and sharp. But today? She looks like someone who keeps forgetting how to breathe.
“You don’t need to worry about hurting my feelings. If the other night at the hotel was too much, if you want to slow things down?—”
“I don’t. Really, it’s not you.”
“Then what is it?”
She exhales as she pushes her plate away, her toast completely untouched.
“It’s my niece. She had surgery on Monday, and I have no idea how she’s doing. Joe, my brother-in-law, refuses to talk to me, and the hospital won’t give me any information because they claim I’m not immediate family.”
Her voice cracks on that last sentence. And even though she tries to hide it, I can see her trying to blink back the tears.
“Do you want me to make a call? I can get someone at the hospital to?—”
“No.”
The word leaves Fiona’s mouth so fast that even she looks startled by it.
I raise a brow. “No?”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she says, clearly flustered. “I appreciate the offer, I do. But it’s a violation of HIPAA to discuss a patient. I want an update, but I don’t want a doctor to lose their job because of it.”
“You don’t need to worry about that. I have many strings I can pull.”
Fiona shakes her head. “It’s fine. Really. I’ll hear something soon. No news is good news, right?”
Her tear-filled eyes are full of hope as she looks at me, but before I can say anything else to comfort her, Scout comes barreling down the stairs, wearing his jumper on backwards and toothpaste smeared all over his face.
I hold back laughter. “I think you should go back upstairs and try again, bud.”
“You told me to get ready, and I did,” he says, stubbornly.
I catch Fiona’s eye and find a genuine smile on her face. It’s small, but it’s there, and I love that Scout is the one who brings it out of her.
“Fiona, can we go to the park again today? There’s even more snow, and I never got to finish my snow man.” Scout pouts.
She ruffles his hair. “We’ll go later. But first, we have your lessons to do, remember? It’s your first official day of homeschool.”
Scout groans as he slides onto the chair beside Fiona.
“I thought that was a joke,” he mumbles as he gazes out of the window at the snow-covered city below, and I swallow a laugh.
“Don’t make him work too hard.” I finish the last of my coffee and get to my feet, snatching my phone off the table.
It immediately starts buzzing with a notification for a meeting I’ve already rescheduled twice, and I audibly sigh.
“If you get all of your work done, you can come and build snowmen with us,” Fiona teases.
Scout bounces in his seat. “Yes! Please come and build snowmen with us!”
“I’ll do my best.” I walk around the table to place a kiss on the top of Scout’s head.
On impulse, I lean over and press a quick kiss to Fiona’s head too.
She goes still for a moment, then leans in slightly, so I bend close and whisper in her ear, “We’ll talk more over dinner.”
“Ok,” she whispers when I pull back, her blue eyes meeting mine.
I reach out and gently stroke her cheek, wishing I could lift the weight that is sitting heavy on her shoulders, even if only for a moment. I wonder if maybe it would be worth paying her brother-in-law a visit…
While I ride the elevator down to the parking garage, I decide to send a message to Aiden Clark, Kieran’s trusted personal investigator, asking him to do a little digging on this Joe.
He sounds like a complete scumbag. The fact that he is keeping someone like Fiona, who is nothing but kind and attentive, away from her nieces doesn’t sit well with me.
Aside from worrying about Fiona, my attention keeps drifting back to Lorcan.
As I walk into the office at Sullivan Investments, I’m already replaying the last handful of leads Brennan and I have chased over the past week. Every single one has ended with the same misdirection or dead ends as people swear they haven’t seen Lorcan in months.
But I call bullshit on the lot of them.
Lorcan’s on the move, and I know he’s closer than any of us realizes.
And the longer we go without finding him, the higher the chances he will stumble across the truth about Scout or worse. The truth about Scout’s mother.
If Lorcan gets his hands on that information, he’ll weaponize it. And I can’t let that happen.
I lean back in my chair and stare at the ceiling, hoping for something to come out of the woodwork. There’s nothing I hate more than feeling out of control, but I’ve started to exhaust all of my contacts.
My inbox dings, and I almost upend my chair as I hurry to open it. But it’s only an email from Aiden sending over some information on Joe Halligan.
I pull up the file and quickly scan the contents, but every page I scroll through pisses me off more.
Multiple reprimands at work.
Financial strain.
A sealed domestic disturbance report that I can’t access without pulling strings.
And this prick thinks he can keep Fiona from seeing her nieces? Not on my watch.
I drag my finger across the trackpad and highlight a relevant line, which I forward onto one of my guys. Hopefully, knowing he has me watching his back might be enough to persuade Joe to step out of the way and give Fiona back the little family she has left.
The question is whether Fiona will thank me for it, or never forgive me for digging into her past.
After hitting send, I head across the hall into Fiona’s vacant office to use the coffee machine. I might have one of my own, but I find the lingering smell of her perfume in the air grounding.
I take my espresso back to my desk and pull out my phone.
ME: I think I might need a framed photo of your ass in one of those tight skirts to put on my desk.
FIONA: Is that your way of saying you miss me?
ME: I take it back, I think I might like being teased after all.
FIONA: That can be arranged…
ME: Aren’t you meant to be homeschooling my son? Not thinking of dirty ways to make me hard?
FIONA: You started it!
ME: Are you arguing with me?
FIONA: Which is the correct answer which ends up with you tying me to the bed?
I start typing out a response when a new text pops up on my screen with a message from Mitch, one of my tech contacts. I quickly click out of the thread with Fiona to see if he has anything new for me.
MITCH: Got a new lead. Possible activity matching Lorcan’s known associates.
Attached is an audio file, and I quickly hit play as my pulse quickens.
Could this actually be something?
Nothing but static comes through the speakers for a few seconds.
I turn up the sound and hold the phone to my ear as a couple of male voices filter through, one of which is Lorcan. I would recognize that tone anywhere, the smug, scheming bastard.
However, the other male voice is unfamiliar, which makes me feel uneasy.
“You’ll have everything you need,” the unknown voice whispers.
Lorcan chuckles, and the sound has my teeth grinding. “Good. Once our little insider sends the files through, Ronan will crumble. And the rest will follow.”
I straighten.
Did he just say insider?
“Keep close. If anything changes, I want to know before they do,” Lorcan orders before the static swallows the rest of the conversation.
I replay it. Twice. Hoping that somehow, I misheard it. But no.
There’s a spy feeding information directly into our enemies’ hands and has been doing so all this time.
The only question is, are they inside the company or inside our inner circle?
Fuck.
I quickly call Mitch, praying like hell that there is some mix-up and that there’s no way what I just heard could be true.
“I take it you listened?” Mitch asks.
“You’re sure this is legit?”
“As sure as I can be. Lorcan’s been laying low, but that call bounced off a burner that matched a tower he’s used before.”
“And there was nothing else? No hint as to who this could be?”
“No, that was it.”
“Fuck!”
“Cormac…there’s more.”
“What?”
“Word is, Lorcan’s been seen with Adrian Smirnov.”
My blood goes cold. “No.”
“I’ve been trying to find out why he would be stupid enough to get mixed up with Smirnov, but I keep coming up short.”
“I know why,” I say through gritted teeth.
My worst nightmare has come true. Lorcan knows about Scout. There’s no other reason why he would choose to ally himself with someone like Adrian Smirnov. He’s the kind of man even other criminals avoid.
This is no longer a silly little family dispute.
This is a full-out war.
I hang up, and for a moment, I sit there in absolute silence with my mind racing.
Someone on the inside is feeding Lorcan information, and if he’s working with Smirnov, this is strategic. He’s counting on us never seeing it coming.
But he’s wrong.
I grab my phone and call Ronan as my heartbeat starts thrumming in my ears. I need to meet with my brothers to try and contain this, but I don’t trust that my office at Sullivan Investments hasn’t been bugged.
“Cormac?” Ronan answers.
“I need you to meet me at the penthouse. Now.”
“What’s going on?”
“Lorcan. I have a lead.”
That’s all Ronan needs. “I’ll be there in ten.”
The second Ronan hangs up, I dial Brennan, who answers after the second ring.
“I can’t babysit tonight if that’s what you’re calling for?—”
“Emergency meeting. Penthouse. Now.”
Brennan’s voice loses every trace of playfulness. “On my way.”
I end the call and sprint out of my office.
Not only is there a spy within our circle, but Lorcan is plotting his next move alongside Adrian Smirnov, the one man I actually fear.
If he gets anywhere near Scout…
I can’t even bear to think about it.
My son is everything to me, and every second he is out of my sight puts both him and Fiona in danger because I know she would stop at nothing to protect my son either.
Her selflessness is her biggest strength.
I only hope it doesn’t end up being her greatest weakness too.