Chapter 16
CILLIAN
“Continue,” I say, and I take my seat at the head of the table without looking toward the window again.
Nikolas, Roarke’s replacement, resumes mid-sentence, pointing to the eastern corridor on the digital map, and I listen while scanning the live feed from the port cameras on the side screen.
Three of Patrick’s containers have already been flagged, and customs has them sitting in inspection purgatory while his distributors bleed storage fees by the hour.
“Union vote’s tonight,” Conor says. “We’ve secured nine out of thirteen reps.”
“Make it eleven,” I reply. “Offer fuel credits to the holdouts and pull maintenance contracts from anyone who resists.”
He nods and types it in.
I don’t miss the way my mind drifts back to her.
She hasn’t texted.
I ignore the impulse to check my phone and continue down the list. A carrier in Cork has gone silent after we froze its insurance backing, and I instruct Aidan to send auditors with two uniformed officers so the message lands clean.
Two of Patrick’s outer distributors have started negotiating exit clauses, and I approve the buyouts without blinking.
By one in the afternoon, we’ve shifted three percent of the eastern volume into Byrne hands without firing a shot.
When the meeting clears, I remain seated and open the internal ledger. Eva’s file still sits in the archive, flagged under closed matters, and I leave it untouched. I’ve read it enough times to know every line by memory.
She died in a parking garage five years ago, a blast timed to the ignition of her car.
The report said Device planted beneath the chassis, professional wiring, remote trigger.
Everyone assumed it was collateral in a feud with a rival syndicate, and I buried two men in retaliation before the smoke cleared. A knock hits the door.
“Yeah.”
Conor steps in without ceremony. “You’ll want to see this.”
He closes the door behind him and sets a folder on the desk, thicker than most of the compliance briefs we pass around these days. There’s a flash drive clipped to the inside.
“Source?” I ask.
“Old contact from the northern routes. He’s been sitting on it. Says he finally got confirmation.”
“Confirmation of what?”
He meets my eyes directly. “Eva.”
The room goes quiet in a way that has nothing to do with silence.
I lean back and gesture for him to continue.
“The bomb components,” he says. “The detonator wasn’t local. It was routed through a supplier we traced last month during the Kinsella audit.”
“That supplier was tied to Patrick’s outer ring,” I reply.
“Yes.”
My hand rests flat on the desk.
“Go on.”
Conor opens the folder and spreads photographs across the wood. Grainy warehouse footage. A shipment manifest. Serial numbers.
“The wiring signature matches one of Patrick’s former logistics engineers,” he says. “Name’s Keane. He disappeared two weeks after the explosion.”
“Disappeared how?”
“Relocated under a new identity in Spain. We confirmed through port entry logs and a private security contract filed three months later.”
“You’re certain.”
He nods once. “It’s him.”
I stare at the images and feel something shift, something that has been sitting unresolved for years finally locking into place.
Eva was a message.
Patrick and I were consolidating routes back then, pushing into territories his father once controlled, and I remember the call the night she died. He sounded almost sympathetic. Tragic. Terrible mistake.
He offered condolences before I even asked how he knew. “Why bring this now?” I ask.
“Our contact says Patrick’s starting to talk loose,” Conor replies. “He’s blaming you for destabilizing everything and mentioning old debts. People are listening.”
I close the folder and rest my palm on top of it.
Five years ago, I reacted fast and loud. I targeted the nearest rival faction, burned two warehouses, and left bodies where cameras could find them. It solidified my position and bought silence.
It also served someone else.
Patrick let me avenge the wrong enemy while he tightened his own hold.
My phone buzzes with a message from Riley, and I glance at the screen but don’t open it yet. “Keep digging,” I tell Conor. “I want the full chain. Every transfer. Every subcontractor.”
“You think this changes the timeline?”
I consider the question. “Yes. It does.”
He nods and gathers the remaining photos.
When the door shuts, I finally open her message.
On my way back.
Nothing more.
I type a reply and erase it twice before sending.
Good.
The word feels insufficient. If Patrick planted that bomb, then he’s been playing a longer game than I allowed myself to believe. He waited until my guard was down, until I was building something stable, and he cut it at the root.
My gaze drifts toward the ring safe across the room, the one I haven’t opened in over a year.
Eva trusted me to keep her safe. Riley trusts me now.
The difference is I know exactly who I’m fighting this time.
The office door opens without a knock, and Nikolas steps in, face tight.
“There’s movement on the western docks,” he says. “Patrick’s pushing a shipment through tonight. No paperwork. No clearance.”
I rise slowly and reach for the folder still warm from Conor’s hand.
“Call the harbor master,” I say. “And bring me every camera angle you’ve got.”
Roarke’s replacement nods once and moves, phone already in his hand, and I stay where I am with the file open on the desk, eyes on the grain of the wood instead of the page.
The room is full again within seconds, men stepping in and out with updates, paper, names, times, partial sightings, and every one of them wants an answer now.
I give them one at a time.
“Lock east gate access after nineteen hundred.”
“Done.”
“No trucks rerouted without my approval.”
“Understood.”
“Get me the customs supervisor on Kinsella’s old lane.”
A second nod, another call placed, another set of boots crossing the hall.
By the time the door opens again, I expect Roarke’s replacement or Conall with camera pulls, but it’s Riley, and she stops in the doorway with one hand still on the frame like she came in fast and thought better of it the second she saw the room.
Her color is wrong. She looks steadier than this morning, but she still looks like she should be in bed.
“I need a minute,” she says, and her voice is calm, though I catch the edge under it.
Three of my men are still in the office, one by the map wall, one near the desk, one waiting with a tablet. I glance at her, then at the clock, then back at the men.
“Later,” I say. “Tonight.”
Her eyes flick to the others, then back to me. “Cillian.”
“I know,” I reply, softer now, and I step around the desk before the men can pretend they are not listening. “I’ll hear everything tonight, but I need to move on this now.”
She presses her lips together, and for half a second I think she might push, which I would almost respect if she did, but she doesn’t. She swallows once and nods.
“You should lie down,” I add. “You look like hell.”
That nearly gets a smile out of her, but it fades before it lands. “You always know how to make a girl feel cherished.”
“Go rest,” I say, and I touch her arm as I pass her, brief and low on purpose. “I’ll send for my mother to come over, and if you need anything before I’m back, you tell her, not the staff.”
Her head turns sharply at that. “Your mother?”
“She’ll feed you, she’ll ignore your excuses, and she won’t report every five minutes unless I ask.”
“I don’t need nursing.”
“I’m not arguing about it.”
The men in the room go still in that way trained men do when they realize something private just crossed through the middle of business. Riley notices it too, and she straightens.
“I can manage myself,” she says quietly.
“I know you can,” I answer. “Do me the favor anyway.”
She studies my face for a moment, and whatever she came in here to say stays behind her teeth.
“Fine,” she says. “Tonight.”
“Tonight.”
She turns and leaves, and I watch until she clears the corridor, then I look at Conall. “If she tries to leave the estate again, someone tells me first.”
Conall gives a short nod. “Understood.”
“And call my mother.”
The harbor master arrives on video first, wind noise cutting in and out around his voice, his office window behind him showing a strip of gray water and cranes.
“We’ve got irregular movement near the east break,” he says. “No scheduled tugs, no declared tow, but there’s a service boat running dark and cutting wide around camera cones.”
“Whose boat?”
“Painted over. Registration panel covered.”
“Show me.”
He angles the camera to a monitor feed, grainy and distant, and I watch a low vessel drift past a marker where nothing commercial should be drifting at this hour. Too slow for transit, too careful for fishing.
“Time stamp?”
He reads it off.
“Again.”
He rewinds, and this time I watch the wake pattern and the way the boat checks speed near the outer pilings. They’re mapping lines or placing men, and neither option interests me.
“Keep every feed rolling,” I tell him. “No alerts over open radio. You call me directly if it comes back inside the break.”
He nods. “Understood.”
When the call ends, the office fills with the sound of work again, printers spitting pages, phones vibrating, a chair scraping back. I pull on my jacket and head for the corridor.
Maeve is on her way in as I reach the stairs, my mother behind her with a covered dish balanced in both hands and a face that already says she has questions she will ask later and instructions she will give now.
“You rang,” my mother says.
“I need you at the estate for a few hours,” I reply. “Riley’s been sick.”
Maeve glances at me, then toward the upper hall. “How sick?”
“She was sick at work this morning and she looks wrung out. She says it’s stress.”
My mother gives me a look I’ve known since childhood, one that says she heard the sentence and she does not accept the conclusion. “Where is she?”