Chapter 11 Aran
Aran
Connor’s daughter. Nessa Doyle. I run the name through everything I know and come up mostly empty, which means Connor has been careful.
Careful enough that his own enforcer didn’t know she existed until an hour ago.
That’s not careful. That’s a secret with legs.
Secrets with legs cause exactly this kind of damage.
They walk out into the world when you’re not watching and take people with them.
The washing machine bleeps, and I move automatically to the laundry room. I transfer Aoife’s clothes to the dryer. Jeans, a black tee, the gray tunic, her underwear, checking all the sizes, so I can order more. I place the bra over the airer, and then switch the dryer on.
I have another cousin I had no idea about, and she is old enough to have been born before Liam. This wasn’t extramarital. It was pre, and now she’s here, somewhere, in the business, and Connor hasn’t told a single soul about her except me.
Except someone knows. Someone found out about her. Found out, lifted her, and used her to get Granville back.
I frown as the pieces start to fall into place, and I clench my jaw so tightly that I nearly crack a tooth.
Nessa. It had to be.
She arranged this entire fiasco to get Granville out of O’Neill custody. She arranged her own abduction, she arranged the swap, the ambush, everything. And then she walked out of the hotel like it was just another weekday.
Which means finding her will be next to impossible unless she wants to be found. But it does give me a semi-lead. If she did all of this to break Granville out, then she wants him for a job. I tracked that fucker once already in this lifetime; I can do it again.
Except now I’ve got Aoife to think about.
I head into the sitting room and sit in the armchair that faces the door because that is where I always sit, and I think.
Nessa Doyle arranged her own extraction.
She used Connor’s leverage against him, turned herself into the bait, and walked out clean while the rest of us were throwing each other into furniture on the fourth floor of a hotel.
That’s not amateur work. That’s someone who knows how the game is played, who has studied the board long enough to know exactly which pieces to sacrifice.
It means she knows us. Not just knows of us. Knows us.
She knows Granville, which is the part that really sticks.
Sean Granville isn’t someone you stumble across.
He isn’t a contact you pick up at a dinner party.
You find Granville through specific channels, specific networks, and if Nessa Doyle has been running in those circles long enough to organize a three-party ambush in a Dublin hotel, then she has been operational for years.
The question is, does Connor know about this?
Only one way to find out. I pull my phone out and dial.
Connor picks up on the first ring, which doesn’t mean anything. He always picks up on the first ring. “Aran.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“About what?”
“Nessa.”
“Nothing else to tell.”
“Do you want my honest assessment about what went down today?”
Silence on the line. That particular silence Connor does when he’s deciding how much rope to give me to hang myself.
“Go on,” he says finally.
“Doyle arranged it. All of it. Her supposed abduction, the swap, the ambush. She walked out of that hotel under her own steam because she was never a prisoner. She was the architect.”
More silence. Longer this time.
He knows exactly what he’s doing. I do it.
But I can’t win against him. No one can.
So I ramble on. “She’s operational. She knows Granville.
She knows our protocols well enough to use them against us.
She knows you well enough to know you’d hand over a high-value asset to get her back.
” I pause. “She wanted Granville and knew just the card to play to get him back. That means she knows who she is. Did you know she knew?”
“No. I’ve only known about her for two weeks.”
That makes me frown. “That’s it? How did you find out?”
“Her mother told me.”
“And you believe her?”
“That remains to be seen. Sinead called me to tell me that her daughter—our daughter—knew about me, and to expect her to come asking questions.”
“And instead of questions, you got an anonymous phone call from her supposed abductors to arrange a swap for her.”
He huffs out a breath. He sounds almost impressed. It’s enough to convince me he didn’t have a clue about any of this. It’s reassuring but also worrying. It’s a blind spot.
“Don’t sound proud of her,” I grit out. “I could’ve been killed today.”
He scoffs. “Oh, please.” His voice holds the same tone he’d use if I’d complained about a papercut. “Have you seen you?”
I flex my fingers, feeling the old break in my right knuckle that never quite healed straight. Three men once tried to corner me in a Dublin alley. I left walking; they didn’t. “Not the point. She is in this business, and she wants Granville. That is bad news for everyone.”
He sighs. “Yes, we can’t deny that.”
“Granville saw Aoife. It’s a safe bet that Nessa did too, and probably half the men in that room.”
“Which means she is a loose end,” Connor says.
“She’s a witness. Yes.”
“Then she needs to disappear.”
The words land flat and cold, and I feel something I haven’t felt in a long time. Resistance. Clean and certain as a bone breaking.
“No.”
“Aran.”
“She’s a hotel cleaner, Connor. She doesn’t know what she saw. She can’t place Nessa or Granville in any context that means anything to anyone outside this world.”
“She can place them in a hotel corridor in Dublin on a specific date and time. That’s enough.”
“For who? She’s not going to the Garda. She has no reason to. She has no idea who any of these people are beyond what I’ve told her, which is nothing useful.”
“You told her?”
“She needed to know why she couldn’t go home.”
“This had better not come back to bite us in the ass, Aran.”
“You should’ve thought about that before you were vague with the details.
” I hang up before he can, so he knows how pissed off I am.
Not that it is really his fault. He didn’t know Aoife would be there, but there should’ve been a contingency.
Nessa Doyle is the one to blame for Aoife being caught up in the middle of this.
I would even go so far as to say Nessa knew Aoife would be there.
The thought makes my blood run hot. If I find out that Aoife was placed in danger on purpose, I will tear strips off the person who put her there, cousin or not.