Chapter 31
Dervla
Cormac swats Declan’s hand away from his forehead with a filthy look. “I didn’t get played.”
“You absolutely did,” Declan says. “We all did. She shoved Dervla toward the seat, timed the public fight, made sure witnesses saw enough blood to make it matter, then waited for us to think we’d figured it out.”
Aidan takes a bend without easing off much. The escort cars hold position. “That does not mean Roisin set up whatever your dad just warned about.”
“No,” I say, forcing myself to breathe. “But it means she knew this was going to escalate. Maybe not the exact shape. Enough of it.”
My pulse is too loud. Too fast. Roisin’s face flashes in my head. Her split lip. Her bruised cheek. That maddening calm beneath the damage. Not your enemy. We had to do this the hard way.
I hate that it makes sense.
I hate more that she was right.
“What if she did us a favour?” Cormac says. “I was there. I know what I saw. I know how to read liars. She wasn’t lying. I would never have told Dervla I believed Roisin unless I was certain.”
Three heads turn towards him. Mine included.
He shrugs once. “Don’t look at me like that. If she wanted Dervla publicly bloodied but elevated, she knew something ugly was coming. Position matters. Optics matter. If this turns into a spectacle, she wanted Dervla established before the first move.”
Declan huffs. “You sound like you want to send her flowers.”
“I want to stop pretending everything is betrayal and maybe focus on the fact that someone is trying to help us out of this massive hole we have dug ourselves into.”
I lean forward and place my hand on his cheek.
He glares at me, but then softens when he sees I’m not angry with him.
“You’re right. My gut reaction was to think Roisin set this up, but I think you’re right.
As much as I hate to say it, she let me win that fight.
There were numerous opportunities for her to take me out.
She was carrying a blade, for fuck’s sake. ”
Aidan glances at me in the mirror. “Then we proceed as if she helped with one hand and is reaching for a knife with the other.”
Declan drags a hand through his hair. “Fine. Roisin maybe isn’t the enemy. Still doesn’t change the fact that a public assembly now looks like a perfect place to make a move.”
I sit back against the seat and stare at the grey blur beyond the window. My phone feels heavy in my pocket. Roisin. Siobhán. Whitmore. A list of people I now have to trust in carefully measured doses, which is exactly the kind of thing that gets you buried.
“We do it anyway,” I say.
Cormac turns slightly, dark eyes on me. “You sure?”
“No. But I’m doing it.” I rub my thumb over the copied drive through my coat pocket. “If I hesitate now, I look uncertain. If I look uncertain, I’m dead at St. Augustine’s before any war even starts. Maybe not literally. Politically. Symbolically. Same difference.”
Aidan’s voice goes flat in that way that means his brain has turned into a strategy board. “Then we tighten it. No wandering. No side conversations. No getting pulled off by staff, security, or some concerned little snake with a badge,” he finishes.
“Exactly,” I say.
The front SUV slows slightly as we near the outskirts of campus.
Stone walls rise out of the mist. The first ugly little hint of St. Augustine’s coming into view through the grey.
My stomach tightens so hard it almost feels like hunger.
I hate this place. I love this place. I want to set it on fire and then stand in the ashes wearing a crown.
I pull out my phone.
“Roisin first?” Cormac asks.
“Roisin first.”
I hit call before I can overthink it. It rings once.
“Dervla.”
No hello. Of course not.
“You sound smug.”
“I sound injured, actually.”
“Tragic,” I say. “You’ll survive.”
A soft exhale comes down the line. Not quite a laugh. “That depends on what you’re calling about.”
“We need an assembly.”
Silence.
Then, “You’ve decided.”
I look out at the campus gates looming ahead, all old stone and sanctimony. “Yeah.”
“Good.”
That pisses me off on instinct. “You don’t get to sound pleased like you haven’t spent the last week manipulating half my life.”
“I manipulated a situation. Your life seems perfectly capable of ruining itself.”
I ignore the barb. “I need staff there,” I say. “Not just students. Staff, including Whitmore and Gallagher.”
“Gallagher will be there watching your back. Whitmore… less so.”
“Can you do it?”
“I can do almost anything on campus if I’m given a reason.”
“You’ll have one in ten minutes.” This is good. It cuts Siobhán out of it. One less phone call to make.
Her voice sharpens. “No games, Dervla. If you’re doing this, do it properly.”
My jaw tightens. “Fuck you.”
“I’ll accept that as stress. I’ll pull the student reps. They’ll spread it in under five minutes. As for staff…” She pauses. “Leave that to me.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet. This isn’t over. Not by a long fucking shot.” She hangs up, and I couldn’t agree with her more.
This is what I came here for. This was my goal. But now it’s the first stepping stone to everything else.
“I need to call my dad when we stop,” Aidan says. “He needs to know what’s happening on the ground.”
“Seamus,” I murmur. “This is going to get really confusing.”
He snorts. “Good Irish name, what else can you say?”
“How about we just call your dad O’Connell?”
“Works for me.”
We share a smile in the rearview mirror, and then we pull up outside the house with our badass escort looking like the Taoiseach arrived in town.
The second the engine cuts, my body goes taut.
The house sits there all innocent in the damp morning light, as if it hasn’t become ground zero for every disaster in my life.
The escort vehicles idle front and back.
Men in dark coats step out first, scanning the drive, the hedges, the windows.
It is absurd. It is effective. It is going to set campus gossip on fire before I even make it to the fucking quad.
Declan looks past me through the window. “Subtle.”
“Apparently, that ship has sailed,” I mutter.
Aidan gets out first. Cormac follows. I open my own door before one of Séamus’s men can do it for me because I refuse to start accepting that sort of thing as normal.
Cold air hits my face. The main house door opens before I take two steps.
I’m not asking where they got a key. I know I won’t like the answer.
“I’m getting showered again and changed. Then we go. I suggest you all do the same.”
I head straight upstairs before anyone can start arguing logistics at me like I haven’t already made the decision.
The second I’m inside my room, I shut the door and stand there for one beat with my hand on the handle, breathing through the pressure in my chest. My whole body feels overstimulated and under-rested. My brain is a nest of knives.
Then I move.
I strip fast, dump my clothes in the laundry basket, and catch sight of myself in the mirror over the dresser.
My lip is still split. Bruises bloom yellow and purple along my cheekbone.
There’s another mark near my jaw, one at my throat, a whole constellation of proof that lately my life has become one long series of bad ideas with excellent follow-through.
Turning away, I move to the en-suite, turn the shower on too hot, and get under it anyway.
Water pounds over me, and for half a second, I let my head drop and just stand there.
My mother tried to have me killed.
My father killed her.
My father worked with Séamus ó Briain.
I’m apparently heir to enough rotten power to make half of Ireland nervous.
And this morning I’m going to walk into St. Augustine’s and publicly claim a Board seat that is going to have repercussions I can’t even begin to fathom. Why am I doing this again?
“Oh, yeah,” I mumble. “Dad. Really wish you hadn’t died and left me in this pile of manure.”
I scrub shampoo through my hair harder than necessary.
I’m not breaking down. Not now. I need clean edges. Clean thoughts. A line to follow.
Assembly. Claim the seat. Make it public. Make it undeniable.
Everything else that comes after is the endgame.
By the time I get out, my skin is pink, and my mind is only marginally better than before.
Not enough for comfort, but enough for function.
I towel off fast and go back into my room, steam following me out.
If I walk into that place looking rattled, they will read it. If I walk in looking soft, they will invent weakness where there isn’t any. If I overdo it, I look like I’m playing dress-up in inherited power.
If I go in there with a triple-barrelled surname, I’ll lose them. I have to scream ó Briain at them while reminding them that Callaghan holds weight, all the while channelling Alanna Colthurst.
You’ve got this.
No, I don’t.
But I’ll do it anyway. That should be the new motto.
I pull on black leggings, a green jumper that sits close without trying too hard, and my Docs with bells.
I dry my hair until it stops dripping, then curl it up into a tight bun. The bruises on my face are harder to deal with. I stare at my reflection and consider concealer. Then I put it back down.
Let them see what this place has already cost me.
I pick up the copied drive from where I set it on the bedside table, slide it into the inner pocket of my coat, and put my phone in the other one. I take a breath, then another, and open the door as I’m shrugging into it.
Cormac is outside before I even step into the corridor.
For one second, he just looks at me.
Not at my face first. He takes in all of me. My hair pulled up, coat already on, the bruises I chose to leave uncovered. Something in his expression shifts when he gets there.
His eyes lift to mine, and something settles in them. Approval maybe. Possession, definitely. Not the suffocating kind. The kind that says if anyone comes near me wrong today, they lose a hand.
“Good,” he says.
I raise an eyebrow. “That’s all?”
“That’s plenty.”
I step into the corridor and shut the door behind me. “You clean up well for a man who looks like he enjoys breaking furniture.”
“I do enjoy breaking furniture.” He falls into step beside me as we head for the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs, the others are waiting in the hall. Declan has changed into dark jeans and a blue shirt, hair still damp, looking like trouble dressed itself in expensive misery. Aidan’s in black, naturally, every line of him, suited and booted.
“Did you speak to your dad?” I ask him.
He frowns and shakes his head. “He didn’t pick up.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Probably bad,” he mutters. “But let’s move.”
The walk to campus is the kind of quiet that hums.
By the time we hit the gates of St. Augustine’s, the campus has already started to move. Knots of students drift toward the main hall. Staff walk with the deliberate pace of people who have been told something is happening, but not what. Roisin works fast.
The escort of armed guards, which I was not told would be accompanying me, is behind us, which is both annoying and a relief.
“Hall?” Cormac asks.
“Hall,” I say.
The walk across the quad is the longest I’ve ever taken. I feel every set of eyes that lands on me. The bruises. The bun. The three men walking in formation around me. I don’t slow down for a single one of them. By the time we hit the steps of the hall, the whisper has already become a roar inside.
Roisin meets us at the door.
She’s still a mess of split lip and yellow bruise, arm still strapped, but she’s standing the way people stand when they’ve decided which side of the line they’re on. She looks me up and down once, the way a sister would.
“Centre stage,” she says. “Gallagher’s already there. Whitmore is in the front row and pretending he isn’t sweating.”
“And the Board?”
“All seven seats. Yours included.” She tips her head a fraction. “It’s empty. Waiting.”
I don’t thank her. She doesn’t expect it.
The doors open, and the noise hits me. It’s packed out.
I figured I’d get maybe half-attendance if that.
The tiered seating banked on three sides, the long oak dais running the fourth.
Seven chairs along the back wall behind it, six of them filled as Roisin takes her seat.
And one of them is empty in the middle like a missing tooth.
I walk down the centre aisle, and the hall goes quiet by degrees. The guys are right behind me.
By the time I reach the steps of the dais, you could hear a phone vibrate.
Climbing the steps, I don’t look at Whitmore or Gallagher. I walk to the front of the dais, plant both hands on the podium, and sweep my gaze over the assembly.
Then I open my mouth, and I take it.
“My name is Dervla Callaghan.” My voice carries clean.
The mic doesn’t even need to do much work.
“I beat the gauntlet and became Apex,” I say.
“I put Roisin Brennan on the ground in front of half this campus. I have been hunted, attacked, surveilled and threatened on these grounds in the space of weeks, and I am still standing here. I have heard, since the moment I arrived, that the seventh seat is something to be earned. Bought. Manoeuvred for.”
I let that hang.
“It isn’t.”
Whitmore shifts in his seat. I see it in my peripheral vision. I don’t look at him.
“It’s claimed.”
I look directly at the empty chair behind me.
“That seat is mine, as it was my father’s before me.”
The hall descends into a deeper silence.
I walk to the empty chair. I sit down in it, the guys at my back.
The Board doesn’t stand up to stop me. Not one of them.
That’s how you know.
Gallagher starts a slow clap, but he doesn’t look at me. I don’t look at him either. I stare straight ahead.
I should feel something enormous. Triumph, maybe. Vindication. Anything.
Instead, I see a man rise and walk towards me, his face a vicious snarl. “You can’t just say it’s yours,” he growls.
“Padraig Nestor, I presume,” I mutter. “I can, and I did,” I say, louder.
He doesn’t flinch. He keeps coming up the steps of the dais and stops directly in front of me. “You aren’t getting away with this,” he hisses.
A sharp snap echoes through the hall.
Padraig falls to his knees, his face slack, with a hole in the back of his head where the bullet hit.
“Get down!” Cormac shouts, and I crash to the ground with him over me as the hall erupts into chaos.
Book 3: Conquer