"Her name’s Savannah," I grumbled.
"Savannah Daniels," Conor pointed out with glee. "Her dad’s Dagger Daniels. Fuck, I wonder if we save her life if she’ll get him to meet with me again. This time alone."
"Why? So you can jack off in front of him instead of just thinking about him?" Eoghan questioned with a laugh.
"Fuck off, Eoghan. You’re the one who joined the Army. Over-compensating, much?"
"You have seen my wife, haven’t you?" Eoghan bickered back. "I don’t have to compensate for shit— Wait. Did you say Savannah Daniels? Didn’t she just break the Sparrows’ story?"
Conor and I shared a look.
"I don’t know," I admitted. "I haven’t been watching the news."
"I’ve been busy," Conor agreed. "Lodestar said that news was breaking about the NWS, but I didn’t bother keeping track, not when I’ve got bigger fish to fry."
Though I arched a brow at what, clearly, was an admission that he was friends with an ally's hacker, I stayed silent as Eoghan said, "You know she lost her job after she told everyone there was a toxic work environment at TVGM? Apparently, the series’ runners and producers had a casting couch."
This wasn't news to me.
"How do you know that?" Conor questioned.
"Inessa told me."
He hummed. "She lost her job for telling people that her bosses had furniture that they used to cast people with?"
Eoghan started snickering. "Okay, now I know that crap about you starting PornLandia is bullshit. How the fuck do you not know what a casting couch is?"
I eyed him carefully. Conor’s relationship with sex was strange to say the least so it wouldn’t surprise me if he was joking, or if he was being serious about not understanding what a casting couch was.
"It’s basically when a producer who can choose between four new members of staff will pick the one who fucks him," I explained quietly.
Conor winked at me. "Ohhhhh." I shook my head at him, wondering why he pulled these moves sometimes. "That makes more sense."
"You mean other than the network being concerned about their staff’s taste in interior decor?" Eoghan laughed again. "Kid, gotta love the way your brain works. Anyway, yeah, she blew the whistle on that, then got fired for it."
"How’s that fair?" Conor demanded, while I stayed silent.
"It isn’t. That’s the point. Anyway, Inessa told me she lost a lot of credibility, but yesterday, she shared some links on her personal social media and they went viral."
"Of course they did. She’s Dagger Daniels’ daughter." Conor huffed.
"Not everyone still gets boners for ancient rock bands," Eoghan sniped. "It hit the news last night. She revealed names tied to crimes and evidence to back it all up. The whole nine yards."
I whistled under my breath. "You didn't know about this, Con? Lodestar really didn't give you any details? Just told you she was working on something?"
"I knew she had something planned." He cast me a look. "The day you arrived and asked for help going cold turkey?"
"What about it?" I replied, wondering if that was even a question.
"Do you remember anything about it? Or the run up to it?"
I just remembered visiting an NA meeting at the end of the week, and making a promise to myself that I’d quit Oxy.
Then, I’d made shit a thousand times worse before the weekend was out.
I wasn’t about to tell my younger brothers that though.
"Not much."
Conor frowned, but explained, "The Mayor was a Sparrow. Remember?"
"Vaguely," I said grimly, reaching up to rub my forehead where I was sure my perspiration had turned into icicles now.
"Well, we tried to turn him. We got some leverage over him, then the Sparrows sent a dirty cop in to kill him when they figured out he was compromised.
"But the Sparrows had set a trap for the fucker. He killed the Mayor but the NYPD showed up at City Hall and had the place surrounded. They had snipers and everything on patrol. Fucker got shot and toddled off to hell with a bang.
"Before he died, though, he made a video and had his wife send it to all the news channels. He explained what the Sparrows were and declared that Jason Young was the guy who’d told him to take Coullson out. He's that dick Republican who wears suits that are a size too small."
I almost laughed at the description.
I remembered Young. He'd been the presidential running mate in the last election.
"You really don’t remember any of that?" Eoghan asked warily.
"No." My retort was grim, but I figured that was understandable.
"Either way, ever since then, I know Lodestar’s been working on a way to keep on spreading the news."
So, the night following Savannah’s breaking news, she ended up here? Unconscious?
That couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?
Slowly, I verbalized my train of thought: "So, somehow, the neighbor on the floor below you, who also happens to be the journalist who broke a story on the Sparrows, sneaked up onto the helipad after cracking Conor’s security system, and descended to this level… Do we think there’s a reason for that?"
"Whatever it is, it can’t mean anything good," Eoghan muttered.
And even though it was my brotherly duty to disagree with him on principle, this time, I couldn’t.
Seven
Savannah
I woke up in a living room I didn’t recognize, surrounded by men I didn’t know. At least, not in my dazed state.
Screaming, I jerked upright, arms flailing as I tried to figure out where the hell I was and who the fuck I was with.
There were five of them.
Looming over me.
But…
Christ.
They were hot.
And when I said hot, I didn’t just mean like regular hot. I was talking Chris Evans’ hot. Henry Cavill smokin’.
Of course, that didn't diminish my panic.
Rapists could be cute.
Then, I saw him. Immediately, my heart slowed and I began to calm down, even as my head started to throb with the makings of a migraine.
He wasn’t standing in the circle around me, he was just off to the side, sitting on an armchair, shoulders hunched as he leaned forward, one elbow propped on a knee while he had the other leg resting outstretched in front of him.
When recognition hit so did relief.
As did want. Need. Regret.
Those tangled emotions did more than hit me. They sank inside me like the ocean flooding holes kids dug in the sand to make sandcastles.
"Aidan?" I whispered rawly.
"Savannah." He rubbed his thumb along his bottom lip. "How are you feeling?"
"I’m okay." Total lie. But I was surrounded by the O'Donnelly brothers. You didn't jump into shark-infested waters and willingly slice your wrist open, did you? "What’s going on?"
I peered at his brothers.
I’d never met them before, but they were as notorious as Aidan.
You didn’t not know the O’Donnellys in New York.