Chapter 17
SAOIRSE
Maeve drags a second blanket over my legs even after I tell her twice I’m warm enough, and Cillian’s mother ignores me completely while she breaks a soda bread roll into smaller pieces and sets them on a side plate like I’m seven and likely to refuse food on principle.
“I’m fine, I promise,” I tell them, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel.
“Good,” his mother says, passing me the plate. “Eat while being fine.”
Maeve snorts into her tea and tucks one foot under herself on the sofa. “She does that to all of us. Don’t take it personally.”
“I know exactly who I do it to,” his mother says. “The stubborn ones.”
The sitting room is warm in a way the rest of the house rarely is at night.
Someone lit the smaller lamps instead of the overheads, the fire has burned down to a deep red bed with low flame at the edges, and the curtains are drawn tight against the windows.
A tray sits on the coffee table with soup bowls, teacups, half a loaf, butter gone soft in its dish, and a little jar of marmalade Maeve insisted I try with the bread.
I eat another bite to stop them from looking at me like I might vanish if they blink.
The soup settled earlier, and that should comfort me, but my body feels strange to me now.
Every shift of heat in my stomach gets my attention.
Every smell is louder. The paper bag from the pharmacy is hidden in the bottom drawer of my dressing table upstairs under two folded scarves, and I can feel its existence from across the house.
Maeve reaches for the remote and lowers the television volume until it is little more than a murmur. “Did he text?”
His mother gives her a look. “He’s at the docks, not at a dance.”
Maeve lifts a shoulder. “Men can text from both.”
I keep my eyes on the bread in my hand. “He’s busy.”
That answer satisfies neither of them, and I can feel it, but they let it pass.
His mother leans back in the armchair and studies me over the rim of her cup, not in a hostile way, not even in a curious way, just in the manner of a woman who has raised hard people and can tell when another one is trying too hard to keep her spine straight.
“You’ve got a fever?” she asks.
“No.”
“Chills.”
“No.”
“Pain.”
I shake my head once. “Just nausea.”
“Any dizziness?”
“Earlier.”
She nods and sets her cup down. “If it worsens, we ring Dr. Fallon and ignore your opinions.”
Maeve points at her with two fingers. “See? Family tradition.”
I should laugh. I almost do. Instead, I press the edge of the bread into the soup and watch it soak.
My phone lies face down on the cushion beside me. I have checked it three times without opening anything, and each time, my pulse jumped before I even touched it. No new messages. No summons. No short, clipped order to come to the study now.
He would not send that in text if he suspected what I need to tell him.
My stomach turns again at the thought, and I put the bread down.
Maeve notices first. “Too much?”
“I’m okay.”
His mother stands before I finish speaking and lifts the plate off my lap. “Then we’re done pushing food for ten minutes.”
“I can eat.”
“You can,” she says, “and you will later.”
She says it gently, which somehow makes it harder to argue.
Maeve shifts closer and nudges my shoulder with hers. “He looked bad when he left,” she says quietly, eyes on the fire instead of on me. “Work bad, not bleeding-out bad, if that helps.”
It does and it does not.
“I know,” I say.
“You two have the same face when you’re worried,” she adds.
I turn to look at her, and she grins a little, quick and crooked.
“That cannot be true.”
“It is, and it’s horrible to watch.”
His mother clicks her tongue. “Leave the girl alone.”
“I am being supportive.”
“You are being nosy.”
Maeve smiles into her cup and goes back to the television.
The easy bickering should calm me, and part of me wants to sink into it, wants to stay right here under this blanket and let the room hold for one more hour.
For one more night, even. I could tell him tomorrow.
I could wait until morning and choose my words with a clear head and a locked door and no blood on his cuffs.
The thought barely forms before another one cuts through it.
Tomorrow is not promised in this house.
I stand up too quickly, and the room shifts once at the edges. Maeve is on her feet immediately, one hand out, and I catch the back of the sofa before she reaches me.
“Easy,” she says.
“I’m fine.” I hate that phrase now. “Just stood too fast.”
His mother is already there, her hand cool at my wrist, thumb on my pulse. “Sit.”
“I want to go upstairs and wash my face.”
“You can wash it sitting down too.”
Despite myself, I laugh once, thin and tired, and she gives me a look that says she will take the laugh and the obedience together if she can get both.
Headlights sweep across the line of curtains and move on, then return, slower this time, spilling white bands through the gaps where the fabric does not meet perfectly. Tires crunch on gravel outside.
The room changes.
Maeve’s posture shifts first. His mother drops my wrist and turns toward the hall. I stand still with one hand on the sofa and listen to car doors open, voices outside, the front door, boots in the entry, the low exchange of men who are still in work mode and trying not to carry it into the house.
I know his step before I see him.
He comes into the sitting room with Conall two paces behind and stops just inside the threshold.
His jacket is still on, the front of his shirt is open at the throat, and the side of his face catches the lamp light in a way that shows every hour he has been gone.
Dock grit marks one sleeve, there is a dark smear near his cuff that could be oil and could be blood, and his eyes go to me first, straight and hard, like he was walking in with five things in his head and all of them just got pushed into a different order.
The breath leaves me so fast, my chest hurts.
He knows.
I do not know what he knows, and the difference stops mattering the second I see his face.
“Jesus, Cillian,” Maeve says, looking him over. “Did you get shot again or is that somebody else’s mess?”
“Not mine,” he says, and his voice is flat from holding too much in place.
His mother steps forward before he can move farther into the room. “She’s been sick, she ate a little, and she needs sleep, not whatever expression you’ve brought in with you.”
His eyes stay on me. “I need to speak with her.”
“Tomorrow,” his mother replies.
“Now.”
“She was vomiting this morning.”
“I know.”
“She’s exhausted.”
His jaw shifts once, then stills, and he finally looks at his mother. “I said now.”
Maeve glances at me, then at him, reading the room faster than she lets on, and her mouth loses its usual edge. Conall stands in the doorway and looks politely at nothing, which tells me this is worse than I thought.
His mother folds her arms. “If this is business, it can wait.”
“It can’t.”
My fingers curl into the blanket at my sides. Every part of me wants to speak first, to get ahead of whatever he heard, to say his name and tell him I need one minute and a closed door and a little mercy. I open my mouth, but he is already looking at me again.
“Riley,” he says, quiet now, quieter than before, which is worse. “Study. Alone.”
The room goes still around the words.
I nod once, and the blanket slides from my shoulders to the sofa as I step past Maeve toward the door.
No one tries to stop me after that. Maeve shifts aside, his mother says my name softly, and I keep moving with my chin up even while my legs feel weak.
Cillian is already halfway down the corridor, and I have to quicken my pace to catch him.
He doesn’t look back.
The study door opens, I step inside, and he closes it behind me with a hard click that cuts off the house.
The room is warm from the fire that burned earlier, but the heat doesn’t reach me.
His jacket lands over a chair, wet at the shoulder from the night air, and there is blood on one cuff and across two knuckles.
I stare at his hands for a second too long.
“Look at me,” he says.
I do.
He stays standing behind the desk, palms braced on the wood, shoulders squared, face set in that controlled way that means he is one breath from doing something worse than shouting. The lamp throws light across the files and the glass near his hand, but he doesn’t touch either.
“Tell me the truth,” he says.
My mouth dries out. “About what?”
His expression hardens, and his voice drops lower. “Don’t insult me.”
I swallow and try again. “I came to tell you earlier.”
“You came to my office while I was moving men to the docks.” He straightens and takes one step around the desk. “On the drive back, I got a call from Patrick, and he spoke like he knew my house from the inside. So I’ll ask you once. Who are you to him?”
The answer hits the back of my teeth and stays there for a beat.
I could lie. I know every way to do it. I know what tone to use, where to put the pause, how to sound wounded instead of cornered.
I can’t do it now.
I look at the edge of the desk and say it anyway. “He’s my father.”
Silence.
Cillian doesn’t move. His eyes stay on my face, and the quiet stretches until I hear the clock on the shelf and the faint murmur of voices downstairs.
“Say it again,” he says.
“Patrick is my father.”
His fingers flex once against the desk. “How long?”
“From the start.”
“From the first day you entered my house.”
“Yes.”
A short laugh leaves him, sharp and empty. He turns toward the window, then back so fast, I flinch before I can stop myself.
His eyes catch it. That makes him angrier.
“You sat in my meetings,” he says. “You listened to my men. You watched routes shift. You slept in my bed.”
“I know.”
“And you reported to him.”
“Yes.”
The word is barely out before he steps closer. I give ground without thinking, and my calves hit the chair behind me.