Chapter Twenty-Seven
LUCA
We settle in and I even have what Darla calls a “restorative nap,” although my mind is too busy for much of it to let me sleep. When I do, I have dreams—nightmares, really. All the anxieties running around in my subconscious coming to the fore.
I feel more tired after my nap than before, and so I decide, on Darla’s insistence for tonight, at least, to dine in my room. Finch looks highly approving when he finds out.
“I’ll stay up here, too,” he says.
“No, baby bird. You go down and enjoy yourself with all those people you like.”
“I likeyou,” he retorts.
“I want you to relax while we’re here. You do better when you’re around others.”
He folds his arms. “I’m not going to leave you sitting up here brooding on your own.”
“I won’t be alone; I’ve asked Tara to join me. We have things to discuss, angel. Business.” I know Finch like I know myself. I know every expression he has, from delight to distaste to despair. But I can’t quite read the slight frown he gives me now. “What is it?”
“Business,” he says dully.
“We agreed to keep things separate—”
“Yeah, yeah.” He throws up his hands. “I just don’t see whybusinessmeans my sister gets to spend time with you when I don’t.”
“Because—”
“Iknowwhy,” he snaps, despite having just claimed ignorance.
I don’t like these little irritations between us. They’re happening too often, and they’re not like our normal arguments. There’s something deeper underlying Finch’s barbs these days. “Where is this coming from, this sudden urge to…to change things that have been working for us?”
He gives me an incredulous look. “Workingfor us?” He takes a breath, holds it, and then lets it out slowly. “That’s a longer conversation, honey. I’ll go down and tell Tara she’s been summoned.”
“Thank you,” I say, because it’s all I really can say.
But I can tell from the look on Finch’s face it’s thewrongthing to say.
* * *
It takes longerthan I’d like that night to steer Tara Donovan off the subject of my health, but she gets the message eventually, when I change the subject for the third time. “What I’m really interested in discussing,” I say, after taking a sip of water—no wine for me, Darla insisted—“is the IFF situation.”
Tara looks down quickly at her meal, set up on a little stand in front of the chair she’s pulled over. “Yes. Well.”
My meal—a very hearty shepherd’s pie—is in on a bed tray set over my lap. In a way, it feels luxurious to be eating in bed. If it weren’t for the circumstances, I think I’d actually enjoy it. “Any further intel on Shanahan’s killing?” I press.
She forks through the mashed potato topping, leaving little tracks in it without eating. “Nothing yet.”
“If you need help with gathering information,” I begin, and she gives a scowl that reminds me so much of Finch that I have to suppress a smile.
“No, thank you,” she says frostily. “My people are just as experienced as yours. If they can’t find anything, it’s not because they’re incompetent.”
“I meant no disrespect,” I say gently.
She sticks the fork firmly through the pie and lifts a forkful to her lips. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s just very stressful. But of course it must be even more stressful for you, after the attack in New York.” She takes the mouthful, chews, swallows. “I don’t know what happened to Shanahan, how they got to him. Two of my men were actually with him only moments afterward: Rory Byrne and Craig Murphy. They only recently got out of prison and they’ve been working under Conor. Both say they arrived while Shanahan was still alive, that they tried to get him to give a name before he died, but…” She drops the fork back into her meal. “But the assassin had also cut out his tongue,” she says neutrally.
“These men—Byrne and Murphy. Do you trust them?”
“Murph’s been with the Family for years. Decades. And Rory—he’s saved my life more than once. He’s always talking about how he wants to bring down the IFF. He’s quite fanatical about it.”
