Page 69 of His Forced Irish Mafia Bride

I kept my eyes on him.

He continued when I didn’t stop him. “The south district movement was tied to a delayed handover. One of our relay units failed to confirm pickup on time, so I went in person to avoid gaps in coverage.” He paused, then added, “The west transit zone wasn’t planned. I was redirected mid-route after an alert came through about a potential breach near logistics traffic. I followed it to confirm there was no escalation risk.”

I didn’t react.

He noticed that, so he kept going. “No one instructed me to bypass protocol. I made judgment calls based on timing and coverage risk. If I’d stayed within strict assignment lines, we would have had blind spots in two separate sectors.”

His tone stayed steady, but I could hear the effort behind it now. Not panic. Control. I turned the file over slowly on the desk.

“So you’re saying both movements were necessary,” I said.

“Yes,” he answered quickly. “And they were documented through internal relay updates.”

I let a short silence sit between us. Then I spoke again. “Show me those updates.”

His expression tightened for half a second before he answered. “They’re in the system logs under sector relay. You can verify them.”

I studied him for a moment longer than necessary.

He had answers. Clean ones. Structured ones.

I’d seen enough reports like his to know the difference between truth and fiction. I closed the file and pushed it aside. “Go,” I said. He stood, hesitated as if he expected more, then left the room.

I didn’t believe him completely, but I also didn’t have proof he was lying. And in my line of work, that gap inknowledge was dangerous. I waited for the door to close behind him.

Dilligan’s words were still in the room, but they didn’t feel solid. They sounded correct, but something about them didn’t sit right. They felt arranged, like they’d been shaped to fit a question instead of coming from what really happened.

I opened the file again and read it slowly. Then I compared it with Colt’s earlier report. Both accounts followed the same structure. Both explained movement in a way that sounded reasonable. Both claimed there was a need to leave assigned zones.

I called for the system logs from that day and placed them beside the reports. Everything matched on the surface. Times lined up. Locations were recorded. Movement was logged.

But matching records didn’t mean honesty. I went through Dilligan’s route first. He’d moved through the south district, then the west transit zone. The logs showed short gaps between each movement, nothing unusual on its own.

Then I checked Colt’s movements. His coverage shifted during the same time Dilligan was in the west zone. The system showed an adjustment in patrol patterns. That change created a short blind spot between two monitored areas.

That blind spot was small, but it was enough to make me pause. I leaned back and looked at the information again. Both men had given answers that made sense on their own. When placed together, the timing created space where something could pass without being seen.

I called for a full list of interactions between Colt and Dilligan over the past week. I also asked for any movement changes that weren’t reported to me directly.

While I waited, I kept thinking about Anton. His operations always depended on gaps like this. Not large failures,just small breaks in coverage that no one noticed until it was too late.

When the reports came in, I went through them one by one. There were meetings that weren’t logged in full. There were changes in duty that were not clearly explained. There were small overlaps where both Colt and Dilligan were involved in the same zone, but never recorded together.

I closed the file and placed it on the desk. Something inside my structure wasn’t working on its own. It was being shaped from within.

***

I heard her before I saw her—her ceramic cup striking the tile table, then the sound of the coffee machine. She was already in the kitchen when I walked in.

Maeve didn’t turn immediately. “The coffee’s still bad,” she said out of nowhere. I glanced at the pot.

“It hasn’t changed?”

“Yes. It’s terrible,” she replied.

I stepped farther in. She poured coffee and didn’t offer me any.

Outside the window, the light was gray but steady. It had rained again earlier, and it was still cold. Maeve leaned against the counter.