She’d triggered a level of selflessness in me that I didn’t even realize I was capable of. Maybe I wasn’t ordinarily, and maybe I was always bound to be different around her.
When she sniffled a few more times, then squeezed my waist in quiet thanks, in silence, we drifted apart and finished up in her apartment.
I carried most of her things, only letting her drag the cabin bag she’d used to store her IT equipment. Conor broke the security seal on the maintenance elevator so I didn’t have to walk up the stairs to the helipad, which I was fucking grateful for after kneeing the bed the way I had, and we were spat out into what could be considered a mud room that had a locked door.
Conor was standing there, his gaze on us both as he held out a phone for Savannah.
She frowned at it. "Who is it?"
"Star." He waggled the phone. "Take it. It’s yours. I cleaned it up so that no one can hack it. There’s a secure messaging app on there, and I imported your contacts—"
"How the fuck did you do that?" she growled, her hands snapping to her hips as she stared down my brother.
I snorted. "Stick around. He’s capable of worse."
And he was, but Kid definitely wasn’t on his A-game.
It had been building for a while. I couldn’t blame him.
He was the keeper of our secrets, our first defense against attack, and the one we most relied on to protect the Firm.
There were only so many plates a person could keep spinning before they started to fall. Conor, right now, was definitely standing amid some ceramic shrapnel. I knew how that felt, and wished there was something I could do, but the family as a whole was facing this tsunami.
The difference was, Conor and I were doing it alone. Eoghan had Inessa, Declan had Aela, Finn had Aoife, and Brennan had Camille now.
I cast a look at Savannah.
Could I have her?
She’d implied I could, but last night was just a taste of what this world was like. An amuse bouche before the appetizer. I wasn’t sure, as street smart as she thought she was, she could ever be prepared for the entree.
Unapologetic to the last, Conor grinned at her. "Just consider it a convenience. At least you won’t have to transfer all your data over onto the new device. I did all the hard work for you."
"Exactly what you’d get at an Apple store," I mocked, gently squeezing her shoulder. "Genius Lab 2.0. This is better, Savannah. Only fuck knows what’s on your old phone."
She huffed. "No way they’d be able to hack it."
Conor’s brow puckered. "I thought you were smart."
"Kid!" I barked, the warning clear.
He shrugged. "What? It’s true! Everything can be hacked. Fuck, everything. Whether it’s physically bypassed or code manipulation. Pacemakers, TVs, baby cams. It’s all a playground for hackers." He rolled his eyes. "You think someone couldn’t get into your phone? How trusting are you?"
Because his disapproval sounded genuine, I wasn’t surprised when Savannah blushed, but he’d embarrassed her enough into snatching the phone and grimly muttering, "Thank you."
"You’re welcome," Conor replied as she stalked off down the hall.
Seeing she was heading for the room I’d tucked her in last night, I accepted that she needed space.
Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t about to get much of that.
"You could have done that nicer, Kid," I grumbled.
He scoffed. "I cloned her phone last night. She’s got more shit on it than a fucking terrorist being hunted by the FBI. They were tracing her calls too. If she discussed anything sensitive, scheduled anything with Star on her old one, then you need to tell her to change her plans because they’ll know about it, and will likely be there to gain access to her."
I thought about the meeting tonight with Jen, but merely queried, "Couldn’t you have started with that?"
Conor grinned. "If she’s going to be hanging around, I figure she needed to get used to the way we work."
"The way you work," I corrected dryly.
"Same difference."
"No, it isn’t," I retorted, unable to stop myself from chuckling because he was such a fucking pain in the ass.
Conor frowned at me. "Did you just laugh? Jesus, is that all it took? An orgasm?"
I blinked. "What?"
He wafted a hand. "I heard you two fucking like two goddamn screeching cats earlier. Do you mean you haven’t had sex since the drive-by shooting?"
"If you hear us fucking again, turn your goddamn music up. Don’t listen in, perv," I snapped, irritation buzzing in my ears like turbocharged white noise.
"I wasn’t listening in," he argued. "I heard you over noxxious, Aidan. Christ."
"Well, turn the volume up more," I snarled. Even her sounds of pleasure belonged to me. No fucker else. Certainly not Kid.
"Okay, I’ll just rupture my goddamn ear drums because you can’t keep it down." He released a scoffing sound. "Although… if she keeps you smiling, I’ll let her clean your pipes out regularly and will make my ears bleed for the cause."
I growled under my breath. "I made you a promise a long time ago, Conor, that I wouldn’t beat the shit out of you ever again. No matter how annoying you were. Well, you’ve reached that point so I’d walk away if I were you."
He squinted at me. "You really are weird about her, huh? I was only joking about the penguin shit last night."
My mouth tightened. "You’re not making this any better."
Conor shrugged but took a wary step back, as if he sensed I wasn’t pissing around—Kid’s brain finally decided to kick in. "You should probably get that seen to."
"What seen to?" I rumbled, my hands tightening about the handles of the bags I was carrying. They started creaking—thick leather straps began creaking as they bit into my flesh because of how hard I was clenching down on them.
"The fact you’re possessive enough about her to be jealous of me, to be jealous that I heard her like that. Throw in the fact she can make you smile, maybe she’s what you need to get over the Oxy."
I scowled at him. "That’s so unhealthy."
He hitched his shoulder again. "Whatever gets you through the day, Aidan. Our world ain’t like another person’s, is it?
"If it were, you’d be tucked away in some fancy rehab facility, drinking virgin piña coladas at the side of an indoor pool while you talked about your feelings and how your daddy fucked you up when you were little.
"Instead, we’re dick deep in a war with a secret society and you had to detox in my living room in a blanket fort. Take the wins as they come," he intoned, arching a brow at me as I scowled at him even harder than before.
Not that he let me have the last word. Fucker never did.
He sauntered off, retreating to his office, leaving me in the hall with all of Savannah’s stuff.
Technically, I had two choices.
Take her things to the room I’d given her last night, or to mine.
But I’d already made the decision when she was weeping in my arms—my room it was.
Twenty