off Callie if he thought for a second that she’d go, but at least if his sisters were safe he could focus his efforts on his fiancée. And Devlin…Of them all, Devlin alone had the ability to have a better life if someone just gave him the chance to get the hell away from the rest of the family.
“Now, son, I’ll see what I can do, but that kind of thing takes time.”
Another excuse. He resisted the urge to throw his phone across the room. “Make it take less time.” Teague hung up, adrenaline making him shake. He hated this shit, being helpless and relying on others to make things right. Hadn’t he learned a long time ago that the only way to get something done was to do it himself?
So the question remained—what would it take to bring this whole fucking mess to a standstill?
He poured himself a glass of whiskey, thinking hard. Victor Halloran might be one scary motherfucker, but he hadn’t crawled to the top of the food chain without having smarts to go with it—and war wasn’t smart no matter which way you looked at it. If he hadn’t just lost his son, he’d be more willing to let go of the insult of Callie marrying an O’Malley. The man had to want vengeance before anything else. Teague just had to position himself in a place where he could hand the old man his justice on a silver platter.
That meant he had to find Brendan Halloran’s killer.
Chapter Seven
Carrigan O’Malley waited for her brother to stalk past where she stood in the little nook outside the library, bathed in shadow. Teague didn’t see her there, just like Aiden hadn’t before him. She’d learned at a very young age that if she wanted to find out the unfiltered truth, she had to eavesdrop. She’d gotten pretty good at it since then, which led to all sorts of interesting—and terrifying—discoveries.
Like the fact that Teague had someone with the FBI on speed dial.
She shook her head. He’d always been an idealist, even when they were kids. To him, everything was black and white, good or bad. Life didn’t work that way, especially their lives, but she already knew what had spurred him to take the leap from minor rebellion straight into being a true traitor.
His sisters.
Growing up, he’d always been the protector, the one who stood between them and the rest of the world. It was something he’d have been wise to grow out of—no one could save them, not really—but he hadn’t.
Why the feds, Teague? They aren’t going to help us unless they benefit, which means everything we love is going up in flames.
She wouldn’t rat him out, though. They all had their secrets, from Aiden right down to Keira—the little parts of themselves they kept close and quiet, and refused to share. His might be more damaging than most, but hers were right up there in the running. If her father ever found out what she did on the nights she slipped her protection duty, he’d ship her off faster than she could say fucked.
And that was if she was lucky.
She stepped into the hall and headed in the direction of her room. Things were quiet at this time of night, the old house echoing strangely enough that when she was ten, she’d been sure there were at least a few resident ghosts. Now she knew better. The only one who haunted these halls was Carrigan, floating from one room to the next, never free enough to actually leave, never restful enough to just go along with the path her father had set out for her.
Marriage.
That was the only path for her and both her sisters. They would be married to an appropriate man—meaning, one who would serve the family business—and then go on to extend the empire with as many children as possible. The only chance she had of avoiding that fate was joining a convent—her father would be willing to give up a breeder for a nun.
She just wasn’t sure she was.
It was far too tempting to dwell on the choice that was bearing down on her, closing a cage around her ribs until each breath burned. She didn’t have much time left, the clock in her head ticking down in time with her biological clock, the buzzer ready to go off at any moment. More and more, her father kept making comments about her advancing age and how there wasn’t much time left at