Chapter 31
Dervla
The fact that we all skipped lectures yesterday to go on a wild goose chase and get shot at seems to have gone over all our heads.
Now, I’m standing in the kitchen, sipping hot coffee, feeling the effects of three guys fucking the living daylights out of me and deciding how to go about casually dropping the Casino Night into conversation with Roisin.
I want her there, front and centre, so she can report back to the Board, or not, depending on where her views lie.
One assumes with herself, but she still has skin in the game because she is a Board member.
“You got this?” I say to Aidan.
He nods, scrolling through his phone. “Everything will be set up by tomorrow night. Today is about making sure everyone knows what’s going on.”
“I’ll handle Roisin,” I say. “You handle the rest.”
Cormac looks up from where he’s finishing the last of the toast. “You sure?”
“Yes.” I drain my coffee and set the mug in the dishwasher. “If I walk around campus with three men attached to me, it rather undermines the point I’m trying to make.”
“It also keeps you alive,” Declan says.
I turn and point at him. “See. This. This is exactly what I mean.”
His mouth twitches, but he doesn’t argue. That is probably because he knows I’m right.
Aidan slips his phone into his pocket. “Fine. But you keep your phone on, and if anything feels off, you call.”
“I know how phones work.”
“Humour me.”
“I’d rather not.”
He gives me a look that says he is one wrong answer away from assigning me a fucking escort. I grab my bag before he can say anything else, shove my phone inside it, and head for the door. The morning is warm, and I turn my face to the sun that has decided to show its face today.
Campus is moving in that mid-morning way where everyone looks like they have somewhere urgent to be and half of them are lying. Students cut across the quad in clusters, coffee cups in hand, book bags slung over their shoulders. Nobody pays me much attention at first.
Then they do.
Eyes catch on me as I pass. Curious. Assessing.
I catch up with Roisin at the café, grabbing a coffee.
I cross over to her and stand right in front of her. “You coming?”
“Where to?” she asks carefully.
“You know where.”
She smiles enigmatically. “You’re making a statement.”
“About time I did.”
“True. I’ll be there.”
I nod and walk away from her. Job done.
That’s the trick with places like St. Augustine’s. You don’t announce. You let people overhear. You let the right person hear one thing in the wrong tone, and suddenly the entire university is choking on speculation.
It spreads like wildfire.
By lunchtime, I’ve heard three different versions of what’s happening tomorrow night.
One says it’s a party. Another says it’s a fight night.
A third says the new Apex is hosting something in the assembly hall that involves gambling, blood, and a dress code, which is close enough to the truth that I don’t bother correcting it.
I sit through Gallagher’s lecture in the afternoon and take notes with my left hand, which is starting to piss me off. More ice on the right later, and I’m taking the tape off. Do or die. I don’t give a fuck anymore. I want my right hand back.
He’s dissecting the legal framework of institutional corruption today, and either the universe has a sense of humour or Gallagher knows exactly what he’s doing, because every case study he cites could be a chapter from my father’s ledger.
I watch him at the front of the room, mild and precise and utterly in control.
After the lecture, I walk back across campus alone.
Henrietta is warm against my spine, the sun is still out, and for the first time in weeks, I don’t feel like something is about to come at me from the shadows.
Not because the danger has passed. It hasn’t.
But because I’ve stopped crouching and started standing. The difference is everything.
A girl I vaguely recognise from Dr Keogh’s English Lit class falls into step beside me. “Is it true?” she asks.
“Depends what you’re talking about.”
“That the new Apex is running a casino night in the assembly hall tomorrow. Open door. Fights downstairs.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Are you insane?”
“Probably.”
She grins. It’s sharp, genuine, and surprised. “I’m Anthea. I’ll be there. I’m especially interested in the… underground activities…” She peels off toward the library, and I keep walking, and the warmth in my chest isn’t just the sun. It’s something I haven’t felt since I got here. Momentum.
I take the long route, the one that winds through the quad, past the café, and along the south cloister, where Aidan cornered me on my second day.
I want to be seen. I want every person I pass to register that Dervla Callaghan is still here, still upright, still moving like she is about to kick up a storm.
It works. Or maybe I’m imagining it. But the glances feel different this afternoon. Less curious, more wary.
I make it to the rugby pitch and sit on a low wall to watch Cormac score a try. I giggle as I had no idea he played.
“Hey,” Declan says, sidling up to me and sitting down. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just trying to be seen.”
“I think it’s working. Everyone is staring.”
“Good,” I say. “Let them.”
Declan glances at me. “You look pleased with yourself.”
“I am pleased with myself. It’s been a while.”
Cormac cuts across the pitch again, brutal and fast, and someone twice his size bounces off him like they’ve made a terrible life choice. I grin before I can stop it.
“He plays angry,” I say.
“He does most things angry,” Declan replies.
“And you?”
He looks out at the pitch. “Depends who’s asking.”
I snort. “Such a cryptic bastard.”
A whistle blows. Training breaks for water. Cormac looks over, spots me, and that dangerous face of his changes in a way I’m probably not meant to see. Possessive. He jogs over, shirt damp, hair a mess, chest rising hard.
“You stalking me now?” he asks.
“Yes. I thought I’d start with the violent ones and work my way up.”
His mouth curves. “Funny.”
“Thank you.” I tip my head toward the pitch. “You’re disturbingly good at this.”
“I’m good at most things.”
Declan makes a quiet sound that is definitely a laugh and is definitely aimed at Cormac’s ego.
Cormac looks down at me, all heat and dark focus and sweat-damp skin. “You staying?”
“For the rest of training? Christ, no. I’ve seen enough male aggression for one day.”
“You watched me score twice.”
“I watched you flatten some poor bastard and call it sport.”
“That was sport.”
“That was assault with applause.”
He huffs a laugh. It does something annoying to my stomach.
I stand before my brain can make that expression on Cormac’s face mean more than it should.
“I have things to do,” I say.
“Such as?” Cormac asks.
“Cause trouble.”
“Thought that was already handled.”
“Today is light trouble. Tomorrow is organised trouble.”
He wipes sweat from his forehead with the hem of his shirt, and I very deliberately do not stare at his stomach. Or my name etched into his arm. Or the fact that I know exactly how those hands feel on my body.
“See you later,” I say, with more dignity than I feel, and make a move to leave.
Cormac catches my wrist before I can get far. Not hard. Just enough to stop me.
I look down at his hand, then up at him. “Do you want to lose a finger?”
“No. Just checking something.”
“What?”
He studies my face for one second too long. “That you’re actually okay.”
Something in me softens before I can stop it. Irritating.
“I’m okay,” I say, quieter this time.
His grip loosens, but he doesn’t let go immediately. “Good.”
Then he does, and I walk away before any of us can make that strange and slightly mortifying.
Declan joins me, and we stroll around, swinging by the old assembly hall to see Aidan setting up.
It looks half respectable from the outside and vaguely criminal the second I step in.
Tables are already going up across the main floor, black cloths thrown over them, crates of chips stacked near the wall, and two boys I recognise from economics are hauling in a roulette wheel with the kind of reverence usually reserved for relics.
The stage has been opened up, curtains tied back, and there’s a section at the rear where someone has rigged a temporary partition to hide the stairs down to the under-stage level.
Very subtle. Completely illegal. I’m obsessed.
Aidan is in the middle, directing traffic with one hand and checking something on his phone with the other. He spots me the second I walk in.
“Thought you were causing trouble elsewhere.”
“I’m multitasking.”
Declan shuts the door behind us and scans the room automatically. Habit now.
I walk towards the stage and tilt my head up at the old beams, the dust, the heavy lights overhead. “This is perfect.”
“It will be once these idiots stop putting the blackjack tables too close to the exits,” Aidan says.
One of the idiots flushes and starts dragging a table further in. I grin.
“See?” I murmur. “You’re so charming.”
“I get results.”
“That’s one word for it.”
I move past him and find the stairs down.
The under-stage space is low-ceilinged, concrete-floored, and exactly the kind of place that invites bad decisions.
Temporary strip lights have been fixed up along the walls.
There’s already a square roped off in the middle with enough room for two people to beat each other senseless while a crowd screams around them.
A trestle table stands near the wall with notebooks, cash tins, and a battered lockbox that looks stolen from a parish raffle.
“This is disgusting,” I say, delighted.
Aidan comes down behind me. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
I turn in a slow circle, taking it all in. “You did this in a day.”
“We all did this in a day.”
Declan steps down after us, his gaze moving over the corners, the single door, the staircase, the low ceiling. “Capacity’s going to be a problem if too many people hear.”
“That is not a problem,” I say. “That is proof of concept.”
“It’s also a fire hazard,” he replies.
“Christ, you’re sexy when you talk bureaucracy.”
His mouth twitches.
“How many fighters? Do we know yet?”
“Eight confirmed. Four maybes. Two idiots who think this is a chance to beat Cormac to a pulp.”
“Not likely,” I snort.
Aidan gives me a flat look. “That is exactly why they volunteered.”
“Love ambition in a man,” I say.
“Those two don’t have ambition. They have poor judgement.”
“Even better.”
I walk into the roped square and test the give of the floor under my boots.
Solid enough. The air down here is colder than upstairs, with that damp old-building smell that never quite leaves.
It is perfect for violence. Hidden, ugly, and just respectable enough from above that no one can pretend they didn’t know what was happening if it all goes to shit.
Which, naturally, makes me want it more.
“We need a proper board,” I say, turning back to them. “Odds, names, running totals. If we’re going to run bets, they need to see the money moving.”
“There’ll be one by the entrance,” Aidan says. “And another upstairs for the legal side.”
“The legal side,” I repeat. “That’s adorable.”
He ignores me. “Cormac’s handling the fighters and the order. Declan’s handling cash. I’m handling entry and overall control.”
“And I’m doing what?”
The two of them look at me.
“If either of you says, ‘looking pretty and making a statement’, I’ll start stabbing.”
“At the risk of being greeted with your blade,” Aidan says. “That is exactly it. You swan around, do a bit of gambling. Network. Be seen. That is the whole point of this.”
“You don’t need me to help with anything?”
“No, it’s all taken care of.”
“Aren’t you good to me?” I ask, with more heat than is strictly necessary.
He smirks. “I expect something in return.”
“Oh? What’s that then?”
“He means getting his dick wet,” Declan says in that blunt way that I appreciate.
“That can be arranged,” I murmur and turn away to head back upstairs before I make good on that promise right now.
As I pass one of the tables, I pick up a deck of cards and pull out the aces. Four of them, one for each of us. I shove them in my pocket and drop the useless deck in my bag before I leave the assembly hall, and the guys, to their plans.