Chapter 18
Declan
Ifucking love the look on their faces.
Shock. Hunger. Fear. Respect. The whole rotten campus has just watched Dervla Callaghan drag Roisin Brennan off her pedestal and stamp on her in the middle of the quad. They will talk about it for years.
I move in close behind her while the crowd boils around us, phones still up, voices rising, everyone wanting the best angle on the fallout. Dervla is breathing hard. Blood runs from her split lip. There is a bruise already coming up high on her cheek. She looks wrecked.
She looks beautiful.
Cormac wipes blood from the corner of his mouth with the heel of his hand and stares after Roisin like he’d happily chase her down and finish the job.
Aidan’s expression is colder than mine, which is saying something, and there is a rip down the front of his shirt where one of Brennan’s guards got too ambitious.
I put myself half in front of Dervla and scan the edges of the quad.
No staff even bothered to show up to shut it down.
“What’s the bet Roisin has walked straight up to Whitmore’s office to file a formal complaint against me?” Dervla asks.
“I’d put a million euros on it,” Aidan states.
“Do you even have a million euros?” I ask.
He snorts. “What do you think?”
“Nice,” I mutter. I’m not exactly poor, but that kind of wealthy is out of my reach. I live firmly in the upper-middle class, and I’m happy there.
“Well, million euro bet or not, I’m about to be in a world of trouble,” she says.
“Nah. Roisin will get as far as filling in your name on the form, and your grandfather will have it shut down. I wouldn’t worry about it,” I say.
Dervla gives me a sidelong look. “That is not remotely comforting.”
“It should be. Means you can get away with more.”
Aidan adjusts the torn front of his shirt and looks around the quad with that detached, ruthless calm of his. “We need to move before this turns into a fucking parade.”
He’s right. The crowd is inching closer now that Roisin is gone, bold in the aftermath. Most look thrilled, which says everything about this place. St. Augustine’s likes violence best when it comes with hierarchy.
I catch sight of one guy angling his phone a bit too close to Dervla’s face.
“Back up,” I say.
He does. Fast.
Dervla dabs blood from her mouth with her fingertips. “Do I look as bad as she does?”
“Worse,” I say.
Her head turns sharply.
I shrug. “You asked.”
Cormac laughs once. “He means better.”
“I mean, you look like you won,” I correct. “That’s not pretty.”
Her mouth curves despite the split in it. “Good. Home please. I need a long hot bath, food, vodka and sleep. Not necessarily in that order.”
“Done,” I say and sling my arm around her shoulders. She relaxes against me as we walk back to the house.
By the time we hit the front door, half the fucking university has probably seen the video.
Aidan unlocks the door. Cormac goes in first, sweeping the hall with that quiet-killer focus he defaults to after violence.
I stay close to Dervla while she shrugs out of my hold and walks inside under her own steam.
She is bruised, bleeding, and running on fumes, but she would rather crawl than be carried.
The door shuts behind us.
For one beat, nobody says anything.
Then Dervla looks up the stairs, as if deciding whether to collapse or set something on fire for balance. “If anyone says adrenaline crash, I’ll stab them.”
“We wouldn’t dare,” I say with a smile and lead her up the stairs. “Bath now, vodka during, then food and sleep.”
“Sounds good to me,” she sighs as I take her into her bedroom and she collapses on the bed while I move to the en-suite to run her a bath.
I turn the taps full and pour in half a bottle of bath stuff she keeps by the sink.
The water runs hot enough to steam the mirror.
She needs heat. She needs to stop vibrating out of her own skin.
When I come back into the bedroom, she is flat on her back, one arm over her eyes, boots still on.
“Dervla.”
“I’m dead,” she mutters.
“No, you’re dramatic. Different thing.”
She lifts her arm enough to glare at me with one bruising eye. “That was almost kind.”
“Don’t spread it around.”
I crouch and start on her boots. She lets me tug them off without argument, which tells me more than anything else could about how destroyed she is. Her hands are scraped. Her knuckles are red. There is dried blood at the corner of her mouth.
I straighten. “Bath’s ready.”
“Hero.”
“I know.”
Cormac appears in the doorway, filling most of it. “House is clear.”
Aidan comes up behind him with a bottle of vodka and four glasses pinched between his fingers.
Dervla gets to her feet and strips off. I hand her clothes to Cormac, who takes them downstairs to the laundry room without complaint.
She disappears into the en-suite without modesty, too tired to bother with it and too comfortable with us now to care.
The door stays open. Steam rolls thicker into the bedroom.
Aidan sets the vodka and glasses on the bedside table and pours. “I give it ten minutes before campus starts choosing sides in public.”
“They already have,” I say.
He gives me a look that says I’m stating the obvious.
Dervla sinks into the bath with a hiss loud enough to carry out into the room. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Hot?” I call.
“Painfully. Perfect.”
I pick up a glass and move to the bathroom. She’s half-submerged in clouds of foam and steam. Her lip is swollen. There’s a red scrape across her jaw. One of her knees is already going ugly.
She opens one eye at me. “If you say I look rough or beautiful, I’ll drown you in my own bathwater.”
“I was going to say you fight like a rabid little bastard.” I hand her the vodka.
That gets a tired, cracked laugh out of her. “Better.”
I sit on the closed toilet lid and watch her drink.
Not because she needs supervision. Because after a day like this, I need to keep seeing her breathe.
She knocks back a mouthful, winces when the vodka hits her split lip. “That stings like a bastard.”
“Good disinfectant.”
“That is medically false.”
“Probably.”
Behind me, Aidan drifts into the bathroom doorway with his own glass. He looks absurdly neat for someone who was fighting in the quad twenty minutes ago, apart from the torn shirt.
Dervla looks between us through the steam. “Why do I feel like I’m under observation?”
“Because you are.”
She sinks lower in the water until the foam hides more of her. “If one of you produces a clipboard, I’m leaving.”
Aidan checks his phone. “Campus forum is already on fire.”
“Good,” she says.
He scrolls, expression cooling further. “Two main camps. One thinks you just dethroned Roisin in a historic display of female rage. The other thinks you’re an unstable thug who should be expelled.”
I laugh. “And us?”
“No one touches the Kings,” he says.
“So basically, what that means is you are a footnote on this page,” Dervla snorts and takes another gulp of vodka.
“Pretty much,” I state and stand up. “We’ll leave you alone for now.”
“Please,” she says, and it’s all that’s needed for Aidan and me to leave.
I close the door behind us, and we move down to the kitchen. Cormac is busy in the laundry, and a second later we hear the washing machine kick in.
“Take you that long to figure it out?” I ask with a snort.
He walks into the kitchen. “Fuck you. I was stain-removing.”
Aidan pours himself more vodka, like this is a civilised debrief and not the aftermath of public warfare. I grab a glass and take a swallow straight away.
Cormac opens the fridge and stares into it as if the answer to today is hidden behind the milk. “She needs food.”
“She always needs food,” I say.
“She really needs food,” he replies, reaching for the chicken and vegetables.
Aidan’s phone keeps lighting up on the table. Mine vibrates in my pocket a second later. Then again.
“Tell me that’s not everyone on campus discovering they know us personally,” I say.
“It is exactly that,” Aidan replies.
I take my phone out and look. Messages. Group chats I forgot existed. Unknown numbers. A video from the quad already doing the rounds.
I grin despite myself. “She is the reigning Apex in more ways than one.”
My phone buzzes again.
This time the number is unknown.
I stare at it for a second, then answer. “What?”
Silence.
Then a woman’s voice, clipped and cool. “Mr Finnegan.”
I glance at Aidan. He sees my face sharpen and sets his glass down.
“Who’s asking?” I say.
“You should be advising Miss Callaghan to stay inside tonight.”
“You people really need a new hobby.”
“The quad was unwise.”
“Funny. From where I stood, it looked fucking necessary.”
A beat. “You’ve made the Board nervous.”
“Good.”
The woman ignores that. “There will be movement tonight. If she leaves the house, she creates opportunities.”
“Are you threatening her?”
“No. I am informing you.”
“Who are you?”
“That isn’t relevant.”
“It becomes relevant when strangers start calling my phone with instructions.”
She huffs out a breath. “It’s Siobhán.”
I frown at the phone. That was easy. Too easy. “What changed your mind?”
“Who cares?” she says. “Look, Roisin has been in with Whitmore since she hauled her arse into his office looking like she went a round with Conor McGregor.”
I snicker. Dervla will be pleased. But then I sober up. “And?”
“They are plotting.”
“How do you know?” I ask and place the phone on the table on speaker, placing my finger to my lips to keep the other two guys silent.
“I have… my ways.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It doesn’t concern you,” she says. “But I can hear every word, and it’s not looking good for Dervla.”
“Meaning?” I snap.
“Brennan and Whitmore are in on this and have been since Brennan first started going here. They are working together. They wanted Dervla here. They knew getting rid of Cillian… Callaghan would be the push she needed after Cillian, uhm, Mr Callaghan blocked her from attending after high school.”
I narrow my eyes. “Cillian? You knew him well enough to call him Cillian?”