Page 69 of Crown of Thorns

But what I wanted and what I needed were in direct conflict. I needed her to be strong. I needed her to understand. I needed her to be the kind of woman who could survive in this world if something happened to me. And I needed all of that more than I needed her to stay soft.

So I chose. I made the choice without asking her permission, and I made her into something different. And now I'm mourning the woman I destroyed while being grateful for the woman she's becoming.

That's the operative's paradox. You can't love someone and force them to grow in the same moment. One negates the other. The moment you start shaping them toward usefulness, you're already acknowledging that love—if you ever felt it—is secondary to necessity.

We stay like that through the rest of the night. Her head on my chest. My hand in her hair. Two people who are being slowly remade into something that might be stronger, but is definitely harder. Two people who've traded softness for survival and are only beginning to understand the cost of that trade.

When dawn breaks, she's still awake.

"I think I understand now," she says, "what it means when you say you're protecting the family. What it costs."

"Good," I tell her. "Because you're going to need that understanding."

She nods. She accepts. She moves forward.

I watch her and I think: I made her this. The thought doesn't feel like pride. It feels like grief.

It feels like the moment I made a choice I can never unmake.

Chapter thirty-six

The Order

Renny

The girl's name is Ailish. She's seventeen. She was Séan O'Donnell's daughter.

I didn't know she existed until the phone call came from Mrs. Fahey. Ailish was found trying to leave Dublin. Doyle territory. A threat made to ensure compliance. A lesson about the costs of defection. A reminder that family members are always currency.

Lorcan is in meetings all day. Dec is deployed. The machinery of family business grinds on without pausing for one girl and one choice.

I sit in my office and I look at my telephone.

I could wait. I could tell Lorcan and let him handle it through proper channels. I could accept that this is how the world works. That sometimes people get hurt and you can't save them. That caring about individuals is a luxury I can't afford.

I could accept it.

But Ailish is seventeen, and Séan O'Donnell accepted punishment for betraying the family, and his daughter shouldn't pay for his choices. Should. That word has gotten very small in my world.

I pick up the phone.

"This is the veterinary clinic," I say when the extension connects. "I need to speak with Roisín Doyle."

The pause is long. Then a female voice, young and careful.

"This is Roisín."

I remember her face from the night I met her in secret. I remember the calculation in her eyes. I remember understanding that she's intelligent enough to be an asset or dangerous enough to be a threat.

"Your people have taken a girl named Ailish. Seventeen. Daughter of Séan O'Donnell. I need her released."

Another pause. "And why would we do that?"

"Because I'm asking." I keep my voice level. Professional. Operational. "And because if she's not released within two hours, I'm going to call a contact and tell him to make it stop. He'll handle it however he needs to handle it. And that will escalate this from a message to a war."

I can hear the smile in Roisín's voice. "You're threatening the Doyles."

"I'm preventing unnecessary bloodshed. There's a difference."