“Kieran,” Ronan warns.
Kieran turns on him. “How can you be so calm about this? She’s a fucking snake?—”
“I’m waiting to hear the whole story before I form a judgment.”
Kieran looks like he wants nothing more than to take one of the guns off the wall and put a bullet in Ronan’s skull.
I take a breath.
Right now, I need to focus on the facts and try to ignore the innate urge I feel to step between Fiona and Kieran, to protect her from every insult he hurls her way.
“She's been working with Lorcan this entire time!” Kieran’s voice breaks in a growl. “After what he’s done to us,you’re willing to sit back and let her tell us some fucking sob story?”
Fiona looks desperately at Ronan. “I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. I only did what I thought I had to.”
Kieran scoffs. “How fucking convenient.”
“My sister was in trouble, and I was trying to fix it. I thought you of all people would understand.” She folds her arms over her chest.
Despite the situation, the corner of my mouth twitches with a hint of a smile at the glimpse of the woman I was coming to know, hidden beneath the layers of pain and guilt.
“You thoughtIwould understand?”
“About needing to do whatever it takes to keep the ones you love safe? Yes.” Fiona makes a point to look at each of us in turn, though she lingers on my face the longest. “I didn’t know how else to protect her, and when the day came for Lorcan to call in his debt, I… I didn’t know how to say no. I didn’t know who to trust. I thought if I kept my mouth shut, I could protect everyone?—”
Her voice cracks, and she quickly snaps her mouth closed as she fights to keep control over herself.
But Kieran is not making it easy for her. He steps closer, making a point to brush his fingers over the rifles mounted on the wall. “Protectingeveryone? By giving Lorcan information? By lying to us for weeks? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Fiona swallows hard before lifting her eyes to meet his gaze.
“I only gave him what was absolutely necessary to keep my niece alive, Iswear. Then I tried to warn Cormac when he caught me with the laptop?—”
Ronan turns to me. “How long have you known about this?”
I scowl, gripping the edge of the desk, as all eyes turn to me. “Since the night Scout was taken.”
Kieran curses.
“I was upstairs in the office, confronting Fiona about it when…” I don’t need to finish the sentence. We all know what happened next.
Brennan looks like someone just shoved a knife in his chest.
“She put us all in danger,” he mutters, more to himself than anyone else. “How could you not tell us? After everything that happened to Scout?—”
I give him a sharp glance. “What’s done is done. What we need to do now is decide how to use the information we have.”
“So, that’s it?” Kieran demands, turning on me. “She gets to walk free because you say so? Well, fuck that, Cormac. Not when my wife and child could be next?—”
Ronan roars, finally stepping out of the shadows. “Enough! This is exactly what Lorcan wants.”
“God knows what she’s been feeding him while she’s been under my roof,” Kieran accuses, ignoring Ronan completely.
“I didn’t feed him anything he didn’t already know. Again, I only gave him what was necessary to keep my niece alive. Nothing else.”
Ronan narrows his eyes at her. “And you didn’t consider simply coming clean? That maybe we could have helped protect her?”
“I didn’t want to take the risk,” she says quietly.
