The Mafia Heiress They Could Never Find novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Last Day

Her professor hands her the sealed papers on campus, and Declan arrives in front of the students to haul her to the dinner; she walks into campus security, and the car is an hour away.

Finn was waiting for me in the kitchen on Monday morning with my phone in his hand.

"Conor told me to hold on to it," he said. "I'm very bad at holding things."

He put it on the counter and slid it across to me.

"He'll check the app tonight and see you came online. I'll say it was an accident."

"Finn."

"It happens to me constantly. Ask anyone."

I picked up the phone and turned it over.

He looked at the floor tiles.

"I don't think you leaked anything," he said. "I want you to know I said that out loud, in the study, to Conor's face."

"What did he say?"

"He said somebody is going to pay for it, so it had better not be the wrong person."

That did not sound like a promise to me.

Finn put a piece of toast in my hand and told me to eat it.

He had been doing that since I was seven.

I ate half of it standing at the counter and almost told him everything.

Then I picked up my keys, and the guard who had slept outside my door followed me to the garage.

He drove me to the university without a word.

My professor was waiting in her office with the door shut and the blinds down.

She was sixty and gray-haired, and she had taught me how to read a stress diagram when I was nineteen.

She slid a thin folder across the desk.

"Everything you need is in here," she said. "Your transfer form, the restrictions, and your project designation. After tonight your name goes into a sealed file."

"Sealed from who?"

"From everyone who is not the program," she said. "That includes your family."

She waited a moment.

"They're the Dorans, Maeve," she said. "I know what I'm asking you to leave."

I held the folder against my chest.

"Why me?" I asked. "There are fifty applicants with better grades."

"Because you fixed the jam in the university's test rifle in three minutes with a bent paperclip," she said. "That is why."

She almost smiled.

"Your car will come to the house at six. Do not take a weapon of any kind. Do not tell anyone when it arrives."

I thanked her and went out into the hall.

I made it as far as the engineering building steps before I saw Declan.

He was coming up the walk through a crowd of students, still in his black overcoat, and my guard was walking behind him.

Declan didn't slow down.

He caught my wrist and pulled me back against the railing.

"Dinner's at six," he said. "You're coming home now."

"Let go."

"Conor said you don't leave the grounds without us, and you walked out the front gate."

"I walked to my own class."

"You don't have a class."

Students were stopping on the steps to watch.

Two girls took out their phones.

"Declan, let go of me in front of these people."

"I don't care who's looking. Walk."

He tightened his hand, and I felt the bones in my wrist press together.

A campus security officer was coming up the walk at a run.

"Sir," he said. "Sir, take your hand off her. Right now."

Declan looked at him, and then at the phones.

He let go of me, slowly.

"Miss," the officer said. "Do you know this man?"

"He's my brother," I said.

My wrist had gone white where Declan's hand had been.

"I'll go with him," I said. "It's fine."

It was not fine, and everyone on the steps knew it.

Declan bent down so only I could hear.

"You embarrassed me in front of strangers," he said. "I'm going to remember that."

He walked me to the car with his hand not quite touching my back.

I sat in the back seat holding my own wrist in my other hand.

Neither of us said a word the whole way home.

In my room I took the small black suitcase out of the closet.

I put in the pocket watch, my drawing roll, and three changes of clothes.

I left the gun cabinet closed and the family photographs on the shelf.

My phone buzzed on the bed at five minutes to five.

It was my professor.

The transport has left the airfield. It will reach your gate in one hour. Be in the foyer with your suitcase. Do not say goodbye to anyone.

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