Chapter 3
Sorcha
By the time we’ve done our third switch out, this time in a sporty black number with only two seats, and Cian’s army surrounding us at strategic intervals, I’m fuming, hungry, need a pee, not to mention other ablution-type situations and tired.
We circle back around Dublin for about the tenth time, and I growl when I see the sign for the big Tesco.
I slam my fist on the dashboard in frustration.
“Are we ever going to stop?” I snap, glaring at Cian’s stony profile.
“Or is this some grand tour of Dublin’s finest roundabouts? ”
He doesn’t even look at me. “We stop when I’m sure we’re not being followed.”
“We’ve switched cars three times and have your goons playing bumper cars around us.
I think we’re good.” I slump back in the leather seat, my head still throbbing a dull, angry rhythm against my skull.
“I need to piss. And eat. And figure out how I’m going to explain to my boyfriends that my brother is a kidnapper. ”
The word ‘boyfriends’ makes his jaw tighten. Good. “They already know. I called them on the first stop, and followed up with a text.”
“Excuse me?” I bark. “And you’re only telling me this now? What did they say?”
“Not much. I didn’t give them much choice. They know you’re safe and with me.”
“Safe,” I scoff. “Sure.”
He finally glances at me briefly. “Safer than you were an hour ago.”
“An hour ago, I was with my guys, eating a toasted cheese sandwich. Now I’m in a car with a stranger who happens to share some of my DNA, driving in circles like a fucking lunatic.”
“They let their guard down,” he says, his voice flat. “They let you become a target.”
“They didn’t let anything happen. You happened.” I cross my arms, the motion making my head throb in protest. I hate that he has a point, even a twisted one. The explosion happened on their watch. They’d be kicking themselves raw over it.
He doesn’t argue, just turns the car onto a road filled with terraced houses. He pulls up outside one of them and cuts the engine. “Get out.”
“Here?” I say in surprise.
“Here.” He gets out of the car and slams the door.
I get out and close my door quietly. This is a residential area and pissing off the neighbours isn’t on my to-do list. The house is identical to all the others lining the road—white plaster, a small patch of grass out front, net curtains in the window.
It’s aggressively normal. The perfect place to hide a problem child like me.
Cian is already at the door, key in the lock. I trudge up the path behind him, my head still feeling like it’s full of angry wasps. He pushes the door open and gestures for me to go in as his army of goons filter silently down the garden path behind me.
The inside is as bland as the outside. Beige walls, generic furniture. It smells of paint and new carpet. A safe house. Sterile. Soulless.
“Home sweet home,” I mutter. “Where’s the dungeon? I assume that’s where you’re keeping me.”
He ignores my sarcasm, locking the door behind us with a series of clicks that sound final. “Bathroom’s upstairs, first on the right. There’s food in the kitchen. Do some thinking while you’re up there.”
He walks past me into the living room, leaving me standing in the hallway.
He’s not treating me like a prisoner, but he’s not treating me like a sister either.
I’m a problem to be managed. An asset to be secured.
And I fucking hate it. But right now, my bladder is screaming louder than my pride.
I head for the stairs, my hand gripping the bannister for support.
One thing at a time. Piss, eat, then figure out how to burn this whole situation to the ground.
The bathroom is as I’d expect. Small with an over-the-tub shower, next to a toilet and sink.
There is a medicine cabinet which I open, just to be nosey, and I’m startled to find it filled with all kinds of emergency supplies, including a small box of tampons.
“Well, well, half-brother. How many women do you abduct?”
Deciding not to look a gift horse in the mouth, I crack open the box and get to work, sorting myself out.
I grimace and drop the tampon down the toilet.
I have no choice, really. Is it ideal? No.
Will I lose sleep over it? Also no. I flush and then wait for the toilet to fill up again while washing my hands, and then I sit and pee, the relief almost making me dizzy.
I flush again and wash my hands again, trying not to do the thinking that Cian wants me to do.
But it’s impossible. He wants me to choose him and the family and go back to England with him and be a good little girl.
Well, fuck that. I’ll take my chances on the auction block and hope to fuck the Rhodes’ pockets are deep.
Flushing the toilet again with a guilty conscience, I head back downstairs, where the silence is thick.
I find him in the kitchen, sitting at a small table, a plate of sandwiches and a bottle of water in front of him.
Another plate sits waiting for me. He doesn’t look up, just nods towards the food.
“Eat,” he says again, the same flat command as before.
I grab the plate, my stomach twisting with a mixture of hunger and resentment. I take a massive bite of the sandwich—ham and cheese on white bread—and chew aggressively, daring him to comment.
“You’re not a prisoner, Sorcha,” he says finally, his voice quiet. “You’re a responsibility I failed to handle correctly from the start.”
“So now I’m a chore?” I swallow. “Add it to the list. Bastard, liability, chore.”
“You’re my sister,” he says, and the words are heavy, final. “And I’m not letting you become a casualty in a war that you didn’t start. So you can hate me. You can fight me. But you will stay here until you understand what’s at stake.”
“I already know what’s at stake,” I point at him with my crust. “I already know who I’m choosing. If that backfires on my arse and I end up being chained to Liam Ahearne, or some other fuckface, then so be it. It is a choice I made of my own free will to stay there and take my chances.”
“Over my dead body,” he growls. “You will be dragging all of us into a bloody war if that happens.”
“Then trust that my guys won’t let it.” I take another bite and chew, glaring at him.
He doesn’t answer as he glares back at me. I’m sure lesser people have withered under that icy stare, but not me. I’m not letting him push me around. No chance.
He finally breaks, a long-suffering sigh escaping his lips.
“You think this is about free will? This is about survival. Your guys are heirs. They have a duty to their own families, their own bloodlines. What happens when their fathers decide you’re not a suitable match?
When they order them to marry for an alliance?
When they recall them home after time away at Uni?
What then? They may want to keep their Order together, but chances are, in this life, that isn’t going to happen. ”
His words strike a chord. The problem is, we’ve never discussed it.
When has there been time? This has been a total whirlwind, and the conversation of what happens after St. Bart’s has never come up.
I didn’t even think that far ahead. I’ve never had the luxury of thinking past the next day, week at the most. “We haven’t discussed it,” I tell him honestly.
“But you need to give me the chance to. What if they are willing to give everything up to be with me, and you took that choice away from them, from me, and we never even knew? What happens then? I die alone and miserable, but safe from deadly peril? Fuck that, Cian. How would you feel if Charles Stroud had taken Victoria away from you? Would you have simply accepted it because her dad said so?”
My point hits home so hard, he chokes on the sandwich, and I feel victory in the air.
“Tory and I have been together for a while, Sorcha. I know her inside out. You have known these guys for a few days and don’t even know if they will choose you after St. Bart’s. Also, she has never been in this much danger. This isn’t the same.”
Victory crashes down. Damn him and his reasonable argument.
“But that’s why I need to find out.” He looks like he is about to argue, but I don’t let him.
“Take me back to them. Let me find out the answers to these questions. If I don’t, I will live in limbo the rest of my life blaming you for it.
If it turns out this is a fantasy and they are only thinking short-term, then I’ll call you, and you can come and get me.
I’ll be waiting, passport in hand, to go back to England.
But if they want forever, then I’m in with them, Cian.
You have to give me the chance to figure it out myself, even if that puts me in danger.
You being a bully won’t make up for the mistakes our dad made with me. ”
“So, I’m your second choice? The family is your second choice? The consolation prize?”
“Booby prize, more like,” I mutter, but he hears me and growls. “It’s my life. A life you’ve had no part in until you decided to blow it up. You don’t get to dictate the terms now.”
He pushes the chair back and paces the small kitchen, a caged predator in a space too small for his rage. He stops, his back to me, his hands braced on the counter. I see the tension in his shoulders, the coiled power. For a long moment, the only sound is the hum of the fridge.
“You’re right,” he says, and the admission shocks me into silence. He turns, his face a mask of cold calculation. “Dad made a mess. I’m trying to clean it up. But you’re a Gannon, Sorcha. You’re stubborn. You won’t be told.”
“Took you long enough to figure that out.”
A ghost of a smile touches his lips, gone as quickly as it appears.
“Fine. You go back. You ask your questions.” He takes a step towards me, his eyes pinning me in place.
“But you have forty-eight hours. If you don’t have an answer that secures your future by then, I’m coming for you, and you won’t get a say. You won’t get shit.”
“Deal,” I say, trying not to make a sarcastic comment about what an arsehole he is. I need him to stick to this. “But can you make it seventy-two hours? Forty-eight isn’t very long to make life-altering decisions.”
“Forty-fucking-eight. If these pricks don’t know they want to be with you by then, they can get fucked.”
I glare at him, but I can’t push him again. He is going against everything he believes in to let me go back. I rise slowly and breathe out. “Forty-eight hours.”
He nods and strides past me, expecting me to follow.
His guys, all crowded into the living room, follow us, silent as ghosts as we file out of the house.
Instead of the black sports car, I’m bundled into a black SUV that just screams mafia.
I try not to roll my eyes. Axl has one sitting on his driveway.
It’s standard issue. The drive back is silent, a thick, suffocating blanket of unspoken threats and reluctant truces.
I stare out at the rain-slicked streets of Dublin, the city lights blurring into long, wet streaks.
Forty-eight hours. The words tick like a bomb in my head.
He’s given me a leash, but it’s a short one.
I risk a glance at Cian. His face is a stony mask, his eyes fixed on the road.
He’s not my brother, not really. He’s a Gannon, and I’m a problem he’s been forced to solve.
He’s right about one thing, though. The question he raised hangs in the air between us, a foul stench I can’t ignore.
Marriage. The word tastes like rust in my mouth.
It’s a business transaction, a cage. But in this world, it’s also a crown. An armour no one can pierce.
What if they say no? What if they laugh?
A week. We’ve known each other for a fucking week.
Cian is asking me to secure a lifelong commitment from three men who’ve only just learned my name.
It’s insane. But the alternative—going with him, becoming his ward, his responsibility—is a fate worse than death.
That means I have to be savvy, one step ahead.
Give him what he wants without the guys thinking they are stuck with me forever.
I don’t particularly want to think about how it will upset me if they say no.
I want to be stuck with them. But in this way?
It’s so far from what I imagined, it makes me feel sick.
The SUV slows, pulling onto the road around campus. It’s dark, rainy and deserted. The gothic buildings loom black against the night sky, and I wonder how many deals like this have been made on its sacred ground.
He draws to a stop outside Axl’s townhouse. He cuts the engine and climbs out. He walks around and opens my door.
“You don’t need to escort me to the door,” I mumble.
“Don’t I?” he asks, grabbing my upper arm and half-dragging me up the driveway. He bangs on the door, his fist white knuckled as we wait.
The door opens, and my guys are standing there, suspicion dawning on their faces.
“Forty-eight hours, Sorcha,” Cian says, his voice a low growl. “The clock starts now.”
He lets me go and turns to stride down the driveway and get back in the SUV. He peels away from the curb, probably disturbing everyone within a mile of here.
“Forty-eight hours for what?” Axl asks, hauling me inside the entrance hall while Ciar slams the door shut. Cillian moves in close, staring at me as if he can’t believe I’m here.
“To convince one of you to man up and give this poor, little Gannon female a husband. Any takers?”