Chapter 17
“Jesus Christ. Do you even hear yourself?” Cora snaps, throwing her hands up like she’s trying to shove the words right into Da’s face.
Tilting her chin high, staring down her nose at him as if daring him to argue.
Even through this damn computer screen, you can feel the heat of it—her trying so hard to knock him down a peg or two.
From the moment this meeting started, Da’s been in rare form.
Huffing like he’s carrying the weight of the whole world on his shoulders and rolling his eyes at anything that’s not coming out of his own mouth.
Scoffing, sneering, making the room feel thick and toxic with every exasperated sigh.
It’s exhausting watching him slowly attempt to poison everything and everyone with his attitude.
And hell, I get it. He’s pissed, he feels betrayed. He’s hurt, not that he’d ever admit it. But we all are. It’s not just his burden to bear and now, more than ever, we need to close rank to get to the bottom of this shit once and for all.
Declan stands back against the wall behind Da, like a statue carved out of ice, arms loose at his sides like he hasn’t got a care in the world but his eyes are focused—he’s always been the kind to be five steps ahead, watching, waiting for the right moment to strike.
Uncle Bren’s right next to him, glasses pushed to the top of his head so he can rub the bridge of his nose like he’s already feeling a headache coming on, like this whole thing is wasting precious seconds.
Jack, Seamus and Owen? They’re equally as tense, like they’re ready to jump up and place themselves between Da and Jonathan at any second.
Some things don’t change. They just keep spinning in circles until you’re too numb to care anymore.
“What’s ridiculous is that I’m supposed to just stand here and pretend it made sense, sending what could’ve been our only real lead away without so much as a single question,” Da snarls, and suddenly, the whole room catches fire as tensions snap.
Jonathan’s arms are around Helen before anyone can blink—holding her back like she’s a wildfire about to break loose.
She’s wild with fury—fists balled at her sides, nostrils flaring as she wrestles Jonathan’s hold.
A mother ready to tear down anything and anyone who threatens her kids, even the ones not hers by blood.
“For the last time, Lily is not, and never has been, the enemy.”
Cora’s voice shakes on the first word, but she locks eyes with Owen—just a flick, too fast for anyone else to catch—and the tremor dies in her throat. She straightens like she’s bracing against gunfire.
“The real enemy is out there, and we’re handing them the goddamn blueprint to destroy us. Can’t you see that? They want us distracted. Bleeding from the inside out. They want our cracks, our weakness. And you’re giving it to them, wrapped in a bow like some fucking Christmas present.”
The room that moments ago felt ready to combust stays frozen, like someone hit pause mid-explosion. Nobody moves, nobody breathes. Owen most of all just watches her, jaw locked, and pride evident in every line in his face and quirk of his mouth.
Some might call it weak, the way he stands back and lets her take the lead, but they’d be dead wrong.
Owen has always been team let Cora shine.
Always the first to step aside so she can take the space she deserves, the space she’s earned.
He knows she’ll take Jonathan’s role one day and he’s never once tried to dim her to make room for himself.
But he’s also the same man who steps forward the second someone pushes her too far. The quiet warning. The shift in the air. The storm gathering at her back. The unspoken threat tucked behind his easy smile—she leads, but she never stands alone.
And for a moment, even in the chaos, that balance between them is so solid it sends a jolt of jealousy through me.
“When are you going to stop sulking,” she says, quiet now, lethal, “and start fighting with us?”
“Cora, enough.”
Jonathan cuts in before Da can open his mouth, still half-holding the woman trying to slip from his arms while pinning his daughter with a look. He’s not yelling, just using that quiet tone men like him use when they’re one inch from losing it.
But it’s too late for me. I’m already past whatever calm I had left.
“I disagree,” I say, voice cold and flat. “He needs to learn to watch his mouth. To show some fucking respect. We’ve all lost, we’ve all suffered. It’s not just him and his wounded pride.”
Da’s glare snaps to me instantly. Shock fights with that permanent scowl—disbelief stamped across his face that I would dare open my mouth against him.
Please.
The days of swallowing his word like gospel, of hero-worshipping him just because he’s my father are dead. There isn’t enough loyalty left in me to play his obedient son on command while also going through with this marriage.
“Don’t you have an engagement party to get ready for?
” he scoffs, voice dripping with contempt.
The mere mention of what’s waiting for me tomorrow tightens like a leash around my neck.
My mind races, picturing the glittering hall, the cameras, the whispers of everyone watching, judging, expecting.
I feel a familiar, suffocating weight—the performance, the smiles, the pretending.
Every instinct screams to run, yet every eye will be trained on me, waiting for me to fail.
“Some of us can multitask.” My words come out harder than I mean. “Now, how about we get back on topic?”
I throw a look at Owen, desperate to yank this conversation away from the topic of Lily, to pull it back from the fresh wound of hearing her name tossed around like some goddamn complication instead of a person. Like she wasn’t the only good thing I ever had.
“Right.” Owen clears his throat, trying to reset the room.
“We called this meeting not to rehash the Lily issue or start a riot, but because we’re at a dead end with this fucking tattoo.
Ciaran and Declan have had no luck working out what’s meant to be buried in the ink and Brennan has had no luck finding ties between Jimmy and Conor.
Unless we can find someone else to interrogate, someone easier to break, we’re running out of options.
And unless we strip-search every Points member, I don’t know how the hell we’re gonna find someone else. ”
“Do it.” Declan’s voice is quiet but firm. He’s already pacing, in that calculated way of his, brain ticking through every possible move while stealing glances at Bren, who looks just as lost in thought.
“We call them down to the Pit in groups, frame it as training.” Bren suggests slowly.
“And weed out anyone with even a whisper of sketchy ink,” Cora adds, glancing at Jonathan.
She’s stepping up—taking the lead more every day.
And Jonathan? He’s letting her. Slowly retreating since Helen came back.
Handing over the reins, meeting by meeting, shrug by shrug.
He’s choosing peace over war, and I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t envy him for it.
“In other news,” I clear my throat, voice catching just a little, “I don’t think Salvatore is as clean as he wants us to think he is.”
That gets their attention.
I walk them through what I’ve seen, the little inconsistencies, the cracks in his mask, the gut instinct that’s been clawing at me ever since I set foot on his estate. Something’s off. Wrong in a way I can’t quite explain, like standing in a beautiful house and smelling gas.
“It’s early days, and it could be nothing, but…”
“But it doesn’t sit right.” Owen’s voice is low as he runs a hand through his dark hair, messing it up even further.
“Keep your head down and your eyes open,” Jack advises, concern etched in the lines of his frown. “Dig as much as you can without drawing unwanted attention.”
“The last thing we need is you getting into hot water before the ink’s even dry on your marriage license,” Declan grunts, and everyone murmurs their agreements, the unspoken tensions hanging between us as the meeting draws to a close.
The second the feed ends, I go back to my desk, back to the only thing that makes sense anymore: control.
I start poking through Salvatore’s security system again, fingers flying, trying to get deeper, peeling back another layer.
Something about this whole place makes my skin crawl, like I’m breathing in lies with every inhale.
Control used to mean keeping enemies in check, holding the reins so tight no one could move without my say-so. Now it’s about her. About making sure I can see her, despite the distance between us. Because distance doesn’t make the habit fade, it just makes the itch worse.
And watching her is still my worst habit, one I can’t seem to break. One I’m not even sure I want to break. Especially not now, with everything getting more complicated by the day.
Because the emails paint one version of her. Cold and calculated. Tangled up in something dark enough to scorch anyone who gets too close.
But the girl I’ve been watching for months—really watching—has never once slipped.
No secret meetings, no coded calls, no shadow figures at her door.
Just late nights, early mornings, exhausted laughter, and a woman piecing together a life from whatever pieces she has left.
If she’s involved in a trafficking ring, she’s the most convincing liar I’ve ever known.
And that’s what’s fucking me up.
Because if she’s innocent, then she’s vulnerable. Exiled and on her own, cut off from every safety net she ever had.
Switching from Salvatore’s firewalls to the camera feed from her flat isn’t even a decision. My fingers move before the thought fully forms, pulling up yesterday’s footage when the current feed shows nothing but an empty flat, the timestamp blinking in the corner like a quiet accusation.
Even grainy camera footage can’t hide the way she glows.
She’s mid-laugh, leaning closer to the camera, talking to her new friends on some FaceTime call, and the sound of it hits me like a punch straight through the chest. For a second, it almost seems like she’s moved on.
Like what we had—and what we lost—never meant anything. Like I never mattered.
She looks happy. Like she’s building something for herself. Like she’s finally free.
And I hate that I still care.
I hate that it still fucking burns. Quiet and constant, like heartburn that never goes away, no matter how many ways you try to soothe it.
Tonight’s meeting just made it worse, a hundred times over.
Sitting there, listening to everyone dance around her name like it’s some kind of explosive, makes it painfully clear just how fucked we all are.
Even if she’s innocent, it might already be too late to wipe away the hurt and the damage that the last year carved into all of us.
And then there’s the simple, gut-wrenching fact that in six months, I’ll be tied to someone else in an irreversible way.
The list of things I can’t change feels like it’s growing longer by the day, a heavy ledger I can’t balance. But amongst that, there’s one tiny thing I can change.
She’s mentioned wishing she could get coffee delivered a few times lately. Just a throwaway comment on her streams to her followers, a tiny flicker of honesty for the strangers who think they know her. They eat that shit up, like they get to have a piece of her, like she’s theirs to keep.
They don’t know shit. Not really.
But I did. I still do.
So I set up a delivery from her favourite café. Her usual order—three shots, oat milk, cinnamon on top. I schedule it to arrive every morning at the same time, no note, and no message. Just the drink. Like muscle memory. Like I’m still woven into her routine, whether she wants me to be or not.
I know how it looks. I’m not blind to the pathetic shape of it.
And yeah, maybe it’s petty, maybe it’s manipulative, maybe it’s fucked up.
But that's all I have left.
I might not be the name she says out loud anymore, but I can still haunt the quiet corners of her life. I can still remind her that I was the one who noticed everything. Who remembered every small thing.
Let her wonder, let her question who’s behind it, even if deep down she already knows.
I might not have her anymore. And most days, I know I shouldn’t want to.
But there’s still a version of us that lives in my head—warped, stubborn, beautiful. And I don’t know how to kill that version without killing some essential part of myself right along with it.
So I send the coffee.
And I pretend it doesn’t matter that she can never know it’s from me.