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Rory bit her lip, and I couldn’t help myself from walking next to her, tugging on her ponytail to get her attention. Her annoyance quickly replaced her worry, lips pursing as she pulled her hair from my grip.
“Don’t worry about us, Red. Why don’t you and the girls see what kind of trouble you can get up to?”
Then Ames was there, wrapping a hand around Rory’s elbow to pull her into the kitchen while Cillian and his two men followed Alex up the stairs. Rory’s bodyguards took up positions at the front and the back of the house, which seemed to relax Rory a bit, though her mouth still held tension as her eyes followed the rest of us up the stairs. I made sure to keep my grinfirmly in place as I shot Rory a wink, maintaining my cool in the face of her worry despite the churning in my gut.
Too much rested on this meeting, this conversation, which I’d been thinking about for months. I’d been the one to make most of the calls on this job, meaning any and all fallout would be because of my actions. Or inactions.
That alone wouldn’t usually be enough to worry me. The three of us had a great relationship with Cillian, Alex and I working with him for years. He was the reason we built our business, and we were the reason he had been able to stay ahead, using our services to keep his security tight and his intel fresh.
What worried me was that I hadn’t considered Cillian would have a bargaining chip, something we’d need. The three of us were supposed to start this conversation with all the power and end the conversation with what we wanted. Now, Cillian had what I wanted, and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to keep it while also keeping all the promises I’d made to myself and my friends.
We’d spent the past few hours reviewing how the conversation might go, getting any and all intel organized for the conversation we knew we’d have with Cillian. And I still wasn’t sure it would be enough, if everything we had planned would guarantee what I’d felt so confident of before yesterday. It felt like there was more to lose now, like the stakes had changed and I’d have to be ready to offer up something in exchange for what I wanted.
Alex glanced down at my knee, which bounced as I tapped my foot on the floor. I frowned at the nervous habit, pressing down on my knee with my palm until it stilled, though my legs continued to itch with the urge to move.
Bex and I settled on either side of Alex as Cillian and his men sat in the chairs opposite the desk, squeezing into the chairs we’d had to bring upstairs from the dining room.
I watched as Cillian propped his ankle on his knee and I copied the movement, using the cheap psychological tactic to give us every possible edge in this conversation. Despite working with Cillian for years, neither Alex nor I were sure how he would feel about us keeping intel to ourselves, especially since it pertained to his daughter. Saving her life likely meant ours weren’t at risk, but that didn’t mean we’d achieve our goal. This had been a dangerous plan since I first proposed it back in October, but we’d all felt the reward was worth the risks. Today would be the ultimate test of whether or not the months I’d dedicated to Rory’s safety paid off.
Though that wasn’t necessarily true. I couldn’t help but think of the fear and determination on her face as she was attacked, her easy proposal of sharing a bed to keep me from sleeping on the couch, and the smell of her hair this morning.No, I thought,regardless of how today goes, the months were worth it.
Cillian was the first to break the silence. I watched Alex’s mouth tip at the corner, happy to have taken the first point in the conversation. He’d always had the opinion that the first person to speak was at a disadvantage for the rest of an interaction.
“So, Xander, why don’t you explain how Dev got so lucky as to be present when my daughter was attacked?”
Alex had never been one for beating around the bush. Pretending not to be Ames’s stalker was the most prolonged deception he’d ever been involved in. So he didn’t bother trying to lie about luck or timing, he simply laid out the facts.
“About three months ago, we got some intel regarding you. More specifically, related to a woman associated with you. A banphrionsa.We didn’t think much of the term, assuming you had a mistress, maybe a niece or distant cousin we didn’t know about. There wasn’t a lot of information, but it was enough to pique my interest.”
“I found Rory,” I cut in, allowing Alex to avoid describing the amount of digging he and Bex had done into Cillian’s personal accounts: off-the-books payments, property he bought, travel logs. “Took me a couple tries to find her, but eventually I saw her as she left her apartment.”
I glanced up at Cillian, tracking his auburn hair cut close to the scalp, which was just beginning to run through with gray. Then I met his eyes, the same forest green that I’d winked at on my way up the stairs.
“Our family resemblance,” Cillian filled in.
“If I just saw her on the street, I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Even with her connection to you, I would’ve believed she was Cormac’s daughter. But with the person online calling her ‘princess’ - it all added up. I’ve been tracking her since October, spending most of my time looking out for the threat we knew was coming. Yesterday was a culmination of months of surveillance.”
“And where were her guards when she was attacked?”
I knew he was asking more for confirmation than anything, the dejected looks on the faces of Rory’s bodyguards enough to tell me Cillian had already reamed them out. So I didn’t stifle my smile as I told Cillian, “Rory gave them the slip. I’m sure you know she’s pretty adept at it. Luckily, she hasn’t been able to slip my tail once, including yesterday.”
Cillian didn’t look reassured by my words, and I watched as Cormac and Patrick caught each other’s eyes with a grimace. I remembered the way Rory would joke and smile at her bodyguards, the way John would ruffle her hair after he had to track her down. The way she’d called them as soon as she could yesterday, reassuring them she was safe.
And I felt just bad enough to say, “It’s probably a good thing your men weren’t there. He would’ve expected them, likely taken at least one of them out before going after Rory. I was furtherbehind her, so he didn’t expect me. He was dead before he saw me.”
That seemed to settle Cillian - barely - though I received appreciative looks from both of Cillian’s men. They were already familiar to me - Cormac, especially - from our history with Cillian, but it seemed like my backing up their peers gave me some extra respect in their eyes.
“I recognize my daughter’s life would’ve been forfeit without your intervention, and I thank you for it.” Cillian tipped his chin in my direction, though his jaw was still tight as he reminded us, “However, it doesn’t escape my notice that she should’ve never been that close to death. Since you all should have informed me of the threat.”
“No, we shouldn’t have.” Bex’s hard voice had me widening my eyes in her direction. Not that I didn’t trust Bex, but she didn’t have the relationship with Cillian that Alex and I did. Those years of familiarity were likely the only reason we still had beating hearts after keeping a threat against his daughter a secret.
She ignored my warning looks as she continued in a flat voice, “Keeping the threat a secret was agiftto you. She isn’t our responsibility.”
At that, I peeled a rubber band off the ball I usually spent most of our work meetings tossing between my hands, snapping it in her direction to make my anger clear.
She hid her flinch as the band hit its target on her calf, still hidden below Alex’s desk, and adjusted her wording. “Shewasn’tour responsibility. It would’ve been easy to figure out who Rory was, shove her back off on you, and wipe our hands of the whole mess. But instead, we spent most of our resources keeping your daughter safe. Alex and I spent days searching for women who could be your banphrionsa, tracking down leads for Dev to follow up on until he found Rory. Then, once wefound her, Dev spent three months watching over her from the shadows, keeping her safe.
“And he kept her safe. He saved her life when it would’ve ended if we had simply ignored the information, which, let’s be honest, most contract workers in our situation would do.”
