24. Declan
DECLAN
The movie Encanto plays loudly on the TV as Joshua sits in my lap, wide-eyed, two fingers in his mouth. Every time I let him go, he wanders over to the TV screen until his nose is practically touching it.
He keeps absentmindedly twirling my hair, something I can tell he does to his mom, but I push the spitty hand away every time I feel his fingers inching toward me.
I feel my father before I even hear him.
The low growl of an engine, too smooth. The air in the room being sucked out, replaced with something icy and solid.
The faint buzz of my hair standing on its end, reacting to static like I’m in the middle of a lightning storm.
I exchange a glance with Rian, who suddenly looks younger, like a boy caught doing something stupid.
Like the boy in his arms. Kellan’s already on his feet, pretending not to flinch.
We all know it. We can feel our father approaching like he’s the weather.
I have to strain my ears to ear the faint closing of a door. It’s not a slam, but the silence that follows is somehow louder. Suddenly, the room is full of tension, and I stand, scooping Joshua off my lap with my hands under his armpits. “Hey, bud, how about you go into?—”
The front door swings open.
And there he is.
Our father, leader of the Crowley clan, Fionn Crowley.
I see the back of his head first—the shimmering copper and blonde, as he walks backward through the front door, dragging something that’s taking him a lot of effort.
It takes me a second to realize it’s a body.
I don’t recognize the guy, though it would be hard to.
His face is a mix of purples and reds, blood and bruising, and it’s evident that he’s just been dragged up the driveway.
Pieces of gravel are stuck in his exposed flesh.
Some of his teeth are missing. I don’t know if he’s unconscious or dead, but my father drops him like garbage in the entryway.
I turn cold as I hear the boys scream, their voices high-pitched and full. Heat creeps into my chest, and my vision starts to swim around me as I listen to their fear. My eyes are fixed on my father, on the smug look on his face as his eyes flick past me to the kids.
He takes a small step toward them, and I glide to the side to block his path. His expression hardens, all the light in his eyes slipping out of them. My jaw hurts from the effort of my teeth clamping together, and all of my muscles feel alive with tension.
Rian takes a tentative step toward the body. “What happened?”
“What happened?” our father echoes. Then he laughs. It’s a bitter, hollow sound. “What happened is I thought I raised killers.”
He looks around the room. At the quiet. At the warmth still lingering in the air. I say a silent prayer of thanks that Caroline is still out with her friend. I don’t know why I want to protect her from him. Maybe I just want to protect everyone from him.
He sniffs the air, like he can smell the softness. The domesticity. Like it’s rotting meat.
“This isn’t what I told you to do,” he says.
His eyes land on me. I twitch, sucking on the inside of my cheeks and letting go.
I squeeze my fingers into fists and release them, cracking every one of my knuckles.
“Declan, are you seeing this, lad? They’re playing house with the kids. And the girl is still alive, is she?”
I nod, a crisp and clean nod that warns him of my own jurisdiction in this family. It isn’t just him. I evoke fear in people, same as he does. It’s high time he learned that. “She is,” I say, the side of my cheek ticking.
“I expected more of you, mo mhac .” My son.
His way of calling me back home to him. “Kellan, maybe not, but you’re my warrior.
” He reaches out for me and drops a heavy hand on my shoulder.
His fingers dig into my flesh, and I’m careful not to flinch, not to show any weakness.
“You’re stronger than the other two. You were supposed to end this. Clean. Efficient.”
Rian is seated on the couch with the children, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. His legs jiggle impatiently as he listens to my father. The children are near him sniffling quietly. He speaks up, his voice sharp, “You said nothing about kids. You must have known she had kids.”
“Of course I knew she had kids,” our father answers sharply.
He waves at the boys behind me, and I step toward him, pushing him backward.
“So what?” he snaps, taking a wide stance and straightening his shoulders.
His tongue runs grotesquely over his teeth, some of which have been replaced with gold caps, and I feel nothing but disgust toward him.
“So you sent me in to lure a woman with children to her death?” Rian asks. “What was supposed to happen to them?”
“They would come with us.”
Kellan whispers, “Why would they come with us?” I shoot him a warning glance. He thinks too much with his heart. He’s bound to say something that sets off the bull.
Our father laughs, and there’s real venom in it.
It’s the kind of laugh that sucks all the joy out of a space.
He steps over the body and walks toward the boys.
They flinch and shut their eyes at the vision of him, the same logic as a little kid who pulls the blanket over their head when they’re afraid of a monster in the closet.
Quickly, I walk ahead of him and grab the boys by the wrists to pull them to stand behind me.
My father presses his lips together in a look of disappointment, rolls his eyes, and slowly slides to a squatting position. “All well? What are your names, wee boyos?”
Kellan’s timbre is lower and more serious than I’ve ever heard from him when he says, “Hey, Dadaí, how about you talk to us?” Dadaí.
Gentle. His best chance at getting some softness from him, and we all know it won’t work.
“I asked you a question. Why would they come with us? Did you know they were ours?”
Our father sighs at the confrontation and rises to his feet.
He turns to face Kellan, his son in every sense of the word, a man who looks just like him, has his easy smile, and shrugs.
“Aye, I knew. It was always a part of my plan. You were supposed to kill the mother and take the kids. Raise them into little mafia princes.” He grins when he says that and looks down at the bashful boys.
I feel them pressing against my legs, looking between my knees, and I keep a strong grip on them.
I don’t know what I’ll do if my father makes a move toward them. My chest already feels like I’m breathing through a balloon, and every word is magnified in my head, echoing slightly against a cavernous anger.
Their arms are so small in my hands. It’s like holding a pencil or a doll.
They take up no space at all. Even their cries are negligible, like the mews of kittens.
I move my hands from their arms and clamp them over their ears, pressing their other ears to my legs.
“You wanted us to raise them into child soldiers?” I ask, spitting out the words.
My father chuckles. “That’s so dramatic, Declan. Not child soldiers. They’re heirs, same as you all. You need someone to pass the family business to.”
“Don’t dress it up,” I snap.
His eyes narrow. “You’re my sons. I didn’t do anything wrong raising you up in the family business.”
My throat constricts, my hands on the boys. I believed he was going to kill them. I never thought he was going to put them on an assembly line and turn them into workers for him.
I don’t know how I was so blinded by my loyalty to him that I couldn’t see that killing these children who belong to me could never be in my best interest. That it could only be in his.
But now that I’ve seen them, I’m okay with neither. I can’t be okay with hurting them in any way.
Now that I’ve felt their small hands and seen the way they play with toys, the things that he made me do when I was barely older than them make me sick. He makes me sick.
More than that, he’s a liar. If I can’t trust him, then what does he mean to me? All that existed of him in my eyes was that I knew he was being honest. He may be cruel or disgusting, but I didn’t have to wonder if he told lies.
Behind him, Kellan’s fist is shaky, and when my eyes focus on it, I see a knife in his hand. He’s considering, his eyes on the back of our father’s neck. My blood runs cold, and the room darkens around the two of them, leaving them glowing in the light of the moment.
Kellan is a better man than me, kinder. He never would have considered killing children. Even the fact that our father wanted us to raise them in the family business is a murderous offense.
I meet his wild eyes and give a small imperceptible shake of the head. I tap the boys’ heads. Not here. Not in front of them.
“Go ahead, boyo . If you think you can take me, then go ahead and do it. Don’t stand there with your dick in your hands,” my father growls, his eyes on me but his words directed at Kellan. He always manages to fuel that eyes-in-the-back-of-his-head rumor.
Kellan sheathes his weapon, but his face still holds all of his anger. My father smiles, a slimy placement of his lips, no heart to it at all. “Good. Now let’s talk about ways this girl can prove herself.”
Rian’s jaw is locked, eyes stormy. Kellan says nothing, but I can see it all over his face. The doubt. The same doubt that’s been eating at all of us. We were given a task. A simple one. But she changed it.
Caroline.
The girl with fight in her throat and softness in her hands. The one who spits in my eye like she means it, then cries in the shower with the door cracked open.
I know what our father wants. He wants obedience. Efficiency. Control. But looking around this house, I see something we’ve never had. Something that might be worth breaking the rules for.
“Will she get to live?” I ask.
“If we find a suitable task that she can prove herself with, I will let you all keep her.” He smirks. “For whatever you’re doing with her in here.”
His implication disgusts me. He thinks we’re using her body together, that she’s a concubine, when really she’s something more like a beating heart for us. Still, I nod.
At my legs, Joshua tugs on my shirt. I look down and he waves his hand for me to get lower. When I squat and look into his blue eyes, he leans forward and cups his hands around my ear to whisper into it, “I had an accident.”
I glance down and see that he peed his pants, and tears wobble in his eyes. “I was scared.”
“I know. It’s okay. Let’s get you cleaned up.” I pick him up into my arms, holding him against me, not caring that his urine-soaked jeans are wrapped around my waist.
I walk away from my father and the conversation he wants to have about how to ruin the one thing in my life that could be pure. In the laundry room, I peel the wet pants off Joshua and stick them in the washing machine.
No matter what happens next, the blood’s already on our hands. And now we have to decide if we wash it off or let it dry.