4. Tiernan
TIERNAN
Fintan stares at me from across my desk, hands clasped over his stomach as he leans back. His gaze is searching, suspicious.
“What?” I ask, pulling the file closer.
“Who is this girl?”
I breathe in deeply and release it, turning in my chair to pull the blinds down a bit to block out the low winter sun.
“Elle Langley,” I say. “Stripper. Broke. Lives in a shit flat in the Isle of Dogs. Crappy and rundown. Cheap. No family worth naming. No boyfriend. No criminal record beyond unpaid fines and debt chasing her around.”
Fintan’s eyes narrow. He doesn’t waste words. Never has. Out of the three of us, he’s the quietest, which makes people think he’s the calm one. They learn differently when he decides to act.
I open the file and look at the printout from her DVLA file. Lorcan’s assistant has been hacking every database in the UK, by the looks of it. Useful bastard.
She’s a nobody, and yet she claims to have just walked into the illegal fight like the doors were left wide open for her.
That bothers me more than if she had been a fucking MI5 agent.
Fintan taps two fingers against his stomach. “Lorcan made her strip?”
I shove the file across the desk. “She walked into the club during a fight. Claimed she had the wrong address and was looking for some bloke called Mack.”
“And?”
“And Lorcan decided to test her.”
Fintan doesn’t look at the file.
He looks at me.
That is worse.
“What exactly did Lorcan do?” he asks.
I glance toward the office door even though it’s shut. No one out there would come in without permission. No one with a survival instinct anyway.
“He pushed too far,” I say.
Fintan’s face doesn’t change. He knows our brother. “How far?”
“Far enough.”
“Tiernan.”
I hate when he uses my name like that. Quiet. Flat. Lorcan can cut a man down with a sentence, but Fintan makes silence feel like a gun on the table.
I rub a hand over my jaw. “He made her strip in the ring. In front of everyone.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“That’s not the part that was too far,” I mutter. I’ve done worse than stand there while Lorcan tore a woman’s pride apart. I’ve broken bones for less. I’ve emptied rooms with a look and a blade. I’ve held men down while they begged for their mothers.
But Elle Langley’s face stays in my head.
The way she went pale. The way she kept looking for an exit that wasn’t there. The way Lorcan kept pushing because he could.
“He told her to masturbate and make herself come.”
Fintan sits forward. That tells me more about his interest in this woman than words ever could. “And did she?”
His tone is quiet, deadly.
“She did. She fingered herself and came all over her hand.”
“Jesus,” he says and sits back, rubbing a hand over his face.
“The fact that Alex Snowden was there did not help matters. And it made it even worse when he showed an interest in the woman. You know how he irritates Lor.”
“With good reason. That dick deserves to be buried up to his neck in sand in the Sahara.”
“Facts. But we aren’t touching him until Lorcan gives the word,” I finish. “And even then, it’ll be a fucking mess.”
Fintan studies me for a long moment. “Snowden doesn’t watch random girls like that. Not unless he knows Lorcan is interested.”
“Exactly, and Lorcan played right into that. He was itching to grab her and fuck her where she stood.”
“In the middle of the ring where he just KO’d someone.”
“He didn’t just KO Donnelly. He put him in the hospital. Well deserved, mind you.”
“Yeah,” Fintan snorts. “Don’t fuck with Keane money.”
“He’s lucky to still be alive. Although I’m fairly sure this was lesson one in not trying to steal from a Keane.”
Fintan opens the file at last, but he doesn’t read it. His thumb presses into the corner of the first page, holding it down. “Where is Lorcan now?”
“In his office in a meeting with GrantsCorp. The deal for the apartment block is going through this week.”
“After last night?”
“Lorcan doesn’t pause because he found a woman to obsess over.”
Fintan gives me a flat look. “That right there is a worry. Lorcan doesn’t obsess over anyone.”
“Except himself,” I say with a snort of amusement.
Elle Langley is out there, probably terrified out of her mind and wondering when we’re coming for her.
Because we are.
Lorcan already gave the order before dawn. Not in words. He didn’t need to. The file on my desk is enough.
“Lorcan wants her,” I say.
Fintan shuts the file. “And what do you want?”
“I want this to have never happened. If she talks—”
“No one will believe her. The fighting ring will be shut down before the police finish taking the report.”
“You hope.”
“It’s the word of a cheap stripper over the Keanes. Who do you think they’ll believe?”
“That’s only half the problem. She didn’t have any idea what she saw, what she walked into.”
“Are we sure she’s innocent in all this?”
“Yeah,” I say, sitting back. “She was terrified, and she wasn’t lying about why she was there. She genuinely ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“You’re a hundred per cent sure?”
I shoot him a look. “It’s what I do, arsehole.”
He holds his hands up. “Just checking.”
“Not that it matters, because if Lorcan decides she’s his, innocence won’t save her. In fact, it only makes her more enticing.”
He knows I’m right. Lorcan wanting something puts a target on it.
Our enemies know his habits, his temper, his need to own whatever catches his interest. If Snowden noticed her, others did too.
A poor blonde stripper with no protection and no idea how deep the dirt goes under this city.
She’s not just a loose end. She’s bait now.
The thought pisses me off.
I don’t like feeling sorry for people. It gets in the way. Sympathy slows the hand before the blade lands. But last night left a bad taste, and I can’t shake it.
Fintan rises from the chair and buttons his jacket. “I’ll go to her flat.”
“And do what?”
“Talk to her.” He smiles. It’s slow, and I know exactly what it means.
“Hurt her and you die, brother or not.”
“She’s got to you too.”
“Of course she fucking has. You’ll see what I mean when you see her.”
“See her bring herself to an orgasm in the middle of a crowded illegal fight?”
“You missed that. Maybe she’ll give you a personal show if you ask her nicely.”
“That would really piss Lorcan off,” he says with a smirk.
“Do your worst,” I grumble and wave him off. He’s pissing me off now. Everyone is pissing me off. I want some time to think about this woman, what she means and what Lorcan intends to do with her.
Fintan leaves without another word, and the office feels too quiet after the door shuts behind him.
I stare at the file.
Elle Langley.
The photo on the first page does nothing for her. Flat lighting. Tired eyes. Hair scraped back. It should make her easier to dismiss. It doesn’t.
I flip the page and scan the details again, giving my hands something to do that isn’t punching a hole through the wall.
Rent arrears. Utility debt. Payday loans. Missed payments. A phone contract in default. No parents listed on any recent records. No emergency contact.
No one to call if she disappears.
That makes me breathe in deeply. “Little stripper all alone in this world,” I murmur. “No one to save you from yourself.”
I turn in the chair again and stare out over the glossy side of London.
Most people walking around down there have no idea of the depravities that go on when it gets dark.
Only a few people know that the Keanes run an empire of violence underneath their feet while running a billion-pound property empire during the day.
I push back from the desk and stand. Sitting still never suits me. It gives thoughts room to get loud.
Lorcan’s office sits down the hall, behind glass, money, and women with perfect posture who pretend they don’t hear half the threats that leave his mouth. Mine is closer to the men who actually make our world turn. The ones who move cash, bodies, information, and trouble.
My phone buzzes on the desk.
Lorcan.
I answer and put it to my ear. “What?”
“Where’s Fintan?”
His voice is calm. Too calm.
“Out.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Tiernan.”
“He went to see the girl.”
Silence.
I look toward the closed door and wait for the explosion. It doesn’t come, which is worse.
“Good. What does he plan to do when he is there?”
“Make her come,” I joke.
Lorcan chuckles darkly. “Lucky man. She is a beautiful sight, wrecked and exposed.”
“Careful, Lor. Your obsession is showing.”
“Like you haven’t stopped thinking about it yourself. Don’t lie to me, T. I know you.”
“I’m not the one who made a public spectacle out of a scared woman because Snowden looked interested.”
“That’s not why I did it,” he grits out, epically pissed off. Who cares?
“You did what you wanted.”
Another silence drops between us, sharp enough to draw blood.
Lorcan rarely gets called out. Fewer men survive it. I’m family, which gives me more rope than most, but it’s not endless.
“She walked into my club,” Lorcan says.
“She walked through an unlocked door.”
“That shouldn’t have been unlocked.”
“No shit. That’s the problem we should be discussing instead of whether you get to keep a traumatised stripper as a pet.”
His breathing changes. Barely. Enough. “If Snowden gets within a thousand yards of her, I want to know about it.”
“Is this really about Snowden or about her?”
“Both,” he growls and hangs up.
Both. Great. Our brother has decided to give a new meaning to the word annoying.
I pull the phone away from my ear and dial a number that is rarely used.
Rare because this is the man you call when you want to spy on one of the most powerful men in the city without his entire security team knowing about it.
“Arch. It’s Tiernan Keane. Got a job for you. Alex Snowden.”
A grunt.
“Yeah, I know. But that’s why I called you.”
Pleased grunt.
Right. We’re getting somewhere now.