Chapter 20: His Own Men

My father crossed the ballroom floor in a dead silence.

Nobody stopped him.

Nobody in that whole room of people he had fed, funded and forgiven took one step to stand between him and his daughters.

"You're coming home," he said to me.

"No."

"You're sick. You're confused. You've been used by a criminal."

"I'm standing here in front of three hundred people," I said. "Say it to them."

His face did something I had never seen it do.

It came apart.

Underneath was a man of fifty-nine who had spent his whole life being obeyed, and had just watched a room refuse.

He reached out and grabbed my arm above the elbow.

"Let go," my mother said.

"Be quiet."

"Let go of her."

He shoved her, one-handed, and she stumbled into a chair.

Maeve cried out.

I twisted, and he hauled me around by the sleeve of my green dress.

His other hand closed on the black cord running up from my side.

I understood what he was going to do about half a second before he did it.

He pulled.

There was a burning pain along my ribs, and a sound from the pack that I knew like my own name.

It was a long, flat, rising alarm.

The pump had lost its signal.

My knees went.

I hit the floor of the ballroom on my side.

The noise of the room went far away, and the world closed down to a tiny bright circle.

"Deirdre!"

That was Donovan's voice, from very far away.

He must have been standing in the hotel lobby all night.

The doors banged, and boots hit the parquet at a run.

"Get your hands off her," Donovan said.

I heard something heavy hit a table.

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