23. Deargán
DEARGáN
Ipaused at the foot of Liath’s tower after she told me to leave like some pathetic bastard waiting for a miracle.
The night air bit cold against my face while light glowed weakly from her bedroom window high above me. Something ugly and raw twisted slowly through my chest.
He was still in there with her.
He still got to touch her.
While I stood outside in the fucking cold with nothing.
By the time I reached Cill na Caoine, rain had started falling hard enough to soak through my coat.
The abandoned church crouched black against the edge of the Ravenwood estate with broken stained glass glimmering faintly whenever lightning flashed across the sky.
The dead still lingered here. You could feel them in the stone.
I shoved through the heavy church doors, crossed the nave, and headed up the spiral staircase.
The attic room glowed blue from the bank of computer monitors shoved against the far wall and the faint clack of keys filled the attic beneath the sound of rain hammering the church roof.
Bas sat in front of the screens with one boot propped on a crate beside him. He looked up the second I entered. “What’s the craic, Crispy?”
I didn’t bother with greeting. “I want everything on Lorcan Lasair.”
He went still, his fingers hovering above the keyboard.
For a moment the only sound in the room came from my boots as I strode across the wooden floorboards and pulled out a chair beside him with a scrape.
He leaned back slowly in his chair as he studied me. “Is this about the mission?”
I dropped into the chair with a sharp exhale of its leather cushions. “Yes.”
He pursed his lips. “Deargán—”
“Stop judging me and just do it.”
He tapped his fingers on the side of his keyboard, his brows furrowed.
I prepared to argue back.
But he turned toward the screens and began, files opening up in quick succession as he broke all sorts of laws with a tap of his keys.
He moved through the systems so quickly it was almost impossible to follow.
The boy’s driver’s license flashed up on a screen, his passport on another.
Bas let out a whistle as he stared at Lorcan’s photo. “Would not want to compete with that.”
A growl loosened out from my chest.
Then came more documents. Birth certificate. High school certificate. College records. Banking records. Solicitor files. Lasair trust structures. Bas navigated through the architecture of Lorcan’s life like he had walked these systems before.
Maybe he had.
He’d lived half my life and yet nothing about Bas’s abilities surprised me anymore.
My eyes swam.
Bas stopped on a particularly wordy document. “Um, Crisper? You might want to look at this.”
I leaned in, frowning at the screen.
Last Will & Testament of Magdalene Elizabeth Blackwood.
The sight of her name in full struck a wound in me that had never healed. My jaw tightened before I kept reading, scanning through the document line by line.
I stopped cold when I saw my name.
Bron Deargán.
I reread the whole paragraph, the meaning sinking in slowly as I untangled the legal jargon.
Magdalene Asylum and all its grounds would pass to her son, Lorcan Alexander Lasair, upon her death.
But if Lorcan died without an heir, the estate reverted to… me.
The room went strangely quiet around me, the raindrops on the roof tiles sounding muffled as if from underwater.
Bas tilted his head as he peered at me. “Well now,” he said. “Who was mammy Lasair to you, you rascal?”
I said nothing.
My eyes stayed fixed on the screen while the calculation assembled itself piece by piece inside my head.
A way to end this.
A way to rip everything from Alistair Lasair in one move.
The asylum.
His legacy.
His heir.
And Liath.
I leaned back slowly in the chair.
“All I have to do to win,” I said quietly, “is to kill the boy.”
“Bron.” Bas whipped his head around to me, my name hissed like a warning. “She won’t come back to you because he’s gone.”
“She will.” It had to be true. I needed it to be true.
He studied me for a long moment. “And when she finds out you killed him?”
My breath caught for half a second. She would grieve him. She would sob for him. And I would hold her through it knowing I had done that to her.
I shook my head. “She won’t.”
“From what I can see, that boy isn’t tied up in his father’s corruption.” His gaze flicked toward the screens. “He hasn’t crossed any lines. If you kill him, it’s purely for yourself.”
“What’s your fucking idea, then?” I snapped. “Give up on her and what? Spend the rest of my life chasing evil men in the dark alone like you?”
I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. But the apology remained trapped behind my teeth.
Bas blinked, the only sign my words had struck him. “Maybe,” he said quietly. “But I can still look at myself in the mirror.”
Silence settled heavily through the attic. Rain hammered against the stained glass clockface while colored light bled weakly across the floorboards in bruised patches of red and gold.
I stared at my name inside Maggie’s will.
Bron Deargán.
Heir to Magdalene asylum if Lorcan died.
In the corner of my vision, where the lamplight failed to fully reach, Pie stood watching me silently.
I refused to look directly at her. Refused to acknowledge her standing there in the corner of my mind. Refused to let her voice bleed into my head.
I kept my eyes on the screen instead, the plan settling into place.
Take everything from Alistair.
Take Liath back after the world beneath her collapsed.
All I had to do was kill the boy.