Chapter 26
Aidan
The room goes silent.
I stand to Dervla’s left with blood drying on my knuckles and my shoulder still pissed off from the shot outside the chapel, and watch Cillian Callaghan bring a hidden machine in a dead man’s office to life.
The screen flickers.
White text scrolls up black glass.
“Please tell me Whitmore had a less serial-killer hobby than building financial apocalypse panels into antique walls,” I mutter.
“No,” Cillian says.
That should be absurd. It isn’t. Not in this room. Not after today.
Dervla stands with her arms at her sides, gun still in hand, face scrubbed clean of everything except fury. She looks at the screen like she wants to put a bullet through that as well.
“How long?” she asks.
“A few minutes,” Cillian replies.
“A few minutes,” she repeats. “Amazing. My emotional devastation brought to you by loading time.”
Séamus gives a short breath that might be a laugh if he were capable of normal human responses. “Temper.”
“Try me,” she says without looking at him.
I do not take my eyes off the panel. The progress bar stops halfway. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Cillian says, turning to Dervla. “The next part is why Dervla is the only one who can unlock it.”
“Meaning?” I say, eyes narrowed before she can.
Cillian looks back at the switchboard and lifts a small lid off to the left. Underneath it is a black panel. “Blood biometrics.”
“Oh, you have got to be shitting me,” I grit out.
“You want me to bleed on it?” Dervla asks, eyes wide.
Cillian doesn’t even blink. “A drop. Perhaps two.”
“Perhaps two,” I repeat. “Good to know the apocalypse has margin for error.”
Dervla moves before anyone can stop her. She sets her gun on the desk, pulls Henrietta out of the back of her jeans, and slices the pad of her thumb open with the sort of violence that makes something dark in me go warm.
Dervla presses her thumb to the black glass.
For one ugly second, nothing happens.
Then the panel glows red beneath her blood.
A sharp beep cuts through the room. The main screen flashes once, then again. New lines of text start running, faster now, columns opening down the display like a ledger from hell.
ACCESS VERIFIED.
PRIMARY AUTHORITY CONFIRMED.
CASCADE ARMED.
Nobody says a word for a moment.
“Now what?” I ask. “Talk us through it, seeing as we have apparently been chasing our own dicks for the last god knows how long.”
Cillian looks at the screen as if it is an old friend finally behaving itself.
“It maps the data on the drive to the shell structures Whitmore built into the system. Accounts, trusts, property, vehicles, educational funds, donor channels, payroll diversions, offshore holdings, legal retainers, black budgets. Once the match is complete, the cascade pushes simultaneous triggers.”
“English,” Dervla says.
“It empties them,” I reply, eyes fixed on the display.
“Freezes what can’t be emptied. Flags what can’t be frozen.
Sends records where they can do the most damage.
Revenue. Banking oversight. Press contacts if Whitmore was thorough enough.
Rival institutions. People who will panic. It’s fucking genius.”
Dervla hisses at me. “So glad you’re impressed.”
I chuckle. “It’s very impressive.”
The progress bar jumps. Seventy-four per cent.
I keep my eyes on the screen and my body angled towards Dervla. Habit now. Instinct.
“What’s the catch?” I ask.
“Yeah. There is always a catch,” Cormac says.
Cillian finally turns from the panel. “Once the cascade begins, there is no reversing it. Any ally, any useful intermediary, any compromised asset still embedded in Roman infrastructure goes down with them.”
“Is there a way to stop it before it starts?” I ask.
Cillian nods. “It will stop its load at ninety-nine per cent. Then we need a tertiary confirmation.”
“More blood?” Dervla asks.
He shakes his head. “The tertiary confirmation requires a verbal command.”
“That’s it?” I ask.
Cillian looks at Dervla. “It has to come from you.”
She nods.
It makes sense. Her blood, her voice.
The bar crawls to eighty-one per cent.
I watch the numbers because it is easier than looking at her father standing there alive and useful after blowing a crater through her life.
Roisin steps closer to the panel, reading fast. “If this dumps records where I think it dumps them, half the country’s respectable men are about to develop chest pain.”
“Good,” Dervla says. “Then what?”
Cillian looks at her. “Then you choose whether to burn it all.”
The room tightens.
Séamus shifts his weight. “There’s no choice to make.”
She nods.
The progress bar crawls higher.
Roisin leans in further, eyes flicking over the data stream. “What exactly counts as an ally here?” she asks. “Because if Whitmore built this properly, there will be bleed into institutions that are not formally Roman but are adjacent enough to get caught.”
“Correct,” Cillian says.
“And by adjacent, you mean?” Declan asks.
“Anyone tied through shared funding vehicles, covert patronage, placement routes, debt structures, mutual protection agreements.”
Declan stares at him. “So half the fucking country.”
“Not half,” Cillian says.
Nobody looks reassured.
“More than,” he adds.
“Jesus,” I mutter and scrub a hand over my face. “Is it call my dad time?”
“You have seconds,” Cillian says.
“I’ll wait,” Dervla says, giving me a look. “Go.”
I nod, already pulling out my phone. I step out into the hallway and pull the door mostly shut behind me, dialling my dad.
The corridor is colder than the office. Quieter too, though I can still hear the muted hum of voices inside, all of them orbiting the same button with the same body-shaped blast radius.
He answers on the second ring. “Aidan.”
“Everything okay after the explosion?” I ask.
“Small breach of the outer wall of the estate. They were dealt with.”
I frown. “Who?”
“Depends on how much you know.”
“All of it.”
“Brendan’s men.” Deliberately vague.
“Romans.”
“So you are up to speed.”
“Don’t be a dick. The Romans are done. Brendan Murphy is dead. Dervla shot him in the chapel.”
A beat.
“Nice.”
That one word carries twenty things. Surprise. Approval. Calculation. Concern that he will never admit to.
“Whitmore built a kill switch into his office. Cillian’s just loaded a drive into it.
It’s about to gut Roman finances, front companies, placements, donor channels, all of it, and anything adjacent.
Sell up, cut loose, move money unless you want to lose it.
You have seconds. Once she confirms it, there’s no taking it back. ”
“Stall her as long as you can. I need five minutes at least.” He hangs up.
Shoving my phone back into my pocket, I push the door further open. “He asked for five minutes.”
“He doesn’t get it,” Cillian states.
“Yes, he fucking does,” Dervla says, giving me a nod. I trust her. “Start the clock.”
Cillian’s eyes cut to her. “Dervla.”
“I said start the clock.”
He looks like he wants to argue. Good luck to him. When she gets that tone, arguing is just volunteering to be humiliated.
“Five minutes,” she says. “Not because he asked. Because I want every bastard who can run from this to know the fire is coming and fail anyway.”
Séamus gives her a long look. “Mercy is not usually your best quality.”
“This isn’t mercy.” She picks up her gun from the desk and shoves it next to Henrietta down the back of her jeans. “This is theatre.”
That, if anything, seems to satisfy him.
Declan has a timer ticking down as he stares at his phone.
“Call him,” I say. “Be quick.”
He nods and turns his back, muttering into the phone a few seconds later.
I turn to Séamus. “You aren’t affected by this?”
He gives me a level stare. “That remaining almost half of the country is run by me, laddie. I’m fine.”
I snort. “Call me laddie again, and we will have a more serious problem.”
“I like you,” he says. “I have a place for you.”
I tilt my head as Dervla goes apocalyptic.
“Excuse me?” she roars.
The office nearly cracks under the force of her voice.
Séamus doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed. “I said I have a place for him.”
“He already has a place,” Dervla snaps. “With me.”
That lands in the room like a blade on stone.
Something hot and vicious unfurls low in my chest. I don’t smile. I want to. I keep it.
Séamus studies her for a beat too long. “Possessive.”
“You have no fucking idea,” she says.
Declan makes a rough sound that might be a laugh. Cormac does not bother hiding his approval. Roisin looks like she wants popcorn and a bloodbath, but can’t decide between the two.
“The interesting thing you seem to have overlooked is that my organisation is your organisation,” Séamus states, and he’s not wrong.
“I haven’t overlooked anything,” Dervla says. “I’m choosing how it functions now.”
Séamus lifts a brow. “Big claim for someone who hasn’t inherited yet.”
“That can be arranged,” she growls, and I stifle my snort of pure amusement.
“She shot Brendan Murphy in the head,” I say. “That tends to speed things up.”
That earns me a sideways look from Dervla. Sharp. Brief. Pleased despite herself.
Declan returns from his phone call and holds up the screen. Three minutes.
Cillian turns back to the panel. “Ninety-two per cent.”
Cormac moves closer. I move with him without thinking, closing the distance to Dervla until I am near enough to put myself between her and anybody stupid.
“Ninety-eight,” Cillian says.
The numbers on the screen crawl like they enjoy the tension.
Dervla watches them with a stillness that means violence is only sleeping. Her thumb is still bleeding. A thin line of red tracks down the side of her hand. I catch her wrist and lift it before she can object, bringing it to my mouth to suck.
Her breath catches, her eyes darting to Cillian, but he’s not looking at her.
Her pulse jumps against my fingers.
Good.
“Don’t make it weird,” Dervla mutters, too low for anyone except me.
I release her hand and glance at the screen. “Too late.”