“You stopped after you got attached?”
I look at him and don’t dodge it. “Yes.”
His mouth twists, and he drags a hand over his face. “Jesus Christ.”
“My name isn’t Riley,” I say quietly. “It’s Saoirse.”
He laughs bitterly. “You think the real name helps?”
“No.” I shake my head and will the tears away. “I’m telling you the truth while I still can.”
“While you still can.” He repeats it and points at me. “Do you hear yourself? You’re standing in my study choosing your wording after months of lying in my house.”
Tears push at my eyes, and I hate them. “I know what I did.”
“You do not.” He takes another step forward, and the desk is no longer between us. “You have no idea what tonight could have cost me. Men were in my docks with charges and cutters, and I’m taking calls from your father while I’m driving back to find you wrapped in my mother’s blanket in my sitting room.”
“I didn’t know about the docks.”
“Didn’t you?”
“No.” I meet his eyes and hold it. “I swear to you, I didn’t.”
He searches my face, looking for the slip, the practiced line, the tell. There isn’t one left. I’m too tired, too afraid, and too done.
“He threatened me last night,” I say.
Cillian’s expression shifts, not into kindness, but into focus sharp enough to cut. “What did he say?”
“He said I was protecting you. He said I was slipping.” My arms fold around myself without permission. “He said if I betrayed him, he’d finish me.”
“While you were under my roof.”
“Yes.”
“And you still kept this from me.”
“I was trying to find a way to tell you without getting you killed faster.” The words come out rough now. “I know that soundsinsane. I know it does. I came to your office before you left tonight, and I was going to tell you everything, but the room was full and you were already moving men and I lost my nerve for one more hour.”
He looks like he wants to throw something. He looks like he wants to tear the room apart and put it back in a shape he can trust.
Instead, he asks very quietly, “Do you love him?”
It takes me a second to understand who he means. “No,” I say.
“Your father.”
“No.”
He studies me.
“I’m afraid of him,” I say. “I obeyed him for years. I learned how to make myself useful so he’d stop looking at me like I was a debt he regretted paying. But I don’t love him.”
His breathing changes. He looks away, then back, and I know he is measuring what to do with me, not what to believe. Belief is already gone.
“I love you,” I say.
The words leave before I can shape them into anything safer. My voice breaks on the second word, and I don’t take them back. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t plan it. I know I have no right to say it in this room, tonight, after all of this, but it’s true.”
