I pull out my phone, open the photos from yesterday, and hand it to him. “Want to explain this to me?”
Connor stares at the screen showing him sitting across from Liam O’Rourke. I watch his face carefully - the initial shock, then recognition, then what looks like defeat.
“Fuck,” he whispers.
“You know I know who Liam O’Rourke is, right? He’s one of your father’s most trusted men. So tell me why you were meeting with him here in the city.”
Connor hands me back the phone, his face pale. “You don’t understand?—“
I grab him by the shirt and push him against the wall. “Then make me understand. Because right now it looks like you’ve been lying to everyone, including your sister.”
“Let go of me!”
“Your sister thinks she married me to protect you from some Tribunal threat. She’s upstairs right now, happy andtrusting, while you’re having secret meetings with Declan’s people. So start talking.”
Connor turns away, raking a hand through his hair. “I never wanted any of this.”
I release him but don’t step back. “Any of what?”
Connor slides down the wall until he’s sitting on the floor, his head in his hands. “I was studying at the University of Dublin, working toward my literature degree. Then Da came to me six months ago and told me my life was about to change.”
“How?”
“The Murphy family. Da owed them money - a lot of money. Two million euros.” Connor looks up at me, his eyes haunted by fear. “And when he couldn’t pay, they said they’d kill both of us. Me and Tierney. As payment for his debt.”
A cold sensation twists my stomach. This isn’t about Connor being a criminal. This is about him being collateral damage.
“And Declan had a plan?”
“The marriage arrangement. But it required getting leverage first.” Connor’s voice is barely a whisper. “The vault job wasn’t about some Tribunal threat. It was to get intelligence on a family in the Tribunal network so Da could propose a marriage deal from a position of strength. He’d offer Tierney and in exchange, get protection from the family because of the intel he had on them.”
The pieces click together in a way that makes me sick. “The Tribunal story was bullshit.”
“Complete fabrication. Da needed Tierney to think she was protecting me from something real so she’d go through with the vault break-in and the marriage.”
I think about Tierney that night in Bucharest, the fury in her eyes when she thought I was just another criminal trying to control her life. How wrong she was, and how fucking right, too.
“And you’ve known this whole time.”
“What was I supposed to do?” Connor’s voice cracks. “Tell her the truth and watch her flee the country? Let the Murphys hunt us both down because our father couldn’t pay his debts?”
“So you came to New York to help sell the lie.”
“I came to New York because those bastards were already looking for me in Dublin. Da said I’d be safer here while the marriage got established.” Connor wipes his eyes. “But yeah, I was also supposed to make sure Tierney believed the cover story. And the cover of me being enrolled in uni here made sense.”
Jesus, the manipulation runs deeper than I thought. Not just Tierney being used, but Connor being forced into complicity.
“What was the meeting with O’Rourke about?”
“Checking in. Making sure the arrangement’s holding, that your family’s agreeable to the situation, that Tierney...” He trails off.
“That Tierney what?”
“That she’s adapting. That she’s not going to try to leave.” Connor looks up at me. “Liam wanted to know if the marriage was working, if she seemed happy.”
I think about this morning again. The way Tierney laughed in the gym, genuine and carefree. Such a huge turnaround from the girl who came here weeks ago to be forced into a marriage.
How she didn’t pull away when I carried her to the shower, didn’t fight me when I washed her hair. The admission that we’d moved past hate.
