Chapter 6 Cayce #2
“You’ll be steady.” His gaze narrows. “And if Don Marco tries to get under your skin—if he needles you about your age, your mother, or even fuckin’ Colorado—you do not take the bait.
You do not stand. You do not raise your voice.
You let me talk first, and when it’s your turn you say exactly what we agree and nothing more. ”
“Plain enough,” I say. “I’m already taking his most valuable possession. I don’t need to rub it in.”
“And you won’t let your temper write checks your skull can’t cash,” he adds.
“I won’t,” I say. “But I also won’t let you—or anyone—use me or what happened like a mop to keep the floor clean.”
Rafferty rubs his chest. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” He glances at Roisin. She’s already fishing in her coat pocket, flicks an antacid onto the blotter. He ignores it. “You sound like your mother when she wanted to climb up on her soapbox and make us beg for forgiveness.”
“To be fair, she usually earned it,” Roisin says.
“Call the woman,” Rafferty tells her without looking away from me. “Go get the ring.”
“On it.” Roisin is already thumbing her phone. “Band size?”
I flex my hand and picture hers. “Small.”
Roisin lifts a brow and holds up her own hand—long fingers, thin. “Smaller than mine?”
“Close,” I say. “Shorter. Not thinner.”
She mutters, pockets the phone, and slips out, boots whispering down the stairs. The room settles around the three of us again, too quiet. Waiting.
Tiernan finally pushes off the wall. The Zippo does a last neat snick and disappears into his pocket. “And the black sedan last night?”
I give him a look.
“Yeah,” he says. “We pulled the plate. Moretti’s driver. I can scrub the footage of them loitering. Tell the dean it’s art students testing a light meter.”
“No scrubbing,” I say. “No favors they get to cash in later. No hacks that stink up the servers or leave a data trace. We run our own play: keep eyes on her from outside the cone—two bodies at a distance, trade shifts noon and sundown, never the same camera twice. If she’s with the roommate, you don’t crowd; if she’s alone at night, you follow to an entrance and stop.
You do not touch her friends. You do not talk to her roommate…
Prudence…unless there’s a threat on the sidewalk.
If a threat shows, you put your hands where they can see them and say you’re campus security hired for event overflow until she’s in a lit space. That’s it.”
Tiernan nods, a slow, clean acknowledgment instead of his usual grin. “Copy.”
“And Tiernan,” I add, because the smell of bleach is in my mouth and I didn’t put it there, “you don’t go through their trash looking for leverage. I’m not starting this with a blackmail file. If someone comes for her, you handle them, not her.”
“Understood,” he says. It actually sounds like he means it.
Rafferty picks up a pen and signs something that has nothing to do with me. Power as handwriting in contracts that I want nothing to do with. He sets the pen down and looks at me like he’s measuring whether my spine’s the right mettle for this thing I’ve decided to carry.
“Friday,” he says. “Soft voices for those that can’t handle our chaos. Small knives so the guns don’t get drawn. You don’t blindside me because no matter what happens inside these walls, we’re family outside them.”
“I just did by announcing my upcoming nuptials,” I tell him. “I won’t do it again.”
He leans back against the desk, studying me with the face he wears for wake rooms and weddings. “If you tie our name to hers—theirs—you don’t get walk when it’s inconvenient.”
“I don’t walk,” I say, and every cell in me knows the bill for that promise. “I settle in. I wait for what’s mine.”
He snorts. “God help us all.”
“Maybe He will,” I say. “He was in the room last night.”
Rafferty’s mouth twitches. “Don’t.”
“I’m not joking.” I let him see it. The stubborn.
The soft under it I don’t show men who count.
“I used Halloween the way I always do—one night a year where I ask instead of take. I ask because you sent me somewhere that made taking a muscle memory and asking a thing of pain. If you hadn’t shipped me to Blackvine, I wouldn’t need the ritual.
I wouldn’t have been in that booth at all. ”
Silence. Then a sound that isn’t quite a laugh, isn’t quite a groan. He drags a hand down his face. “I told you,” he says, breathing heavier, “I didn’t know what that place was. It was supposed to make our boys hard. Give you the…hardness…this world demands.”
“It did,” I say.
He looks up sharply at the tone.
“It made parts of me I don’t like very hard,” I add. “And it made other parts very careful. Last night—she got the careful. She has to get that side or she doesn’t get me.”
He stares at me like he’s trying to decide if he can afford to be proud. That, too, is a bill men like him keep in a separate ledger.
“Fine,” he says at last. “You’re committed.
So am I. Here’s the plan, plain as dirt so you can’t pretend you misheard later.
” He ticks it off on his fingers. “If Don Marco needles you, you smile with your eyes and not your teeth and you let me answer the insult. When it’s time to speak, you say: I intend to marry your daughter.
Then you shut your mouth and let the men who think they run things pretend they do.
You don’t win the night with clever. You win it by being impossible to move. ”
“Good,” I say. “That’s exactly how it will go.”
“And if he tries to turn it into a pissing contest?”
“I don’t piss,” I say.
Tiernan huffs, half-amused despite himself. “You heard the man. He’s housebroken.”
Rafferty points the pen at him. “You forget how to be invisible around her and I’ll send you to Colorado.”
Tiernan’s grin fades at the same time I reply, “No, you won’t.”
“No,” Rafferty says, and for a second he looks shame-faced. “I won’t.”
Roisin slips back in without knocking and sets a small velvet pouch on the blotter.
“From Maeve for the engagement ring,” she says.
“Dark silver, low profile for the band. Ogham cut inside with the Shannon name. But the diamond is two carats and princess cut. We’ll check your size tonight when you stop pretending you know ring math, and I’ll get yours from her after. ”
“Bless the woman,” Rafferty mutters. He looks at me. “Anything else?”
There’s a secret part of me—small, ugly, honest—that enjoys every second of this.
Being seen with her. Being caught. The way discovery forces a shape on something I would have chosen anyway.
Claim isn’t a word I like in other men’s mouths.
In mine, tonight, it feels like a vow that puts my body between hers and anything with a pulse that wants to take her from me now that I’ve tasted her.
“You’ll have to get the wedding band from Nan. And I’m not gonna be the one to make that call. Since she’s moved to Salem, she’s become more and more like an old witch.”
Fuck, my sister is right, and I didn’t even think of it.
“It’s okay.” I bluff. “Nan loves a good story, and this one’ll give her all the gossip points with her sewing circle, or whatever they’re calling themselves.”
“Yeah,” Roisin doesn’t even bother hiding her laugh. “Good luck with that. She’s more likely to kill you for tarnishing a nun than anything else.”
“Well, you’ll have to call her.” Rafferty grunts. “We all know she’ll insist you drive up there, but you’ll need to call first. Do you have anything else for me?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Two more things.”
Rafferty waits.
“One,” I tell him, “if any of our boys—or theirs—makes a joke about damaged goods, you correct it. Out loud. In the room. She’s mine, and she’ll be the Shannon queen. No disrespect stands, and if correction comes from me it’ll mean they lose their tongue and their eyes.”
His expression doesn’t change. “Done.”
“Two,” I say, “you let me be the one who tells her what we’re doing before you send a messenger to her father.”
“Christ,” he says. “You really mean to marry her.”
“I mean to claim her as mine,” I say, and that’s the only thing that matters. “And I’ll rot in hell for depriving heaven of an angel, but I don’t give a damn anymore.”
He bows his head, just enough for the crucifix to be the tallest thing in the room again. “God help us all,” he says.
“Maybe He will,” I answer, and this time Tiernan doesn’t smirk. He just opens the door.
“Go shower,” Rafferty says, weary in a way he’ll never admit to a doctor. “Put on the suit that makes you look like you came by this honest. And for the love of every saint you think you aren’t afraid of, don’t let her father catch you praying again.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I tell him, and step into the hall.
Tiernan falls in beside me, steps a half behind like he’s learned I’m more likely to stop if someone leaves me room to move. “You sure?” he asks quietly. “About all of it?”
“No,” I say, and the truth tastes better than bravado. “But I’m sure about her. Which surprises the fuck out of me”
He nods once, as if that’s an answer you can build scaffolding around. “I’ll set the watch. Two bodies, rotating. No trash, no hacks, no contact. You’ll get a ping if she walks after dark.”
“And Tiernan,” I say, hand on the stair rail.
“Yeah?”
“If she looks over her shoulder and sees you, you’re too close.”
“Copy,” he says again. Plain and clean.
Behind us, through the office door, I hear Rafferty pick up the phone and start calling men who think they’re in charge of weather.
He’ll order linen napkins and a roast you can cut with a look.
He’ll have the room arranged so nobody’s back is to a window.
He’ll pick a table with legs that won’t break if a man leans too hard on a lie.
He’ll do his job.
I’ll do mine.
Ask. Wait. Hold the line when they try to move it.
And if Don Marco decides to test how steady I am, he will learn what Blackvine made unbreakable in me and what it failed to touch.
He will learn I don’t swing first in a room with crystal.
He will learn I don’t swing at all if his daughter’s inside the blast radius.
He will learn that the boy they sent west came back hard in the places that matter and soft in exactly one.
I touch the velvet pouch in my pocket, feel the weight of a ring that isn’t a trap.
“Let’s go,” I tell Tiernan.
“To war?” he says, because he can’t help himself.
“To dinner,” I correct. “And maybe to plan a wedding.”