I nod my head.
“Well, that makes sense,” Tristan says. “The Murtaghs are ruthless when it comes to money. If you don’t pay up, you die.”
He frowns then, as if something is puzzling him.
“Why not finish the job, though?” he asks. “Why leave him alive?”
A chill runs down my spine as I contemplate what might have happened if the O’Sullivans hadn’t been there.
About what might still be happening.
“I… I don’t know…” Another thought pierces through my panic. “Do you think Pa’s still in danger?”
“Has he paid them back?” Tristan asks rhetorically.
“Tristan, he’s an old man. He’s in the hospital now. He has no way to defend himself,” I argue, shoving myself off the counter. “What if they try to kill him in the hospital?”
“It’s a possibility,” Tristan says with a shrug.
There’s not even a glimmer of humanity in his cold eyes. Instead, there’s calculation.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whisper honestly. “What do I do?”
“You need to ask for help,” he tells me.
I feel my heart sink.
“I have no one.” I say that because I’m not prepared to acknowledge that he’s the only person I can ask.
“No one?” Tristan asks, raising one dark eyebrow. “What am I, then?”
What is he?
He’d been a rookie-in-training when Pa left the police force. That was sixteen years ago. Now, he’s a thirty-five-year old man who looks at me as though I’m about to be his next meal.
“You’re… a friend,” I say cautiously.
“A friend?” he says in mock offense. “Is that all I am to you?”
I have to try very hard to stop myself from cringing. “You’re a friend of the family,” I elaborate. “Pa thinks of you as family.”
He snorts. “Your father looks at me as a convenient connection,” Tristan dismisses. “He knows I have influence, and he knows he needs all the help he can get. So he keeps me around under the guise of friendship.”
I’m shocked by his honesty, but I’m also nervous of it.
If, after all this time, Tristan is having an honest conversation with me, there’s bound to be a catch.
“That’s not true,” I lie. “He cares for you.”
“But do you care for me, Saoirse?” he asks.
No.
“Yes.”
He smiles. “That wasn’t very convincing.”
I can feel new panic start to surface. I realize I’ve never actually been alone with Tristan before. Not like this. There was always someone else in the house.