Page 164 of Rage

Kieran O’Malley stood, extending a hand to me.

“I’ll need to pay the check,” I said, hoping he’d contradict his off-hand comment of paying for dinner.

I dislike contradictions, and I wanted to dislike O’Malley.

“It’s handled, Lovely. Let’s go upstairs.”

“No.”

“No?” He didn’t seem mad that I might be going back on our recently struck agreement. Just confused. “Second thoughts already?”

I needed to play my hand correctly. How many women had bedded a man for something, only to be cheated in the end? Men were liars. It was a fact of life.

“This is the Grand Kintyre.” I felt my voice lower into a growl. “Your office is here. If you have paperwork to sign, then that is where the trade happens. Quid pro Quo.”

His face smoothed into blankness, then he said, “As you wish.”

I ignored his outstretched hand, and got up on my two feet.

The Grand was where the Irish had made their home. Their negotiations, meetings, and business happened somewhere on the premises.

If this is going to be a transaction… it needs to feel like one.

Beds made things intimate. Being in someone’s living space was intimate - a thing I only did with my family. I wouldn’t do it for some Irish scum who had to blackmail sex from strangers.

“This way.” He led me to the main lobby, down a narrow staircase that headed down. There was a long row of offices, witha conference hall at the end, nestled behind two large double glass doors.

Ominous, creepy and so like the New York City of the speakeasy days.

It wasn’t a basement in the normal sense. The ceiling was high, the walls were dry, the doors were made of an expensive heavy wood, carved meticulously with their names on a placard with descriptors: Eoghan Green -CEO, Kira Green -Manager Gallery Four… so on and so forth until I came upon a Sin Flanagan, and Kieran O’Malley, both simply described asBoard Member.

A lack of detail was always a sign of shady business.

He put a key in the lock and pushed it open. The inside of his office looked like a library, complete with a globe, ornately carved hardwood desk, authentic Persian rug and walls of bookshelves.

This was a room made for an older soul than the one I was looking at.

I ran my fingers over the leather bound books, and scoured the titles: The Iliad, Les Miserables, and Black’s Law Dictionary. Was he… a lawyer?

He did not look the type.

He went to his desk, his eyes trained on me the whole time. He took another key and opened a drawer.

He pulled out a stack of papers and placed it on his desk.

As if reciting a grocery list he read the title, “Sale for the ports of…”

At the bottom, where it asked for an authorizing signature, wrote down his name, and filled out the signature block.

“How do I know you’re authorized to do that?” I asked.

He chuckled, “I might not be in the limelight, like Eoghan, but your lawyers have been dealing with me this because I most certainlydohave the authority.”

“Why have I barely heard of you until now,” I said.

“That’s by design, Lovely,” he said, with a smirk. “Eoghan can be center stage, while the rest of us are in the shadows, making sure the mechanisms work.”

That’s what I was too. A person behind the curtain, tugging on the pulleys to make sure the show went on.

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