Trust my dick to come back online for her.
I heaved a sigh as I closed the door.
To this day, I wasn’t sure if that meal together had been wise or foolish. As we ate, I knew she was that rarest of gems—a woman with conversation. A woman with understanding of the world around her, with a voice and opinions and dreams and desires she wasn’t afraid to discuss. With her knowing that I was well aware her airhead act was exactly that, it let down her barriers, made her open up in a way that I thought few ever accessed.
I liked that. I had at the time and to this day, I still did.
Our evening had been cut short by work. I’d gotten a call, and I’d had to leave before we could finish dessert.
When I’d arrived at Da’s warehouse, the one where he did some of his nastier work, and had found him elbow-deep in corpses that he was hacking apart with a saw, as well as some other shit that had gone down that night, I’d decided that ghosting Savannah was the safest bet all round.
For me, but mostly for her.
I should have known that getting her a job at TVGM wouldn’t be enough to stop her from popping into my world once more. Should have recognized that we were destin—
Christ.
I didn’t need to go there.
I really fucking didn’t.
I wasn’t a nice man. I wasn’t a good one either. She deserved better.
She didn’t deserve this life.
Me.
Leaving her to rest—not running from desires I had no business having—I sucked in a breath as I passed Conor’s office and peeped in through the door. His workspace took up the entire length of his penthouse because he had several desks, each with six or more monitors running at the same time.
Finding him with his feet propped up on one of his desks, a phone tucked between his shoulder and ear, I left him to it, then limped over to the elevators.
As I did, my cell buzzed. Peering down at it, spying Finn’s name, I arched a brow and connected the call.
"What?"
"Crazy coincidence, don’t you think?"
I pulled a face, then ducked my gaze away from my reflection in the elevator doors. "What are we? Bitches now? You really want to talk about this?"
He heaved a sigh. "No. I just saw the way you looked at her, Aidan. I ain’t seen you that fired up in a long time."
My shoulders shuffled at his words. "I don’t want to talk about this."
"Maybe you don’t want to, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. I mean it, bro. The way you looked at her? The way you responded to her? You were like the old Aidan."
"He’s dead."
"No, he ain’t," Finn snarled. "Don’t be a dumbass. It’s great that you’ve detoxed, and it’s even better that you’re staying clean, but what’s your reason to get up in the morning, huh?
"The drugs drove you for so long, but this fucking business we’re in, that’s not going to get anyone fired up when that alarm blares at five goddamn AM and you have to slog away at a job that isn’t exactly good for the soul."
"Has Aoife been making you watch Julia Roberts’ movies again?"
"Eat, Pray, Love wasn’t as shit as you think," he grumbled. "But there’s no fulfillment in our line of work. The money’s good, man, we both know that, but it’s not like it’s going anywhere. The other shit, it’s just going to drag you down, back into that pit. You need something to keep you on the straight and narrow."
I frowned at his words because I knew he wasn’t wrong.
That didn’t mean he was right.
But still... I did feel different.
For the first time in six weeks, I wasn’t thinking solely about my knee, about the pain I was in, about Oxy, or about working off my frustrations in the gym.
Instead, I was heading out. I was dressed, I was showered. For the first time in a while, I’d shaved, and not because I had puke in my beard but because Da expected us to look a certain way when we left the house on business.
Huh, Finn wasn’t wrong.
I felt fired up inside, and knew that when I made it to the Hole, the place where Brennan did his best work, I’d be just as riled and tangled up inside with the need to find answers that would help me keep my personal temptress safe.
"I know this sounds crazy, man, but I’m pretty sure that after you met her, you fucking changed."
"Shut up," I thundered. "You’re talking out of your ass," I groused as the doors to the elevator opened and spat me out on the garage level that was Conor’s alone. While I limped over to my Bentley, I muttered, "She didn’t fucking change me." I barely goddamn knew her.
"Maybe she didn’t, but whatever you found out did." His tone told me he didn’t believe that, but he fell silent a second. "You never did tell me what that was."
I grunted. "You’re going to cut off when my Bluetooth shifts."
"You mean, you want me to cut off." Finn chuckled. "Go on, fuck off. Just be aware of what she does to you. Maybe if you’re aware of it, you won’t push her away like you did before."
Opening the door to the car, I purposely pressed the ignition button so that the dash would fire up and it would disconnect us. Unapologetically, I let the call fade away, but Finn’s words didn’t disappear so easily.
As I plunked my ass into the driver’s seat, I thought about how I wouldn’t be able to separate myself from her until she’d finished publishing all those exposés...
Because I knew for a fact that I wouldn’t be comfortable leaving her with guards.
I just... couldn’t.
I’d relied on them for years, but look at what had happened tonight—how could I trust them to keep her safe when, with the first real threat to her life, she’d had to defend herself with a fucking mop and a coffee table book?
I’d seen the carnage for myself, and rage continued to filter through me at what she’d had to do to survive. A mop and a coffee table book were all that had stood between her and death.
I might never have seen her again if she wasn’t such a fighter.
My hands tightened around the steering wheel to the point where the leather creaked, but I ignored it. My palms burned, but I ignored it. Savannah was...
I blew out a breath.
I didn’t fucking know what she was.
I really didn’t. I just knew she was something, and that something routinely popped into my thoughts even though I hadn’t seen her in a goddamn lifetime.
Hopped up on Oxy, I’d still thought about her. Thought about what she’d uncovered. The secrets in the family, the truths and lies that were burrowed within the O’Donnelly clan.
Filthy secrets and filthier lies.
She’d become tangled up in them in my mind, and it messed with my head. As much as I needed to protect those secrets and lies from ever seeing the light of day, I needed to protect her too. They all went hand in hand.
Mouth tightening with frustration, I got on my way.
At this time of the morning, the traffic wasn’t as bad, but somehow, as I drove off the island and into Brooklyn, I got caught up in a traffic jam and it took me about twenty minutes longer than I’d have liked to make it to Brennan’s territory.
As was often the way when I had the misfortune of coming into this part of our world, I waved my hand at the corpses Da had buried in one of the lots here. There were pigs and a politician or two buried within that ground, earth that would forever be untouched no matter how much the value of it soared. Not that I could imagine that happening in my lifetime. And when I was dead, and Da was gone, who the hell would care about some rotten old bodies that were secretly buried?