“Jesus, Cillian,” Maeve says, looking him over. “Did you get shot again or is that somebody else’s mess?”
“Not mine,” he says, and his voice is flat from holding too much in place.
His mother steps forward before he can move farther into the room. “She’s been sick, she ate a little, and she needs sleep, not whatever expression you’ve brought in with you.”
His eyes stay on me. “I need to speak with her.”
“Tomorrow,” his mother replies.
“Now.”
“She was vomiting this morning.”
“I know.”
“She’s exhausted.”
His jaw shifts once, then stills, and he finally looks at his mother. “I said now.”
Maeve glances at me, then at him, reading the room faster than she lets on, and her mouth loses its usual edge. Conall stands in the doorway and looks politely at nothing, which tells me this is worse than I thought.
His mother folds her arms. “If this is business, it can wait.”
“It can’t.”
My fingers curl into the blanket at my sides. Every part of me wants to speak first, to get ahead of whatever he heard, to say his name and tell him I need one minute and a closed door and a little mercy. I open my mouth, but he is already looking at me again.
“Riley,” he says, quiet now, quieter than before, which is worse. “Study. Alone.”
The room goes still around the words.
I nod once, and the blanket slides from my shoulders to the sofa as I step past Maeve toward the door. No one tries to stop me after that. Maeve shifts aside, his mother says my name softly, and I keep moving with my chin up even while my legs feel weak. Cillian is already halfway down the corridor, and I have to quicken my pace to catch him.
He doesn’t look back.
The study door opens, I step inside, and he closes it behind me with a hard click that cuts off the house. The room is warm from the fire that burned earlier, but the heat doesn’t reach me. His jacket lands over a chair, wet at the shoulder from the night air, and there is blood on one cuff and across two knuckles.
I stare at his hands for a second too long.
“Look at me,” he says.
I do.
He stays standing behind the desk, palms braced on the wood, shoulders squared, face set in that controlled way that means he is one breath from doing something worse than shouting. Thelamp throws light across the files and the glass near his hand, but he doesn’t touch either.
“Tell me the truth,” he says.
My mouth dries out. “About what?”
His expression hardens, and his voice drops lower. “Don’t insult me.”
I swallow and try again. “I came to tell you earlier.”
“You came to my office while I was moving men to the docks.” He straightens and takes one step around the desk. “On the drive back, I got a call from Patrick, and he spoke like he knew my house from the inside. So I’ll ask you once. Who are you to him?”
The answer hits the back of my teeth and stays there for a beat.
I could lie. I know every way to do it. I know what tone to use, where to put the pause, how to sound wounded instead of cornered.
