Her eyes stayed on me for a moment before she sank into the chair.
That’s it. Ease her in. Nice and slow, Kael murmured.
“I went through your performance reviews since 2023,” I said, straightening some papers on my desk.
She said nothing.
“You were overlooked. Repeatedly.”
Her eyes widened a fraction. Just a fraction—she caught it almost immediately and pulled it back. But I’d seen it. I saw everything.
“I’d like to apologise on behalf of Kilcullen Tech,” I said, the words sitting tightly in my mouth the way any acknowledgement of my management’s failures did.
She gasped.
It was a small sound. Barely anything. Her hand came up and rested against her chest and my eyes dropped before I could redirect them.
I let them stay there for one second longer than was professional.
She was perfect. I could see it clearly now—not the cold and the disdain of the conference room, not the woman I’d been filing under threat and anomaly and problem to be solved. Just her. The line of her throat. The rise and fall beneath her hand.
By the Gods, Kael said, with a reverence entirely uncharacteristic of him.
“Thank you,” she breathed.
Two words. Warm and unguarded, the heat of them reaching me across the desk like something physical.
Heat, Kael said, his attention sharpening instantly.Heat. What can we do to trigger it? Think. There must be something—
He pressed forward and I held him back without making it obvious, which was becoming a full-time occupation.
“I hope you won’t hold it against me.”
She was unsettled—not nervous exactly, but recalibrating. This wasn’t what she’d walked in expecting. The braced quality she’d carried through the door was softening at the edges, replaced by something more uncertain and infinitely more dangerous to my composure.
Good.
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
Those dark brown locks swept back and forth with the movement. I watched them settle and thought, without meaning to, of the forests outside Cork in late autumn—that specific depth of colour, the way the light moved through it at different angles and pulled out shades you hadn’t noticed until they were directly in front of you.
As if she’d heard something, her small hand came up and tucked her hair behind her ear.
The gesture was so unself-conscious it did something unreasonable to my chest.
“Of course I won’t hold it against you, Mr Gallagher.”
“Please.” I held her gaze.“Call me Conrí.”
Chapter 24
Nika
His words hit like a sledgehammer.
It took a few seconds to process—especially after the frost of the morning, the side eyes and the silence and the weight of a floor full of people who had decided. Against that backdrop, this felt almost surreal.
Validation.
