***
Aoife
The hotel receptionistsmiled at me. I’d been coming here for so long now that everyone knew me, and I was under no doubt that they assumed the same as Finn had—that I was screwing the Senator.
It was an expensive place, though. Class and discretion were its promise. Boutique in size, it catered to diplomats and politicians in the city, and I knew its motto was secrecy.
God only knew what went down in these walls, but even the housekeepers knew not to talk. Now that I thought about it, I wondered if a Family ran this place.
Such discretion?
Money couldn’t buy it, only threats could. And whose expertise ran in threats? The mob.
Still, if they were in charge, I could imagine cameras recording shit, and blackmail threats in the mail.
My lips curved at my vivid imaginings as my boots crushed the thick carpet when I strode across the foyer toward the banks of elevators.
Alan, Dad, had the same room each time, and I never had to ask to go up. It was a standing arrangement.
William had followed me inside, but he was staying in the lobby. As I headed into an elevator and turned around, I nodded at him when he took a seat on one of the sofas, pulling a paper from his leather coat.
He was in his fifties, had a scar that ran down the left side of his throat, and looked like the archetypal mobster if I was being honest. Discreet he was not, but I figured that was the point of security.
What use was there in having a heavy following you around if no one knew you were protected?
I’d seen the gun in his holster when he’d opened the car door for me this morning. His jacket had pulled open, and the weapon had glinted in the light. I was under no illusion that the man knew how to use it, too.
A part of me wondered why I wasn’t freaking out.
The last time I’d met my dad, I was single, and had a growing reputation in the city. I’d also been desperately lonely, lost after my mother’s death, and floundering.
Now?
Everything had changed. Everything. Me included.
Finn brought something to my life that I’d never realized I’d been missing. There was a fire in my belly now. Sure, his world scared the shit out of me. The news of a war coming to town? I was fucking petrified that either he or I would get caught in the cross fire—it was why I’d agreed to postpone my plans for the bakery.
Though Finn brought danger to my world, he also brought life.
It was like I’d seen everything in sepia before him, and suddenly, everything sparkled with vibrant colors.
The height of insanity?
Maybe.
But I was happy.
Really happy, and God, it made me wonder when the last time I’d felt that way was.
As the elevator purred to a halt, I stepped out into the corridor and walked toward the room my father had hired for us.
I opened it and stepped inside, knowing it would be unlocked in preparation for me. The room, as always, was empty. He arrived after I did. We’d tried to keep things hush-hush, but apparently, hadn’t done that great a job of it if Finn had managed to figure out what we were doing.
Should I tell Dad that we’d been caught? If I did, it would make him doubt Finn, and I really didn’t need his approval or disapproval. He was my father, I knew, but we had more of a friendship than a father-daughter relationship. He’d been a stranger for too long for me to allow him to have a heavy hand over my life, but I didn’t want to argue. I saw him little enough as it was, and I didn’t want to waste time on something that was going to happen whether he liked it or not.
The next time he saw me, I could be Aoife O’Grady, and that was that.
The suite was comfortable and elegant. The bedroom was separate from the living room where we always sat. A large window overlooked a small gated garden, and there were two sofas opposite each other with two ornate armchairs, the kind that had golden scrollwork as a frame with horsehair cushions, flanking them.