Chapter 26
Aoife
“Well?” I ask after about ten minutes of total silence and me driving around Dublin trying to find my way, or at least a fucking sign pointing to Ranelagh.
“Hmm?” Aran murmurs, still scrolling, earbud in one ear to listen to audio.
“Anything?”
“Yeah. Pretty much everything Granville said.”
“So, this is a good thing, right?” He sounds depressed, which is confusing me.
He drags a hand over his face and stares at the phone again like he wants the screen to give him a different answer.
“No,” he says finally. “It’s not good.”
I grip the wheel tighter. “Why?”
“Because it means Nessa is exactly what he says she is.” He flicks through something else, jaw hard.
“Because Connor’s daughter has been fed this from birth and pointed at her own blood like a weapon.
Because her mother has been building this shit for years.
Because Sean just handed me proof that Connor’s long-lost daughter is a traitor to him. And he lost Granville.”
“Why did you let him go?” I ask tentatively. “Not that it matters, but just curious.”
He sighs and stares out of the window. “I believe him. He is exhausted with this life, and I get it.”
“What does that mean? For you?”
“Nothing. It means absolutely nothing. You don’t walk out of the Irish mafia without having an exit strategy and a place to disappear where they can’t find you. Blood or not.”
“Oh.” I chew my lip and take a left. It’s the wrong way, but I don’t care where we go now.
“I’m not saying I want to leave,” he says suddenly, looking at me as if I might use that information against him. “I’m just saying—”
“You don’t have to explain it to me, Aran. You’re allowed to be tired of all this shit. You’re allowed a moment where you wish things were different. God knows, I know that. I’m not judging you one way or the other.”
“I know, and that’s why I can’t lose you,” he says, so quietly, I only just heard him.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say lightly, to try to ease up the atmosphere. “You branded me with your name. That makes me yours, regardless. I have no skin in this game, Aran. I’m an outsider. I only care about you. Crazy as that sounds after five fucking minutes.”
He places his hand on my thigh and squeezes it. “Take the next right.”
I take the right.
The city starts looking familiar again a minute later, but my pulse doesn’t ease. It’s different when you’re driving and not sitting on a bus wishing you were anywhere else. His hand is still on my thigh, heavy and warm, like he needs the contact as much as I do.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Connor’s.”
I glance at him. “Straight there?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds grim.”
“It is grim.”
I blow out a breath and keep driving. Traffic thickens near the lights. A bus edges into my lane. A cyclist cuts across too close. Normal Dublin shit. It’s wild that the world keeps moving when everything in ours has gone feral.
Aran gives me directions every now and again but is otherwise silent. Staring at the phone.
“Are you going to tell Connor you let Granville go?” I ask at a red light.
He makes a noise that sounds somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. “Let go are not the words I will be using. You didn’t see anything.”
“You’re going to lie?” I almost squeak in surprise.
His gaze cuts to me, sharp and unapologetic. “I’m going to protect us.”
“That’s a yes.”
“It’s a necessary yes.”
I stare at the road. “That sounds like mafia for lying.”
“It is lying,” he says. “Connor doesn’t need the details of me letting Sean drive away while I had you in the car. He needs the proof. He needs to know who his daughter really is. That’s what matters.”
I tighten my grip on the wheel as I take the next turn. The light changes. I drive on.
The gates to Connor’s place come into view too fast. The gates open.
My stomach drops all over again.
“I hate this house,” I mutter, driving up the red-bricked drive and stopping next to a Range Rover.
“No, you don’t. You love it.”
“Shut up,” I mutter and kill the engine. “I’ll stay here.”
“Connor will think we’re hiding something.”
“We are. I’m not like you, Aran. If he asks me something, I’ll spill.”
Aran looks at me for a second, then opens his door. “Then keep your mouth shut unless I tell you otherwise.”
“He’s not just going to accept that if he asks me something. I need more.”
“You tell him you didn’t see anything.”
Right. Lie.
He gets out, and I swear under my breath before following. My nerves jack up another notch as I slam the car door.
Aran comes to me fast. He doesn’t touch me straight away. He just looks at me, taking my measure like he’s checking whether I’m about to bolt.
“If you babble, he will know. If he asks you something directly, you say you didn’t see anything and leave it at that.”
He puts his hand at my lower back and steers me toward the front door. We don’t even get to knock. The same man from before opens up and lets us in with one curt nod.
I walk into the hall and immediately feel that same pressure as before. Big house. Quiet house. Money everywhere. But I breathe in and get the scent of fresh flowers from a vase on the hall table, and I relax a bit. There is life here, and it’s in pretty yellows and purples.
Aran keeps me moving, his hand firm at my back, through the hall and toward that office again.
My pulse kicks harder with every step.
The door is open this time. Connor is standing by the window with a phone in his hand. He turns when we walk in, and I get the full force of his attention all over again. It’s like being pinned in place without anyone touching me.
“Here,” Aran says, throwing the phone onto the desk. “You’re going to want to have a very thorough fucking look at that. Nessa is up to her neck in this, so is her mother, Oonagh O’Reilly. Your daughter is a traitor to this family and needs to be put down.”
“Careful,” Connor says, danger in every letter.
“Trust me.”
Aran steps back with me glued to his side, and we wait.
Connor looks at Aran first. Then at me. Then back at the phone on the desk like it might bite him.
I stay quiet.
He picks it up, unlocks it, and starts going through whatever Sean gave him. The room goes dead still except for the small taps of his thumb on the screen. Aran doesn’t move beside me. I don’t either. I can feel him, though. Solid. Wired. Ready.
Connor’s face changes by degrees. Not much. A tightening around the eyes. A flattening of his mouth. Once, his jaw jumps hard enough for me to catch it from across the room.
“Get out,” he says quietly.
Aran doesn’t need to be told twice. He ushers me to the door and practically shoves me through first. He hangs back for a second and says, “I’m sorry,” before he closes the door and marches back the way we came.
I have to jog to keep up with his giant strides, but he is clear on one thing. Getting out.
We hurry back to the car, and Aran helps me in the passenger side before he climbs in and starts the engine, bolting as fast as he can out of the driveway in case Connor is going to call him back at any second.
“That was…”
“Do you even have a word ready for what that was?” Aran asks with a smirk.
“No,” I admit. “I was trying to break the silence.”
He chuckles. “You are perfect.”
I scoff. “Hardly. I’m shaking like a leaf. Do you think he bought it?”
“He bought it. He would’ve had something to say about it if he didn’t.”
“He didn’t even ask you where you got it.”
“He doesn’t need to. He doesn’t care where the information comes from. That’s below his pay grade.”
“Nice job if you can get it,” I mutter. I stare out the windshield as the gates slide shut behind us and try to get my breathing under control.
It doesn’t work.
Connor’s face is stuck in my head. Not shouting. Not raging. Just that awful, measured stillness while his whole world got ripped open on a phone screen.
“What now?” I ask.
Aran keeps his eyes on the road. “Now he moves.”
“That sounds bad.”
“It is.”
I glance at him. His hands are tight on the wheel. Not panicked. Just locked down so hard, I know he’s one wrong word away from putting his fist through something.
“Will he ask you to be part of it?” I’m dreading his answer because neither option is good.
“No. Probably not,” he clips out. “This has gone above my pay grade.”
“Oh,” I say again because fucked if I know how this shit works. “Does that make you upset?” I venture.
He looks at me with an expression of incredulity before he shoots his gaze back to the road. “I honestly don’t think anyone, ever, has asked me that before, in any sense.”
“Well? Does it?”
“No. Not in the slightest. My job is my job. I did the drop, found the info when it went sideways. Now, I wait for the next drop, the next target.”
“Are you happy with that?”
He goes quiet for a beat, then another.
“No,” he says finally. “I’m functional with it.”
“That’s bleak.”
“It’s honest.”
I sit with that. The city rolls by outside. Trees. Brick. Bus stops. People carrying shopping bags like there isn’t a war moving around under the surface of Dublin.
“Do you want something else?” I ask.
His jaw shifts. “You ask dangerous questions.”
“I’m asking anyway.”
He looks at me then. Properly. His eyes catch mine for a second before he looks back at the road. “Until you, no.”
Something in my chest goes tight.
“And now?” I ask quietly.
“Now I want things I shouldn’t.”
I don’t answer. I don’t think I can.
He reaches over and puts his hand on my thigh again, squeezing once. Hard. Grounding. Claiming. Both. I grip his hand and squeeze back as tightly as I can.
We drive the rest of the way in silence.
When we pull into his garage, I don’t move right away. Neither does he. The engine ticks as it cools. The quiet feels heavy after everything. Granville. Connor. Nessa. The whole rotten mess sitting between us.
Aran kills the engine and turns to me. “You did well.”
“I didn’t do fuck all.”
“You kept your head when most people would’ve lost it.”
I sit there while Aran looks at me. His gaze sweeps over my cap, my jacket. I can feel the sting where he carved his name into my skin. I must look like hell.
“I nearly passed out in your hall earlier,” I admit.
“And then you pulled it back.” He reaches over, carefully extracting the gun from my pocket like he’s afraid I’ll accidentally shoot myself. “That matters.”
“I don’t feel like I did anything that matters.”
“You matter. That’s the fucking problem.”
His words knock the air from my lungs. When I meet his gaze, warmth spreads beneath my ribs. It’s tender, foreign and terrifying. I drop my eyes to my hands before my face gives everything away.
He gets out and comes around to my side. By the time he opens the door, I’m already moving.
Inside his house, I wait while he locks up and sets the alarm.
“Sit,” he commands, turning to me.
I drop into the kitchen chair without argument.
He turns to pour whiskey, his back to me as he braces both hands on the counter for a second before he straightens again.
That one second tells me more than anything he’s said in the last hour.
He pours one, then turns with the glass in hand and looks at me. “You want one?”
I shake my head. “No.”
He knocks half of it back, jaw tight as he swallows. Then he sets the glass down.
He stays where he is, staring at the floor tiles.
“You should eat,” he says finally.
I give a short, tired huff. “You always say shit like that when everything’s falling apart.”
“Because people make stupid decisions when they haven’t eaten.”
“I’ve made some very stupid decisions well-fed.”
His mouth almost shifts. Almost. “Still. Eat.”
I study him from my chair, taking in the rigid set of his shoulders, the white knuckles around his glass. “What are you thinking?”
“Good fucking question.”
“So answer it.”
I wait. I’ll wait because this man has become important to me in ways that I can’t even begin to understand in such a short space of time. But I know I will wait for him for however long it takes.