9. Atara
Atara
If there’s one thing a degree in Finance teaches you, it’s that every system has a leak. Every budget has a hidden fee, and with that, I know that every fortress has a service entrance.
I am currently sitting in a chair staring at a mountain range that looks like a matte painting from a western movie. I have spent the last forty-eight hours being a "guest."
In my world, a guest is someone you offer a coaster to. In Lorcan’s world, a guest is someone you lock in the East Wing with a guard named Miller who has the personality of a brick wall and a visible holster under his blazer.
I stand up and smooth out the silk trousers I found in the walk-in closet. The clothes in here are... insane. Cashmere, silk, tailored linen. Everything is in my size, which is a level of creepy-meticulous I don’t want to think about.
I walk to the door and pull. Locked. Again.
I knock. Twice. Hard.
The small viewing slit slides open. Miller’s eyes peer in.
"Miller, hi. Good morning," I say, trying to channel a smile even though I want to scream. "I’ve counted the floor tiles. There are four hundred and twelve. I’ve read the one book on the nightstand about desert flora.
Did you know the Saguaro cactus can live for two hundred years?
Fascinating stuff. Can I go for a walk now? "
"No," Miller says. His voice sounds like it hasn't been used since the Clinton administration.
"A light jog? A brisk crawl toward the front gate?"
"The boss said you stay in the wing."
"The boss also thinks growling and grunting is a valid form of conflict resolution, so his judgment is clearly compromised," I snap, crossing my arms. "I need a laptop. I have things to check. My bank account, my email, the status of my succulent, Sir Photos-a-Lot."
"No internet access."
"Fine. A phone? A simple, low-tech device that connects me to the outside world? I’ll even take a carrier pigeon at this point."
Miller slides a small, black burner phone through the slot. It’s a brick. A relic from 2005.
"No international calls," he grunts. "Pre-programmed numbers only. Security, Echo, and the kitchen."
"Wow. My social life is really peaking," I mutter, catching the phone. "Thanks, Miller. You’re a peach."
The slit slams shut, and I glare at it.
I stalk back to the bed and toss the phone onto the duvet. I have no internet. No way to call Tania. No way to tell the world that Atara Ross didn't just vanish into the Irish mist.
But I have my brain. And I have a notepad I found in the desk drawer.
I sit down and start to write what I’ve noticed since I got here.
Guard Rotation: Shift change at 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM. Staff: One maid comes in at 10:00 AM. She doesn't speak English, or she’s pretending not to. Exits: The balcony is a forty-foot drop onto decorative cacti. Not ideal for a graceful escape. The Weak Point: Lorcan.
He’s the one who brought me here. He’s the one who "owns" the house. If I can figure out how he moves, how he thinks when he isn't being a "Don," I can find a way to make myself a cost-prohibitive asset. If I’m too much trouble to keep, he’ll have to let me go.
I’m currently on the 'stubborn and annoying' track. I need to move into 'indispensable.'
A soft thud at the bottom of the door stops my internal monologue. It’s not Miller’s heavy knock. It’s a small, hesitant sound.
I walk over and pull the handle. To my surprise, the door clicks open. It’s not locked from the outside right now.
Standing in the hallway is Maeve.
She’s wearing a yellow sundress and holding a large, battered cardboard box. She looks up at me with those wide, dark eyes, Lorcan’s eyes, but without the ice. She looks solemn, her little mouth set in a thin line.
"Hi, Maeve," I say, my voice softening instinctively. "Are you looking for your dad?"
She shakes her head. "He’s in the loud room. With the buttons."
Right. "What’s in the box?"
"A puzzle," she says, holding it out. "It’s a desert, but a piece is missing. Mrs. Higgins said I can’t do it alone because the sky is too big."
I look at the box, then back at the empty, beautiful suite behind me. I could spend the next hour trying to pick the lock on the service elevator, or I could sit on the floor with a five-year-old.
"The sky is always the hardest part," I agree, stepping back and opening the door wider. "Come on in. I’m a bit of a puzzle expert. I once did a five-thousand-piece map of the London Underground. My roommate Tania called it a 'cry for help,' but I think it was art."
Maeve walks in, her small sandals clicking on the marble. We sit on the rug in the center of the room and dump the pieces out.
It’s a disaster. Five hundred pieces of varying shades of sand and blue.
"Okay, strategy first," I say, sorting the edges into a pile. "Edges first. Always. It’s about creating boundaries, Maeve. Once you know where the world ends, it’s easier to fill in the middle."
Maeve watches me with intense focus. She picks up a blue piece and tries to fit it into a brown one. "Dada says boundaries are for people who don't have enough men."
I pause, a blue piece of sky in my hand. "Your daddy says a lot of things, doesn't he?"
"He’s also a messy eater," she says matter-of-factly, her small fingers sorting through the pile. "He was messy again this morning. He tried to hide his hand, but I saw the tomato sauce."
The "tomato sauce." My stomach does a slow, sickening roll. I think about the man who held me on the plane, the man who smashed my phone. He’s a killer. A Don. And he’s the only person standing between this little girl and whatever ghosts are haunting her family.
"Is he mean to you?" I ask, my voice low. “Your Dada?”
"No," Maeve says, looking surprised. "He gives me the best LEGOs. And he lets me stay up late when he thinks I’m sleeping. But he’s always looking at the door. Even when we’re eating."
I grin at her.
"We’ll find the sky, Maeve," I say, reaching out and tucking a stray curl behind her ear. "Piece by piece."
We work in silence for a while. She’s good at the colors. I’m good at the shapes. We fit the corners together, creating a frame of sand and scrub brush.
"Why are you here?" Maeve asks suddenly. "Is it because of the 'eye'?"
I freeze. "The eye?"
"Daddy was talking to Kieran. He said Silas said, 'an eye for an eye.' I have two eyes. Do you have two eyes?"
"I do," I say, my heart hammering. Silas. The ghost who wants a life for a life. The man who thinks I’m Lorcan’s weakness.
"I don't like Silas," Maeve whispers, her fingers hovering over a piece of the cactus. "He made Mama go away."
The air in the room feels like it just lost ten degrees. I didn't know about her mother. I mean, I guessed, but hearing it from her—the casual, heartbreaking way a child describes a tragedy—is different.
"I'm sorry, Maeve," I say. I reach over and take her small hand in mine.
"It’s okay," she says, though her eyes are shimmering. "Dada says he’s a ghost now. But ghosts are scary."
"Ghosts aren't real," I say firmly, even though I’m currently being hunted by one. "They’re just memories that don't know where to sit down. And your dad? He’s a big, grumpy wall. Nothing gets past him."
She smiles then, a small, shy thing. "You're like the lady in my book. The one who wasn't scared of the dragon."
"Oh, I’m terrified of the dragon, Maeve," I laugh, and it’s the most honest thing I’ve said in days. "I’m just very good at pretending I’m not."
The door opens.
I look up, expecting Lorcan, but it’s Echo. He’s leaning against the frame, his hands in his pockets, looking at the puzzle spread across the floor. He looks at me, then at Maeve, his expression unreadable.
"Boss wants to know if you've eaten," Echo says.
"I’ve had a bagel and a crisis," I say, not standing up. "Tell the 'Boss' that I’m busy solving the desert."
Echo snorts. "Maeve, Kieran’s looking for you. It’s time for your lessons."
Maeve sighs, a long, dramatic sound that reminds me so much of Lorcan I almost giggle. She stands up and brushes the dust off her dress.
"We'll finish the sky tomorrow, Atara?" she asks.
"Tomorrow," I promise.
I watch her walk out, her hand in Echo’s. Echo pauses at the door, looking back at me.
"She doesn't usually take to guests," he says. "Most of them are too scared of her dad to look her in the eye."
"I’m not most people, Echo."
"I’m starting to see that." He closes the door, and I hear the deadbolt slide home.
I sit back on the rug, surrounded by pieces of a sky I can’t see.
I came here with one goal: escape. Map the guards, find a car, get back to a world where 'trajectories' meant career paths, not bullet paths. For two days that plan has been the only thing holding me together.
But I’m a numbers person, and the numbers just changed.
Silas didn’t take Maeve’s mother for leverage. He took her to hurt. An eye for an eye—you take what a man loves, so he has to keep living in the hole where it used to be. That’s not a kidnapping strategy. That’s a man balancing a ledger written in people.
And sitting here on this rug, I finally understand the line item I’ve become.
Silas saw me at that breakfast table in Ireland.
Silas decided I’m what Lorcan loves now—he’s wrong, but it doesn’t matter what’s true, only what’s in his column.
Which means I’m not a hostage anybody’s going to ransom.
I’m a debt he fully intends to collect. The second I’m outside these walls with no men and no warning, I stop being Atara Ross with a 3.
9 and a lease in Brooklyn. I’m just the next thing he takes from Lorcan to make him bleed.
So, let’s game it out. Say I do it—pick the lock, beat the rotation, make the gate.
Where do I run? Home, to my mother’s little house in Queens?
To Tania’s couch? I’d be a flare going up in the dark, leading a man who keeps score in bodies straight to the doorstep of every person I’ve ever loved.
Running doesn’t get me out of the equation. It just adds names to it.
And it isn’t only what’s waiting out there. A bad escape in here, a tripped alarm, an open gate, a guard pulled off his post to chase me down, is exactly the kind of crack a ghost crawls through. I picture Maeve in her yellow sundress somewhere in the middle of that, and my blood goes to ice water.
This is the part Mark would never believe: that I’d run the whole spreadsheet, and it would tell me to stay.
Not because I’ve surrendered, God, no. Because the cage, as much as I hate it, and I do, I hate the locked door and the clothes in my exact size and the burner phone with three numbers in it, is the one place on the entire planet where my staying alive doesn’t get somebody else killed.
But I need to be sure.
I know I can’t just leave, but I need to be sure. I don’t want to be kept by a man who sees me as property, especially when I can’t think straight about it.
I can’t leave.
If I leave, who’s going to help her find the sky? Who’s going to tell her that ghosts aren't real when her Dad comes home with 'sauce' on his hands?
Lorcan is a monster. I know that. I felt the heat of his anger on the plane. I saw the coldness in his eyes when he destroyed my phone. He is a man who treats the world like a balance sheet of debts and punishments.
But Maeve is the human variable.
And for the first time since I stepped onto that black jet in Ireland, I’m not just thinking about how to get out.
I’m thinking about how to stay alive long enough to make sure she’s okay.
I pick up a piece of the blue sky. It’s jagged. It’s difficult. It doesn't look like it fits anywhere.
"Just like me," I whisper.