“I’m not worried about the old sod. He’s getting smugger by the second. His younger kid is also a literal fucking joke—wouldn’t recognize trouble if it gave him herpes and cut his dick off. But the older son is dangerous. We need to watch him.”

Whoa.

Re. Fucking. Wind.

Literal fucking joke? This had my name all over it. I’d nearly trademarked this bitch in my family. Dangerous older son? That would be mo órga. Precious Cillian.

Also, this sounded nothing like a torrid, harmless affair with an anal-loving mistress.

I wasn’t offended, though I knew he’d referred to me as a goodie bag of incompetency, STDs, and failure. I was more occupied with what he was up to. I plastered my back to the wall, trying not to make myself known. For the first time since I’d discovered my dick was good for more than pissing interesting shapes in the snow, I was interested in something that wasn’t pussy.

“Yes, that’s fine. Listen, I need to head back to the office before people ask questions. We’ll talk next week.”

He killed the call, sighed heavily, and started making his way up the stairway. Thinking on my feet, I went back up the stairs, tiptoeing, opened the first available door, and slid in. I pressed my back to it, listening to Sylvester ascending the stairs to the eighth floor. When the coast was clear, I opened the door and made my way straight to Da’s office.

I was out of breath by the time I got to him. He was sitting with Cillian—surprise, surprise—laughing over their bowls of salad. I didn’t knock. Part of me wanted to please him, but the other was happy to piss him off.

“For the love of God, learn how to knock.” Da put his salad down and patted his mouth with a napkin. “What do you want, ceann beag?”

I waited for the slow-ass door to close all the way, regulating my breath, before I talked.

“First of all, for you to stop calling me this.” I thought about how I called Sailor CT even though she hated it. “Second, I just heard Syllie talking weird shit with someone on the phone. I think it was about us.”

“Specify,” Cillian ordered, chewing on a piece of lettuce and steamed chicken from the organic bar downstairs. Even that didn’t emasculate the fucker.

“I think he wants to bring us down or something.”

“Us?” Cillian arched a thick eyebrow, assessing me through honey-hued eyes. He took assholeness to a whole new level today—probably still pissed about the refinery explosion. But nobody was hurt, so what was the big deal?

“You. Happy?” I crushed my teeth together angrily. “He wants to take you down. He said something about how Athair was smug, and I was stupid, and you were dangerous, but that he wanted to go on with some plan.”

“Where was that?”

Cillian was the only one talking. Da had returned his attention to his salad, and I wondered if he even took me seriously. I felt my ears pinking with rage. “Emergency stairway.”

Cillian and Da exchanged looks I couldn’t read. Maybe I’d have been able to if, you know, I saw them more than twice a year.

“Probably bitter about his quarterly bonus.” Da patted the corners of his mouth with his green handkerchief, chewing.

Cillian frowned, but didn’t correct his assumption.

“Go back to your duties, boy.” My father waved me off.

“But Da…”

“Chop-chop now,” he stressed, pointing at the door with his plastic fork.

I glanced between them. My brother looked at me in a strange way. The wheels in his brain turning. Whatever he was thinking, it wasn’t enough to back me up. I kicked a trash can, sending paper and bottles flying everywhere.

Nice. Asshole doesn’t recycle, either.

“Jesus fuck, you never listen.”

“Stop. Cursing,” Athair bit out.

Cillian motioned to security through the window emotionlessly.

“No need to call your guard dogs. I’m leaving.”

I wanted to slam the glass door in their faces, but again, watched as it closed inch by inch for half a goddamn hour.

Sylvester Lewis wanted to fuck my family up, and despite everything, or maybe because of everything, I wasn’t okay with that.

I wanted to get to the bottom of this. Before or after I screwed my father’s little redhead project? Only time would tell, but I had two incentives now. Two things to wake up in the morning for:

1. Find out what Syllie was up to and deal with him myself

2. Tame Sailor Brennan, the unbroken, wild horse I wanted to use as my own personal pet until this nightmare of an agreement was over

On Monday, I woke up to a picture of me in the local newspaper, ducking my head down while following Hunter to a limo on our way out of the fundraiser.

“The Hunter Games: Royal Pipelines Playboy Caught Canoodling Archery Mistress Sailor Brennan!” screamed the headline, which I thought was both incorrect and unwitty.

I figured Gerald was behind this, and also knew he had decided to market his son and me as a couple to tame Hunter’s disastrous image, so I tried to tell myself I didn’t care—all while shoving the newspaper to the bottom of my duffel bag, making sure Junsu couldn’t find it.

As it turned out, a couple days later it didn’t really matter.

“The boy. He’s here again,” Junsu announced solemnly, his hands clasped behind his back, a disapproving pucker on his lips.