Chapter 28 Cormac
Cormac
Pre-dawn in late autumn is dreary, grey and misty.
I haven’t slept for more than an hour, worried someone might kick the door down and steal the hard drive, or worse.
Kill us all. Kidnap Dervla. And any number of other scenarios.
I sit fully clothed in an armchair by the window with a gun against my thigh and watch the room lighten by degrees, ready to move at a second’s notice.
The fire has burned out. But the central heating is blazing, making the room a bit stifling.
Declan is out cold on top of the covers, one arm flung over his face, like his body gave up before his brain had a chance to argue.
Aidan is asleep on the sofa, also dressed for war, head tipped back, jaw set even unconscious.
He looks like he’s preparing a legal case in his dreams.
Dervla is the only one in the bed now. Somewhere in the night, she drifted sideways and stole most of the covers, hair everywhere, one hand under the pillow like she’s hiding from the world and refusing to admit it.
She looks vulnerable.
It means all the bruises on her face stand out more. It means every bastard who has decided she is useful suddenly feels closer than these walls. I look away before the urge to wake her and get her the fuck out of this house turns into something stupid.
A soft knock lands at the door.
I’m up before the second one, gun in hand.
Crossing over, I open the door just enough to see Emily on the other side. “Bit early to be knocking,” I say.
She suppresses a prim smile. “Mr ó Briain has been up for two hours already.”
“Is that normal?”
“Yes.”
“Fine,” I say grudgingly. “What do you want?”
“Breakfast is in half an hour,” she says. “And he asked that Miss Callaghan come to the study when she wakes.”
I keep the door where it is. “Asked?”
Emily’s expression stays perfectly neutral. “Asked.”
I glance back over my shoulder. Dervla is still asleep. The others haven’t moved. “She’ll come when she’s ready.”
Emily inclines her head. “Of course.” She turns to go.
“Emily.”
She looks back.
“If anyone comes near this room again without warning, they’re getting a gun in their face.”
“I’ll let the staff know that as well,” she says, and walks away with the same measured, silent stride.
I shut the door, lock it, and stand there for a second listening to the corridor. Nothing. Just the old-house quiet of money and secrets.
When I turn back, Aidan is awake, eyes open, not moving.
Declan grunts from the bed. “What time is it?”
“Too fucking early. Around six.”
He drags his arm off his face and squints at the window. “Thought this place would have the decency to let us sleep in before the criminal patriarch starts summoning people.”
“Apparently not.”
Dervla stirs under the covers, making a low sound and dragging the duvet higher. Her eyes open a second later, unfocused at first. Then she looks around the room, the men, the fact I’m standing by the door with a gun in my hand, and reality lands.
“Well,” she says hoarsely. “Nothing says good morning like organised crime and emotional damage.”
Declan sits up slowly, rubbing a hand over his face. “You look like shit.”
“So do you,” she fires back, though there’s no real sting in it. She pushes herself upright and winces. “Ouch.”
Aidan stands and stretches the stiffness out of his shoulders. “Emily was here.”
“She says breakfast in half an hour. Séamus wants you in the study after,” I say.
Dervla lets out a long breath and drops her head back against the pillows. “Naturally. God forbid a mafia king waits until someone wakes up.”
I put the gun down on the side table within reach and cross to the bed.
Aidan moves to the window and parts the curtain a fraction, checking outside. “Hot shower, stand there for as long as it takes for you to not wince when you walk.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she mutters and forces herself upright with a groan. She disappears into the en-suite, and a second later the shower kicks on.
I drag a hand over my face and look at the other two. “Did you sleep at all?”
“Define sleep,” Aidan says.
Declan swings his legs off the bed and stands, stretching until his back cracks. “I had a dream I was throttling Whitmore with a curtain tie from this house, so I’d say yes. Productive sleep.”
I almost chuckle. “If one of the ties goes missing, this conversation never happened.”
Aidan lets the curtain fall back into place. “We need to decide what happens if ó Briain doesn’t like her terms.”
“He’ll like them or he won’t,” I say. “Doesn’t change what we do.”
Declan looks at me. “Which is?”
“We stay close. We don’t let her hand over a thing unless she wants to. If he pushes, we make it expensive.”
Aidan’s eyes sharpen. “In this house?”
“In any house.”
The shower runs steadily in the en-suite, and for a minute, that is the only sound in the room. It should be calming. It isn’t. Nothing in this place is.
Declan grabs his jeans off the floor and pulls them on. “You think he’ll force it?”
“I think men like him don’t hear no often enough to build a healthy relationship with it.”
Aidan’s mouth goes flat because he knows I’m right.
My gun goes back to the waistband at my back.
The shower cuts off.
All three of us go still without meaning to.
A second later, the bathroom door opens, and Dervla walks back out, wrapped in one of the house’s fluffy white towels, hair damp, skin pink from heat, bruises fading into ugly yellow at the edges.
She moves to the chair where her clothes are, then pauses at the bedside table and picks up the hard drive. For a moment, she just stands there with it in her hand, expression unreadable.
Aidan notices first. “Still set on it?”
She looks at the drive, then at him. “Yes.”
Declan exhales through his nose. “Stubborn.”
“Correct.”
I watch her thumb move over the plastic casing. “You don’t hand it over until he copies it in front of you.”
She nods once. “I know.”
“And if he says no?”
Her eyes meet mine, and I know what she is going to say before she says it.
“Then he still gets it. There is no point in us having it when we don’t know what to do with it.
I’ve thought this through. It’s the only way to get out of here.
When we do, I have to claim that seat. Siobhán and Roisin said to just take it.
So I’m going to call an assembly. The entire staff and students of St. Aug’s gathered in one place to hear me say it. ”
I want to argue with her, but at this point, it’s futile.
She has made up her mind, and quite frankly, she is right.
It just doesn’t sit quite right that we are handing this over without a fight.
But at the end of the day, it’s her decision.
This is her family, her life, and if she trusts them enough, then we have to as well.
“Fine,” I say as she waits for me to say something.
“Fine?”
“Fine.”
“Fine doesn’t usually mean fine,” she says.
“Accept it as it was meant, or we keep fighting about it,” I point out.
Her eyes narrow. “Accepting.”
She gives me one last look like she expects me to start again, then turns and gets dressed with brisk, annoyed movements that say she is using anger to keep the rest of it in place.
I respect the technique.
We get ourselves presentable enough to go downstairs without looking like we’ve spent the night plotting sedition in a mafia manor.
I open the door first and check the corridor.
Empty.
“Clear,” I murmur.
“That you know of,” Dervla mutters. “There’s probably cameras in the portrait eyes.”
“This isn’t Scooby Doo,” I mutter back.
Declan snorts almost too loudly. “If Séamus calls us a bunch of meddling kids, I’m out. I won’t be able to defend anyone for laughing.”
“Shut the fuck up. All of you,” Aidan snaps, the only one who can’t take a joke, apparently.
Mood hoover.
We head down together. I keep Dervla in the middle without making a thing of it. No one comments. They don’t need to. The house is too quiet for normal morning noise. No clatter. No voices. Just the thick hush of old walls that have heard worse things than us.
The dining room is already laid out.
Long table. Silver. China. Enough food to feed a wake. Fresh fruit, pastries, rashers, eggs, black pudding, toast under linen, coffee in heavy pots. It would almost be civilised if it weren’t happening in the middle of a power struggle with armed men outside.
Séamus is already seated at the far end, reading something that looks older than the Republic. He sets it aside when we walk in.
Alanna is beside him with coffee and a face like she invented disapproval.
“Good morning,” she says.
“Debatable,” Dervla replies.
Emily appears from nowhere and pulls out a chair for Dervla midway down the table, not too close to Séamus, not too far either. Deliberate. Everything in this house is deliberate. I wait until Dervla sits, then take the chair on one side of her. Aidan takes the other. Declan drops opposite us.
Séamus watches the arrangement without comment.
“Eat,” he says.
Dervla picks up a piece of toast. “You do know saying it like that makes it weird.”
“And yet you understood me.”
She holds his gaze and butters the toast like it owes her money.
I load a plate because I learned years ago that people think better with food in them, and because if this turns ugly, I’d rather not do it hungry. The coffee is strong enough to strip paint. Good. I take two cups.
For a minute, there is only cutlery and the low scrape of chairs. It almost passes for normal if I ignore the armed estate, the hard drive in Dervla’s pocket, and the fact that the man at the end of the table could probably have us buried six feet under in under a minute if he chose to.
Fun times.