Page 26
GO.
I don’t sleep again. He paces until the lights come on. And so do I.
When the guard shows up at seven with “Attorney visit,” hours before any lawyer should be out of bed, I already fucking know.
* * *
Cillian’s on his feet. No briefcase. Just his phone, face up on the table.
“She sent me this at two this morning,” he says, and slides it over.
A photo. Dark, grainy, shot through a window from a few floors up. Quiet street. Parked cars. Across the road, just outside the streetlamp, a black SUV with the windows blacked out.
“Two nights running. Same spot. She saw a cigarette, so there’s a driver. She got a partial plate.” He pauses. “She asked me if she was being paranoid.”
I go still. My wolf and I want the exact same thing at the exact same second; there’s no fight going on under my skin. Everything stops. My breathing. The noise in my head. It all goes quiet and cold and very fucking clear.
Cillian takes a step back from the table.
“Declan.”
“Where is she now?”
“Home. I had a man from the firm’s security contractor on her building within forty minutes. The SUV left at four. She’s fine. She’s angry I won’t let her come into the office, which I’m taking as a good sign.”
“Your contractor.”
“Licensed and bonded.”
“They’re rent-a-cops in a Camry, Cil. Pull them. My people will take it from here.”
“Your people are why there’s an SUV outside her apartment, Dec.” There it is. The shit he’s wanted to say all along. “Four fucking days. Zahra’s officially been your mate for four days, and somebody’s already sitting on her building. This is exactly what I warned her about.”
I just stare at him.
“She’s never had to look over her shoulder in her…”
“I fucking know, Cil.” It comes out with the wolf in it, and he shuts his mouth. He’s scared for her, and he’s right, but none of that changes what happens next. “Need your phone.”
He shakes his head. “Absolutely not.”
“Privileged room. No audio. You put it on the table, you dial my brother, then you go stand by the door. Whatever you don’t hear, you can’t fucking be asked about.”
“That’s not how privilege works,” he answers with an exhausted sigh.
I hold his eyes. He stares at me for a long time. Then he unlocks his phone, dials a number he shouldn’t know by heart, sets it on the steel surface, and walks to the door with his back to me.
A different man would’ve refused. But a different man wouldn’t have answered my mate’s text at two in the fucking morning…
* * *
Rian picks up on the first ring, like he always does.
“It’s me.”
I have three brothers, and God help anyone who messes with us.
Aidan’s the oldest. He’s forty-eight. My position was his by right when our father died, but he took one look at it and said, “Not a fucking chance, Dec.” Aidan doesn’t want to run shit. He wants to fix things. Money, property, problems. He makes what the rest of us do disappear into clean accounts, and he’s the only one of us anybody’s ever called nice. Stupid fucking mistake people usually only make once.
