“Question for you, little O’Sullivan,” she murmurs.
“I object to the diminutive,” I say, “but the floor is yours, Officer.”
“Where’s your da?”
Her voice is soft. Gentle.
And yet, I feel my confidence faltering.
It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for the last twenty-four hours.
Amongst other questions, of course.
Questions like, where is Saoirse?
Is she safe?
Where does she think I am?
All good questions. None of which I’m liable to get answers to anytime soon.
Especially not from a fucking prison cell.
Which brings me back to Officer Rian’s question.
Where the hell is my father?
“I don’t know,” I say with a shrug, trying to play down his absence. “I’m betting he had an early tee time. Clearly, he hasn’t heard about this. Bad news always messes up his putting game.”
The policewoman raises her eyebrows and cocks her head to the side. “Come on now. You’re not that naïve.”
She takes a step closer to my cell.
“I’m not part of the, shall we call them, ‘politics’ in this department. I’m not in anyone’s pocket,” she continues. “And even I know that Ronan O’Sullivan was one of the first people to be informed about the incident.”
“Accident,” I correct. “It was just a little accident.”
“An accident that has left the son of the most powerful man in the city in a coma.”
“So he isn’t dead?” I ask, gripping the bars a little tighter.
“Not that I’ve heard.”
A part of me is relieved. Mostly because I know Murtagh’s death will cause more trouble than he’s worth.
But another part of me is disappointed.
The fucker is just wasting oxygen, as far as I’m concerned.
“My father will be here,” I say with a confidence I definitely don’t feel. “We O’Sullivans have always been procrastinators.”
I throw her a little wink. She just shakes her head at me.
“That callous, over-confident act you’ve got going isn’t going to last long,” she tells me. “The Murtaghs and Kinahans are going to chew you up and spit you out.”
I snort. “I’m hardly concerned about a rich boy playing gangster dress-up. I was born into the life.”
“Maybe. But you haven’t lived it yet,” she replies.