CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
William
I HAVEN'T SLEPT. Haven't tried.
The ceiling above my bed is just a shadow. I've been staring at it for hours, watching nothing, thinking too much.
Frank's face keeps coming back. The way he looked at me right before I pulled the trigger. That split second of surprise, like even after everything, he didn't believe I'd actually do it. The sound of the shot. The way his body went sideways in the chair. The wall behind him.
The horror on everyone's faces.
Aidan's mouth opening and closing. Matty going completely still. Reilan's color draining. Aoife's hand flying to cover her mouth.
I killed my uncle in front of all of them. Put a bullet in his head across a dinner table and didn't feel anything except relief that it was done.
What does that make me?
The thought circles and won't let go. I push the sheets back and sit on the edge of the bed. My hands are shaking. Not the fine tremor from withdrawal. Something else. Something that feels like it's been building since I watched Frank hit the floor.
I need a drink.
The thought is so immediate, so absolute, that I'm on my feet before I've decided to move. My body knows where the whiskey is. Knows the weight of a glass in my hand, the burn going down, the way everything gets softer after the third one.
Just one. Just to take the edge off.
I'm in the corridor before I catch myself. The house is dark around me. Silent. Everyone is asleep except me and whatever's crawling around inside my skull.
Aidan's office is downstairs.
The thought lands and won't leave. Aidan keeps whiskey in his office. The good stuff, aged and smooth, the kind that goes down easy and makes everything softer.
One drink. That's all. Just to stop the shaking. Just to quiet the image of Frank's head snapping back.
I want it so badly my mouth waters.
My feet carry me down the stairs. Each step feels inevitable. I'm thinking about the burn of the whiskey. The warmth spreading through my chest. The way the edges of everything get blurry after the third glass.
Aoife would be disappointed.
The thought cuts through, and I stop on the landing. Grip the banister until my knuckles go white.
Aoife, who held a bucket under my chin for three days. Who flushed my cocaine without blinking. Who stayed when she should have run.
She'd be disappointed. And I'd have to see it in her face every time she looked at me.
I stand there in the dark, breathing hard, fighting myself.
The office is down the hall. Aidan's whiskey is definitely there. But if I go looking, I know what I'm really doing. I know what it means. One drink becomes two. Two becomes the bottle. The bottle becomes whatever I can find to chase it.
I think about Matty.
After I shot Frank, after the room went silent and everyone stood frozen, I was the one who left first. Walked out without looking back.
But later, when I passed the dining room, Matty was still in there.
Alone with the body. He'd sent everyone else away and was making calls, arranging things.
He didn't ask permission. Didn't wait to be told.
He just handled it.
That surprised me. He’s been surprising me since this started.
I let go of the banister.
I don't go to the office. I turn the other direction, toward the kitchen, because I need coffee or water or something that isn't a drink. Something that keeps me on this side of the edge.
The lamp above the stove is on. Someone else is awake.
Matty.
He's sitting at the table with his phone in one hand and a pack of mints in the other, scrolling through something with that blank expression he wears like armor. The lamp above the stove casts half his face in shadow.
He doesn't look up when I walk in. Just shifts the pack of mints to his left hand and keeps scrolling.
I go to the sink. Fill a glass with water. My hand shakes slightly as I bring it to my mouth, and I drink the whole thing standing there, letting the cold settle in my chest.
When I turn around, Matty is watching me. He doesn't say anything. Doesn't have to.
I pull out the chair across from him. The scrape of wood against tile is too loud in the silence.
"Can't sleep either," I say.
He grunts.
I let the silence sit. Matty doesn't respond well to pressure. Never has. You push him, and he retreats further into whatever space he's built inside his head. You wait, and sometimes he comes out on his own.
Tonight, he comes out.
"Viktor Tarasov," he says. His thumb stops moving on the screen. "I found his next meeting."
Everything in me goes still.
"Where?"
"The old grain warehouse outside Drogheda. Friday night. He's bringing six men. Maybe more." Matty's dark eyes lift to mine. They're the same eyes our father had, and looking at them still costs me something. "He thinks we're still scrambling. Still licking our wounds after the house."
"Aren't we?"
"We've been strategic." The correction is quiet but pointed. "There's a difference."
I lean back in my chair and study my brother. He's always been the hardest one to read. The brains of the family, Alex used to say, but brains wrapped in something none of us could quite name. Depression, the therapists said. Withdrawal. Emotional detachment.
I look at him now, and I'm not sure what I see.
"How long have you been tracking Viktor's movements?"
"Since the house." His gaze doesn't waver. "Someone needed to."
The house. The night my house burned. The night I got Aoife out while Viktor's bombs turned our home into rubble. The night that started all of this.
"You never said anything."
"You were occupied."
Occupied. His word for the withdrawal. For the three days Aoife spent holding a bucket under my chin while I shook myself apart. For everything that came after.
I don't argue. He's not wrong.
"Tell me about Viktor," I say.
Matty sets the phone down. For a long moment, he's quiet, his gaze fixed somewhere past my shoulder.
"Viktor Tarasov. Kira's uncle. Senior Bratva commander operating out of Eastern Europe for the past fifteen years.
He's the one who orchestrated the contract that put Jason in the Bratva's pocket.
He's the one who ordered the hit that nearly killed you outside the medical examiner's office," Matty pauses.
"And he's the one who's been coordinating with whoever our mole is.
Every attack. Every piece of intelligence that reached the Russians. Viktor is the one receiving it."
I think about Jason. My brother, who isn't actually my brother, who carries Frank's blood in his veins and Russian connections that stretch back further than any of us knew. Who married Viktor's niece and got himself exiled to another country because staying here would have killed them both.
Viktor Tarasov has been a shadow over this family for years. I just didn't know his name until now.
"Friday night," I repeat. "That gives us two days."
"Just under." Matty checks his phone. "Assuming he keeps to schedule."
I stand. The chair scrapes again. Matty doesn't flinch at the sound. He just watches me with those dark, careful eyes that see more than they should.
"I want floor plans of the warehouse," I say. "Entry points. Exit routes. Everything you can find on Viktor's security protocols."
"Already have it." He slides his phone across the table. "I sent it to your secure email an hour ago."
Of course he did.
I look at my brother. Really look at him. The way he's sitting, the way he's holding himself, the way he's already three steps ahead of everyone else in this house.
Alex was right. Matty is the quiet one you have to watch out for.
"Why are you doing this?" I ask.
His expression doesn't change. "Because someone has to."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have." He picks up the pack of mints. Opens it. Pulls one out and holds it between his fingers without eating it. "You asked me once why I stayed. When everything fell apart. When Alex left. When Jason was exiled. When you took over, and we all knew you weren't ready."
I remember. The night after Alex's confession. The night I found out my brother killed our father and called it mercy. I asked Matty why he didn't walk away when he had the chance.
He didn't answer then.
He answers now.
"Because someone has to stay," he says quietly. "Someone has to remember who we were before all of this. Before the blood and the deals and the bodies." He puts the mint in his mouth. "I'm the only one left who can."
The words settle over me like a crushing weight.
Matty, who's barely spoken since our father died. Who retreated so far into himself that we all thought we'd lost him. Who carries our father's face like a curse and our father's depression like an inheritance.
He's been here the whole time. Watching. Waiting. Building something none of us knew about.
I don't know what to say. So I say the only thing that matters.
"Thank you."
He nods once. Doesn't say anything else.
I leave the kitchen and head for the stairs.
The hallway is dark. Quiet. I'm passing the dining room when I see movement. A shadow slipping through the door.
Aoife.
I stop. Watch her disappear inside. The door doesn't close all the way behind her.
I should go upstairs. Should give her space. Should let her have whatever moment she's looking for in the room where I killed my uncle.
I don't.
I push the door open.
She's standing in the middle of the room, her back to me. The lamps are off. Just the gray light from the window catching the edges of things. The table. The chairs. The wall they scrubbed clean.
"Aoife."
She turns. Her face is pale in the dim light. She hasn't slept either.
"Reilan," she says. Just the name.
"Time's up."
Her face shifts. Something tightens around her mouth, her eyes.
"I need more time."
"You've had three days."
"He's my brother."
"He's a traitor."
Her jaw tightens. "You don't know that."