Chapter 15
Dervla
Cormac’s weight pins me to the mattress; each thrust is a precise calculation of force.
Not enough to break, just enough to bend.
He shifts angles, finding places inside me that transform coherent thought into static.
At the edge of my awareness, Declan’s gaze is possessive.
Aidan’s breath warms my ribs as he traces invisible equations along my side, his thumb and forefinger closing around my nipple with the measured pressure of someone testing a theory.
“More,” I gasp, the word barely coherent, but Cormac hears it.
He smirks, that feral edge sharpening his features, and picks up the pace, slamming into me with a rhythm that shakes the bed.
My body responds, arching up to meet him, chasing the build that coils tighter in my core.
Declan leans over, his mouth claiming mine in a bruising kiss, swallowing my moans as his hand slips between us to circle my clit, matching Cormac’s thrusts with expert pressure.
“You’re perfect like this,” he murmurs, voice rough, before he captures my mouth again, his tongue tangling with mine as the sensations overload me.
Cormac’s grip on my hips tightens, his breath coming ragged now.
He swells inside me, pushing me closer to the brink.
Declan bites down on my lower lip. It’s the final spark, and I shatter again, my pussy clenching around Cormac as the orgasm rips through me, fierce and unrelenting.
He follows a heartbeat later, groaning low as he spills inside me, his body tense as he unloads. His hips jerk in short, sharp movements as my pussy grips him hard enough to break him. “Fuck, Dervla,” he groans.
I close my eyes and just feel as he pulls out, and Declan takes his place, his fingers on my pussy as he plays with me gently, pushing the cum spilling out of me back inside.
I’m still trembling, my body a live wire of sensation as Declan settles between my legs.
His touch is gentler than Cormac’s but no less commanding.
He slides into me slowly, deliberately, as if savouring every inch.
My breath hitches. Aidan’s fingers trail down my side, tracing every curve and line with a possessive touch.
Declan thrusts deep, his rhythm steady and controlled.
I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, urging him to go faster, harder.
He grins, that cocky smirk that drives me wild, and complies, his body colliding with mine in a rhythm that builds pleasure from my core outward, like ripples becoming tidal waves.
Aidan’s teeth graze the sensitive skin as his hand cups my breast, thumb circling my nipple until it’s hard and aching.
Declan’s relentless pace and Aidan’s teasing touch are overwhelming, pushing me closer to the edge with every second.
Sweat slicks between us as Declan hammers into me, each thrust jolting my body.
Aidan devours my neck, marking territory with teeth and tongue.
Tomorrow I’ll wear those bruises as proof I belong to them.
I yank his hair hard, forcing his mouth to mine as Declan’s cock stretches me wider.
Heat builds. Declan digs brutal fingers into my hips, using me, pulling me back against him. When Aidan’s mouth captures my nipple, his teeth clamp down with delicious cruelty that shoots straight to my cunt.
“Fuck, yes—” The orgasm rips through me. My pussy clamps around Declan’s cock, milking him while I thrash beneath them both. He jerks inside me, his rhythm turning savage.
He growls my name like a warning, and then he comes hard with a broken sound.
For a few seconds, everything is heat and weight and the hard drag of breath.
Declan drops his forehead to mine, eyes shut, chest heaving.
I can feel the tremor in him, the way he is holding himself together by force.
Aidan presses one last kiss to the mark he made beneath my jaw, then another to my shoulder, far gentler than the way he took me apart to begin with.
Cormac is sprawled beside us now, one forearm over his eyes, still panting.
Declan eases back at last, careful in a way that does something dangerous to my soul. He brushes damp hair away from my face with a slow smile.
Aidan shifts up onto an elbow and studies me with that cool, ruthless focus of his, except it is softened around the edges by satisfaction and something more possessive than I want to name. “By the way, what is your mother’s maiden name?”
I blink, my thoughts scattered. “Why?” I snap.
“So we might get a read on your maybe grandfather.”
“Oh. ó Briain.”
Aidan goes still. It means something just shifted in his head and every piece on the board moved with it.
“If your mother is an ó Briain, then this is not just some connected family with money and influence. That is old power. Political. Criminal. Institutional. Dynastic. The sort that doesn’t need to shout because the room shuts up anyway. ”
I stare at him. “Useful. Vague. Slightly infuriating. Can we narrow that down?”
He rubs a hand over his jaw. “My father mentioned them exactly once in front of me. Not by name. By warning. He said if I ever found myself in a room with the wrong ó Briain, I should speak carefully and never mistake courtesy for weakness.”
“That tracks with the guy who commands CTU with threats,” Cormac snorts. “You’ve been holding out on us, sweetheart.”
“Shut up,” I grumble. “How was I meant to know?”
Aidan gives me a look that says exactly that is the fucking point.
Declan snorts and rolls onto his side, propping his head on his hand as he looks at me. “That would explain a lot about you.”
I narrow my eyes. “Careful.”
“No,” he says, far too pleased with himself. “You’re touchy, vicious, suspicious, allergic to authority, and somehow still act as if you should be in charge of every room you walk into.”
Cormac drops his arm from his eyes and turns his head. “Also mean as fuck.”
“Fuck off, all of you.”
Aidan’s mouth curves. “See?”
I would kick him, but that requires moving, and my body has fully entered that dangerous state of satisfaction where every limb feels too heavy to bother weaponising.
For a minute, nobody speaks. The room is warm.
My skin is oversensitive. My heart is finally slowing down after the violence of the day and the violence that followed it in here.
It should feel reckless, how quickly we pivoted from attempted murder and counter-terrorism bullshit to this, but it doesn’t. It feels necessary.
Then, I roll over and stick my hand under the mattress. “Did anyone see his name on here?” I ask, dragging out the hard drive.
“No, but then I wasn’t looking for it,” Aidan says, looking like he could kick himself for not being able to see into the future and know this was important. He gets off the bed and drags his clothes back on. “Laptop.”
I pass him the drive instead. “Desk.”
Cormac pushes himself upright with a wince he tries and fails to hide, then reaches for his pants. “If your grandfather is on that map, I want to know where.”
“So do I,” I mutter.
Getting up. I grab my tee off the floor and drag it over my head while Aidan opens the desk drawer and pulls out the laptop.
Declan comes up behind me and presses a kiss to the back of my neck before he moves past. It is so unexpectedly soft that it almost undoes me more than everything else did.
I ignore that aggressively.
Aidan puts the laptop on the desk and opens it. He plugs in the hard drive, and we all stare at the screen in anticipation.
Dad’s map pops up, and we lean in, searching the exact same screen, hoping his name jumps out at us.
“Nothing,’ I say after a few moments. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
“I’d say bad. He is so high up, he doesn’t have a classification,” Aidan mutters.
“Or dad knew and kept him out of this purposefully.”
Aidan nods. “How do we get him to come to you?”
“Get arrested by CTU,” I say brightly.
He snorts. “Let’s try something less ambitious. The fight with Roisin. Loud, public, dirty. If she gets hurt or worse, tough shit. If he can get CTU to stand down, the local Gardaí don’t stand a chance.”
Cormac gives a low laugh. “I’d pay to watch that.”
“You wouldn’t need to,” I reply. “You’d get front row seats while pretending not to enjoy yourselves.”
“I never pretend,” he says.
“That is unfortunately true.”
Aidan is already typing, zooming in and out of the map, chasing lines through names and shell companies and trusts with old-Irish surnames wrapped around them like barbed wire.
His face has gone distant in that cold way that means he is building something in his head and deciding who gets sacrificed first.
Declan drags on his jeans and comes to stand at my shoulder, close enough that heat rolls off him. “If we bait Roisin, it has to be controlled.”
“Controlled,” I repeat. “You mean publicly humiliating her within an inch of her life, but in a way that benefits me.”
“Yes.”
“Lovely. I can do that.”
Aidan glances back at me. “You are enjoying this too much.”
“I have been shot at, hunted through a passageway, nearly branded a terrorist, and informed I might be heir to some dynastic criminal empire before lunch. Let me find some enjoyment out of this shitshow.”
Cormac sits on the edge of the bed, dragging a tee over his head with obvious irritation.
“O’Connell,” Aidan says after a few seconds have passed. “My dad is on here. Not on the main screen, there’s a click-through page.”
“How did you find it?” I ask, leaning over again.
“I recognised a name of a shell corp. SandersBurn Tech. It’s my dad. He provides… things to certain people who shall not be named.”
“Bit of a dark horse, aren’t you?” I murmur.
“Says the girl with not one but two mafia families at her feet.”
I ignore that. “Anything on ó Briain?”
“Still no.”
“Look at the St. Aug’s alumni page,” Cormac says.
Aidan’s fingers pause over the trackpad. “Good call.”
He brings up a webpage and taps the keys. St. Augustine’s appears on the screen, and he clicks on Alumni at the top.
It looks deceptively clean at first. Names, graduation years, honours, Board appointments, legal firms, ministerial offices. Private equity and family offices. Old surnames I’ve heard all my life without ever knowing exactly why adults went strange around them.
Cormac gets off the bed and comes closer. “Search it.”
Aidan types ó Briain.
Three results.
The air in the room changes.
I step closer until my thigh hits the edge of the desk.
The first is a woman from the eighties. Not relevant. The second is some judge in his sixties. The third—
My stomach drops.
Séamus ó Briain. Class of 1979. Magna Cum Laude. Board Chair Emeritus. Patron. Founding Family.
“Founding family,” I mutter. “Makes sense.”
I stare at the screen until the letters start looking like a threat with very good manners. Séamus ó Briain. My grandfather. My mother’s father. Founding family. Board Chair Emeritus. Patron.
Everything old and rotten at St. Augustine’s suddenly grows roots, and they connect directly to me. No wonder they wanted me here. No wonder Dad didn’t.
There’s a little profile summary beside the name. Philanthropist. Former chair. Major benefactor. Public service advisory roles. Trustee appointments. Cross-border education initiatives. It reads polished and respectable. Clean enough to frame.
It feels wrong, knowing what I know, which admittedly, isn’t much.
“He’s right there,” I mutter. “Not hidden. Just… dressed up.”
Aidan clicks into the profile. A larger page opens with an old professional photo.
Same eyes. Older in the image, but not as old as the man from earlier today.
The same controlled expression. The same sense that if he smiled at you, it would be because he’d already decided exactly how useful you are. Or not.
“Right,” I say, stepping back. I need to breathe. “Roisin,” I add, drawing focus back to where I can use it. “What if she’s left campus?”
“If she has, she will be dragged back because of the formal complaint against her. The Board will want it dealt with, not hanging over their heads until Roisin decides to come back.”
“Okay, so we assume she’s still here.”
“Call her out,” Cormac says. “Stand in the quad and make her come to you.”
“She might not.”
“If she doesn’t, then you go in twice as hard when you find her.”
“I’m not a fighter,” I say. “I can hold my own, I can use a blade, but I’m not skilled enough to hold down a fight with someone like Roisin. She’s probably been formally trained all her life.”
“That is not the advantage you think it is,” Cormac says.
“Meaning?”
He gives me that wicked grin. “I’ll show you. Back garden. Now.”
He strides off, leaving me to pull on a pair of leggings and my trainers and dart after him, Aidan and Declan behind me.