Chapter 14 #2
“Belial argues for peace,” Keogh says, pacing the front. “But his peace is not surrender. It’s strategy. He wants to wait, to adapt, to let time soften God’s wrath. He’s not weak. He’s patient. And patience, in Milton’s Hell, is the most dangerous virtue of all.”
I scrawl that down too, my words a mess across the page.
When the lecture ends, I pack up and head out, taking the back stairs to avoid the main corridor crush. The day is warm, the April sun doing its best impression of something reliable, and the walk home is long enough that my thoughts have room to stretch.
The locksmith Declan recommended arrives not long after I get in.
He’s fast and professional, doesn’t ask questions, and leaves me with two new sets of keys and a deadbolt that would take a battering ram to get through.
I pay him in cash and lock the door behind him, testing the new hardware twice before I’m satisfied and head upstairs to grab the file from under the mattress.
I pull it out and spread the pages across my bed.
Everything I gathered in those weeks after Dad died, sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor of the manse with Jameson for company and murder for motivation.
Names. Dates. Connections. Bank records I pulled from his study.
Phone logs from the burner he thought I didn’t know about.
A photograph taken at some gala three years ago, all of them in black tie, smiling for the camera like they weren’t deciding fates over canapés.
I find Dad in the photograph. Second from the left.
Glass of whiskey in his hand, with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, because it never did in public.
He’s standing next to a woman I don’t recognise, silver-haired, sharp-featured, and on his other side is Whitmore, leaning in too close, his hand on Dad’s shoulder in a way that looks chummy but reads possessive.
I stare at Whitmore’s face. That oily smile.
Those calculating eyes. He was a student here with Dad.
He rose through the institution while Dad built his empire off campus.
They knew each other for decades. And now Whitmore is Vice-Chancellor, presiding over St. Augustine’s, and Dad is dead, and the seat is empty.
Whitmore is watching the chessboard from the highest position in the university.
I circle his name over and over. He gives me the utter creeps. He knows something, I just know it. Then, under it, I write a single word and underline it twice.
Suspect.
It’s not enough. It’s not close to enough. But it’s a start, and starting is the thing that separates people who grieve from people who get answers.
I slide the file back under the mattress and check the time.
It’s getting late, and I need to eat. The afternoon has disappeared into the work, and I’m stiff from sitting cross-legged on the bed for hours.
I stretch, wince when my knee complains, and head downstairs to look for something decent to eat.
The kitchen is empty and clean. I fill a glass with water while I think, drink it standing at the sink, and stare out at the overgrown garden, that needs a serious overhaul.
Beyond it, the trees are still. Everything looks manageable in the late-afternoon light.
Containable. Like problems that can be solved with enough time and enough anger.
There is a knock at the door, and I frown. I open the door to find Declan on the doorstep. He’s holding a takeaway bag in one hand. He looks at me and raises the bag slightly.
“Thai,” he says. “I guessed.”
“That will do,” I murmur and step aside against my better judgement. I’m starving, and he has food already cooked and delicious.
I get plates while he sets out the containers.
We eat at the kitchen table. The Thai is good.
He asks about my day with the careful neutrality of someone who wants information but won’t push for it.
I tell him about Gallagher’s lecture. The conspiracy content.
Joint enterprise. The one who never holds the knife.
After that, we eat in silence for a while.
It’s the third time we’ve sat in this kitchen together, and the domesticity of it should feel wrong.
It doesn’t. It feels like a habit forming against my will, a groove being worn into the surface of my life by a man who makes tea the way I like it and shows up with food without being asked.
After more small talk, we clear the plates. He loads the dishwasher while I hand him the plates, and the brush of his fingers against mine when he does it sends a jolt up my arm that has nothing to do with the injury.
I pull my hand back. He doesn’t acknowledge it.
The kitchen is clean. The food is done. There is no reason for him to still be here, and no reason for me to want him to be, and both of those things are true, and both of them are lies.
“I should go,” he says.
“Probably.”
He doesn’t move.
I’m leaning against the counter. He’s standing by the table, two metres of kitchen floor between us, and the distance feels like a dare.
The silence is the same kind as last night: weighted, pressurised, the air thick with something unspoken that’s been building since the first night he walked into this room and put his hands on me.
“Dervla.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t say my name like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to do something we can’t take back.”
He looks at me. Steady. Patient. Those light eyes give me nothing and everything at the same time. “I’m not going to do anything,” he says. “Unless you want me to.”
The words settle between us like a lit fuse.
The worst part is that I believe him.
Not because he’s gentle.
Because he’s precise—and he’s been precise with me in every way that counts.
He’ll stand there, quiet and steady, and wait for me to cross the floor, and the bastard of it is that he knows I will.
“I hate you,” I say.
“I know.”
“This doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means whatever you want it to mean.”
“It means I’ve had a shit day and a shit week, you’re here, and I’m tired of fighting everything all the time.”
“Then stop fighting.”
Two metres. That’s all it is. I cross it in three steps, grab the front of his shirt with my left hand, and pull him down to me.
The kiss is not gentle. It’s not tentative or questioning or any of the things a first real kiss is supposed to be.
It’s a detonation. His mouth opens against mine, and the sound he makes, low, rough, pulled from somewhere deep, vibrates through my chest. His hands find my waist, and the grip is immediate, hard, possessive, like he’s been holding himself back, and I just cut the rope.
I bite his lower lip. He groans and lifts me, both hands under my thighs, and my back hits the wall beside the kitchen doorway with enough force to rattle the picture frame next to my head.
My legs wrap around him. His hips press into mine, and I can feel him, thick and hard through his jeans, and the contact drags a gasp out of me.
“Hard. Fast.” I pant. I don’t want slow. I don’t want careful. I want to feel something that isn’t grief or rage or the dull, constant ache of being alone in a house that belonged to a dead man.
His hand slides up under my top, fingers splaying across my ribs, and the heat of his palm on my bare skin makes me shiver.
He pulls the top over my head in one rough motion.
He unsnaps my bra with a quick movement, and his eyes drop.
The look on his face, dark, hungry, reverent, makes my stomach flip.
He lowers his mouth to my breast, and the first touch of his lips makes my spine arch off the wall. He sucks, hard, and I grab his hair with my left hand and pull, and the sound he makes against my skin is feral. His teeth graze my nipple.
I moan. “Declan.” His name comes out like a plea, which I will deny forever.
He lifts his head and looks at me, and his eyes are dark with lust, all the quiet patience gone, replaced by something raw and uncontrolled that I’ve never seen on his face before. This is what he looks like when the composure breaks. This is what was underneath all along.
His hand goes to his belt, and I hear the leather slide free, and the sound of it spikes my pulse.
He shifts me higher against the wall, one arm braced, and I reach down and push at his jeans, needing him free.
He manages the rest one-handed, which would be impressive if I had the brain function to appreciate it.
I feel him against me, hot and hard, and I reach between us with my left hand, stroking his impressive length.
He plasters one hand against the wall, the other still under my thigh, as his eyes close and lets me jerk him off for a few seconds before he drops me lightly to my feet.
His hands slide to the button of my jeans.
I help him, clumsy with one hand, shoving the denim down my hips until it drops around my ankles, and I kick them free.
He pulls my underwear down after it, and then I’m bare against the wall in my own kitchen while he’s still half-dressed, and the imbalance of it should bother me more than it does.
He drops to his knees. His tongue is slow and deliberate against my clit, and I hate that it’s slow, because slow means I have to feel everything, every careful stroke, every point of precise and devastating pressure, and there is nowhere to hide from it.
My left hand grabs his hair, not guiding, just holding, needing something to grip, while my right hand presses against the wall because my legs are threatening to give out under me.
“Declan.” His name again. I can’t seem to stop saying it.
He doesn’t answer. He sucks my clit and then nips it sharply. I yelp as my head tips back and hits the wall.