Chapter 54
HATCH
One month later
“He’s lucky I don’t kill him, Laoise. This has gone on long enough. It’s been a month! You need to come home already.”
Kian McKennon’s voice crackles through Lucy’s phone speaker, his already light Irish accent thickening just enough that I know he’s pacing in frustration wherever the hell he is.
Probably their penthouse library. And he’s probably gesturing with one hand as Mrs. McKennon pretends not to smile at his melodramatics while still absolutely agreeing with every word coming out of his mouth.
It’s been a month since Old Stone Church.
Mrs. McKennon arrived the next day, and she and Kian stayed the first week, long enough to glare holes through me, stalk the docks like they were casing the place for weaknesses, and make damn sure Lucy was truly staying because she wanted to, not because I’d chained her to the hull or whatever the hell they assumed I might do.
They left when it became painfully obvious she wasn’t going anywhere, and the island’s been settling around us ever since, like it had to relearn how to breathe without Castle’s boot on its neck.
“Dad,” Lucy groans, dragging the word out as she sinks deeper into the mattress. “You’re not listening.”
Late morning spring light spills through the narrow windows of Fancy’s Haven, soft and pale, glinting off the water and the other boats outside.
The houseboat rocks beneath us with a gentleness you don’t notice until it’s gone.
Chessy and Dinah are curled together at the foot of the bed, both of them entirely unbothered by the national incident happening over speakerphone.
A breeze slips in through the cracked porthole, carrying salt and marsh and the freshness of spring, vibrantly alive after the dead of winter that hung on too long in March. Now Wander’s feeling a whole lot less like a hiding spot and more like a home.
Lucy is sprawled across the bed before me, our clothes an exercise in opposites—me in only sweatpants, her in my white tee and the teeniest, tiniest black thong that I’m trying to be super professional about since I’m zeroed in on her hip.
I’m nearly finished sketching out a tattoo she wants here, low on her hipbone, using my stencil pen for the skull resting in a teacup full of rose mallows, a local wildflower with big rose-colored petals that grows in the marsh cordgrass.
I’m calling it “Skull in Rose Mallow Tea,” my finest work art yet.
Everyone married into the Fury family gets a skull tattoo, so when she described what she wanted, it took Herculean efforts to hide my excitement. Mostly because I’m a bastard and didn’t want to tell her what skulls meant for fear of her changing her mind.
Color me damn surprised at her answer after I asked her why a skull.
“Because Fury spouses get skulls, don’t they? I figure we might as well get a head start.”
I mean, what the hell’s a guy supposed to do with that?
She’s been dropping little jokes-that-really-don’t-fucking-feel-like-jokes more and more lately, and I’m just holding my breath, trying not to get my hopes up.
“I want to stay,” she says into the phone, her voice firmer now. My knees do that weird weakening thing every time she says that—even when I’m laying down.
There’s a long pause on the other end, and I can practically hear Kian’s blood pressure spiking.
“What?” he asks at last.
Lucy sighs and winds her finger in the shirt’s hem, and I still her fidgeting so I can keep stenciling. She’d been in the middle of reading before that phone rang, all curled up and soft while I worked, and now here she is getting verbally accosted before noon.
“Why do you keep acting like I haven’t said this a hundred times? I want to stay, Dad.”
“I’m not acting. I’m assuming you keep mispronouncing ‘my flight home leaves in an hour.’ It’s literally an island built by criminals, Laoise!” Kian huffs. “Do you hear yourself?”
“Really rich coming from a syndicate-man, Dad.” Lucy rolls her eyes. “But Wander Isle is safe now. Safer than it’s ever been.”
“Maybe safer for everyone else, but it’s still not safe for you!”
I scowl at the phone, resenting Kian implying I’m not keeping his daughter safe, but Lucy presses her finger over my lips before I can object. A necessary reminder that I’m not supposed to be here while she’s on speakerphone.
I kiss her finger and let it go to finish the curve of the last petal on her hip, then lean back and study it.
Not bad. Still needs shading and the crown worked in, but I’ve got the placement right.
“It’s safe, Dad. We’ve made it safe.”
He hums, still unconvinced. “Walk me through it again, Laoise. I want to hear it again.”
Lucy laughs lightly. “Fine, but then will you leave it alone?”
There’s a very loaded pause before he finally gives an inch. “Try me.”
“Fine,” she chuckles. “Alright, first off. We’ve cleaned house. The people strictly loyal to Castle are gone. The worst of them are banned from ever stepping foot here again.”
It’s true. Since we took The Rabbit Hole over, everything has shifted. The island still feels like itself, still strange and secretive and full of whispers, but it breathes easier.
Lucy breaks down everything we’ve done over the past few weeks, some by ourselves, and some with the help of our friends.
Dorman never returned after McKennon’s men released him zip-tied and roughed up into the Mojave Desert. Mira’s fled with the rest of the rats, shockingly. She never said a peep around me when she was here, but apparently, she was Team Castle.
There was no love lost between Castle and Mariposa, so she still runs the bar.
Watchman still haunts the DJ booth. Dee took over books and staffing because she likes numbers better than people by a mile, though she still occasionally insists on going back on the floor to swindle some patrons as “Tweetie.”
As for X, he stepped into his role as my righthand man here, but only after I was overruled by Lucy about kicking Duchess off the island. Completely aside from the fact that she’s a Wilde, I can’t forgive her for what she did.
But Lucy’s more forgiving than I am, and, more than that, she’s lost too many people already to this war. Whether I like it or not, Duchess needs our protection more than my condemnation.
Lucy has a point too, even though she’s not quite mercenary enough to say it out loud. People tend to be way more loyal when you protect them than when you fuck them over. Having a Wilde on a Fury’s payroll might just be the in we need to end the feuding between our families.
That leaves Chef…
There was never a question as to his loyalties. He’s Iris’s man through and through. Chef will never leave Wander Isle, because he’d never leave Iris, and Iris’s mind can never leave home.
She’s starting to need Mary Ann more and more recently, something that’s killing both Lucy and Chef inside. But then Iris smiles, and the fact that Lucy has the ability to give Iris her sister back eases the heartache of losing someone right before their eyes.
The Rabbit Hole itself also got an upgrade.
The vents were fixed first, as was the club’s secrecy behind its “special blend” of hookah.
We ordered a new Pining strain that actually burns clean.
No secondhand dosing, no mystery ingredients.
If a patron wants Pining, they ask for it by name, they know what it does, and they make the call themselves.
No one gets dosed without knowing anymore.
Lucy and I tackled the Smoke and Mirrors Room next, somewhat literally. Everyone with something to smash with and a grudge showed up for demolition day, rage-room style. After thirty minutes, there was nothing left but dust and bent mirror frames.
What went up in its place looks the same but isn’t.
It’s now the Looking Glass Room. New two-way mirrors connect to the Flower Room next door.
If you want to perform, you set the glass.
If you want to watch, you know where to go.
Everyone involved walks in with their eyes open.
The room that used to strip people of their choices now runs entirely on them.
The Mirroring stayed. That was Lucy’s call, and she was right.
Now the dancers who want in on the intelligence side know exactly what they’re doing.
They’re not being tricked into extracting secrets for a boss who won’t tell them why.
They’re operatives. They understand the game, they choose to play it, and they get a cut of the value they bring in, and the same sense of agency and control that convinced Lucy to stay in Wander.
The ones who just want to dance and have fun?
They just dance and have fun. No pressure, no leverage, no strings. Their choice.
Turns out, willing operatives are a hell of a lot better at this than coerced victims. Gee, who woulda thunk?
The secrets flow better than ever now. Rich men still come to an underground club on a barrier island and drink too much and talk too loud and think the women they’re into are too female to be dangerous, because that’s what rich men do.
The women still listen. The difference is Lucy doesn’t sell what she collects.
She files it. Stockpiles it. Builds a library of insurance policies for the Troisgarde, Furys, and everyone under our protection.
Nobody on Wander Isle gets blindsided again, because Lucy McKennon has a file on every person who’s ever been stupid enough to open their mouth in her club.
Is it clean? No. Getting people drunk and having beautiful women coax their secrets out of them isn’t exactly the moral high ground.
But nobody’s forcing these arrogant gossips to walk through the door.
Nobody makes them run their mouths. The Rabbit Hole doesn’t create the vulnerability, it just sits at the bar beside it and takes notes.
If Lucy can live with that, then I sure as hell can. On a sin island, that’s about as close to righteous as you get.