Page 9 of Ruthless Claim

She nods.

Then she’s gone and I’m alone in the ladies’ room again.

I look at my reflection, and breathe, before I put myself back together the way I always do—carefully, piece by piece, from the outside in—and I go back out.

The next hour passes in the particular kind of suspended misery that looks, from the outside, like a very lovely party.

I circulate.

I talk to relatives and allies who want to assess the new Santoro-Brennan bridge and find out what she’s like up close.

I say the right things, ask the right questions, and make people feel seen, because that’s a skill I have.

In the meantime, I keep a close eye on Cillian.

He’s talking to Connor near the bar when I drift close enough to observe.

Connor is speaking with authority and Cillian is standing there listening.

Connor says something.

Cillian nods.

Connor says something else.

Cillian’s jaw tightens for less than a second then it’s smooth again.

Connor walks away.

Cillian picks up his drink and stands there alone.

He looks toward Emma’s table again and it’s a quick, involuntary movement of his eyes, gone before anyone who wasn’t watching closely would catch it.

Something moves through his face then he’s back to being stone.

You’re a coward. I think at him. Your cousin did nothing wrong except fall in love with a Santoro, and you punished her because that’s what Connor said.

I look away.

The reception ends at eleven o’clock and a black car awaits us at the front of the hotel.

We say our goodbyes together, side by side, performing one last round of the performance, and I hug my family.

My mother kisses my forehead, and Emma squeezes my hand, but Leo holds on for a second longer than usual.

I feel his breath against my hair and he says quietly, just for me, “I’m sorry, Val.”

“I know,” I say, because I do know and because it doesn’t change anything. I love my brother even when his decisions have consequences I’m paying for.

Then I’m in the back of the car with Cillian Brennan. The door closes and the city slides past the windows and neither of us says a word.

The silence is suffocating.

It’s uncomfortable, but it’s not the awkwardness of the head table. It’s just two people who have nothing to say to each other sitting in a car together, which is somehow almost worse.

There’s something exhausting about it.

Something that feels, very faintly, like the shared residue of having both survived the same ordeal, except I refuse to bond with him over that so I keep my eyes on the city and I say nothing.