Chapter 14: Tierney's Office

Declan's POV

I went to see Tierney at nine on Friday morning, eleven hours before the opening.

I told Miriam first, in the kitchen, with my coat on.

"Record it," she said. "All of it. Don't be clever."

"I'm never clever."

"You're clever when you're scared," she said, and fixed my collar with both hands.

I kept my phone in my inside jacket pocket with the recorder running.

Whitaker Property Group was on the fourth floor of a glass building on Wacker, and Tierney's door had her name on it in gold.

She was at her desk with a coffee, and she smiled when she saw me.

"Dec," she said. "I wondered if you'd come."

"I came to say I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"All of it. The night at my place. The invoice. Letting you into my life."

She set the coffee down and came around the desk.

She was in a cream suit, and the silver cuff shone on her left wrist.

"That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me in a month," she said.

"I want you to leave Miriam alone."

"I know you do."

"Name your price."

She laughed softly and leaned against the desk beside me.

"It was never about the price, Dec. It was always about her."

"What does that mean?"

"I mean she's soft, and she's lonely, and she needs someone who will look after her. I'm the one who does that. You just got in the way."

My jaw tightened, and I put on the grin, because the grin is what I do when I'm scared.

"You looked after her for ten years," I said. "How much did it cost her?"

"Friends give each other gifts."

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