2. Declan #3
I place the phone on the table before my grip cracks the screen.
“Where is he?” Maeve takes it back immediately.
“Safe.” “That is not a location.” “It is all you are getting until I know whether your organisation issued the order.” “My organisation did issue it.” Her face tightens, but I hold up the document.
“I did not.” “You expect me to appreciate the distinction?” “I expect you to understand that whoever used this code has access to systems controlled by fewer than six people.” I take my secure phone from inside my coat.
“I am calling Adrianos.” Maeve’s brows rise.
“The Greek king who hired a brilliant accountant, lost control of his penthouse, and now allows her to terrorise international finance?” “You have been keeping informed.” “I became bored in hiding.” “Most people take up gardening.” “Plants die when I glare at them.”
Adrianos answers on the third ring sounding irritated enough to be awake and dressed.
“Declan, if this concerns Maeve Gallagher, Elena has already stolen my second monitor.” I look at Maeve.
“How does he know?” She lifts one shoulder.
“Perhaps your dramatic airport reunion made the news.” Adrianos exhales into the phone.
“You sent me her surveillance photograph two weeks after leaving a Crown meeting like the building was on fire. Subtlety was never the Irish gift.” I put him on speaker and photograph the payment reference attached to Cillian’s execution order.
“Run that through OB6.” The humour disappears from his voice.
“Where did you get it?” “Maeve brought an execution order carrying my current authentication.” Silence follows, broken by the faint sound of Elena demanding the phone.
Adrianos says something in Greek, loses the argument, and Elena’s voice replaces his.
“Send the full payment chain and stop touching anything you might later decide to shoot.”
I send the pages and wait while Elena works.
Maeve remains across the table, watching me instead of the phone.
“How long?” I ask. Elena begins typing loudly enough for the keys to sound personally insulted.
“If the reference is genuine, two minutes. If it was constructed to resemble OB6, perhaps ten.” Adrianos speaks somewhere behind her.
“She means fifteen but dislikes admitting computers occasionally resist her.” Elena ignores him.
“The account moved money through a Dublin logistics company, crossed a Greek settlement vehicle, and entered an Irish operational reserve forty-three hours ago.” My stomach hardens.
“OB6?” “Yes.” She continues typing. “It is not merely connected. It uses the same layered routing sequence Kalliopi identified.” Maeve’s face loses the last trace of colour.
Elena inhales sharply. “Declan, the payment authorisation came from inside the Irish Crown infrastructure.” I look at my code on the order.
“Can you identify who issued it?” “Not from this reference, but whoever did had current access.”
I end the call after ordering Elena to send everything to a secure channel.
Maeve takes her phone and the drive from the table, but I close my hand over the execution order.
The facts are simple now, even if everything beneath them is not.
I did not order Cillian’s death. Someone inside my organisation used my current code, moved OB6 money through Irish infrastructure, and built an execution package detailed enough to reach Maeve’s home.
That person knows about my son when I did not.
Fury settles through me, no longer wild but clean, the kind that has buried better men than whoever is responsible for this.
“You have your proof,” I say. Maeve shakes her head.
“I have proof you did not fund the order personally. I still do not know who inside your organisation can be trusted.” “Neither do I.” The admission tastes like blood.
“Which means wherever you hid him is only safe until the wrong person follows the right trail.”
Maeve steps closer and reaches for the order.
I catch her hand, but this time she does not pull away.
“If I take you to him and you bring the threat with you, I will never forgive myself.” Her voice remains steady, but I feel the tremor in her fingers.
“The threat already knows his school, his home, and his family.” I turn her hand over and press the photograph against her palm.
“Keeping me away will not make him safer.” “You are very convincing for a man who spent the last hour threatening me.” “Threatening you is familiar. This is new.” Her eyes lift to mine.
For one brutal second, I see the woman she was before I condemned her and the mother she became without me.
I release her hand because holding it now feels too close to begging.
“Take me to my son,” I say, “before the bastard using my name reaches him first.”