I can’t do it now.
I look at the edge of the desk and say it anyway. “He’s my father.”
Silence.
Cillian doesn’t move. His eyes stay on my face, and the quiet stretches until I hear the clock on the shelf and the faint murmur of voices downstairs.
“Say it again,” he says.
“Patrick is my father.”
His fingers flex once against the desk. “How long?”
“From the start.”
“From the first day you entered my house.”
“Yes.”
A short laugh leaves him, sharp and empty. He turns toward the window, then back so fast, I flinch before I can stop myself.
His eyes catch it. That makes him angrier.
“You sat in my meetings,” he says. “You listened to my men. You watched routes shift. You slept in my bed.”
“I know.”
“And you reported to him.”
“Yes.”
The word is barely out before he steps closer. I give ground without thinking, and my calves hit the chair behind me.
“How much?” he asks.
“At first, more than I should have.” My voice shakes, and I force it steady. “Later, less. Then fragments. Then guesses. I started delaying things. I started holding back.”
“You expect that to matter to me.”
“I expect nothing from you right now.”
He stares at me, and the rage in him is controlled enough to be frightening. “Who put you here?”
“My father did.”
“No. I know who ordered it.” His voice cuts harder. “I’m asking what he asked you to do.”
I close my eyes for a second, then open them. “Get close. Listen. Learn your patterns. Track your pressure points. Watch how you moved your men and where you shifted freight when you were hit on one side. If there was a chance to push you toward a bad decision, I was supposed to help create it.”
His face changes at that, growing remote and far colder.
“And did you?”
The shame comes up hot and immediate. “At the beginning, yes.”
He goes very still.
I keep talking before fear shuts me up. “I told myself it was survival, that your world runs on leverage and everyone lies and I was only doing what I had to do. Then Roarke died, and things changed, and you changed, and he started asking for more than I could stomach. He wanted reaction windows, timing, your blind spots, and I stopped giving him clean information.”
