Chapter 2
Aidan
“You’re staring,” Declan says before taking a long gulp of water. He places it on the table outside the cafe carefully, precisely.
“And?” I say, not taking my eyes off the woman who gave me the middle finger and told me to fuck off earlier. Snub one. Snub two was her ignoring me when I shouted at her across the quad.
“She’s going to come over here and stab you in the eye,” Cormac snorts. “Part of me hopes she does.”
“Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you. Blood and gore everywhere.”
“I’d fuck her in it.”
Still keeping my eyes on the little pixie, the left side of my mouth turns up. “Glad my dismemberment can provide some erotic entertainment for you.”
Cormac doesn’t respond. He doesn’t need to. The fucker means every word, and that’s what makes him useful. He’s sitting across from me, arms folded, watching the same woman I’m watching, with the same kind of hunger.
Declan, on the other hand, is pretending he’s not interested, but I know better.
He proves it a second later. “Dervla Callaghan. Daughter to the late, great Cillian Callaghan. Was at Dublin City University until eight weeks ago when she filed to deregister and never went back. Applied here the same day and despite a Board block three years ago, sailed through the application process to transfer into her last year.”
“Fucking hell. What are you? Dervla-pedia?” Cormac laughs. “Dec’s got it bad.”
“Know thine enemy,” I murmur. So far, he hasn’t told me anything I don’t already know. I’m a legacy at St. Aug’s. The O’Connells go back hundreds of years at this institution.
“She didn’t just sail through,” I say, picking up my coffee and taking a slow sip. It’s bitter, the way I like it. “Someone on the Board pushed her application through. The block was unanimous three years ago. That doesn’t just evaporate.”
Declan nods slowly. “Someone wants her here.”
“Or someone wants what she brings with her.” I set the cup down. “Cillian’s seat is empty. Once twelve weeks have passed, they have to fill that seat within a fortnight. The rules are part of the founding stone, and they will remain so until this place burns to the ground. She timed it well.”
“You think she’s after his seat?” Cormac asks.
I give him a glare that could kill an oak tree. “Obviously. Why else would she cut loose from Dub City U to come here when they already rejected her once?”
“She has no idea the competition that is up for that seat,” Declan says, sitting back.
“She will learn quickly enough. A seat hasn’t opened up in fifteen years. Every alum, from current students to old folks who are in their golden years, will be vying for it.”
“Including you,” Declan says with a smirk before he picks up his water again, eyes now on the pixie eating a sandwich as if it offended her in some way.
“Says who?” I ask lightly. “I don’t want it.”
“Oh, please. Spare me the humility.”
I don’t do humility. It’s a weakness dressed up as a virtue, and I’ve got no time for it.
But I also don’t broadcast every play I’m making.
That’s the difference between every other power-hungry bastard and me in this place.
They announce. I acquire. Declan knows this.
Cormac knows this. They’ve watched me play the long game since we were five, sitting in the back row of the chapel during our first week at St. Aug’s Catholic primary school, carving our names into the pew like the little shits we were.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t interested in the seat,” I clarify, because precision matters. “I said I don’t want it. There’s a difference. Wanting implies I’d be disappointed if I didn’t get it. I’m not capable of disappointment, because I don’t lose.”
“Christ, the ego on you,” Cormac mutters, but there’s no heat in it. He’s heard it all before. He’s also seen me back it up, every single time.
The pixie—Dervla—stands up from the bench she’s been perched on and brushes crumbs off her jeans with quick, efficient hands. She shoves her sandwich wrapper into the bin and stalks off.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see someone move. I’m out of my seat in under a second and shoving my hand into Troy’s chest before he gets two steps in her direction.
“Don’t,” I say casually.
He glares at me. “The bitch threw us out of our house. I’m living in some damp student flat because of her.”
“The house belongs to her. She has the right to live in it while she attends this institution or for the rest of her life if she chooses. Touch her, and you will find out the lengths I will go to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
He growls and doesn’t back down. He is smarter than that, though. He knows he can’t go up against me physically or in the hierarchy. He will lose on both accounts.
He steps back. His jaw is tight, and his eyes are full of the kind of impotent rage that makes stupid men do stupid things. “But she’s got enemies she doesn’t even know about yet.”
“Then she’ll fit right in.” I smooth the front of his shirt where my hand creased it, a gesture that’s more threat than courtesy. “Run along now before I let Cormac take his revenge for ratting him out in high school for cheating on his maths test.”
Cormac slams his fist into his palm, a wicked grin splitting his face. He’s been waiting to do that for six years.
Troy turns and walks away, but not before throwing a look over his shoulder that tells me this isn’t over for him.
Idiot. Troy Kavanagh has the strategic thinking of a toddler with a hammer.
Everything’s a nail. He’ll come at Dervla sideways when he thinks no one’s watching.
What he doesn’t realise is that there will always be someone watching.
I sit back down again and pick up my coffee. Declan hasn’t moved, but his eyes tracked the entire exchange with the flat attention of a predator deciding whether to get up.
“You just marked her,” he says.
“I marked her as untouchable,” I say. “By anyone who wants to keep their hands.”
Untouchable.
The word settles in me like a vow I didn’t mean to make.
It isn’t noble. It isn’t even generous.
It’s possessive in the oldest way—because the idea of someone else putting hands on her first makes my vision go cold at the edges.
“Ours,” Cormac mutters, a claim being staked.
I drain the rest of my coffee and set the cup down. “Cillian Callaghan’s daughter doesn’t just waltz into St. Augustine’s without consequences. Every faction on this campus is going to try to recruit her, use her, or bury her. I’d rather be the one holding the shovel.”
“Her initiation will be tonight,” Declan says. “The outcome will determine where she’s placed.”
“Right at the top,” I predict. “The apex predator. Anything less and I’ll be disappointed in her.”
“She’s really crawled under your skin by telling you to fuck off, hasn’t she?” Cormac says with a laugh. “Not many people live much past the two seconds after.”
“She’s different,” I say simply, and leave it at that.
Because she is. I saw it the second her eyes snapped open in the quad—grey-green, feral, furious at being caught off guard.
Most people look at me and recalibrate. They soften, defer, or calculate how to use proximity to me as currency.
She looked at me like I was an obstacle between her and wherever she was going.
Then she swore at me with that filthy mouth and walked away with bells jingling on her boots like some kind of war fairy.
I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
Different is usually a warning sign for me.
Different means variables I can’t control, outcomes I can’t guarantee, the kind of mistake that gets written into the history of a family as a cautionary tale.
But when she looked at me like I was an obstacle instead of a prize, something in my chest sharpened.
Not desire. Not yet.
Recognition.
As if I’d finally met someone who wouldn’t ask permission to become dangerous.
“Tonight,” I say, standing up. “We need to be there.”
“They’ll make her run the gauntlet,” Cormac says, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
“The enhanced one that no one talks about or mysteriously disappears,” Declan adds.
“And that is what will make this so fun. We’ll be at the end. If she falls, we catch her. If she passes, we take her. Either way. Ours.”
I leave them at the table and walk. I cut through the archway behind the café that opens onto the south cloister, where the stone is so old it’s practically powder under your fingertips.
I know every shortcut, every blind spot on this campus.
I’ve been walking these grounds since I could stand, dragged here by my father for alumni dinners where men in expensive suits decided the fates of other men in cheaper ones.
I learned early that buildings don’t hold power.
People do. And the people who hold it here are the Board.
Seven seats. Seven voices. Six of them are currently occupied by men and women who’ve been entrenched so long they’ve calcified.
Cillian Callaghan’s seat—the seventh—has been empty for eight weeks, and the whole ecosystem is destabilising because of it.
But that’s the point of the twelve-week waiting period.
Alliances are shifting. Old debts are being called in.
And now his daughter is here, with those grey-green eyes that don’t look away when they should, and everyone’s scrambling to figure out whether she’s an asset or a liability.
Everyone, that is, except me. I’ve already decided.