3. Declan #2
“For Christ’s sake.” I scowled and lowered my voice, so Catie wouldn’t hear. “I don’t need you to be her teacher, or an armchair therapist. I just need you to let her be a kid on summer break. That’s all. And keep her out of my office unless it’s important. Understand?” I held out her notebook.
“I understand,” Olivia said, snatching back her notebook.
“Miss Olivia!” Catie called. “Can you read me a story?”
“Sure, sweetie,” Olivia said, stepping into the room.
She gasped when she saw the floor to ceiling wall of bookshelves.
The picture books were all on the bottom, where Olivia could reach.
I normally bought two copies whenever I sent Catie a book.
That way I could keep one copy and read it over the phone to her.
But after @1000words and I had gotten into a conversation about books we’d loved as tweens and teens, I’d also started stocking the higher shelves with stuff I thought Catie would like when she was older.
Plus a few books I’d had as a kid that I didn’t want to get rid of.
Olivia traced her hands over the spines reverently, her disappointment with me temporarily forgotten.
“This is way better than the grown-up library downstairs. I feel like Belle in the scene where she walks into the library,” Olivia joked.
“What’s that make me?” I asked. “The Beast?”
Olivia threw me a wicked smile over her shoulder, and I felt my blood heat.
Then she caught herself, smoothing her expression into something bland and cheerful. “Catie, what book do you want us to read?”
My phone started buzzing—a text from my friend and lawyer Thomas Maher.
I have news. Give me a call?
“I’ve got to make a call.” I glanced at Olivia and Catie, who were already settling into the giant purple beanbag chair in the corner. “Will you be all right?”
I wasn’t entirely sure which one of them I was asking, but Olivia nodded and Catie was already engrossed in her book, so I headed back into my office and shut the door.
I called Thomas. “What is it?”
“Hello to you too,” Thomas answered. He was an exceptional lawyer, but he loved a good conversation, and you couldn’t rush him for anything.
It was one of the many reasons he’d chosen to set up a practice in Galway over the hustle and bustle of a Dublin law firm.
“Are you going to make me rush through this?”
“I am. Catie’s in town.”
“What? That’s brilliant,” Thomas’s voice sounded like he was beaming. “We’ll have to have you and Sinead over for dinner. How long are they staying?”
“Sinead’s not here,” I said. “Just Catie and an unhinged nanny. She’s staying for two months.”
Thomas fell silent. When he spoke, it was tentative kindness. “When you say two months, you wouldn’t mean sixty days, would you?”
I sat heavily in my chair, remembering that Thomas’s father-in-law had been in and out of rehab for the past decade.
What if rehab doesn’t help Sinead? a frantic voice inside whispered.
I refused to listen to it. “I’d appreciate your discretion.”
“Of course,” Thomas said. He cleared his throat. “Maybe this isn’t the best time for my news, then.”
“Please, go ahead,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “I need the distraction.”
“I’ve heard rumors that the O’Rourkes are thinking of selling property,” he said.
I straightened, feeling like a jolt of bad electricity had been shot through my system. The O’Rourkes were the scum of the earth. They were the reason I didn’t believe in forgiving your enemies.
A family of petty landlords, the O’Rourkes had been the richest family in Ballybeith for generations—and they’d gotten that wealth on the backs of the poorest families in town.
They’d killed my da, when the family’s current patriarch, Mark O’Rourke, decided to drive home drunk when I was in high school.
They’d never faced a single consequence for their actions.
I’d spent the last sixteen years waiting for a way to make them pay.
“Why would they sell now?” I asked, trying to keep my vicious excitement in check.
“You know the son, Seamus? Apparently, he was put in charge a year ago, and he all but ran the business into the ground, wasting money on high-end improvements and renting to people who couldn’t afford to pay, then letting them live there for free for months.”
I frowned. “Is it some kind of insurance scam? That makes no sense.” If anyone else had been responsible, I’d have said it sounded generous—wildly, stupidly generous. But generous was not a word anyone associated with the O’Rourkes.
“I think he’s just incompetent,” Thomas speculated. “Mark came out of retirement and demoted his son. He’s jacked up rents, but it’s not enough. Word is he’ll have to sell one of his properties.”
I held my breath, imagining buying the iconic O’Rourke mansion and razing to the ground.
I imagined Mark O’Rourke’s rage and grief.
Short of killing someone, destroying that mansion was the only way to make the O’Rourkes feel a fraction of what my family had felt.
With any luck they’d flee town in shame, and sell their properties to someone else who would run them responsibly.
Maybe then my da would have justice. And I wouldn’t feel this jagged, clawing rage in my heart, shading everything I did and experienced. Maybe all my successes would feel different, would feel like enough, once I finally had the one thing I truly wanted.
“Do you think he’ll sell the mansion?” I asked.
“It makes sense to. It’s their most valuable property,” Thomas said. “Do you still want it?”
I could practically taste revenge on my tongue. “I do. Set up a shell company, though. They’d never sell to me.”
“What’s your budget if they put it up for sale?”
“Anything,” I said, viciously. “I want that house.”
“Why?” Thomas asked. “What are you going to do with it?”
“Stop their hold on this town,” I said. That was all he needed to know for now. The house was something of a local landmark—he might not like the idea of me tearing it down. But I could work him around to it. I just needed to get the place first.
I thanked him, said goodbye, and started to hang up.
But Thomas had one last thing to say. “Sinead will be fine, Declan. You know her.”
“I do,” I said.
That was the problem. Sinead was one of the only people I’d never been able to control.
Unbidden, an image flashed in my mind of Olivia with her damn notebook, fighting me on every instruction I gave her.
It felt like more and more of my life was being upended by uncontrollable women.