4. Rian
RIAN
When I get back to the house that my brothers and I rented out in the middle of nowhere, a massive expanse on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, I pause before opening the front door.
I already know what they’ll think. I steady myself to face Declan’s cold exterior and Kellan’s sick loyalty to the coldness.
The home is glass and gunmetal with doors as heavy as the concrete inside the walls, a masculine display of wealth. When I finally step inside, my brothers stand from their spots on the slick leather couch in the open living room. It’s a spot with no charm, just superficial class.
Declan’s face is alight with excitement, that sick heathenish look in his eyes that practically contorts his face from the one I recognize of my brother to that of a villain. “Where is she?” he asks, his eyebrows dropping as he sees that no one is behind me.
Raising one hand in a gesture to wait , I dig the slip of paper from my pocket with the other and throw it down on the table. “She’s not here, but I made contact.”
Declan doesn’t even make a move toward the paper. The disdain on his face is evident, and he sneers at me. “Am I supposed to be impressed? The job wasn’t to ‘make contact.’ It was to bring her back here.”
“You don’t think it would be easier to bring her back here willingly?” I ask coolly, as if the proposition itself doesn’t give away how I felt when I talked to her. Who was that guy? He was supposed to be an act. So why did part of him feel real?
“Since when have we ever needed anyone we killed to be willing?” Declan sneers, the excitement that layered his eyes just moments ago long gone. Now his eyes are dull again, impenetrable walls.
Kellan pipes up, his voice almost teasing, “Maybe we should try it more often.” He walks over to the bar and pours himself a drink, which he swirls in his glass, anticipating Declan’s anger at the sentiment of consent.
“Does it always have to be bloodshed this, bloodshed that?” he asks, his eyes meeting mine over the rim of his glass.
I shoot him a look, hoping to quiet him, but he tips his scotch at me slightly and takes a swig, throwing his head back.
Declan’s mouth falls agape, and his whole body pivots to stare at Kellan. “It isn’t about bloodshed. It’s about being efficient and quick.”
“For you, it’s always about bloodshed,” Kellan counters. He has a way of saying something too true just when you’ve counted him out as an idiot.
Declan takes a step toward Kellan, his brown curls bouncing as he does, making Kellan flinch.
Satisfied, Declan stops in place and continues, “Bloodshed is a perk. We kill because if we take her out ”—he kills me with his eyes—“then that gives her time to tell people about you. More security cameras. More witnesses. More time alive means more eyes. But our brother wasn’t thinking about that, was he? No, he was thinking with his dick.”
Guilty. I can’t deny that Caroline did something to my dick, made it twitch and harden behind my zipper, but there’s another reason I need to keep her alive for now. I’m afraid to tell them, afraid they’ll take matters into their own hands, afraid they won’t understand or care.
I’m pretty certain those boys I saw foisting Legos into their mouths like candies were ours.
Well, one of ours. And whoever’s they are, they’re a part of the Crowley clan.
Which means they’re heirs to all the Níamh Fuil brings, the bad of our father and his enemies, the good of our wealth and loyalty.
I can’t kill Caroline until I’ve confirmed it.
I’ve killed plenty of people, but never the mother of my child. It feels like quite the line to cross, though I’m sure Declan would do it happily and without a second thought.
I usually trust my brothers implicitly with everything.
You have to in this business. If you don’t have family, you don’t have anyone.
But I know how bloodthirsty Declan can be.
And how Kellan can be a pawn for him. I push my shoulders back and meet his disdain squarely.
“She might have something valuable of ours. That’s all I can say for now. ”
Declan sucks on his teeth, his angular cheeks hollowing out even more. “Since when do you make calls like what you can tell me? We’re a unit. You tell me everything, and we decide together what to do with the information.”
“Us,” Kellan quips quickly, settling on the arm of the couch. “You tell us everything.”
It’s a quick dig, and one that Declan doesn’t appreciate. “Are you going rogue?” he asks me.
“I’m being careful. Part of being a unit is protecting it,” I say, taking a step toward Kellan, who offers me his drink. I take a gulp and hand it back.
“I’m trusting you to do this job. You know what orders we got,” Declan says roughly, watching the two of us with jealousy. His jealousy is so pervasive in everything he does. He’s jealous of other people’s things, feelings, experiences—he lives in a shroud of green.
“Have I ever misplaced your trust?” I ask, settling on the arm next to Kellan, feeling protected by his less intense energy.
I sometimes think his part in the mafia is even more compulsory than ours.
We live it, breathe it. He sits in it, arms locked with his brothers.
Of all of us, I could see him living a regular life—riding a bicycle, taking children to the library, buying groceries. He’s almost normal.
Except that none of us had a chance to be normal. We never will be.
Declan stares down at the slip of paper on the oily oak table, his jaw flexing. He drags one finger across the wood, slow and deliberate, until the paper falls into his waiting hand.
The silence tightens, thick as wet concrete. Finally, he looks up at me through the dark veil of his lashes, something dangerous gleaming behind his eyes.
“No,” he relents, voice flat. “You’ve never misplaced my trust.” His thumb taps the edge of the paper once.
Twice. “I think you know what would happen if you did, brother.” He smiles, and it’s all teeth.
After studying the paper for a moment, he lets it drop onto the table with a careless flick and leans back.
“Oh, come off it,” Kellan says, the words coming out on a scoff as he huffs into his glass.
His tie is already loose, his sleeves rumpled, but there’s a glint of sharpness in his eyes that wasn’t there before.
“You asked him to do it because he’s the best at convincing people. He convinced her. Let him do his job.”
The crack of Declan’s head snapping toward him is audible.
“I asked him to do it,” Declan snarls, “because he’s the only one who didn’t speak that night.
That’s it. Nothing special about him.” His voice punches through the room like a bullet.
“If you have something better to do than preserve this legacy and keep us all out of jail, Kellan, then go do it.” He lurches forward and snatches the glass from him, and Kellan jolts to make sure it doesn’t spill as Declan sets it down on the table with a heavy thud.
Kellan’s eyes flick between Declan, seething and rigid, and me, frozen in place, weighing the cost of whatever he might say next. He’s usually the easy one. The affable one. But tonight there’s something brittle under his usual golden-boy exterior, something tired and dangerous.
For a second, nobody breathes. A shock wave of tension ripples through the room, like the whole house might collapse inward if anyone so much as sneezes.
We’ve spent our lives learning how to dance around Declan’s detonations.
How to survive him when he goes off. This could have been one of those nights.
After a long, poisonous beat, Kellan mutters, “Sorry. No.” He straightens his spine. “I don’t have anything more important to do than this.”
We wait for it to satisfy Declan. His eyes are still that cold gray, and his neck is still red.
He glances at the glass on the table and lets out a low laugh, mean and brittle.
His voice drips with the satisfaction of having made us all squirm when he says, “Still, you’re right about Rian. Even if that’s not why I sent him.”
He points at the paper on the table. “Rian, you’re good at reading people. If you think this is easier…”
“I do,” I say quickly, taking the offer.
He smiles, thin and wolfish. “Then we’ll do it your way. Maybe my way isn’t always right. Brute force has a time and place. So…” He leans in, lowering his voice just enough that only I can hear the razor edge beneath the words. “Tell me your plan, brother. Make it good.”
As we all move to sit together on the couch, a thick bar of lead sits in my stomach, anchoring me to the cushion. Now that’s two firsts.
The first time I’ve considered slaughtering the mother of my children. The first time I’ve lied to my brothers.
I wonder how many more firsts it’ll take before the last thing I betray is myself.