Chapter 17 The Red Crescendo
Chapter seventeen
The Red Crescendo
Siobhán
Dublin feels… muted. Like someone’s turned the city’s volume dial all the way down—the pubs quieter, the air softer, even the wind gentler as it curls through the streets. Christmas Eve usually glitters here. Tonight, it feels like it’s wrapped in black lace.
The aftermath of Darragh O’Dwyer’s “death” has blanketed the city in a strange, reverent hush. Flags at half-mast. Candles set on doorstep shrines. People whispering his name with grief or fear or both.
Only three of us know the truth. And I sit beneath the soft glow of the concert hall’s lights, hands folded in my lap, listening to the hush of hundreds of people taking their seats, believing I’m about to lead them in a memorial.
Rouge stands against the wall near the back. Cillian sits in the front row, hands clasped, gaze fixed on me like I’m the only light left in this dim world. I should feel guilty. I don’t.
This performance was supposed to be a small, festive Christmas Eve recital— a simple tradition I’ve done for years. But with Darragh’s passing, it shifted overnight into something somber, something sacred. A mourning dressed in red and gold.
I walk to the piano as the room falls completely silent, every footstep echoing under the vaulted ceilings. When I sit, the bench feels colder than usual, or maybe that’s something inside me.
My fingers hover over the keys. Dublin holds its breath. And for a moment… so do I. I clear my throat softly, leaning toward the microphone as the last few murmurs settle.
“I thought,” I say with a small, breathy laugh, “that maybe we could start with something brighter. Something that always made him smile. Joy to the World was… well, somehow it was Darragh’s favorite.”
A ripple of gentle laughter moves through the audience.
“He begged me to play it every Christmas Eve. So tonight… we’ll begin there.”
I give them a warm smile I don’t feel, then place my hands on the keys.
The first chord rings out, bright, triumphant, golden, and the room exhales with it.
My fingers move with practiced ease, widening the melody into something grander, fuller than the simple carol it usually is.
A symphonic thing. A cathedral of sound.
It’s almost funny, really, playing Joy on the night we buried a lie.
My left hand runs down the lower register, steady and strong, while my right hand lifts the melody into shimmering light.
A trick I learned years ago—play beauty with one hand, and truth with the other.
Rouge leans against the back wall, expression unreadable to anyone else.
But I know him. I see the little tell—the way he drums his thumb along his bicep.
He’s replaying that night. The body. The stagecraft. The violence wrapped in precision.
Rouge made it look like Malachi pulled the trigger. Then turned the gun on himself. I hit a bright cascade of notes, almost laughing at the synchronicity.
How Rouge pulled that off? I don’t think I want to know. I don’t need to. The city will mourn the story they were given. A betrayal turned tragedy. A clean ending tied with a bow.
My fingers arc into the next verse—bolder this time, swelling through the hall. The crowd sits straighter. Some close their eyes. They’re hearing Christmas. I’m hearing the truth.
Cillian watches from the front row, face carved in shadow and reverence. He knows exactly what I’m thinking, what I’m burying beneath each crescendo, what ghosts I’m playing out of the air.
His father died by his hand. Malachi died by Rouge’s.
And me? I’m playing Joy to the World like it’s an elegy.
The final notes rise and fall, a soft glittering echo through the high-ceilinged hall.
When silence settles, it’s the reverent kind, the kind that belongs in churches, or confessions, or after someone tells a beautiful lie.
I bow my head as the applause begins—slow, swelling, grateful. And I think: Let them mourn him. Let them believe it.
Because the only truth that matters tonight is the one sitting in the front row with blood still beneath his nails and love carved into every line of his face. And I know the truth. And I’m the only one who ever needed to.
The applause washes over me—warm, tidal, grateful. A hundred strangers rising to their feet, honoring a man who doesn’t deserve a single candle lit in his name. I stand from the piano, give a soft bow, and the lights dim to signal the end.
Cillian’s already moving before the crowd fully settles.
Rouge peels off toward one of the side exits—handling the press, the whispers, the logistics—while Cillian takes my hand with a gentleness that doesn’t match the storm in his eyes.
We slip out a back corridor, down the stairs, through the service door into the cold December night.
Snow’s drifting quietly. The whole world feels paused. But inside me? Inside him? Nothing is still.
The ride back to the stable-house is silent in that charged way, like we’re both pretending to breathe normally when neither of us is fooling the other.
By the time the house comes into view—warm light glowing through the frosted windows, smoke curling from the chimney—my pulse is a metronome gone mad.
Cillian parks. Turns off the engine. Doesn’t move. Neither do I. We just… sit there, breath fogging the cold air, the weight of the death, the lies, the music, the future pressing in on all sides.
Finally, he says my name. Soft. Devout. “Siobhán.”
It breaks something in me. I climb out of the car, boots crunching in the snow, and before I even reach the porch he’s behind me—coat still on, breath warm against my neck as he unlocks the door. The moment the latch clicks, something snaps.
He pushes the door shut behind us and cages me against it with his hands planted above my head. Not rough. Not gentle. Just… needed. My breath stutters. His forehead drops against mine.
No words. Not yet.
Just two people who survived, who lied to an entire city, who lost and gained and killed and resurrected—and now stand here trembling from everything they haven’t said.
I slide my hands up his chest. He exhales—shaky, broken, relieved.
“Come here,” he murmurs, voice low and raw enough to make my knees threaten treason.
He kisses me. Slow—like a promise. Then faster—like a confession. Then deeper—like an apology neither of us needs.
My fingers curl into his coat. His hands slide to my waist, pulling me flush against him. There’s grief in the kiss. There’s relief in the kiss. There’s blood still drying on memories neither of us will name aloud.
He lifts me slightly, walking us backward toward the living room—toward the soft glow of the fireplace, toward the place that feels like ours and no one else’s.
It’s slow. It’s rushed. It’s sweet. It’s rough. It’s everything we are, colliding after too long.
His mouth breaks from mine just long enough for him to whisper, voice shaking: “I thought I’d lost you once. I’m never letting that happen again.”
I swallow hard. “Then take me,” I whisper back. “Take all of me.”
His growl is soft, sinful, reverent. And he does.
He doesn’t even bother turning on the lamp.
He lays me down in front of the fire — the crackling glow painting his cheekbones in molten gold — and the second I’m on my back, Cillian is hovering over me like he’s deciding whether to pray to me or devour me.
Maybe both. His thumb traces my bottom lip.
“1Mo chol,” he whispers. The words drag a tremor down my spine. He leans closer, breath warm. 2“Mo chroí álainn.”
No one has ever said my name like he says my everything. His mouth meets mine again, deeper this time, hands mapping every inch of me through my dress like he’s relearning what he already knows.
I tug at his coat. “Off,” I breathe against his lips.
He smiles — wicked, adoring — and shrugs it off, tossing it somewhere behind him. His shirt follows. His skin is warm, flushed, muscles trembling with restraint.
“Cillian…”
He kisses down my jaw, my throat, slow enough to make me ache but hungry enough to make me gasp.
“You’re shakin’, love,” he murmurs, lips brushing my collarbone. “Let me take care of you.”
“You already are.”
He hisses softly, like my words hit some place inside him he keeps locked. His hands slide up my thighs beneath my dress, pushing the fabric higher and higher until the firelight kisses bare skin.
“Look at you,” he growls softly. “Spread out for me like a dream. Dublin’s darling daughter, the siren who ruined me—”
I tug his hair, making him look at me. “I didn’t ruin you,” I whisper. “You were made for me.”
His pupils blow wide. And then—He drops to his knees. Right there. In front of me. Chest rising and falling like he’s been punched.
“Siobhán…” His voice breaks on my name. “A ghrá… my love… let me worship you.”
I lift my hips slightly. “Then do it.”
The sound he makes is unholy. His hands grip my hips as he pulls me to the edge of the rug, his mouth trailing slow, reverent kisses up the inside of my thigh.
“You taste like salvation,” he breathes, lips brushing my skin. “Like everythin’ I ever wanted. Like home.”
He kisses higher. Then higher. When his mouth finally reaches me, I gasp — loud, desperate — and he groans against me like my pleasure feeds him.
He licks slow at first, savoring me like he has all night, all life.
His hands hold me open, his tongue moving in lazy strokes that build and build until my breath is trembling.
“Please,” I whisper.
He looks up, mouth glistening, eyes dark with devotion and hunger. “Beg properly, 3mo bhean ghile.”
I rake my nails through his hair. “Eat me, Cillian. Make me come on your tongue.”
He shudders — actually shudders — and dives back in. This time it’s fast. Deep. Precise. Like he’s trying to ruin the memory of every other man I’ve ever known.
I arch with a choked moan, fingers fisting in his hair. “God, Cill—”