I was going to meet my dad for the first time. Technically, I'd seen him already, plenty of times. But I couldn’t remember the last time I saw him, and it hadn't been as my father before now. I was pacing around the room because I couldn’t keep still, Ronan sitting on the bed and watching me.

"Would you relax?" he commented.

I threw him a glare and folded my arms over my chest, fisting my twitching fingers, but I didn’t stop pacing.

"That's easy for you to say, but I haven't been able to stay relaxed for weeks."

"But you're worried about meeting him, though, right?"

I stopped and nodded without looking at him.

"Don’t be. He wants to see you, too. Trust me on this."

Surprisingly, I did trust him, even after everything. But I'd already had one man toss me aside for not being his daughter. My dad's friends had always stayed away from me, this man wasn’t any different. He was basically the only family I had left, and we barely knew each other, though we'd known of each other for years. He also had the advantage of having been there since I was grown up and spending some time 'studying' me for the sake of his plot.

Well… I folded my arms across my stomach. He wasn’t really my only family since I had the baby and Ronan now. I turned to look at him, and he was eyeing my arms crossed over my stomach. His expression was strange, and he probably knew where my mind was going.

"Does he…?" I started to ask.

"No, he doesn’t know. I wasn’t sure how to tell him. If I should, just yet. We've all had way too much on our plate, he just found out… " Ronan interrupted.

I smiled, but I could feel it was shaky. "You just don’t want him to hit you for knocking me up."

He shrugged. "There is that."

He looked worried and I laughed. I went over to sit beside him. I was still apprehensive about a lot of things, this man in particular. But I wanted to be with Ronan, and if he trusted this man to such an extent, there must have been a reason for it. Ronan raised his arm so I could snuggle into his side and I melted into his larger body, curling around my stomach.

Whatever happened to Quinn, it was likely deserved, and I didn’t care. I hated him for killing my mother, my boyfriend. A man I'd loved, enough to want to elope with him because my dad didn’t approve of him before he had his 'accident.' And Quinn had thought he was helping me by killing him so I would stay close to home. Also, how he'd talked, it wasn’t like he felt remorse for having killed someone. Just wasted effort when it was for someone not of his blood. He didn’t even feel remorse for what he did to my mother, he just stayed mad at her.

I could have gone to the police with everything, but how much would it have helped? He was a wealthy man, and I doubted he would have a problem with buying himself out of trouble. It had certainly happened before, it used to scare me when I was younger. Police coming to my home, Quinn going away with them only to return and say everything was okay. It only happened a few times, but every time he was still there before I went to sleep at the end of the day. I was sure some money must have been going toward that.

Whatever Ronan and… Seamus thought should be done, didn’t matter to me beyond both of them coming out of it safely. Quinn could go to hell.

Ronan's phone vibrated, and he shifted, disturbing my rest as he reached for it.

"It's Seamus, he's outside."

I tensed, and his arm around my shoulders gave me a light squeeze.

"Why isn’t he coming inside?"

"He just thought you'd appreciate the warning. He has been busy the past few days, but he was giving you time."

"For what?"

I felt the movement when he shrugged.

"I don’t know. Get used to everything, think about it a little bit. You might not have wanted to see him. I mean, he had an affair with your mom, and it did get her killed."

But I had no idea of the circumstances of that time. I wasn’t going to judge him. When my mother told him about me, she risked everything. Whatever her reason, she lost her life. I wasn’t going to make light of it by rejecting him. If anything, I was curious.

There was the sound of a door opening and closing, then heavy steps making their way to where we were. I held my breath as I waited for him to appear, peeking at him from where I sat, practically hiding behind Ronan. He glanced at me before looking away.

I didn’t mind. We had hours with each other, after all.

"Ronan, everything is set. If you're still doing this, I suggest you go now."

Ronan gave my shoulders a last squeeze and got up. I wanted to hold him down, but I had been waiting for him to leave, which was part of my anxiety. I wasn’t a fan of the plan, but we'd been through the argument already and I'd agreed to keep quiet about it.

Ronan was moving around the room, putting on a black hoodie on over his T-shirt, picking up a bag to leave the room with. Seamus stopped him before he could get past the door.

"I could go."

"We already talked about this, Seamus, you don’t have to volunteer yourself. I know you could. But I want to go."

But he didn’t drop his arm, shaking his head. "Ronan, I really think I should be the one to do it. I have killed so many people and one more shouldn’t make a difference. Especially when that one is him."

Neither of them tried to hide what they were talking about, keeping their voices level. Ronan glanced at me over his shoulder, but Seamus didn’t look in my direction like he was telling me indirectly the kind of man he was, even though I sort of already knew. I was relatively sure everyone in Quinn's inner circle had committed murder at least once or had someone else do it for them.

"We had a deal when you asked to let me in on this plan. I'm either there, or I'm the one doing the deed. We can't leave her by herself, defenseless, and there is no way I'm staying back. Sit this one out, old man. I've got it," Ronan argued.

He dropped his arm but didn’t move out of the way.

"I beg you to reconsider. Once you kill, you can never take it back."

"Seamus, I don’t mind. I know, and I'm prepared for this. I've been preparing for this. I will only do it once, and I want Quinn to die from my hands, no one else's."