Chapter 13
Dervla
“On the ground,” a male voice clips out.
I turn to tell him fuck off, but Declan, Aidan and Cormac are already hands up, and dropping to their knees as if they’ve done this before.
“What the fuck?” I growl and get a Counter Terrorist Unit gun in my face.
“On the fucking ground, bitch,” the officer snarls, with a vicious smirk that makes me think twice about disobeying him.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I mutter as I drop, hands raised. “Counter Terrorism Unit? What the fuck is this?”
“This is the set-up,” Aidan says, voice flat but an amused glint in his eyes. “Bold. Almost imaginative.”
“Shut the fuck up,” the officer growls at him. “Hands where I can see them.”
Aidan lifts them a bit higher.
The officer turns back to me and looks like he’d enjoy pulling the trigger just to improve his morning.
Boots thunder in from both sides of the cloister. More armed officers. Black uniforms. visors up. Faces hard. Too many for this to be chance. This is theatre with a budget.
Someone grabs my wrists and yanks them behind my back. Plastic cuffs bite into my skin.
Cormac makes a sound that is almost not human.
“Don’t,” Aidan says sharply.
I twist my head enough to see Cormac half-rising before a rifle swings his way. His face is murder. Declan is motionless beside him, hands still raised, every line of him pulled tight. Aidan looks infuriatingly calm, which means he’s furious.
“What exactly is the charge?” I ask.
The prick behind me tightens the cuffs another notch. “Conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, possession of prohibited weapons, discharge of firearms on university grounds, and multiple counts pending.”
I bark out a laugh before I can stop it. “Terrorism. That’s ambitious.”
A hand fists in my wet hair and jerks my head back. “You think this is funny?”
I stare up at the officer in front of me.
“Get away from the girl.”
A very posh, older male’s voice joins the party from behind me before I can say anything else. Cormac’s face tells the tale.
“Mystery guy?” I say, with a grimace.
“Release her or find yourself without a life tomorrow,” the man states. Calm, cool, collected. The hand in my hair disappears so fast I nearly lose balance.
A beat later, the pressure at the back of my head is gone entirely.
I twist as much as the cuffs allow and finally see him.
Older. Silver at the temples. Immaculate dark coat despite the rain.
No uniform. No obvious weapon. He stands in the middle of the armed unit like he owns the patch of ground under all our knees.
His face is cut from money and old entitlement.
Cold eyes a distinctive shade of green. Educated cruelty.
Not loud. Not trying. He doesn’t need to.
One of the officers straightens. “Sir, this operation is active.”
“And yet you’ve made the amateur choice of putting your hands on Miss Callaghan.” His voice stays level. “I dislike amateurism.”
Nobody moves.
Nobody breathes properly.
I look at Cormac. His gaze is fixed on the older man with a recognition that is all hostility and none of the useful kind.
The one nearest me swallows. “We have operational authority—”
“And I have actual authority,” the man replies. “Release her immediately.”
The officer behind me cuts the cuffs.
Plastic snaps free. Blood floods back into my fingers in a hot, vicious rush.
I push to my feet before anyone can offer me help, rubbing my wrists and glaring at all of them equally.
“And the men,” he says mildly.
The officers move in to release the guys.
“This was a grave error on whoever authorised you to act,” he says, taking a step closer. Despite his age and the lack of a weapon, it’s menacing and sinister as fuck. “Move out now before I decide to ensure you’re all out of a job by the time you return to your vehicle.”
The incessant alarm shuts off, finally. It’s then that I realise my head is pounding. I put a hand to my temple and fist it as the Counter Terrorism Unit files out like naughty schoolboys.
“Who are you?” Cormac spits out before I can even gather my thoughts in order.
The man smiles; his eyes remain cold. “You’ll find out soon enough,” he says, with a look at me that is loaded, but fucked if I know with what. I frown at him. He looks familiar now that I’m not in fear of being thrown in a cell for terrorism. But I can’t quite put my finger on why.
He must see it, and his smile widens, secretive and irritating. “Good day, Miss Callaghan.”
“Wait,” I say, moving forward as he turns to leave. “You can’t just show up here, order CTU to stand down, and they actually go. Who the fuck are you?”
“I think you know, Miss Callaghan,” he says, and this time he strides off, leaving me dumbfounded.
The moment he is out of earshot, Aidan lets out a loud, “Fuck this! Who sent them? Was this a set-up? Were the shooters herding us, those other guys, so we’d get sent down for terrorism? My fucking father is going to hit the fucking roof when I tell him!”
I’m not sure who he is yelling at. Maybe whoever is watching this on the campus CCTV, having expected us to be hauled off to solitary confinement for the rest of our lives.
“Whitmore?” I grit out.
“Maybe,” Aidan says, clenching his fist like he’s trying not to put it through medieval stone, but losing the battle. “Or Roisin. Or whoever signed off on the shooters and decided the cleaner ending was us in black hoods on the fucking news.”
Declan steps in close to me and checks my wrists where the cuffs bit. His stare is brutal. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” My voice comes out thinner than I want, so I clear it. “Pissed off. Slightly homicidal. Fine.”
Cormac stares where the armed unit vanished and then back at me. “We need to get off open ground now.”
“Agreed,” Aidan says instantly. “Home. No detours.”
I look at the place where the older man disappeared, trying to drag the familiarity into focus. Green eyes. Expensive coat. That face. Something in the shape of him nags at me like a half-remembered funeral and a framed photograph turned face down.
“Dervla.”
I blink and look at Declan.
“Move,” he says.
Right. Yes. Being alive still requires participation.
We cut through the side paths instead of the quad, fast and silent, all of us listening for the next trap. I’m furious. By the time we hit the house, I’m ready for extreme violence, but have no one to hit.
Aidan locks the front door. Declan checks the back without being asked. Cormac stalks the perimeter of the ground floor like he expects a fucking priest, a sniper, and the apocalypse to come through the windows at once.
I stand in the middle of the kitchen, wet, blood-marked, bruised, and so fucking pissed off I kick out at the kitchen chair, sending it skidding across the floor.
No one speaks for a beat.
Then Aidan says, very softly, “This guy knows you.”
I laugh once. It comes out cracked. “Who? The bastard with God-level clearance who looked at me like I’m his family?”
“Yep,” Declan says. “You recognised him.”
I drag both hands over my face. “His eyes. I thought they looked familiar. But fuck knows. I can’t place it.”
“Shape, colour, what?” Aidan presses.
“Both,” I say with a frown and then gulp, taking a step back. “No,” I say, shaking my head. “Fucking no.”
“No?” Cormac says, moving closer. “No to what?”
My jaw locks tight enough to splinter bone.
I pull out my phone with deft movements, my hands suddenly ice cold.
It can’t be? Can it? What are the fucking odds?
Before coming here, I’d say slim to none.
Now? Now, I shouldn’t actually be surprised.
I scroll through my photos, all eyes on me, and stop at a folder that I don’t look at anymore.
I haven’t for a while, but it’s here, sitting on my phone like evidence of a life I lived before.
I open it, and the screen flickers with old photos.
I grimace at her, hating her with every cell in my body.
I tap the nearest one and bring it up to full screen, then I enlarge it with a quick snap of my fingers over the glass.
I turn the phone around and show the guys the eyes.
Her eyes. My mother’s fucking green eyes, a shade of green so familiar and yet so unique, I always wished mine were like hers and not this greeny-grey colour I’m rocking.
Aidan’s gaze snaps to mine. “Your mother,” he says quietly.
I nod stiffly as he takes the phone and stares at it. My hand drops to my side with nothing to do.
“Are you saying this guy is related to your mother?” he says slowly.
“I’m not saying anything,” I grit out. “All I said was I thought his eyes looked familiar. That’s why.”
“Her father,” Aidan says quietly. It’s not a question. It’s a statement as if he knows it’s already true and is just saying it to get the rest of us up to speed. “You never met your grandfather?”
I shake my head. It feels mechanical. “No. She was estranged from her parents. I guess that’s all she knew and made her life choices based on that.”
“Or she knew her dad was a mafia boss with eyewatering power and distanced herself from it. Maybe when she found out your dad was too, it was the final straw—”
“Do. Not,” I grit out. “Do not defend her.”
“I’m not,” he says carefully, handing me the phone back. “I’m trying to make sense of the very limited information we know.”
The kitchen goes quiet in the kind of way that makes every scrape of breath sound too loud.
I shove my phone back into my pocket before I smash it just to stop seeing her face. My mother. Her perfect fucking cheekbones. Her elegant, absent cruelty. The same eyes as that man who is stalking Cormac by phone.
My stomach twists.
My grandfather.
Declan drags the chair I kicked back upright and sets it under the table with a hard little scrape.
“If he is your grandfather, it would make a lot of sense. The mystery, the protectiveness, the fact that he has eyes on you. The way he wants you elevated to a position where you don’t need anyone looking out for you.
This is care, not leverage. The catalyst is probably when your dad died, and you were alone.
Then you came here, and shit hit the fan, and now he shows up to guide you where he wants you. ”
His words are logical, said with calm and control. But there is still the major issue with his last statement. “Guide me where he wants me.” I scoff and shake my head. “And where the fuck is that? Not the Board, too lowly for the likes of him. A useful stepping stone to something higher.”
“Well, obviously, the criminal underworld,” Cormac says, and I could kiss him for not using the word mafia.
“My dad was more involved than I thought,” I say. “He wasn’t just part of the… criminal underworld…” I glance at Cormac, and he smiles slowly. “… he was…”
“Head of his own family,” Aidan says bluntly what I was trying to dodge around.
“And Grandad now wants you to be head of the Callaghan family network,” Cormac adds.
Silence descends as I take that in. Head of the Callaghan family network. What does that even look like?