“Car!” Conall shouts.
The rear door of the SUV is open before I reach it. I climb in with her across my lap, her blood soaking into my shirt and my hands, and Conall gets in front while another car peels out ahead of us. Someone slams my door, then we are moving hard enough to throw the city sideways through the glass.
“Call Fallon,” I say.
Conall is already on the phone. “He’s enroute. Byrne clinic, trauma team on site in ten.”
I look down at her and press harder when the SUV hits a turn, and fresh blood slips warmly across my wrist. Her eyes flutter, then open, unfocused at first, then finding me.
“Cillian,” she breathes.
“I’m here.”
Her lips part, and I think she is about to tell me something else, something I should have let her say in my office when she cameto me pale and shaking and trying to get one minute of my time. Instead, she coughs and winces, and I feel panic rise so hard, I taste metal.
“Talk to me,” I tell her. “Stay awake.”
She blinks slowly. “I tried.”
The words land, clean and cruel, and guilt comes in behind them like a blade.
I told her to pack. I opened the door and pointed her out of my house like she was dirt tracked over a floor. I watched her standing there crying and sent her into the night, then I told myself I was being smart, I told myself betrayal had a price and I was paying mine in discipline.
She vanished, and I let her.
Now she is bleeding in my arms after stepping into a bullet meant for me, and there is a child in the middle of this that I did not know existed.
Fear and rage come together so hard, I can barely separate one from the other. Rage at Patrick. Rage at myself. Rage at every choice that put her in this seat, in this city, in my reach, then out of it. Fear for her. Fear for the baby. Fear that I am about to lose both before I even learn what could have been mine to protect.
My thumb brushes the side of her jaw, smearing blood there, and I wipe it away with the side of my hand.
“How far?” I ask, looking up.
“Seven minutes,” Conall says, phone still to his ear. “Fallon says keep pressure, keep her talking, no fluids by mouth.”
Saoirse stirs against me. Her hand slides to my wrist and rests there, weak but deliberate.
“I didn’t tell you,” she says, voice thin. “I was going to. I tried.”
“I know,” I say, and the truth of it hits me while I speak. I do know. I saw it in her face in the doorway, I saw she came carrying something heavy and urgent, and I chose the docks and my pride and my fury over one private conversation.
I lower my head until my forehead touches hers for one brief second. “Save your strength. You can shout at me later.”
A small breath leaves her that might have been a laugh in another life.
The city lights streak across the windows, and the convoy cuts through traffic under no sirens, just speed and calls placed ahead of us. We do not use public emergency rooms if we can avoid it. Too many eyes, too many records, too many men willing to sell a room number for the right cash. Byrne Medical was built on top of an old convalescent house my grandfather funded after the dock strike riots, then expanded in stages over thirty years into a private surgical facility that serves judges, businessmen, boxers, priests with bad hearts, and every kind of man who pays for silence. Officially, it is a rehabilitation and specialist center. In practice, it is where my family takes its blood.
I think of my mother in the sitting room, hand on Saoirse’s wrist, ordering soup and rest in that calm voice that makes grown men obey. I think of Maeve throwing a blanket over her legs and pretending jokes would soften the edges. I think of the way Saoirse looked at me in the lobby two months ago, in my office, in my bed, and I hate the part of me that believed betrayal erased all of it.
Patrick raised her to be useful. I know that kind of training. I know what men like him build in children and call loyalty. He taught her to watch, to lie, to survive, to make herself small until needed and sharp when called. He sent her into my house as a weapon and expected a blade back in his hand.
She still came to warn me.
She stayed gone when I threw her out, which means she heard the order and obeyed it even then, even carrying my child, even hunted by the man who made her. She found a way to disappear from Patrick while pregnant and alone, then she walked back into my lobby knowing I could have had her dragged out before she got three words out.
And when the shots started, she moved toward me.
I look at her again and feel grief rise up so fast, it makes my vision blur for a second. I blink it clear and keep pressure on the wound.