My declaration had his jaw tightening. "I’d like to read the files you have on him."
"No ‘please’ or ‘thank you?’" I sniped.
"I don’t think they’re required in a life or death situation, Savannah."
He surprised me by getting to his feet. The chair scraped against the tiled floor, jolting my nerves, and I tipped my head back to look at him looming over me. Christ, he was impressive. I felt like a mere acolyte peering up at a god, pleading for his attention.
Which, after this conversation, was the last thing I wanted, but he was…
I didn’t know how to describe it.
Awe-inspiring made him sound like a piece of architecture.
Aidan was far too tactile for that. Far too close to hand to be anything that was cordoned off from the public reach.
I bit my lip, trying to wonder why my belly pulsed with heat as he pulled together the two halves of his jacket, and as he buttoned them, looking nothing more dangerous than the usual sociopaths that were CEOs on various boards around the city, I almost swallowed my tongue.
"I expect you to give me everything you’ve discovered without argument. I’ll be by your place around eight this evening. I don’t want to be kept waiting."
For a second, I knew he’d done the impossible.
He’d made me speechless.
As I sat there, sputtering, he strode away without another word. Without even a backward’s glance.
His arrogance knew no bounds, but I guessed it was forged in fire.
He knew I’d comply. Knew I had no alternative if I didn’t want my next address to be in the city morgue. Still... he’d given me until this evening, hadn’t he?
I was pretty sure I was close to cracking exactly who was behind Paddy O’Donnelly’s death, and like any journalist worth their salt—a deadline wasn’t something to fear, but something to embrace.
Switching on my phone, I glanced at the clock and then whispered to myself, "Eleven hours. Plenty of time."
To solve a murderless murder.
Eleven
Aidan
Five years earlier
"Where’s your head at, Aidan?"
I cast a glance at Finn. "Nowhere."
"Not even on top of your shoulders?"
Smirking at him, I rolled my eyes. "If you say so."
He grinned at me, then cuffed my ear in a move that was classic Magdalena O’Donnelly. In a move we’d also patented over the years, I ducked just before his hand collided with the side of my head and swung out of the way.
"Think I’ve lost my edge?" I jeered.
"I know it," he retorted, slumping down opposite me in the visitor’s chair in my office. "I saw your focus disintegrating over the course of that meeting. That’s normally your jam. What’s going on?"
I pulled a face. "Nothing."
"Really looks like it," he retorted, arching a brow at me. "You can bullshit your brothers and your father, but you forget, I know you too well."
My nose crinkled. "Fuck off."
I’d pulled this move on Savannah earlier today, so I didn’t need him trying to get into my head. I was too accustomed to the power plays that rocked our world. The corporate version was watered down and it was why, though she had balls as big as Finn, I’d eaten Savannah up and spat her out to dry.
Of course, I’d have just preferred to eat her.
Fuck, she was banging.
Mahogany silk bobbed around her shoulders, shielding a stubborn jaw that housed lips that were made for blowjobs. Her eyes gleamed amber-brown that were topped by thick lashes. Her nose was dainty with a thin bridge, her cheeks like sharp ice picks that made her face heart-shaped.
In a word, she was gorgeous.
Every fucking thing about that face was enough to launch ten thousand ships to me, never mind a thousand.
And those yoga pants? Good God. They’d left nothing to the fucking imagination. I’d tried to see if she had a cameltoe but as much of a prick as I was, my level of asshole didn’t sink that low.
Gaping at a woman’s pussy as she moved toward the table I was sitting at wasn’t one of my regular moves.
Drumming my fingers on the desk, though, I recognized that Finn was uniquely placed to help me. While a part of the core O’Donnelly brother unit, he and I tended to drift together, leaving the others behind. The perks of being the eldest, but also, the ones who shouldered more than the rest realized. They’d never fucking know the shit we did to keep Da off their backs, and I didn’t want them to figure it out either. I didn’t do it for glory or for their appreciation, I did it so they could have more of a life than either of us did.
"Come on," Finn jibed. "You know you’re going to tell me."
"What the fuck are you doing here, anyway? Don’t you have your own office to go to?" I sniped.
His lips curved. "Oh, now I know we’re getting somewhere. Come on, tell me." He made a ‘come here’ motion with his fingers. "What’s got Junior’s panties in a bunch?"
"Fuck off," I groused again.
"Never," he declared, his smile widening.
"True dat." I grunted. "You know that little problem Da had me handle?"
"Which one?" Finn countered. "Ain’t there about ten million we have to deal with on the regular? I wouldn’t be fucking surprised if one day he sends us out on a coffee run."
I snorted. "Yeah, I wouldn’t put it past him. Especially if that shit with the Tongs happens again."
"The poisoning?" He shuddered. "Yeah. He’d probably get me to taste everything first."
"Nah, more like Declan," I joked. "You’re the money man, I’m the heir, Bren’s the Fixer, and Kid’s way too useful behind a computer."
"And anyone can shoot a gun?" Finn retorted, laughing as we discounted Eoghan’s talents with a sniper rifle.
Grinning, I nodded. "Well, this task in particular was to find that journalist who’d been digging around into the circumstances of Uncle Paddy’s death."
Finn frowned. "Thought that was an easy one? Just get one of the runners on it?"
I grimaced at what he wasn’t saying. "It should have been that easy." The cops would just think it was a mugging gone wrong... we’d done it way more times than was smart, but why fix what wasn’t broken?
"Why wasn’t it?"
"I did a background check on her." Not altogether unusual, but I’d pulled one of the Firm’s contacts inside the NYPD to get a complete run down on her and had discovered who her father was.
While Conor’s appreciation for her father’s shitty music had been a compelling argument over why I shouldn’t automatically have her killed because she was pissing Da off, mostly, it was the fact that Dagger Daniels was notoriously protective of his family.
Everyone remembered what had happened to one of his youngest. He’d gone apeshit when she’d been kidnapped. His private security had found her first, the cops lagging way behind as per goddamn usual, and as miracles would have it, not a single kidnapper had survived the encounter…