I took the stairs to Athair’s room three at a time. When I reached his door, I swung it open, not bothering with a knock. I found Cillian and Da sitting at a corner desk of an extremely modest room that had a double bed covered with an orange, fuzzy quilt. The furniture looked clean but dated. They were both wide awake. Da was drinking scotch. Cillian sifted through a bunch of documents, looking like he gave very few fucks about my surprise entrance.
On the desk next to Cillian, his phone flashed with an incoming message.
Fucker had reception somehow.
Unbelievable.
Fresh anger ripped through me, tripling in quantity. They’d ghosted me.
I stormed inside, picked up his phone, and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall and broke in HALF, which—I’d been pretty sure until today—was fucking impossible. Screw polo. I was obviously a wasted baseball hero.
“You want to tell me you haven’t had reception for twelve hours now? That you haven’t checked your emails and phones for that long? Bullshit! I tried to reach you dozens of times before dragging my sorry ass here. Why weren’t you picking up?” I leaned down, roaring. Flecks of my saliva flew onto their faces.
Cillian flipped a page in his document, refusing to acknowledge my presence in the room. Da took another measured sip from his drink.
Don’t kill them yourself. It’s what Syllie wants.
“You want to tell him or should I?” Cillian asked flatly, his eyes still on the goddamn document.
My father looked me straight in the eye, smirking. “You’ve passed the test, son.”
I had visions just then: visions of myself bashing my father’s head against the wall behind him.
Visions of wrestling Cillian to the floor and punching the smugness out of his fair features.
Stuff like that. But I just flashed my craziest, don’t-forget-to-smile grin, which must’ve looked a lot like the promising start of a psychotic episode. “I did? How. Fucking. Fun. Please enlighten me, Father Dearest.”
Cillian finally had the courtesy to dump the document he was reading on the desk. He glanced up at me. “When you came to us about Syllie, Athair didn’t want to believe it. To me, Syllie was always a loose cannon. I took it upon myself to assign Troy Brennan to the task of seeing what he was up to, what dish Sylvester was stirring for us in the disaster pot.” Cillian delivered his speech in a matter-of-fact way that implied he was reciting a cabbage soup recipe.
So that’s why the FBI came kicking down Syllie’s door. Troy already had sufficient legally-obtained evidence on him.
“We found out what he was up to with Boris Omelniski and his little friends in Maine, about the plan to blow the refinery with us in it. We made sure it was empty and all faulty machinery had been shut down. It was a money-sucker, but we couldn’t take any risks.”
My whole body simmered with rage that threatened to choke me.
“Then why did you put me through all this bullshit?” I hissed, my teeth clenched together. “Shut me down every time I tried to warn you about him? Made me go through dozens of sleepless nights of listening to the fucker, on top of doing college work and working full time for your asses? I jumped through hoops and lived on zero sleep to prevent this bullshit…and you’re telling me you knew about it all along?”
My father stood, stepping around the desk and opening his arms. It occurred to me, albeit sadly, that no matter how badly he treated me, I still referred to him as Da, even in my head.
“Hence, you passed the test.”
“Fuck your test!” I seethed, pointing at him. “Fuck it in the ass with a twelve-inch dildo. I almost killed myself trying to save you. I bent over backwards for you. I went to war for you. I was willing to burn, to die, to perish. For. You.”
It was Cillian’s turn to stand. “As I said, it was your dirty job to pull. Pull you did, and in a timely manner. Something that, fortunately, has never been a problem for you, judging by the lack of baby mommas knocking on our door.”
“Go to hell, Cillian.” I dragged my fingers through my hair.
“Already there. It’s called life.”
“So you trusted me to crack this riddle, but not enough to rely on me?” I turned my attention back to Da.
Troy Brennan was about as ruthless and skillful as they came, and Sam Brennan was the golden child of the underworld. Those two could win a cold war with a decade-old laptop and a BB gun. That’s what they did for a living. Of course they’d unveiled Syllie’s plan before I did.
“Correct,” my father said, a twinkle of warmth in his eyes. “Needless to say, the will shall be altered accordingly. You are my heir. My child. A Fitzpatrick. You will keep your job at Royal Pipelines. And you will get a corner office, the one next to Cillian’s. You proved yourself a true member of the family, Hunter.” He opened his arms, expecting me to…what? Jump right in?