Page 131 of Lawless Rivals

“You have eyes.”

“And the cabin had walls. I was locked up, not seated at their dinner table.”

Fionn approaches the desk, pinches the knees of his dress pants, and lowers himself into the wingback chair to my left. He hasn’t asked how I am, yet he’s made himself comfortable while our father picks apart my time with the Tallons as though he’d sent me there to gather intelligence.

My father doesn’t acknowledge Fionn’s movements. “Did you speak with Saint Tallon?”

“Sometimes.”

“And? Is he in charge of everything, or does their mother still pull the strings?”

I glance at Fionn as he sips whiskey from a cut-crystal tumbler, his gaze fixed on me. He knows I’m lying. If he wanted our father to know, he would have corrected me already. The fact that he hasn’t means he’s trying to work out why.

“They listen to him,” I say.

“And what did he speak to you about?”

“He said he took me to force your hand.”

My father taps one finger against the desk, a single hard note in the room. “Is that it?”

Everything else Saint said belongs to the hours when neither of us remembered which family we came from. My father would turn every word into a weapon and aim it straight back at him.

“Yes.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“No.”

“Keira,” Fionn says from across the room. “He must have said more than a few words when you were with him⁠—”

I glare at my brother. “How many words did you say to Sera Tallon before you beat the shit out of her?”

Fionn lifts the tumbler to his mouth again, but the silence he leaves behind answers for him.

My father leans forward. “Why are you choosing to be difficult?”

My gaze darts from my father to Fionn. Neither of them has asked what happened when the cabin door closed. They only care about what I heard through it.

“You’re pushing me for information I don’t have.” I pull my hands apart, exposing the crescents carved into my palms. “I guess learning about the Tallons is more important than asking if I’m okay.”

Neither of them speaks.

“You want a map of the Tallon family setup, and I don’t have one. You want names, visitors, chains of command, whispers through walls and some neat report you can discuss over drinks with your people.” I steel my spine against the wooden chair. “I was a prisoner, not an undercover spy.”

“Prisoner?” Fionn chuckles.

While my father clips the end of his cigar with the small silver cutter beside his glass, I discreetly stick my middle finger up at Fionn.

“Very well,” my father says as he strikes a match, lets the flame catch, then brings it to the cigar. “Get dressed for dinner.”

I stare at him. “That’s it?”

“For now. And wear something nice,” he adds.

Then he lifts two fingers toward the door, dismissing me.

I leave my father’s study with the usual stench of cigar smoke caught at the back of my throat.