2. Declan #2
I take the drive and turn it between my fingers.
It is ordinary in appearance, which means nothing in a world where the most dangerous things usually arrive looking dull.
“You said you found out about the pregnancy the morning you left.” Maeve’s shoulders stiffen.
“Yes.” “Who else knew?” “The doctor, the receptionist, and Niamh.” “Thomas?” “Not then.” “Your family?” “No.” Each answer comes cleanly, but I have interrogated enough people to know truth can still conceal structure.
“Did you consider telling me after you escaped?” I ask.
Something sharp enters her face. “Frequently.” The answer is quieter than the others.
“Then why didn’t you?” She looks at me for a long moment.
“Because the last thing you promised was that if you ever saw me again, you would kill me yourself.”
I remember saying it. Denial would be convenient, but I have never respected men who revise their own cruelty after it becomes embarrassing.
I said the words in my office while fury burned through every piece of evidence in front of me.
Maeve had stood motionless, one hand resting low against her stomach in a gesture I interpreted as fear.
Now I understand she may have been touching the place where my child had already begun to exist. “I believed you betrayed the Syndicate,” I say.
“You believed it eagerly.” “Do not confuse anger with eagerness.” “Do not confuse possession with love.” Her answer lands with surgical accuracy.
I move toward her, and she refuses to step back.
“I would never have harmed my child.” Maeve’s eyes become colder.
“You did not know he was your child because you had already decided his mother deserved a bullet.”
The rage that tears through me is immediate, but it has no clean target.
I want to break the table, tear apart the building, and find every person who touched the evidence that drove her away.
I also want to demand how she could look at our son every day and deny me knowledge of him.
Both truths exist without cancelling each other, which feels intolerable.
“You had seven years,” I say. “Seven years to send one message.” “I sent one today. You were unimpressed.” “Do not joke about this.” “If I stop joking, I may start screaming, and your guards seem nervous enough.” She folds her arms, but the movement looks more like restraint than defiance.
“I spent the first year waiting for you to find the trail I left. When you did not come, I understood that whether you believed me guilty or not, you had chosen your empire.” I stare at her. “What trail?”
Maeve hesitates, and that hesitation answers more than words.
“A withdrawal from one of the old Gallagher accounts in Montreal,” she says.
“Enough to be noticed, not enough to live on.” I remember the notification.
Eamon brought it to me eight months after she disappeared, along with documents showing the account had been accessed through a federal relocation service.
“You wanted me to follow.” “I wanted you to investigate.” “I did.” “And yet here we both stand, older and apparently no wiser.” I move to the table and brace both hands against it because the alternative is touching her.
“I was shown proof that you had entered witness protection.” Maeve’s expression empties.
“I never spoke to a federal agent.” “The records came through Eamon’s office.
” “Then either your uncle was deceived or you have just identified the reason you never found me.” The possibility opens beneath everything I thought I knew, deep and black.
I reach for the execution order again and flatten it on the table.
“Show me the photographs.” Maeve does not move.
“I have shown you one.” “That picture was taken by someone preparing to kill him.” My voice roughens despite the control I force over it.
“Show me one taken by someone who loves him.” Her face changes, resistance giving way to something more dangerous because it resembles pity.
“Do not look at me like that.” “Like what?” “Like I am asking for charity.” She studies me for another moment, then unlocks her phone and opens a hidden folder.
“You do not get to keep these.” “Try stopping me.” “There he is,” she says dryly.
“The devoted father, arriving six years late and immediately stealing family photographs.” She turns the screen toward me.
The first image shows Cillian asleep with a wooden animal tucked beneath his chin, red hair spread across a pillow and one small hand curled beside his face.
Maeve swipes to the next photograph before I can prepare for it.
Cillian stands on a beach in rubber boots, holding a bucket and scowling at the sea as if the tide has personally offended him.
Another shows him at a kitchen table with flour across his nose.
In one, he is missing a front tooth and holding up a certificate from school.
In another, he sits on Niamh’s shoulders during a parade, laughing with his entire face.
The final photograph shows him beside Maeve, both of them wearing paper crowns while a small birthday cake burns between them.
I recognise myself in him with every image, not only in the colouring but in the way he stands, watches, and holds his mouth when concentrating.
He is mine. The truth settles into my bones with an ownership so absolute it hurts.
Six years of first words, illnesses, birthdays, nightmares, scraped knees, and ordinary mornings have existed without me.
I did not lose them because Maeve vanished; they were stolen before I knew they belonged to me.