CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Aoife
THE LAMB IS overcooked.
Nobody mentions it. Raven carved it herself, standing at the head of Aidan's kitchen island with a serrated knife and a concentration that bordered on violent, sawing through the meat like she had something personal against it.
The slices are thick and uneven and slightly gray in the middle, where they should be pink, and she arranged them on a white platter with sprigs of rosemary that she burned under the grill.
It's the best meal I've had in weeks.
Aidan opens a second bottle of wine. Red. Something expensive that he pulled from a rack in the cellar and didn't bother naming. He pours for Raven first, then reaches for my glass.
"I'm fine." I cover it with my hand. "Water for me."
Aidan pauses. His gaze flicks to William, then back to me, and I can see him working it out. Or not working it out. He moves on to his own glass and pours generously.
William doesn't say anything. But under the table, his hand finds my thigh and squeezes once. Brief. Warm.
I watch Aidan lift the bottle a second time to top off Raven's glass.
The wine catches the light, deep red, almost black.
William's eyes track the bottle as it moves.
I see the way his throat works. The way he looks at the glass and then away, deliberately, like it costs him something to redirect his attention.
Aidan doesn't notice. He's already setting the bottle down, already moving on to his food.
I wonder how close they really are. These brothers who would die for each other, who would kill for each other without hesitation. And yet Aidan pours wine at the table without a thought for what it does to William to sit beside it.
My stomach tightens. Because I know something about brothers. About the gap between loving someone and understanding them. About how you can share blood and still miss the most important things.
Reilan.
The thought hits before I can stop it. My stomach clenches harder, and I grip my fork and focus on the lamb. Cut a piece. Chew. Swallow. The meat is dry and flavorless, and I make myself eat it because the alternative is sitting here with Reilan's name bouncing around inside my skull.
"You could have let the staff handle this," Aidan says to Raven, lifting a blackened carrot on his fork. "Rose would have had this done in half the time."
"I wanted to do it myself." Raven doesn't look up from her plate.
"You burned the carrots."
"Then don't eat them."
"I'm eating them. I'm just making an observation."
"Your observation is noted." She puts a piece of lamb in her mouth and chews with exaggerated satisfaction. "Delicious."
"It's tough."
"It's rustic."
Aidan grins. It changes his whole face. He looks younger when he smiles. Less like a man carrying something heavy.
"Where's Matty?" I ask.
William's hand tightens on mine briefly. "Upstairs. Said he wasn't hungry."
"He's been up there all day," Aidan says.
"Leave him." William reaches for his water. "He needs space."
I think about Matty upstairs alone. I don't know him well enough to know if that's normal.
"I want to propose a toast," Aidan says, lifting his glass.
"Don't." William shakes his head.
"I'm proposing a toast."
"To what? We're about to go to war."
"To Raven." Aidan holds the glass higher. "Who decided to cook for us herself when she didn't have to. Who burned the carrots and overcooked the lamb, and it's still the best thing I've eaten in weeks."
Raven's expression softens.
"To Raven," Aidan says.
"To Raven." I raise my water glass.
William picks up his own. Holds it level with ours. He catches my eye across the table, and something passes between us. Small. Private. The kind of thing no one else would notice. Two people drinking water at a table full of wine, and neither of them needing to explain why.
We drink.
The conversation drifts. Aidan tells a story about the first time he tried to cook for Raven, something involving a smoke alarm and a pan of chicken that caught fire.
Raven corrects every detail. They argue about whether the chicken was actually on fire or just smoking, and the argument dissolves into laughter that feels foreign in this house. In this life.
I lean into William's shoulder. His arm comes around the back of my chair.
This is what normal looks like. This is what we're fighting for. A table. A bad meal. People who bicker because they love each other and have the luxury of small disagreements.
Footsteps in the corridor.
Heavy. Fast. The kind of footsteps that don't belong in a house where people are eating dinner.
William's arm drops from my chair. He's on his feet before I register the shift, his hand already reaching for the gun I know he keeps at the small of his back.
Aidan stands too. The wine glass is still in his hand. He sets it down carefully.
The door to the dining room opens, and a man fills the frame.
Tall. Broad through the shoulders. Dark hair cropped short. Green eyes that sweep the room in a single pass. He's wearing a coat that's creased from travel, and he looks exhausted.
Jason Murphy.
Two of Aidan's security appear behind him, flanking the doorway.
They have their weapons drawn but lowered, angled at the floor, and the uncertainty on their faces is obvious.
They know who this man is. They work for Aidan.
But this is Jason Murphy, and no one has told them what to do when an exiled brother walks through the front door like he still belongs here.
The silence that follows is absolute.
I've seen photographs. Heard stories. The brother who married into the Bratva. The brother who was exiled for betraying the family. The brother who, depending on who tells the story, is either a traitor or a man who did what he had to do to protect someone he loved.
"You can't just walk in here." Aidan's voice is controlled, but the cords in his neck are taut.
"Your security didn't stop me." Jason doesn't apologize. Doesn't hesitate. His gaze finds William. "We need to talk. Now."
"Jason." William hasn't moved from his position beside me. His hand is still near his hip. Near the gun. "You shouldn't be here."
"No. I shouldn't." Jason steps into the room. Raven is frozen beside me, her hand gripping the edge of the table. "But Viktor Tarasov is three hours out with enough men and firepower to level this house, and someone needed to tell you in person because your phones are compromised."
The temperature in the room drops.
"What?" William's voice is low.
"Your phones. Your encrypted channels. Reilan had access to everything while he was here, and you never changed the codes after he left.
" Jason's breathing is hard. He's been running.
Driving. Something. "Viktor's known about your meeting with the families.
He's known about Sunday. He's not waiting for you to come to him. He's coming here. Tonight."
"That's impossible." Aidan shakes his head. "We swept everything. Matty built new channels after Reilan..."
"After Reilan, what?" Jason looks between his brothers.
"Left? Disappeared?" Something sharp in his tone.
"Doesn't matter. Viktor had the old codes, and your new encryption is built on the same architecture.
Matty's good, but he's not a cryptographer.
Viktor's people cracked it in forty-eight hours. "
William pulls the gun now. Not pointing it at Jason. Just holding it.
"How do you know this?"
"Kira." Jason's voice changes when he says her name. Softer. "She still has contacts inside the Bratva. People who owe her. One of them reached out twelve hours ago with a warning."
"And you came yourself."
"I had to be sure you'd listen."
William stares at his brother. The two of them were locked in something I don't have the history to fully understand. Years of loyalty and betrayal and blood between them, compressed into this single moment in a dining room that still smells like burned carrots.
"How many men?" William asks.
"Sixty. Maybe more. Infantry mostly. But Kira's contact mentioned heavy ordnance. Rockets. The kind of hardware you don't bring to a negotiation."
Sixty men. Against how many? The security team at Aidan's house. Whatever men the families have pledged but haven't yet assembled. We were supposed to have until Sunday. We were supposed to have time.
"Three hours," William repeats.
"At best. Could be less. I drove straight from the airport and didn't stop."
William turns to Aidan.
"Call the families," William says. "Every man they can get here in the next two hours. Conor first. Then the Brennans."
Aidan is already pulling out his phone.
"Raven." William looks at her. Then at me. "Both of you. Upstairs. Now."
"I'm not going upstairs while you..." I start.
"This isn't a discussion." His eyes find mine. There's something behind the hardness. Something I'm not supposed to see. Fear. Not for himself. "Please, Aoife."
The please undoes me.
Raven takes my arm. I let her pull me toward the door. As we pass Jason, he steps aside. Up close, I can see the resemblance more clearly. The jawline. The way he holds himself. Murphy bones.
We make it to the stairs before the first explosion hits.
I don't hear it. Not at first. My body registers it before my brain does.
A pressure wave that starts in my chest and pushes outward through my limbs, and then the sound catches up, so loud it stops being sound and becomes something physical, something that gets inside my teeth and my bones and shakes them—the floor tilts.
My hand finds the banister and misses and finds Raven's arm instead.
She's grabbing for me at the same time, and we collide with the wall, my shoulder blade hitting the plaster hard enough that pain flares white behind my eyes.
Dust falls from somewhere above us. Fine and grey, settling on my skin, in my hair, coating my tongue with chalk.
Not three hours. Not even one.
He's already here.
The second explosion is closer. I feel the house move.
The wall at my back shudders like something alive, and then the windows at the front of the corridor blow inward.
All of them. At once. The glass doesn't just break.
It lifts off the frames in a single sheet and then shatters midair, and for a fraction of a second, the pieces hang there, suspended, catching the hallway light like something thrown at a celebration.
Then they come for us. I drag Raven down.
My knees hit the floor, and I fold myself over her and the glass rains across my back, my arms, the exposed skin at the nape of my neck.
Tiny biting stings, dozens of them, and then the larger pieces hit the tiles around us and shatter again into smaller fragments that skitter and spin across the floor.
Gunfire. Outside. Rapid bursts that overlap each other in patterns I can't separate. Return fire from Aidan's security, I think, but I can't be sure because my ears are ringing from the explosions and everything sounds like it's underwater.
"Move!" Someone is shouting from below. William or Aidan. "Get them out! Get them out now!"
Hands on my arms. One of the security team, a man I don't know, pulls me up from the floor. Another has Raven. They're steering us away from the front of the house, down the corridor toward the back staircase.
The lights go out.