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“You saved my life,” she said. “I don’t care if your intentions were pure, or if you plan to leverage my rescue into a deal with my father. Unless I’m a hostage until he agrees…”
“You’re not.”
She nodded at Alex, looking reassured at his authoritative agreement, “Then we’re fine. I know the darker side of this business, and stalking me to protect me is honestly one of the least concerning things I imagine could happen to me. Hell, I’m followed every second of my life, so it doesn’t feel much different that you were doing it from afar.”
Rory suddenly blanched, her skin turning even paler as her face fell.
“What’s wrong?” I was out of my seat in a moment, kneeling at her side and discreetly checking her pulse as I grabbed her wrist while we waited for her to respond.
“Sorry, I’m okay,” she said to me as she patted my hand, which I realized I had wrapped around her wrist in a death grip. “I’m usually not this much of a damsel, I promise,” she whispered with a self-decrepitating smile.
“You seem plenty brave to me,” I told her, thinking back to this morning and the fight she put up without hesitation. It was the truth, but I would’ve lied to see the blush in her cheeks as she took in my words. Watching Rory fight off her attacker with such intensity, trusting a stranger with her life, taking each moment of this morning in stride, all of it reeked of the bravery she clearly didn’t see in herself. I was surrounded by brave women - Ames, Wren, Bex - and I already felt confident enough to place Rory within their ranks.
“Ding ding, time’s up!” Ames’s sudden yell from the bottom of the steps shook me from the small bubble I’d created with Rory as I crouched by her side. Rory must’ve remembered that Alex and Bex still sat in the room with us, because she glanced at them both before blushing even deeper, inching her body furtherback in her chair to gain some distance from me. I rocked back on my heels, giving her more space to breathe.
“What was the problem?” I prompted, hoping to ease some of the awkwardness that had filled Rory’s movements, her fingers twisting together in her lap as she flushed deeper.
“I just remembered John and Cian. They must be freaking out looking for me, and you left my phone in the alley.”
“Right. Xan, we owe Red a phone. I trashed it just in case they were using it to track her. Didn’t want to risk bringing them here.”
Alex nodded, tapping at his keyboard as he presumably ordered her a new phone. This one would probably have even more tracking software loaded onto it, but at least we were the good guys. From our perspective, at least.
I pulled out my phone, unlocking it before holding it in Rory’s direction. “Go ahead and give them a call. Let them know you’re okay.”
Rory grabbed the phone from my hand without hesitation, quickly typing in a number with a local area code. But she hesitated just before she hit the call button, letting the phone fall onto her lap as she glanced around at the three of us. “If I call, they’ll track your phone here.”
She sounded disappointed at her own admission, as if realizing her thoughtfulness shouldn’t be wasted on a group of criminals she barely knew.
Rather than wasting my breath trying to reassure her she wasn’t a hostage, I reached over and pressed the green button at the bottom of the screen. A quiet ringing followed as the call connected, Rory glancing up at me in surprise.
“I told you we weren’t kidnapping you, Red. Alex is going to reach out to your father, though it may take a while since he’s apparently in an area with spotty cell service.”
“Plus, we’re the ones they’d use to track the phone,” Bex said with a grin as she stood up from Alex’s desk. “You two better call her bodyguards quick. Ames will lose her mind if breakfast gets cold because we made her wait.”
Alex and Bex headed downstairs, Alex already on his phone as he tried to find a way to get in contact with Cillian from an ocean away. It seemed too much of a coincidence - Cillian visiting Ireland with limited cell service the same day someone made an attempt on his daughter’s life - and I made a mental note to look into who knew about Cillian’s trip.
I would’ve asked Rory, except she was already talking animatedly into my phone while I stood in the corner of the room, trying and failing to keep my eyes off of her. It was unsettling, the way I felt even more responsible for her safety after I’d already saved her life.
I had told Bex months ago that protecting someone formed a strange sort of connection, and it had been the truth. Watching Rory, getting to know her habits…I was bonded to her in an unexpected way, a way I’d attributed to having to be so aligned with her movements.
But sitting across from her, I never would’ve expected that bond to feel even tighter, to feel necessary, as if every inch between us was suffocating now that I no longer had to keep my distance. I’d gone from recognizing her freckles from afar to wanting to count them up close, to trace them with my fingertips and my tongue until I brought that flush back to her cheeks. I wanted to know it was me that did that, that I was in control of not only her safety but her pleasure. That I was in control of her, that she allowed me that privilege.
So when Rory’s eyes met mine just before she whispered, “I’m safe,” into the phone, I knew she was safe from everything and everyone butme.
Chapter 5
Rory
I’d never beenaround anyone else’s family before. I hated how the thought crossed my mind, a reminder of how strange my life was, how lonely it had been for the last twenty-five years.
It wasn’t that I’d never been invited. Once I was old enough, my father put me into a private school an hour north, close enough for us to commute the distance each day but far enough away to give me some anonymity.
The school was prestigious enough to include security, and it wasn’t hard for my father to pull some strings, ensuring most of the security were men on his payroll.
My private school had plenty of kids with powerful families, influential families, which was why security was so emphasized. But it didn’t have quite so many kids with families whose enemies were as dangerous as mine. While my peers had parents in tech and politics, kids who could live off the trust funds their ancestors set up a hundred years ago, I was the one whose father helped run the largest mob organization on this portion of the eastern seaboard.
Not that my peers knew that. Early on, my father decided to keep me hidden from those he was in business with, fearing that I’d be targeted as the only child of Cillian McLoughlin. Eventhough I’d been born before my father took over, he’d always been a target, the heir to the empire, guaranteed to take the throne when my grandfather died.
