Chapter 1 #2
Whitmore nods once. “He wanted you to arrive with the weapon already made, rather than arrive and become the weapon by necessity.” He folds his hands again. “He miscalculated the timeline. Unexpected death can do that.”
The words hit somewhere soft and unprotected, the part of me that has spent weeks being furious at my father for secrets and strategies and a life lived in code. He wasn’t keeping me out. He was trying to hand me something finished.
“Who killed him?”
“That is something I can’t answer. I wish I could, Miss Callaghan.”
I stare at him for a long moment.
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Can’t.” He meets my gaze, and for once, there is nothing performative about it. No positioning. No angle I can detect. “I am many things, Miss Callaghan, but before you accuse, a murderer is not one of them. And I did not have your father killed. He was a friend.”
I believe him, which is deeply inconvenient and almost sickening.
I turn away from the desk and press two fingers to my temple. The headache that has been threatening since the convoy ride has finally arrived, settling in behind my left eye like it intends to stay for the week. “Why are you telling me all of this now? Why not before, or never?”
“For show, Miss Callaghan. This web runs deep. Deeper than you could possibly imagine. Until you knew who your grandfather was, there was no reason to inform you who I was.”
“So you just made me hate you instead.”
“Whatever works.” His smile is genuine.
“Ugh,” I spit out. “So why are you so pissed off that I claimed the Board seat?”
“Not pissed off. Slightly blindsided,” he corrects.
“Yeah, well that makes two of us,” I mutter.
Whitmore leans back in his chair and studies me with the expression of a man who has decided to stop pretending. “The seat is yours. It was always going to be yours. I merely needed you to take it without my fingerprints on the moment.”
“Because that would have undermined it.”
“Because it would have undermined you. There is a difference. A seat handed over by a facilitator is a favour. A seat claimed in front of witnesses, on your own terms, with blood on your face and three men at your back, is a statement.”
I turn back to face him. “You engineered the whole thing.”
“I created conditions. You made choices. That distinction matters more than you think.”
“It matters to you because it keeps your hands clean.”
“It matters,” he says, “because when the people above the Board look at what happened in that hall this morning, they will see a Callaghan who walked in and took what was hers. Not a girl who was handed something by her grandfather’s network.
” He tilts his head. “Which version do you think survives what’s coming? ”
“Go back to the shooters and Séamus’ men. What were you implying?”
“I was implying that Padraig being shot wasn’t accidental.”
“Séamus put the hit out on him.”
Whitmore says nothing.
“And he just happened to be standing in front of me when it was done. It wasn’t for me at all.”
“Not this time,” he says.
I inhale deeply and release it. “So what happens now?”
“Now we wait for the endgame, Miss Callaghan,” he says, pulling a folder towards him. “Dismissed.”
I say nothing to that. What is left to say? I step back, pull the door open, and walk out.
The corridor outside is empty. The kind of empty that has ears. Cormac falls into step on my left without a word. Declan comes up on my right. Aidan closes the office door behind him with a quiet click that somehow sounds more final than a slam.
We don’t make it ten steps before Declan says, “Séamus had Padraig shot in front of you with his own men on the grounds. To send a message.”
I keep walking. “Looks that way. To everyone watching. To the Board. To whoever is above the Board. To me.” My boots echo off the stone floor. “He wanted them to see what happens when someone gets in my way. He wanted me to see it too.”
“I’m starting to really like him,” Cormac states as we head outside. The campus is clear. Maybe this time we are not going back to classes like everything is fine.
Classes.
What a joke.
“That was very unexpected,” I say.
“What me liking your grandad?” Cormac asks.
“No,” I say with a scathing glare. “Whitmore.”
“Mm,” Aidan says. “I don’t enjoy finding out the man I’ve wanted to bury under the chapel for three years is apparently on our side.”
“Side feels generous,” Declan mutters. “He’s on a side. Might overlap with ours occasionally.”
One of Séamus’ guards breaks off from the edge of the path and heads for us. Dark coat. Earpiece. Blank expression that says he could announce the weather or a death sentence in the same tone.
“Miss Callaghan. We’re escorting you back to your house. You are under orders to stay there until morning.”
“Good thing I hadn’t planned on getting out of my bed once I crawled into it then, isn’t it?”
He looks like he wants to smirk, but he doesn’t. He just turns around, and we move. My brain is fried, and all I want now is some tea, food and sleep. Then I want to wake up, have sex and go back to sleep.
By the time we reach the front door, I’m already envisioning myself in my pjs. Before the guards leave, I say to them, “Tell Séamus, the message was received and understood.”
The one who spoke to me before nods briskly. “Will do.”
I close the door and lean my forehead against it as Declan goes to the kitchen to put the kettle on.