Kavanagh clears his throat. “Boss, the plate is registered to a rental firm in Bray. It’s not a private owner.”
Cillian nods once. “So it’s meant to point at Wicklow.”
Kavanagh nods again. Cillian’s eyes return to me. “And none of this frightens you?”
I don’t give him a smile. “It’s a note. I’ve seen worse.”
His stare holds, then he shifts his attention to the folder on the ground. He picks it up with two fingers like it’s dirty and flips to the back page.
His lips part slightly, then close. He turns the folder so I can see it.
The last page is a manifest template, and in the corner there’s a stamp mark that shouldn’t be there. It’s a contractor mark, asecurity subcontractor stamp used in Wicklow corridors, used by firms that answer to my father. I keep my face blank.
Cillian watches me watch it, and his eyes sharpen like he’s waiting for something to slip.
Nothing does.
He lowers the folder. “You’re either very good at staying calm,” he says, “or you’re very good at lying.”
I tilt my head. “Which do you prefer?”
His mouth twitches, then he looks past me toward the dark yard. “Neither.”
Kavanagh shifts. “You want me to lock down gate changes for the night?”
Cillian nods. “Do it.”
“And the van?” Kavanagh asks.
Cillian’s gaze stays on the yard, then returns to me again. “Get it off my ground, strip it, and burn the tags. And Kavanagh.”
“Hmm?”
“Didn’t the old dog have a daughter?”
This time, it takes everything in me to keep my face still or stop my hands from shaking. Kavanagh shakes his head. “From what I know, the girl’s abroad, in college. She cut ties with the family a long time ago.”
I press my heels into the ground. This was a targeted lie delivered across the different Mafia families in power a few yearsago, around the same time as when my father decided I needed to man up and avenge the family.
Cillian nods briefly. “Very well.”
Kavanagh moves out. Now it’s just me and Cillian under the yard lights, and the cameras are watching, and the distance between us feels different than it did upstairs.
My father doesn’t waste fuel or men on theatrics, so if he sent that van, he didn’t send it for a scrap of paper. He sent it to watch. He’ll want to know how fast the gate locks down, how long Roarke takes to move, whether Cillian comes out himself or stays behind glass, which lanes freeze and which keep rolling.
If Cillian sees Wicklow stamped on something loud and obvious, he looks at my father, not at the quiet woman at his desk. It throws suspicion into the open, and it keeps my connection buried under noise. It does put me under light, but my father never feared light. He trained me to stand in it.
He trusts that I can hold a stare, shift a story, turn heat into distraction. If doubt lands on me, he expects me to smile through it and drag Cillian closer instead of pushing him away. That’s how he plays—create a storm big enough to hide the real move, then send his daughter straight into the center and trust she won’t drown.
Cillian steps closer again. I don’t move back. His voice drops. “You told me today that you want control over what matters.”
I hold his stare. “I do.”
“What matters to you?” he asks.
It’s a trap. I give him a clean answer that holds both. “Work. Results. Staying alive.”
His eyes stay on mine, then he nods once. “Good.”
