“Why do you even care?”
“I care about everything to do with you,” he says, with a bite in his tone that removes any iota of real affection it might have held. “I told you, Saoirse: your future is my concern. Especially now.”
My eyes go wide with horror. “What do you mean?”
“The Kinahans didn’t just report on the O’Sullivan runt,” Tristan tells me. “They named you, too. You’re in as much trouble as he is.”
“No…!”
“Heads will roll for this, Saoirse. And at the moment, yours is on the chopping block along with the others. But it doesn’t have to be.”
“What are you saying?” I ask desperately.
“Charges are going to be brought up against the O’Sullivans for this,” he replies. “Not the kind of charges you try in court, though. These are the kind of trials that take place late at night with no one watching.”
I shudder. My mouth is clammy and dry suddenly. “That’s… illegal.”
Tristan shrugs. “That’s the way the game is played for the powerful.”
“The O’Sullivan’s are powerful, too,” I point out.
“Not like they once were,” Tristan demurs with a smirk. “And they know it. Ronan O’Sullivan is not going to enter into a full-scale mafia war if all it takes is sacrificing one son.”
I gasp. “He wouldn’t…!”
Tristan shrugs again. “He’s got spares.”
I take note of the plural. Apparently, the Kinahans don’t yet know about Sean’s departure.
I’m certainly not going to be the one to fill them in.
“Even if Ronan decides to use his connections to save his son, he’s sure as hell not going to do the same for you,” Tristan tells me. “But I can.”
I stop short.
“And what do you want in return?” I whisper, my stomach plummeting.
He leers at me for a long moment. Biding his time like he’s been waiting his whole life for this moment.
And shit, maybe he has.
A scarier thought: maybe he’s been waiting my whole life for this moment.
Then he says it, and when he does, it’s worse than I ever could have imagined.
“All you have to do is marry me.”
I stare at him in shock for a few moments. “You… you want me to marry you?”
He doesn’t so much as blink. Just nods slowly.
A bubble of laughter bursts from me. But it dies away just as quickly when I look at his dark, unsmiling face.
“You’re serious?” I say, sobering up fast.
“I’m the only one with the means and the inclination to protect you, Saoirse,” Tristan says, taking a step towards me. “I’ll even agree to take care of your fool of a father. But without me, you’re facing a Kinahan gun by nightfall. And your dear old pa will have no one to keep him out of trouble. No one to protect him from all those dangerous men he still owes.”
It feels like the world is slowing down suddenly.