Page 2 of Legacy Of Ashes
I was too young to understand why his touch made me feel strange. Why I wanted to curl closer. Why I cried when they sent me to boarding school the next week.
I'm not too young anymore.
"Saoirse? You there?"
"Yeah." I shake off the memory. "What do you need?"
"You. Here. Tonight." Cillian exhales. "The family's hemorrhaging money and influence by the hour. Mother's holding vigil at the hospital. Eamon's knee-deep in street wars. I'm drowning in legitimate business crises."
"I can't just abandon my research?—"
"Your research won't matter if we're all dead."
The brutal honesty hits home. I've been playing academic while my family bleeds.
"There's a plane at Heathrow," Cillian continues. "Wheels up in two hours."
My emergency bag waits in my bedroom wardrobe. Always packed, always ready. Fake passport, cash, encrypted phone. Because no matter how far I run, I'm still Tiernan Kavanagh's daughter.
I'm still the girl who learned to strip a Glock before she could drive. Who speaks four languages and knows seventeen ways to kill someone with household objects. Who earned her PhD in international economics while writing her dissertation on money laundering networks—partly to understand how to dismantle them, partly to improve our own.
The other academics see Dr. Kavanagh, brilliant researcher and EU consultant. They don't see the princess who was groomed to inherit an empire.
They don't see the woman who's been running from her desire for her father's most dangerous man.
"How bad is it really?" I ask.
"Bad enough that Conall asked me to call you personally." Cillian's voice gentles. "He knows you hate coming home. But he also knows you're the only one who can navigate both worlds. Legal and illegal. Academic and street. We need that bridge, Saoirse."
Conall asked for me.The knowledge shouldn't make my nipples tighten, but it does.
"Is he..." I stop, hating myself for asking.
"He's fine. Worried about you, though. Says you've been away too long."
My throat closes. Two years since I last saw him. Two years of avoiding family gatherings where his presence would fill the room like smoke—dangerous and intoxicating.
"I'll be there," I hear myself say.
"Really?"
"Really." I'm already walking toward the exit. "But I'm not staying long. Just until Dad recovers or?—"
"Or until we crown a new king," Cillian finishes quietly.
The thought stops me cold. Dad's empire without Dad. The family without its patriarch. Chaos.
"Two hours," I repeat.
"Two hours. And Saoirse? Pack everything. This isn't a visit anymore."
The line goes dead.
I stand in Oxford's hallway, surrounded by centuries of academic tradition, and face the truth I've been avoiding: I was never really free. The blood of Irish kings flows in my veins, mixed with the ruthlessness of Boston's most feared crime family.
And somewhere in Boston, Conall Devlin waits for me.
My pulse quickens at the thought of seeing him again. Of those gray eyes that strip away pretense. Of hands that have killed for my family now reaching for me.
