Page 40 of Irish Reign

Alix shuts my office door and comes to sit in one of the chairs across from my desk. “Sam?” she says. “You’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry,” I answer automatically. “I won’t do that anymore.”

Alix puts a stack of brightly colored papers on my desk. “What’s going on?” she asks.

“I had my hearing this afternoon. For my bar license. It didn’t go well.” There. I thought it would be hard to say those words:It didn’t go well. But it’s so much easier than I thought it would be. It’s such a short sentence to say my life is changed forever.

“Did they issue their decision?”

“Not yet.”

“How long until they do?”

“I’m not sure. Three months at the most.”

“If it’s bad, can you appeal?”

“It’ll be bad.”

“Can you appeal?” she repeats.

I blink. “No. All decisions are final.”

Final.

Alix sits back in her chair. She’s Chief Operating Officer at the freeport. If her General Counsel is about to be disbarred, she needs to hire a replacement. Immediately.

But after a moment, she says, “So what do you do now? When you know you can’t fail?”

I shake my head. “I failed. I’m going to lose my license to practice law.”

“You’regoing todo that. But you haven’t yet. And no one can stop you right now. Not until you get your official notice about the hearing.”

“Alix, you’re not listening. They’re going to disbar me. I won’t be a lawyer anymore.”

“You’renot listening tome. You’ve got a window of opportunity here. A get-out-of-jail-free card. What’s the last thing you want to do as a lawyer? The most dangerous thing. The thing that could get you disbarred.”

Get Russo.

The answer’s waiting for me, without a second of hesitation. He’s the one who told the world about That Night. He’s why the panel decided against me before I ever entered the hearing room. He’s the reason I fled to New York in the first place. He murdered my parents. He killed my cousin. He’s done everything in his power to take down the man I love, and I’m still not sure Braiden will come out ahead in their ongoing battles.

“I want to destroy Antonio Russo,” I say.

Alix nods slowly. She doesn’t know everything that’s happened in my life, but she reads the newspapers. She’s heard the gossip. “So what do we do?” she asks. “To make sure that happens?”

Wedon’t do anything.

Ido.

I walk into Russo’s lair as if I have every right to be there. I gain the bastard’s trust. I learn his deepest secrets. I bring all of it back to Braiden, so Russo is destroyed, once and for all.

Yeah. Right.

“Braiden would kill me,” I tell Alix. I don’t mean that literally. I think. But talk about taking control where I know I have no right to run things…

“I don’t believe that for a second,” Alix says.

“What would Trap do if he found outyouworked behind his back to take down his worst enemy?”

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