Page 27 of Savage Little Secret

“He’s awake,” Isaak tells me once I step into the hallway where he’s seated in a chair with a magazine in his hands.

“Finally,” I mutter. “I need to talk to him.”

“Everything under control at your place?” Isaak asks nonchalantly but I know that he’s trying to secretly be nosy about Cara.

“Peachy,” I reply before walking into the room with Brendan and shutting the door behind me. “Glad to see you’re finally awake.”

Brendan glares at me, shivering and shaking as sweat drips down his face and soaks his clothes. “Just kill me, you bastard.”

I pull a little baggie of pills out of my back pocket. “Talk, and I’ll ease the pain.”

Brendan’s eyes lock on the bag. “Oxy?”

“Possibly,” I reply as I shake the baggie.

Brendan swallows hard. “What questions?”

Pain is such a powerful motivator. Sometimes, it only takes a little bit to get people talking.

“What was Sean’s relationship like with his daughter?” I ask him as I slip one pill out of the baggie.

Brendan sighs and shrugs. “I don’t fucking know. I think he loves her, as much as a man like him can. But they’re not close.”

“Why not? Fathers are supposed to protect their daughters,” I question him as I step closer. “His only child.”

“He didn’t know about her until she was a teenager. And he always wanted a son,” Brendan tells me. “He was disappointed from the get-go. Had a lot of expectations of her that she couldn’t meet.”

“Like killing someone?” I reply.

Surprise flashes across his face. “Killing? She would cry when she saw a hurt bird. She wasn’t that strong.”

“Why choose her to be the plant? And be honest this time,” I warn him as I turn the pill between my fingertips.

Brendan stares at the pill like he’s entranced. “I think she wanted to prove herself.”

“That can’t possibly be the only reason,” I tell him, pushing for more. “He didn’t have faith in her. Why trust her?”

Brendan chews on his bottom lip for a moment before looking up at me. “She was bait. Sean knew you’d take it. Then he made her feel guilty for caving, basically told her she was a whore just like her dead mother.”

That sick bastard.

I knew that O’Malley was cold, but I didn’t realize just how heartless he was. Maybe Cara wasn’t lying when she said that he doesn’t see her as his daughter, that she’s just a pawn.

Which means there may be other things that she’s told me that are actually true too.

Something pulls tight in my chest. I ignore it.

I offer the pill to him, knowing that just one won’t totally take the pain away. He’ll need more, and he knows it.

Brendan tilts his head back and dry swallows the pill, a relieved sigh breaking from him.

“I’m not done yet,” I tell him as I take another pill out of the bag. “I want to know what her father specifically ordered her to do. She involved herself in my life. Helped me with my business. Encouraged me to make certain decisions.”

Brendan looks wary, but his eyes go right back to the pill between my fingertips. “Intel was secondary. She didn’t provide much of it.”

My eyes narrow. So, she did withhold information from him. “Intel wasn’t the main mission?”

Brendan shifts uncomfortably in his seat, his eyes flickering to the door like he’s expecting Sean O’Malley himself to burst inside and shoot him on the spot to keep him silent. “It was a long game. Sean planned it after he heard that you were arranging a deal with the Suyunovs.”