Page 75 of The Captive
"In the gardens."
My blood turned to liquid nitrogen. "Alone?"
"With Cressida."
The world tilted. For a moment, I couldn't breathe, couldn't think past the roar of panic flooding my system. An O'Malley. Alone with the woman who owned my soul.
I was moving before Alexander could react, crossing to the window in three strides. There, in the rose garden where Cressida and I had shared our first kiss, where she'd whispered her feelings to me, I found them.
Two women sitting on the stone bench beneath the climbing roses. One with honey-dark hair that caught the light like spun gold—my Cressida, my heart walking around outside my body. The other with the distinctive auburn curls that marked her as an O’Malley.
They weren't talking. They were sitting in the awkward silence of strangers thrust together by circumstance, Cressida's body language polite but wary. But as I watched, Aoife said something that made Cressida turn, really look at her.
"She looks exactly like him," I said, my voice hollow. The resemblance was unmistakable.
"She's nothing like him." Alexander joined me at the window, and I heard the desperation he was trying to hide. "Ronan, nobody knows this, but she's spent the last year anonymously helping the families Connor destroyed to get back on their feet. She keeps this under wraps, but you know me. I find stuff."
"Pretty story." I continued watching the women.
"Look at her." His voice cracked slightly. "Really look at her. You don’t have to believe me, but you also know about me and lying. And where my loyalty has lain all these years. I’ve never once failed you. Not ever, not now."
I forced myself to study Aoife O'Malley objectively, past the name that made my trigger finger itch. She was smaller than I'd expected, more fragile. Her smile lit up her face, even while I could only see her profile. Her stance was relaxed, unassuming. Friendly… genuine even. Cressida burst out laughing at something the woman said, and my chest tightened.
But appearances were deceiving.
"She could be lying still," I insisted, but my tone was half-hearted. Even I could make that out.
"Or perhaps she’s just a different human. Her own person, not her name."
I turned to face my oldest friend, the man who'd stood beside me through wars both literal and metaphorical. "You're asking me to trust an O'Malley. In my house. With my woman."
"I'm asking you to trustme."
The simple words hit harder than accusations or arguments. Alexander's loyalty had been absolute since the start. He'd followed me into hellfire, had my back too many times, had never questioned my judgement even when it led into darkness.
And now he was asking me to believe in something that went against every survival instinct I possessed.
"She could be playing you," I said, testing the waters. "This could all be an elaborate setup."
"It could be, although with every fibre of my being, I don’t believe so." He met my eyes directly, unflinching. "But if it is like that, then I'm already dead anyway. Because I won't give her up, Ronan. I can't."
The raw honesty in his voice was a mirror I didn't want to look into. Again, I recognised that desperation, that willingness to burn the world down for someone else's happiness. It was what I felt every time I looked at Cressida.
"You love her more than your own existence? More than our friendship?" The question tasted like ashes.
"I won't choose between you." His hands clenched into fists at his sides. "I can't choose. So either you find a way to accept this, or..."
"Or what?"
"Or I lose the two most important things in my life."
The admission hung between us, brutal in its simplicity. I'd seen Alexander face down armed men without flinching, had watched him make life-and-death decisions with cold precision. But now he looked like a man standing on the edge of a cliff, waiting to see if I'd push him or pull him back.
Through the window, I watched Cressida say something that had Aoife grinning from ear to ear. Cressida found it so difficult to trust, yet I couldn’t believe how comfortable she looked. I couldn’t say they were friends yet as the guards weren’t completely down, but something was definitely happening. It felt like magic to see her so open like this.
"Tell me about her," I said finally, turning away from the window.
Relief flickered across Alexander's features, quickly suppressed. "Twenty-six years old. Studied literature … creative soul deep down, but she’s also good at business. Doesn’t have many friends as she trusts no-one except a handful of people. She’s always been alone, never close to her surviving brother. For years, she tried to distance herself from the family business, but her father had other ideas and insisted she get prepared."
