"If she wants out, she'll find her way out. It's not a prison."
He gives a derisive snort.
"You keep telling yourself that."
Fiachra paces to the far end of the table, but it's not real movement, just an orbit.
He's careful never to let the map leave his peripheral vision.
He picks up one of the red pins, rolls it between his fingers, then stabs it back into the same hole.
He has been running at a deficit of patience all week.
"She asked the staff about the bakery," he says, "then the kitchen deliveries, then the frequency of guard rotations at the gate. She's not playing house. She's making a map of her own."
"Let her."
I flip the next page of the map pad, reveal the underside where the real business gets done.
All the connections invisible to the naked eye—the pipes under the canal, the shell companies in Liechtenstein, the safe deposit boxes nobody but me knows about.
Even the council would have to torture three different accountants to get a whiff of the structure.
Fiachra's lips thin to a line.
"You think I'm being paranoid."
I raise a brow but keep my eyes on the table.
"I think you're being thorough. There's a difference."
"She's a Donnelly," he says, as if the word is a diagnosis.
I nod.
"But she's also a Crowley now."
"That's what worries me."
I allow myself a smile, but only a small one, the kind that says I'm two steps ahead but too tired to explain. I reach for the glass on the edge of the table.
The bourbon inside isbarely touched, but the ice is already surrendering.
I swirl it once, watch the lazy eddy.
The room smells of old maps, starched linen, and the faint aftershock of his last cigarette.
Fiachra won't light another while I'm in the room.
Professional courtesy or superstition.
"She's not a risk," I say. "Not to us."
"She's a risk to you," he says, and this time, the emphasis is deliberate.
I look up, finally.
His face is leaner since Christmas, the bones more prominent.
