Chapter 20
Aidan
“Fuck this,” I mutter and stand up, heading for the front door.
“Going to see Siobhán?” Cormac asks, following me.
“Dervla’s going to kill you,” Declan says.
“Maybe, but if you think I’m sitting on this until tomorrow, you have another thing coming.”
“So do all of you,” Dervla says, coming back down the stairs as my hand grips the doorknob. I let go and turn.
Dervla stands halfway into the hall, one hand on the bannister, hair still damp from the bath, face scrubbed clean of blood but not damage. The bruises stand out more now. So does the fury.
Her stare lands on me first. “You don’t get to decide I’m too tired for a conversation and then sneak out to have it without me.”
“I wasn’t sneaking,” I say.
“You were literally opening the front door.”
“Bold of you to assume I care whether you know where I’m going.”
Cormac mutters, “This is going well.”
Declan stays in the kitchen doorway, arms loose at his sides, like he’s measuring whether this becomes an argument or a riot.
Dervla comes all the way down the last few steps and stops in front of me. “If Siobhán is playing a game that involves me, my father, Whitmore, and whatever the fuck is happening with the Board, then I’m part of the conversation.”
“You are exhausted,” I say.
“I’m still conscious.”
I look at her split lip, the bruise on her cheek, the way she’s standing just a fraction too rigidly because everything hurts.
That should matter.
It does matter.
It just doesn’t matter more than the look in her eyes.
I exhale once through my nose. “Fine. You come.”
Cormac raises his brows. “That easy?”
“It isn’t easy,” I say without looking at him. “It’s inevitable.”
Dervla’s chin lifts a fraction, like she wants to count that as a win but is too angry to enjoy it properly.
“On one condition.”
Her expression goes flat. “There’s always one with you.”
“You do not go in swinging. Not verbally, not physically, not with that knife you think I don’t know you’re still carrying.”
She gives me a bland look. “I would never.”
“Condition accepted or we wait until morning.”
She stares at me for a beat, then says, “Accepted.”
I don’t trust that for a second, but it is close enough.
Declan steps forward. “Are we all going?”
“Yes,” I say.
“No,” Dervla says at the same time.
Cormac snorts.
She looks between us. “If four of us march into Admin after hours looking like this, Siobhán is either going to bolt or have a fucking panic attack,” she finishes. “Two max. Me and one of you.”
“No,” I say.
“Yes,” she fires back. “If I walk in with an entourage, it becomes pressure. I want answers, not a witness statement and a meltdown.”
“Aidan shouldn’t go,” Declan says. “He looks like he’s about to interrogate a minister.”
“I heard that,” I say.
“It’s true.” Cormac scratches his jaw. “But she will be expecting Declan. If she is as clued up as you think she is, she’ll be waiting for you. Take Aidan, and it will throw her sufficiently.”
I look at Cormac. “Sufficiently?”
He shrugs. “She’ll have a script for Dec. She’ll know how to play him. You walk in, she has to adjust.”
Dervla looks between us, weighing it up. I can see the moment she decides she hates that it makes sense. “Fine. Me and Aidan.”
Declan’s jaw sets. “I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to,” Dervla says. “You come, but you follow at a distance.”
“Better,” Declan says with a nod.
Cormac nods once. “I’ll circle the other side.”
“Everyone happy?” Dervla asks.
“No,” I say, grabbing my jacket. “But move, pixie, it’s getting late, and she’ll be leaving campus soon.”
We cut across the campus towards the Admin building.
The last of the students linger, laughing and kicking a football around.
The sun is still out, but weaker now; it’ll be getting dark soon.
The Admin building rises out of the evening like a lie in stone.
Too clean. Too formal. Too full of doors that should stay shut.
Dervla walks beside me with her hands in her hoodie pocket and murder in her posture. She is trying to look casual. She is failing beautifully.
Behind us, far enough back to pass for coincidence, Declan cuts across the path with his phone in his hand. Cormac is nowhere in sight, which means he is exactly where he intends to be.
We reach the front steps. Dervla pushes through first. I let her.
The foyer is empty apart from Siobhán behind the desk.
She looks up, sees us, and her eyes narrow. Pissed off, not worried.
Dervla stops at the desk and plants both hands on the polished surface. “We need to talk.”
Siobhán’s gaze goes to her face. The bruises. The split lip. The faint swelling at her temple. Something flickers in her expression, quick and buried. Not guilt. Not fear. Recognition, maybe. Or concern she doesn’t want to be caught wearing.
“You look like death.”
“You should see the other girl.”
“I did. She is spitting feathers along with blood.” She sits back in her chair, fingers light on the desk, too controlled for someone supposedly caught off guard. Dervla was right to question it. Siobhán doesn’t look like a woman flailing. She looks like one recalculating.
“If this is about the phone call—”
“It is,” Dervla cuts in. “And it’s about my father, and Whitmore.”
The foyer feels too open for this. Too bright. Too public. I scan the corridors branching off the reception area, the staircase, and the hallways.
“Start talking. If Whitmore comes down those stairs, I’ll make something up. I won’t throw you under the bus unless you give me a reason to,” Dervla says.
“Did Declan tell you about Cillian and me?” she starts.
“Yes. How long?”
“Four years.”
My eyes widen, and I slide my gaze over to Dervla.
“Four years,” she coughs. “How old are you?”
Siobhán’s mouth tightens. “Twenty-six.”
Dervla lets out a short, sharp laugh with no humour in it. “Jesus Christ.”
I watch Siobhán carefully. No fluster. No shame. Just irritation at being dragged into the light before she chose it.
I step closer to the desk. “How did it start?”
Her eyes flick to me, annoyed that I’m taking over, but she answers anyway.
“It’s irrelevant for these purposes. But he came here for Board business.
More often than you’d think. He noticed things.
Whitmore. Roisin. Money moving in ways it shouldn’t.
People on campus who had no business having access to what they had access to.
I was here in this job, and I heard things. He realised that quickly.”
“So he recruited you,” I say.
Her jaw shifts. “No, he asked me out. I told you, this wasn’t just some casual thing.”
“And yet you were with him for four years, and I knew nothing about it,” Dervla says bitterly. She catches it and shakes her head. “But you’re right. It’s irrelevant. Is Whitmore abusing you?”
I press my lips together and inhale sharply. That was harsh, even for Dervla.
Siobhán’s eyes go wide, and then she snorts. “What? No. Whatever gave you that idea?”
“We saw you,” I say to try to soften Dervla’s bull in a china shop routine. Since when I became the softer option is a mystery that will remain unsolved. It makes me fall for this woman in ways I couldn’t even fathom before she stuck her middle finger up at me in the middle of the quad.
“Saw me?” Siobhán asks. “What do you mean?”
“You were running out of Whitmore’s office the other night, dishevelled and crying. We were there trying to break into his office for the Board minutes,” I lay it out plain. No point beating about the bush.
Siobhán stares at us for one beat, then laughs outright.
It is not nervous. Not brittle. It is sharp, disbelieving, and a little offended. “You thought Whitmore was abusing me?”
Neither of us answers.
Siobhán presses her fingers to her forehead like we’ve given her a headache she didn’t ask for. Honestly, I can’t blame her.
“Then what?”
“Is it really your concern?” Siobhán asks, which is fair.
“Yes,” Dervla states, chin up.
I try not to roll my eyes.
“I disagree, but if you must know, Whitmore called me up there to talk about you. He was asking all sorts of questions about you, wanted me to dig into your life.”
“And? That made you pull your top out of your skirt and start crying?”
Siobhán gives her a scathing glare, but she doesn’t answer.
I rest my hands on the desk and lean forward. “She is like a dog with a bone. You’re going to have to give her something.”
Siobhán breathes in deeply. “My phone was tucked into my skirt when I went in there. I got a phone call. Emergency contact. I received some bad news that upset me. Whitmore dismissed me, and I ran off to deal with the family emergency.”
“Convenient,” Dervla mutters.
“Fine,” I say. “But your call to Declan earlier was—how shall we put this—suspicious. You know an awful lot about the goings on here, and that’s not just because of some bug in Whitmore’s office.”
Siobhán holds my gaze for a long moment. The foyer hums with the particular quiet of a building that has emptied out for the evening, all ticking pipes and the distant click of a door somewhere above us.
Then she says, “No. It isn’t.”
Dervla makes a sound that is not quite a word.
“I’m not going to pretend Cillian didn’t tell me things,” Siobhán continues, her voice dropping to something careful. “He trusted me. He had reason to. But I’m not an asset, and I’m not a handler. I’d appreciate not being treated like either.”
“Then what are you?” Dervla asks.
“Someone who loved your father.” She says it without apology, without performance. “Someone who has been sitting in this chair watching this place rot from the inside and deciding what to do about it.”
I watch her hands, still on the desk. Not fidgeting and not performing with composure. Actually composed. That is either impressive or deeply practised, and I cannot yet tell which.
“You said they wanted Dervla here to draw out Séamus ó Briain,” I say. “How did you know that?”
Siobhán’s composure holds, but something shifts underneath it. A recalculation. She is deciding how much rope to give us.
“Cillian told me,” she says finally. Her eyes move to Dervla. “He was afraid of this. It’s why he blocked you from coming here after school.”
Dervla goes very still beside me.
“And then he died,” Siobhán says, quieter now. “And there was no one left to block you.”
The foyer holds the silence for a moment. I watch Dervla’s profile. Her jaw is set. She is doing that thing where she processes by going somewhere internal, and nobody outside can reach her until she decides to come back.
And just like that, it all falls into place. “Fuck,” I mutter.
Dervla and Siobhán’s eyes snap to me. I take a step back because the weight of this is enormous. “They’re making a play,” I whisper. “Against Séamus ó Briain.”
Siobhán gulps and nods once stiffly. “And they’re going to use Dervla to do it.”