Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
LODESTAR
It was the measure of a man, I thought, how he tortured someone.
Now, that definitely wasn’t a politically correct method of discerning if a guy was a worthy partner, but as I snagged a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos from the counter while Conor O’Donnelly got his hands dirty, I couldn’t deny—my heart twanged in my chest.
My heart never twanged. It wasn’t a fucking guitar. But Conor had this way about him that got to me. And with this show of strength, he was speaking my love language.
I knew I’d dug myself a few holes in my life. Where, if I didn’t do it my fucking self, I couldn’t trust another person’s handiwork.
That Conor was willing to wade into the fray to get answers made me appreciate him even more than I already did.
And that ‘appreciation’ was far more than was technically wise.
“Fuck—” An inhalation. “You.” Exhalation.
I stared at the living corpse on the board in the warehouse and had to admit—Conor had style.
This was like something from a horror movie with all the wires coming off the guy whom Conor was grilling.
Huh.
Literally.
I almost laughed.
Conor’s torture involved electricity—grilling was far more fitting than I’d originally thought.
Not that he was as amused as I was.
This wasn’t his style. He didn’t have the taste for it like I did, but that was the kind of guy he was—he did shit he didn’t want to for the people who mattered to him.
“There are five levels to this program,” Conor mused, breaking into my thoughts. “You’ve only experienced the first one.”
If the former Five Points’ driver—and traitor—didn’t hear the warning in that, then Michael Byrne was a moron.
Pain-filled shrieks boomed from the speakers, making me glad no one was in this part of the house as I tore open the bag of Cheetos.
“Wonder how long it will take for him to break?” I queried as I watched the guy’s spine bow under the strain of the current.
Conor peered over at me, guileless and all the more dangerous for it as he took in the sight of my snack with a quirk of his lips. “Settling in for the show?”
God, could he be any more perfect?
Acceptance.
Fucking acceptance.
It was a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Not that I made a fool out of myself by saying that; I just nodded. “You’d better be entertaining.”
He rolled his eyes. “This isn’t Netflix, Star.”
“Nope, it’s even better.” I waggled a Cheeto at him and watched as he got to work.
It was, in a word, brutal.
Surprisingly so.
I’d been trained to not give a fuck about the human body.
Morals and beliefs were weaned out of my nature over the process of my training—read indoctrination—into the CIA, but Conor didn’t have that same training. It was clear in every move he made.
The more I watched, the more I saw that he didn’t want to do this. He didn’t enjoy it.
He felt he had no alternative means of making Michael talk.
I knew, in this instance, it was love that made him do this.
Strange, no?
How love, the supposedly purest emotion of them all, could trigger this kind of violence?
Somehow, that made me like him even more. I knew it was technically a weakness, but I couldn’t fault him for it.
Not when I could think of nothing better than having this man love me enough that he'd do anything and everything to cherish me because of it.
“Dagda will make you bleed for this—”
The shriek was cut off, much as it slashed at my sentimental train of thought, and I arched a brow as the zapping of the electrical current made the guy finally pass out.
Those last words had me peering at the frazzled dude, who was literally steaming under Conor’s ministrations, and questioning, “Is he dead?”
“No.”
I took note of the sweat beaded on Conor’s forehead and asked, “Why didn’t you get one of your brothers to do this?”
He cast me a grim look. “Because my mother entrusted this task to me.”
The O’Donnellys were a weird fucking bunch. Intriguing, but goddamn weird. More secrets than a soap opera.
“Why?”
“Because she knows I can keep my mouth shut.”
“You told me,” I pointed out.
His gaze was measured this time as he glanced away from Michael and let it tangle with mine.
No words passed from his lips.
No words needed to.
I swallowed as I stared at him, the Cheetos bag drifting to the table in front of me as we stared at one another.
At that moment, I knew I’d never been as splayed apart as I was with that glance. I’d been tortured, I’d been abused, I’d been treated like an animal—but nothing cut me to the quick like that look.
Fuck.
My voice was hoarse as I whispered, “Conor?”
“Yes,” he rumbled.
“Will you let me know what he confesses to?”
He shrugged. “Set a bot on it. Use whatever you record.”
The faith inherent in that offer staggered me enough that I jerked upright. “You trust me to do that?”
“You didn’t have to ask. You could have just taken. We already spoke about this when you broke into my penthouse to help Savannah Daniels—I’d have opened the door for you if you’d just asked.”
“This is my reward for good behavior?” I tried to tease, but somehow, it fell flat.
“Yes.” He pursed his lips as he took in the mess on the board beside him. “He stinks.”
“That’s what happens when you fry meat,” I mocked, smiling when I took note of his grimace. “How did you even make this equipment?”
The wires and electrical pads were all his own design.
“It was a byproduct.”
“A byproduct of what?”
“Your Christmas gift.”
I blinked. “You want to fry me to death?”
His lips twitched. “No. Ever heard of la petite mort?”
I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t want to steam to death either.”
His chuckle set me alight. “You won’t. Don’t worry. My prototype didn’t work out.”
“Well, it did, depending on what your intention was,” I drawled, staring at the living corpse again. “Do you know who Dagda is?”
“Do you?” he asked.
“Depends.”
“What kind of answer is that?”
My lips tightened. “A truthful one. There are rumors about his real ID.”
“Have you clashed with him?”
Feeling that I was at the center of his attention, I shot him a look. “No. My mother did though.”
“Your mother?” Then his eyes flared wide, and because he was a smart cookie, he put two and two together. “You think Dagda killed her?”
“I know he did.”
“How?”
I studied him. “By investigating her death.”
That had him rolling his eyes. “Helpful. Why would an Irish Republican want your mother dead?”
“Dagda’s an alias for a sniper,” I explained slowly, unsure how much he knew. “They say that he fought for the British during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
“When he was in Belfast, he went AWOL, got himself arrested, escaped, and then he resurfaced as the leader of this Irish nationalist group—the éire le chéile go deo. They say they’re like the IRA, but I think they’re worse. We call them the ECD because we can’t pronounce their fucking name.”
When I shot him a look, I knew I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know.
He didn’t stop me though, just arched a brow when I fell silent.
“Anyway, he set up this bomb in London and got sent up for it. They say that they let him out from time to time to complete jobs…”
That shocked him.
“They let him out to kill people?”
“It’s a rumor.”
“You wouldn’t tell me if you didn’t think it was true.”
I conceded that with a grimace as I reached for a bottle of water I’d placed beside my laptop earlier.
“Why are you telling me this, Star?”
“Because…”
I broke off before I could finish.
Before Christmas, when my childhood friend, Savannah Daniels, had found herself needing to break into Conor’s apartment, I’d hacked his security system and gotten her inside.
Like he’d said earlier, he’d told me at the time—after he’d shouted at me for breaking his code again—that he’d have opened the door for me if I’d just asked…
But trust, fuck, trust was so goddamn hard for me.
People let you down.
That was the one solid truth I had.
The harsh reality of my life.
But something about Conor made me want to trust him. Danger lay in that path, but some shit I couldn’t do alone. We’d already agreed to help each other out.
While he slept, I worked on our mutual projects, and while I slept, he did the same. We doubled our output that way and that unity was the reason those Sparrow fuckers were dropping like flies.
I could have done that on my own but it would have taken so much longer.
“Star?” he queried softly. “It’s okay.”
I swallowed. “Nothing’s okay, Conor. Nothing’s been okay for a really long time.”
His eyes saw too much.
A piercing chestnut brown that could read my fucking soul.
“I know, Star. I know. I’d like to help if you’d let me.”
It hurt to take a step forward. Hurt to open myself up to the potential of betrayal.
My country had let me down. What was to stop the hacker son of an insane mob boss from screwing me over?
It was a leap of faith when I wasn’t known for taking jumps—
“I’d like to draw him out into the open.”
His eyes narrowed. “You want to draw Dagda out?”
“I believe his real ID is a man called Eamonn Keegan. He was freed recently. There’s chatter…” I released a sharp exhalation as the hope that burned inside me started to scorch my insides.
“What kind of chatter? What did your mom get mixed up in, Star?”
My smile was tight. “What I know, I found in redacted files.”
“Tell me,” he urged. “You wouldn’t even be bringing this up if you didn’t believe it.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“My mom’s the reason Dagda went from being a sniper in the British Army to the leader of one of the worst Irish nationalist factions.” My jaw clenched. “She paid for that with her life, and it’s time he paid for taking her away from me.”