36. Kellan
KELLAN
The house feels bigger without them.
It’s not, of course. Same square footage. But it feels like the walls have pulled back from me, like the space between everything has grown teeth without the boys and Caroline to soften it.
She’ll be back soon, dropped off by the driver.
So, I stay in the kitchen, chopping fruit with hands that are too steady for what we’re about to do.
It’s just something to do. She likes breakfast for dinner, and it’s an easy way to pretend that life is normal, to greet her back into…
this. Us. Strawberries, bananas, and waffle batter that’s starting to bubble at the edges of the bowl.
Declan drops a rolled blueprint on the counter like a guillotine. The paper curls, unfurling with a kind of finality. “One more time before she gets here,” he says, palms flat against the marble, his shoulders taut with sweat. “Just to be absolutely sure we know every move.”
I keep chopping. I keep listening . Half to Declan, half to the silence beyond us, listening for Isaac’s little gremlin giggle or the slap of Joshua’s feet across the hardwood. For Caroline’s voice calling out for a missing shoe or a lost sippy cup or a goddamn moment of peace.
There’s none of that now. Just us. Just this.
“When he comes over,” Declan says, tapping the map, “he likes to sit here. The head of the table. Makes him feel like a king. If he has guards, they’ll be posted here and here. One eye on the perimeter. One inside.”
I scrape batter into the waffle iron and close the lid with more force than I mean to. “But they won’t likely be inside,” I murmur, watching the iron hiss.
“If they are,” Rian adds, raising the drink in his hand like he’s making some fucked-up toast, “we spread out. One of us on Athair. One for each guard. Take them out clean.”
My eyes are locked on my batter, feigning nonchalance as my heart strains painfully against my sternum. “We wait until after Caroline’s toast. She’ll give the signal. And Kellan, you’ll be next to him, so you’ll disarm him, like we said.”
Like we said. We’ve said so much now, and it all amounts to the murder of our father.
A sickness boils over in me, thinking about Caroline’s purity and all the ways we’ve dirtied it.
Declan seems to like it, the rawness of her splitting open.
I want to keep her whole. Neither of us is getting exactly what we want.
She isn’t quite as vulnerable as he thinks, nor as clean as I’d like.
I think of Caroline. Of her laughter last night when Isaac asked if the jet had cupholders. The boys didn’t know she was breaking when they hugged her goodbye. I did. I watched her face, saw her fall apart quietly .
“I still don’t know if this ends with him,” I mutter. “Even if we pull it off—if we kill him—do you really think it all goes away?”
Declan gives me a look like I’ve just threatened to burn the whole plan down. “You sound like you’re getting cold feet.”
“I’m not,” I snap. “But we kill him, and what? His alliances vanish? The people he’s made promises to just back down? The Valacchis? The Slaters? We cut off the head—what if the body keeps twitching?”
“We deal with it,” Rian says quietly. He’s leaning on the fridge now, glass sweating in his hand, watching me like I’m some kind of flame he can’t decide to feed or smother.
“Do we even know how?” My voice cracks. “Do we even know who we are without him?”
That stops them. Declan looks away first. That means something. Rian doesn’t answer. He just takes a drink.
I drop into the nearest chair and stare out the window. It’s damp outside—puddles from the morning rain still clinging to the walkway. There are tiny, muddy footprints near the step. Joshua, probably. He always stomped straight into the mess, never around it.
I blink too hard. The world smears. “I just…” My voice breaks. I start again. “I can still feel that day. The day we let her do it. We let her kill for him.”
Declan slams his glass down. “You want to go back to that again? You want to unpack every fucking regret? Fine. But do it on your own time, Kellan. Because we’re out of time.”
Rian cuts in, softer. “We all made mistakes. But this is how we fix them.”
I look down at the blueprint. At the lines, the angles, the sharp precision of what we’re planning.
This is how we fix them—kill the man who made us.
I nod because I have to, because I have no alternative.
I don’t have an alternative in this moment, nothing I can do besides nod.
And I don’t have an alternative in this situation.
I can’t let him keep chasing her forever.
Eventually, he would kill her, and then he would kill our children.
Or shape our children. I don’t know which is worse.
No, he can’t survive this. And my brothers are right. She wants to help, so I have to let her help. I have to let go of the idea of her to make room for who she really is.
The front door creaks. I stiffen, rising too fast.
Caroline walks in slowly, like she’s still in a different life and has to reacclimate to this one. Her coat is unbuttoned. Her eyes are hollow. She smells like wind and expensive fuel.
And expensive grief.
She pauses when she sees the counter. The waffles. The fruit. And the blueprint still smeared with Declan’s fingerprints. The whole picture of our fucked-up lives. The little family we’ve been pretending to be. The little army we’re becoming.
It’s our life; the mundane and the disgusting are never separate.
“ Fáilte ar ais. Welcome back,” I say hoarsely, handing her a plate, and she takes it with a thin but grateful smile before pushing it aside to drop herself against my chest.
This is the real Caroline Johnson. Warm and grateful, purring against me like the kitten I say she is.