I can feel realization gnawing at me. Somewhere inside myself, I know what he’s thinking. I always know what Lachlan’s thinking.
“So, what?” Connor asks. “We take one of his top men? Or we hold someone in his family? I mean, he doesn’t have much that isn’t tied to the Assembly.”
“It’ll be hard to get something he isn’t willing to cut off to save himself,” Finn agrees.
If you’re in the Assembly, you know that sacrifices are all part of the game. There is never anything or anyone sacred if your goal is the top. Not that every family is like that. There are plenty of families that will protect their own, content to have as much as they have.
Antonio isn’t one of those people.
Not even our father was one of those people.
We are two families that want more for ourselves. That kind of drive, that kind of desire pushes us.
My brothers and I learned young that heart is for family, but only so long as they live by the rules. The second you cross your family, you have nothing left.
We also learned that nothing is sacred in the world we inhabit. Sometimes you have to break with what you love the most to make it a step further.
“His daughter will be easiest,” Lachlan says. The words drop like stones in the well of my memory.
Plink.There’s a memory of her standing in the hallway in high school, laughing shyly.Plink.A memory of her hand on my chest as we stood in front of the movie theater, hanging behind our friends, stealing a moment.
Plink.Her face when I humiliated her before the entire school, her eyes red but no tears running down her cheeks.
Her father taught her well.
Lachlan exhales slowly. “She’ll need to be married. Cement the alliance, make it impossible for him to betray us.”
“Old school,” Finn murmurs, but he’s not disagreeing.
There’s a reason why a ploy like this works. Why it’s still used.
Connor shrugs. “I’ll do it, but I don’t know. I’m not O’Reilly by blood—”
“You are to us,” I say automatically. It’s instinct at this point.
Connor snorts. “Yeah, but will he see it that way? He’d probably dispute it, maybe not even respect it.”
“He’s right,” Finn says. “He hasn’t been the most gracious about it in the past.”
Not many people have. Being adopted is almost worse than being a bastard in our world. You can’t call someone a bastard to their face. You can talk about blood all day. It’s all the Assembly will talk about sometimes.
It doesn’t matter what we think of Connor or what value we know he has. Everyone in the Assembly knows he’s adopted. They know his position and it doesn’t impress them.
There’s no way Antonio would accept Connor.
Lachlan can’t do it. He is the head of the family and he has to be unfettered, unbound by our plots so that if anything happens, he’ll be left standing. No matter what.
I know better than to ask this of Finn. He’s a mess right now, and we only spoke to Antonio for a few minutes. I can’t even imagine what it would be like for him to be married to the man’s daughter for insurance.
He’d probably be drunk for the wedding.
“I’ll do it.”
It’s the natural progression, and even as I say it, I know I should have said it first. I knew before Lachlan spoke what we would have to do. I’ve known since I heard we had dirt on Antonio. I knew the way this would play out. I just didn’t let myself think about it until it was bearing down on me like a freight train.
Lachlan glances at me. I can’t see anything in his face or the brief glimpse I get of his eyes.
“Are you sure?”
