Page 44 of If You Go
“Not yet,” Gunnar says. “But the chatter around her name spikes when we scrape an old Slavic forum tied to Brotherhood business. We’re on it in the morning, hard. For now: you tell me how our girl is.”
I don’t look at Surry when I answer. “She told us everything today. He needs to die, but by my hand, or hers, alone.”
Static hums. Then Gunnar’s voice goes softer, which isn’t a thing he often allows. “Copy. Then we adjust.” The command in his voice renews before he continues. “New plan: we make it cost him in pride before we take his body. Pride is his oxygen.”
“Walk it,” Joshua says.
We sketch. Fast, precise. Corver breaks in once from the background—low and clipped—about an email reroute that bought him an address he shouldn’t have. Arnie’s laugh filters through, dark and pleased: “He bought a yacht through a cousin’s trash company. Of course he did. I can work with trash.”
I give them what we have here—security rotations, staff we trust, staff we question but keep anyway because Bridget swears by them. Surry listens without interruption, then taps the edge of the map.
She leans in like she’s laying out a fact, not a plan. “He won’t bring his own men near my family,” she says. “He’ll hire disposable crews—blokes who burn out fast. Look for tiny rentals, temporary trucks: that’s how he hides.”
The way she says it—clean, unhesitating—makes the entire table pause. She’s not guessing. She knows.
And I realize, not for the first time, that there’s an entire part of Surry O’Brien most people will never see.
I lean back, watching her trace lines on the map like she’s sketching muscle memory. Her finger moves through terrain, ports, supply roads—without hesitation.
“You’ve done this before,” I say quietly. Not a question, a clear observation.
Her eyes flick to mine, and for a breath, I catch a flash of the girl she used to be—before scars and smoke and bastards with too much power. Then the commander returns. “Papa trained us,” she says simply. “Not for fun, not for pride—because we had to know how to survive. His words.”
Her voice goes softer, almost distant. “When other girls were learning piano, Selene and I were learning trade routes. Smuggling lines. Which ports could move goods fast, which ones had customs officers you could buy with a favor or a promise. He called it ‘education.’ Said if the men in our family ever fell, it would be us who rebuilt from the ashes.”
Joshua’s pen stills. Gunnar grunts his approval through the comm. Even Arnie whistles low.
But she’s not done.
“When I married Gavin, he thought it was ornamental,” she continues, gaze steady on the map, continuing to make x’s and o’s. “He never understood that I’d already been raised in a warzone—one with better manners, sure, but just as bloody underneath. He’d talk business at dinner like I was furniture, but I was listening. Every time he mentioned a name, a shipment, a port, I filed it away.” She taps a point on the map. “That’s how I know this one. He used to send cargo through here before he laundered the company into one of his Russian fronts.He thought he was clever. But I know his routes. I know his patterns.”
Her jaw sets. “He taught me how to break him, just by thinking I wasn’t just as knowledgeable as him. His mistake for underestimating a woman. The daughter of the Irish King.”
I feel it—something old and lethal stirring behind my ribs. Pride. Awe. The sharp, clean heat of wanting to watch her burn the world that burned her.
“Jesus,” Joshua mutters. “Remind me never to play chess with you.”
Surry almost smiles. “Papa used to make us play risk instead. Said it kept our minds sharp and our hearts soft. You can’t rule if you can’t feel.”
I glance sideways at her, a line of white hair slipping forward from her braid. I reach forward and tuck in while speaking directly to her. “You still feel, Surry.”
She meets my gaze, unflinching. “That’s the point, Brenden. I can feel and still fight.”
And there it is—the difference between who she was and who she’s become. She isn’t just a survivor anymore. She’s a strategist. The woman sitting beside me could take apart an empire with a highlighter and a grudge.
Gunnar’s voice crackles back through the line, low and satisfied. “Hell of an asset you’ve got there, Slater.”
I look at her, then back at the map. “Not an asset,” I correct. “She’s the plan.”
Arnie’s voice: “Send me a five-mile radius around your supply routes. I’ll flag leases that smell like mercenary boarding houses.”
Surry doesn’t flinch at the word mercenary. She just slides the map closer and starts reading off coordinates like a second language. Her dad did well teaching her, without ever letting her know what he was teaching her. I think she, herself, blocked thisinformation until now. A key unlocking a part of her that was buried under duress. Now, free from the secrets, she can unlock herself.
We talk for another half hour. When we finally break, the room is warm with intent. Plans have edges again. We have the next steps. It isn't a victory. It’s momentum. Sometimes that’s more valuable.
Joshua ends the call, pushes the laptop away, and rubs his jaw. “You know,” he says to the ceiling, “I used to think construction was logistics. This is logistics with teeth.”
“You always liked teeth,” I tell him, a small smile on my face.
