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“We should probably start from the beginning,” I said, letting go of Rory’s hand as I sat up straighter in my chair. She probably wouldn’t want to be within an inch of me after this admission, and I prepared myself to watch her run. Prepared myself to track her down.
Just the thought of her running away, the idea of having her out of my sight, had my fists clenching in my lap. Ames had run from Alex a few times through their courtship, and she’d come back of her own volition each time. But I wouldn’t be able to allow Rory that distance, no matter how much she deserved it. Her safety mattered more than her independence, and I worried about how hard it would be to protect her from herself alongside whoever was trying to hurt her.
I thought for a moment about how to start, where to start, what details to include. But what stuck out most wasn’t whatdetails I should skip, but rather the detail that mattered most, that I thought Rory would appreciate the most.
“I guess the first thing to say…To say again, really,” I glanced up at Rory, whose face was blank as she waited for whatever I planned to say, “is that I was telling the truth. We do work for your father, and I am here to keep you safe. I’ve been keeping you safe for months now, waiting to see if someone would come after you. But…your father doesn’t know.”
Alex kept tabs on most of our employers, setting up software that tracked local darknet activity with keywords or some shit that I didn’t fully understand. He’d occasionally get hits on people we worked with, allowing us to twist that knowledge to our advantage.
I didn’t plan to admit this to Rory, at least not all of it, and took a moment to think about what information I could actually share, starting with the most basic facts.
“Cillian’s name came up on the darknet toward the end of September, alongside a reference to a hit being taken out on abanphrionsa.”
“Princess,” Rory supplied in a quiet whisper.
“Yeah, we have Google Translate,” Bex deadpanned, and I kicked at her knee with my foot.Be nice,I mouthed, my efforts only earning me an eye roll.
I sighed in exasperation, directing the gust of air in Bex’s direction just to annoy her, before continuing, “Bex is right. We roughly translated it to mean ‘princess’ in Irish. Which was interesting, because Cillian’s name was attached to the job.”
Considering Cillian wasn’t a princess, but the leader of the local branch of the Irish mob, our interest had been piqued.
“We doubted Cillian had somehow forged connections with royalty, so we looked for a mistress, a niece, any young woman that could be associated with him. Bex and Alex did some digging, looking for trails. Payments to bodyguards who spenttheir time away from the compound, property he owned but didn’t use for business. I followed trails for over a week, hitting dead ends over and over.”
The search at the beginning of October had been brutal, looking for answers to no avail, breaking into buildings only to find them empty or filled with any matter of contraband the mob dealt in.
“Then we heard some rumblings about a daughter of Cormac’s, one Cillian almost treated as a goddaughter when she was younger. So I ended up at your building. I broke in, setting up shop in an empty space on your floor, waiting for you to emerge from your apartment. When you did, I knew I’d found who we were looking for. Your hair and your eyes matched Cillian’s, which by itself wouldn’t have tipped me off, but that combined with the banphrionsa reference? The security you had? The way Cormac had so conveniently failed to mention having a daughter despite us working with him for years? I had a gut feeling.”
I looked at her features now, taking in the face I’d become so familiar with over the past few months. She didn’t look like Cillian’s daughter anymore, though the resemblance was still there. She just looked like Rory.
“You didn’t tell my dad?”
Fuck it. Leaving out the sensitive bits was impossible.
“At first, we didn’t tell him because we technically shouldn’t have found the information about the hit. The information was buried so deep there was no way we would’ve found it save for Xan’s code tracking his name. We weren’t sure how Cillian would respond, knowing we were tracking and collecting information about him without his knowledge. We didn’t even know if the ‘princess’ meant anything worthwhile, which was why we decided to look into it ourselves before reaching out.”
“But?” Rory startled when we all looked up at her interruption, a slight blush tinting her cheeks pink. “Sorry,” she murmured, pushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear, “it just felt like there was abutcoming.”
I laughed, glad Rory broke the tension of my wordy storytelling. “You’re right, there is a ‘but.’ The morning after I first saw you, first figured out who you were, why you were important, we found out someone broke into Wren’s-”
“The little one downstairs who looks like a Chinese version of Snow White? Like some birds and shit are going to come in the window and tie her hair in a bow?” Rory nodded, smiling slightly at Bex’s description of her girlfriend.
“Wren’s floral shop.” I cut back in, rolling my eyes at Bex’s interruption. Only she could indirectly insult her girlfriend while describing her. I almost would’ve been offended on Wren’s behalf if Bex’s infatuation wasn’t clear on her face. “We quickly figured out that it wasn’t a random break-in, but a warning. A threat. Ames’s ex had already come at her before, kidnapped her for a few hours before we got her back.”
Alex growled under his breath at the reminder, and Rory jolted at the sudden noise before refocusing on me. I suddenly wished Alex would make more noise to distract Rory as I divulged the bit of information I expected her to balk at. But when Rory’s eyes met mine, the small glimmer of trust I saw - the trust I didn’t deserve - had me confessing the last part in a quiet voice.
“We needed security, more than the three of us could provide. Not for us, really, but for Ames and Wren. And we figured - I figured,” I corrected, recalling the idea that had sprouted in my mind shortly after we found out about the threat against Wren. How it’d slowly grown roots in my mind until I revealed my plan to the others a few days later. “I figured thatsaving your life would put us in a good position to negotiate for the protection we needed.”
Rory didn’t yell, didn’t scream. She didn’t even look angry, just cocked her head to the side as she inspected me, as if looking for the truth in my eyes. Seeming to find an answer, she said with a sigh, “Stop looking at me like I’m about to kick your puppy. I understand I look more like a librarian than a mafia princess, but despite my looks and my aversion to my father’s business, I amawareof that business. I understand how important information can be. I don’t blame you for keeping it to yourself.”
“You’re not mad?” I couldn’t help but ask, suspicion itching at me at how easily that had gone down. “We found out there was a hit on you and kept it from both you and your father in order to use that information for our own benefit. And I’ve been stalking you for the past three months.”
“Keep digging, bud,” Bex drawled from her position on the desk, smirking when I turned to glare at her.
I knew it wasn’t wise to list out each of my sins, one after the other, but I needed her to understand everything I’d done. I still stood by each decision, and I would understand if she hated me for them. But I hoped she didn’t.
“I’m not mad,” Rory said with a shrug, her oversized sweater falling off her shoulder. My eyes locked onto the bared skin, the freckles that stretched across her shoulder.
It was heady, each new piece of information I gathered now that I no longer had to keep my distance. I vaguely wondered how far her freckles extended down her torso, but quickly abandoned that line of thinking. Both to focus on Rory’s words and take my mind off my cock, which was half-hard from just a glimpse of Rory’s skin.
