4. Declan #2
A burst of automatic fire erupts from the rear garden, followed by two single shots and sudden silence.
I move through the broken door and find Callum kneeling beside a wounded attacker near the garden wall.
The man has taken a round through the calf and another across his ribs, painful injuries but not fatal ones.
Callum has already bound his hands and shoved cloth between his teeth to prevent him from reaching another poison capsule.
Ronan emerges from the hedgerow with blood on his sleeve that does not appear to be his.
Two bodies lie near the eastern fence. Beyond them, tires shriek against the road as the watcher’s vehicle disappears around the bend.
One escape is an irritation. One living prisoner is compensation.
Callum presses his pistol beneath the captive’s chin. “This one attempted to bite through his own tongue. Either he is extremely committed or deeply opposed to conversation.”
“Keep him alive.” I glance toward the house, calculating every wall between my son and the night. “Search his mouth, his clothes, and every scar on his body. Then move him to the underground room at the estate. No hospital, no police, and no records.”
Ronan wipes his knife on the dead man’s jacket. “The road team is pursuing the vehicle. Do you want it stopped?”
“I want the driver breathing if possible.” Sirens would bring questions, and questions would bring attention to a child who officially does not exist. “If not possible, I want the car, the phone, and every piece of dirt trapped in the tires.”
Thirty-seven minutes pass before I open the pantry.
My recovery team controls the property, the bodies are secured for examination, and the surviving attacker is sedated inside an armoured transport.
Two additional vehicles arrive to carry Maeve, Cillian, and Niamh, with enough men surrounding them to invade a small country.
When the locks withdraw, Maeve stands in front of Cillian with her pistol aimed directly at my chest. She lowers it only after studying my face.
Niamh holds the poker, while Cillian holds a tin of peaches against his shoulder as though Thomas stocked the panic room for an unusually domestic war.
None of them appears injured. My heart continues battering my ribs because it has not yet received the news.
“Are they dead?” Maeve searches my coat, my hands, and the blood on my collar. Her attention lingers on the envelope visible inside my jacket. “And before you offer a poetic answer, I mean the men outside, not your better instincts.”
“Three dead, one captured, one vehicle escaped.” I move past the gun and examine Cillian myself, checking his face, his neck, and the hands wrapped around the tin. “They carried another order. It has this address and my current code.”
Maeve goes still. “Then someone knew where Cillian was before I brought you here.”
“They knew enough to watch the road and wait for your arrival.” I take the peaches from Cillian and set them aside. “The boy was leverage. You and the drive were the targets they could not afford to let escape.”
“You make that sound comforting.” Maeve returns the pistol beneath her coat. “I am delighted they wanted to murder me for my personality and not merely as an administrative detail.”
“I have wanted to murder you for your personality for years.” I meet her stare and feel the old heat between us sharpen beneath the new terror. “Tonight, someone tried to do it without my permission.”
Before we leave, I send Eamon a stripped-down message through a private channel.
Maeve has returned with an elderly aunt and a child.
They require adjoining rooms in the secured family wing, clothing for the boy, and additional guards at every entrance.
I do not identify Cillian as mine. I say nothing about the execution orders, the compromised code, Thomas’s drive, or the prisoner travelling behind us.
Eamon raised me after my father died and helped turn scattered Irish crews into the organisation I command, but affection does not grant immunity from suspicion.
The current code has five custodians. Until I know whose hand opened the system, every one of us is contaminated.
Cillian insists on travelling in my vehicle, though Maeve insists on sitting beside him.
Niamh takes the front passenger seat and spends most of the journey examining my driver as if deciding where best to bury him.
I sit across from my son and watch the passing lights touch his face.
Six years exist between us like a country I have never visited.
He has lost teeth, learned to read, formed opinions, developed loyalties, and apparently perfected insolence without me.
I do not know what he eats for breakfast, what wakes him at night, or whether he laughs when he is nervous.
Yet when the car takes a corner too quickly, his hand reaches for Maeve’s, and mine moves toward him at the same instant.
Blood recognises what time tries to steal.
My estate is locked down before the gates open.
Floodlights sweep the grounds, armed men patrol the walls, and every security feed runs through an isolated system my administrator cannot access remotely.
Eamon waits in the entrance hall wearing a charcoal suit and the patient expression he used whenever my father brought violence home.
Age has silvered his hair and deepened the lines beside his mouth, but it has not softened him.
His gaze touches Maeve first, then Niamh, then settles on Cillian.
Recognition does not come immediately. When it does, it strips the careful neutrality from his face.
The boy’s red hair is darker than mine, but the O’Rourke features are unmistakable, particularly beneath a chandelier bright enough to expose every secret.
“Declan.” Eamon looks from Cillian to me, his voice quieter than usual. “Is there something you neglected to include in your message?”
“There are several things.” I rest a hand against Cillian’s back without considering whether I have earned the right. “This is Cillian Gallagher. He is my son.”
Eamon closes his eyes for a brief moment. When he opens them, grief appears genuine enough to unsettle me. “Six years stolen from you. From both of you. There is no apology large enough for what this family believed.”
Maeve stands rigid beside Cillian. “Fortunately, I did not return for an apology. They are difficult to spend and usually counterfeit.”
“Then I will not insult you by offering one before I understand what happened.” Eamon’s tone remains controlled, almost gentle.
“But whatever trust existed before the accusation cannot be restored simply because you returned with a child. Declan must examine the evidence without allowing guilt to make decisions for him.”
“Careful, Uncle.” I remove my coat and hand it to no one, keeping the execution order against my body. “That almost sounded like advice.”
“It was advice.” Eamon looks at Cillian again, and warmth softens his expression. “You have always mistaken agreement for loyalty and caution for betrayal. It makes family dinners exhausting.”
Cillian tilts his head. “Are you my great-uncle?”
“I am.” Eamon lowers himself until they stand closer to eye level, but he does not reach for the boy. “I knew your grandfather, and I raised your father after we lost him.”
“Did you do a good job?” Cillian studies me with open scepticism. “He kills people.”
Eamon’s mouth twitches. “In my defence, he was difficult material.”
The rooms are ready because I warned him, not because he possessed knowledge he should not have.
The family wing contains adjoining bedrooms for Maeve and Cillian, another across the corridor for Niamh, and guards positioned at both ends of the hall.
Eamon asks a servant to retrieve something from his private rooms. Several minutes later, the man returns carrying a polished walnut case darkened by age.
Inside rests an antique chess set carved from ivory and black bog oak, each piece shaped like a figure from Irish legend.
I recognise the chipped white knight immediately.
My father damaged it the night I defeated him for the first time, then accused the table of conspiring against him.
“This belonged to your grandfather.” Eamon offers the case to Cillian with both hands. “Your father learned to play with it, though he never learned to lose graciously.”
“I learned not to lose.” I watch Cillian touch the damaged knight. The gesture reaches somewhere violence cannot defend. “There is a difference.”