Chapter 3
Three
AOIFE O’MALLEY
The O'Malley estate still smelled of ash and gunpowder ten months after its destruction. I stood among the ruins, letting the wind tease strands of auburn hair across my face. My father's ancestral home, reduced to blackened stone.
I tasted rage like acid on my tongue. The Flanagans had taken way too much in a single night.
My father. Our home. But not me. Not the daughter Connor O'Malley had hidden from the world while secretly grooming her to inherit his empire.
And not the ties that bound us to the dark world and sense of honour my family lived by.
My father had almost ruined things by pushing the envelope in the wrong direction. His ruthlessness was mostly feared but his recklessness and impulsiveness, along with his lustful inclinations, had cost us nearly everything. Now, I was the only one fit to step in Connor O’Malley’s shoes.
This was my time.
"Miss O'Malley, you're too exposed here."
I ignored Barrett's—my driver’s—concern, watching a raven pick through debris, its methodical scavenging strangely soothing.
"Do you know what my father called me when we were alone, Barrett?" I asked, my voice carrying the precise aristocratic edge I'd perfected at an exclusive Swiss finishing school.
He shifted uncomfortably. "The Raven."
"Yes. 'My little raven, always watching, always collecting shiny things.'" I let my carefully constructed mask slip just enough to make him uneasy. "He thought it charming that I had such an aptitude for the business."
I caught the flicker of unease in Barrett's eyes. Good. Even allies and especially subordinates should fear me.
The Flanagans had done quite a thorough job—strategic explosives at structural weak points, timed to detonate after they'd extracted Cressida Ashford from my father’s clutches.
The kind of plan I might have designed myself.
The man had been a fool to let his base urges get the better of him.
No self-control whatsoever. Yet, after all, he was a man.
We moved toward the groundskeeper's cottage—the only structure that had escaped harm. Not by chance, but because I'd reinforced it years ago, with my father's reluctant blessing.
"Remember when he caught me making improvements to this place?" I asked Barrett.
"He was furious," the man said, allowing a rare smile. "Called it a waste of resources."
"Until I showed him how it could be used as a panic room." I traced my fingers along the doorframe.
"He told me once you were smarter than all his sons combined."
"Yet he still planned to marry me off to the O'Briens before the Flanagans interfered," I replied, unable to hide my bitterness. "A strategic alliance sealed with his daughter's body and soul."
“Turn around, Barrett.” Inside the cottage, I keyed a sequence into what appeared to be a simple thermostat.
Opening a built-in cupboard, I stepped inside to the steel door and keyed in another code.
The door clicked open and the floor slid into the wall at the back to reveal metal stairs descending into darkness.
"Wait here," I instructed to his back as he still hadn’t turned around. "Close the doors and I’ll see you later. No one follows me down."
The underground vault had been my secret project, originally used as a wine cellar in the estate plans, now a repository for sensitive information in the O'Malley empire. A lot had been destroyed in the fire because my father never thought he’d need this, but at least I’d managed to secure some things over time.
Motion sensors triggered soft lighting as I descended.
The space was not huge but big enough. Three steel cabinets, a state-of-the-art workstation with satellite connectivity, and a weapons cache built into the wall on one side.
My version of a hope chest. On the other side, a couple of bunk beds to house four people, maximised storage, and a makeshift kitchen with attached, properly stocked pantry fit for the apocalypse.
Good ventilation had been thought of, as well as all the tech needed to run operations from this one room.
I pulled out the digital file on Alexander Moore.
The photographs showed a man with dark eyes and classical features, his movements captured in surveillance images that revealed a certain predatory grace to him.
My stomach fluttered and my heart beat just a tad faster.
Ronan Flanagan's man. The man of humble beginnings who had risen through the ranks through sheer skill and strategy—and maybe a bit of luck.
The man was now single-handedly running Flanagan operations across the way in England, a few hours away by boat and car.
"You," I whispered, studying his impassive expression. "You were there that night Father was killed."
The intelligence confirmed it—Alexander Moore had led the tactical team that breached our security. He and others had planted the explosives while Ronan extracted Cressida.
“And before then … you spent that night with me…” I ran my finger slowly down the screen, over his face.
My father had spoken of him once with grudging respect: "The housekeeper's son has more steel in his spine than most men born with silver spoons. Watch him—he's shrewd in a way most men are not. Except maybe, only maybe, Ronan Flanagan."
My father had been a brute-force operator, relying on intimidation and violence. But he'd taught me something different, to my surprise: "The quietest knife cuts deepest, Aoife."
Over the years of him grooming me for this, it became clear I was his ultimate contingency plan. I had my idiot brothers to thank for this, either for incompetence or for getting themselves killed. He had no one else to fill his shoes—nobody like Alexander Moore to train for the role.
Begrudgingly, he realised I could be more than chattel to be sold to the highest bidder. The perfect balance of brains, practicality and refinement, capable of moving through high society and the criminal underworld with equal ease.
"Your legacy, Father," I murmured, "Just not the way you intended it."
My phone vibrated with an encrypted message:
Information about the Flanagan operations that will interest you. Meeting? Reply with location if interested.
—B. O'Brien
Beatrice O'Brien. Formerly Beatrice Ashford, sister to Cressida who now played house with Ronan Flanagan in London. The woman had married that other bastard fool, Patrick O'Brien, after my father's death. Families like ours were not what they used to be.
I pondered the offer. Beatrice had access to both O'Brien and potentially Flanagan intelligence. Word was that Patrick O'Brien was notoriously careless with information around various people, including his trophy wife, believing her too dense and drugged to pose any danger.
I typed coordinates for an abandoned church—neutral ground with multiple exit points I'd already mapped.
As I waited for confirmation, my attention turned to the third cabinet.
This one required both a key and fingerprint authentication.
Inside lay a single item—my father's prized heirloom, a knife that was now mine. I’d coveted it so.
The handle was inlaid with obsidian and ivory, studded with a few emeralds, the exquisitely crafted blade inscribed with our family motto: Dílseacht agus Neart. Loyalty and Strength.
This blade had opened the veins of men who had betrayed my father. Its metal had no doubt tasted Flanagan blood before.
"Power isn't about who has the most guns, Aoife," my father had said when he showed me the knife at sixteen. "It's about who knows where to place the blade."
I lifted it, testing its familiar weight. The last time I'd held it was about a month before the Flanagan attack, when my father had pressed it into my hands when I visited.
"If anything happens to me, remember what matters. Not vengeance, but survival. Dílseacht agus Neart. The O'Malleys endure."
I'd nodded, while knowing I’d made contingency plans. I'd memorized every supplier, every distribution route, every weak point in rival organizations. I was ready to take the reins and he knew it, whether he’d have chosen this or not.
I messaged Beatrice. My phone vibrated moments later with her confirmation.
I slid the knife into its sheath and secured it beneath my coat. The cold steel against my ribs was comforting—a reminder of the tenets I’d live by.
"Miss O'Malley?" Barrett called from above. "Vehicle approaching."
I closed the cabinets and ascended, the vault sealing behind me.
"Let them come," I said, meeting Barrett's concerned gaze. "The Flanagans think they've exterminated us. That makes us ghosts—and what's more dangerous than something that's already dead?"
The abandoned church stood at the intersection of three territories.
Its stone walls were weathered but solid, much like the families that had fought over this land for generations.
I arrived thirty minutes early, my standard practice for any meeting, especially with someone rumoured to be unstable.
"Sweep it again," I instructed Barrett as we pulled up.
His disapproval was evident in the tight line of his mouth. "Your father would never have agreed to this meeting like this."
"My father is dead," I replied, the words cutting like glass in my throat. "And his methods died with him."
"Connor O'Malley built an empire—"
"An empire that burned to ash because he couldn't adapt. Because he couldn’t keep his cock in his pants," I said bluntly. I met his gaze. "I won't make the same mistake, obviously."
I felt the knife's weight against my skin as I entered through the side door, my footsteps echoing on worn stone. The desecrated church had been stripped of religious iconography, leaving only empty alcoves and skeletal remains of pews. Perfect for a conversation meant to leave no witnesses.
I positioned myself where I could see both entrances while keeping a column at my back. Ten minutes passed before the main doors opened, admitting a slender blonde woman in a designer coat.