6. Declan #2
The words strike harder than they should.
I already know Maeve was framed, but suspicion and proof occupy different rooms. Seven years ago, I saw authenticated evidence and chose the Crown over the woman standing before me.
I remember telling her I would kill her myself if she returned.
She had been carrying my child while I made the threat.
No apology can reach backward and close my mouth.
All I can do is find the person who filled it with lies.
“What made you examine her file?” I lower my pistol without holstering it. “Maeve was one of hundreds accused through the Irish branch.”
“The targets were not traitors.” Keane rubs one hand over his tired face.
“Not all of them. Several were investigators, auditors, port officials, and intelligence analysts who noticed money or shipments moving where they should not. The system buried them under credible accusations, then handed their names to you. You were not eliminating threats to the Crown. You were eliminating threats to whoever was stealing from it.”
Maeve opens the laptop and turns it toward me.
A list of victims fills the screen, each paired with an occupation and a suspected discovery.
Customs discrepancies. Falsified shell-company ownership.
Duplicate cargo insurance. Payments routed through OB6 accounts.
Seven of the names match executions I remember performing.
I can still see their faces in the moment they understood pleading would change nothing.
One swore he had spent six months investigating missing Crown money.
I assumed he was bargaining for time. Another insisted the evidence package had been altered.
I shot him before he finished the sentence.
Keane touches the trackpad and opens another file. “There is an eighth victim who never received an execution order. He was murdered before the system became sophisticated enough to manufacture one.”
A photograph appears on the screen. Patrick O’Rourke, my cousin’s son, is twenty-three in the image and grinning beside a shipping container in Belfast. His body was discovered beneath the old wolf-crown mark, the symbol carved into his skin like a declaration of war.
We believed he was chosen because of his blood and killed to provoke the Irish Syndicate.
The memory of his father identifying the body still lives somewhere I do not visit willingly.
“Patrick worked in warehouse management.” I study the route map beside his photograph. “He had no access to Crown intelligence.”
“He had access to Gallagher manifests.” Keane enlarges a report bearing Patrick’s name.
“Four days before his murder, he flagged duplicate containers moving through an Irish shell company. The containers officially carried construction equipment, but their recorded weights changed between Belfast and New York. Patrick requested a physical inspection. His supervisor cancelled it. Patrick copied the route data and contacted someone inside Crown accounting.”
Maeve goes pale beside me. “Those routes appear in the OB6 transactions Elena found.”
“Yes.” Keane closes the report. “Patrick was not murdered at random, and the mark was not merely a message to the Crown. He found one of the earliest Irish transport channels feeding the stolen fund. Someone silenced him, then used the wolf-crown symbol to make his death look like part of a wider attack.”
Rage arrives without heat. It moves through me like winter sealing a river, silent on the surface and murderous beneath.
Patrick’s death helped push the Crown toward suspicion and retaliation.
We searched for an enemy outside the alliance while the person responsible continued using our routes, money, and execution system.
I hunted strangers. I punished informants.
All the while, someone inside my trusted circle watched me clean their crimes.
“Name them.” I close the distance between Keane and me. “You said the altered orders come from inside my circle. Give me the name.”
“I have suspicions, not proof.” Keane does not step back, though his face tightens. “The complete access logs are stored separately from the drive I sent Maeve. I split the evidence because keeping everything together would have made my murder convenient.”
“Your murder remains convenient.” I place my hands on the desk. “Your caution has merely made it slower.”
Keane looks toward the dark window. “I hid the records where no electronic search can find them. I will take you there after I know your protection can survive one night. Until then, I am not naming anyone. If I accuse the wrong man, the right one disappears.”
Maeve touches my arm before I can reach across the desk and force cooperation through less diplomatic means.
Her fingers close around my sleeve, light but deliberate.
Keane has spent years hiding from the same people who stole her life.
Fear made her run across an ocean while pregnant.
It made him divide evidence and trust no one.
I understand the logic even while wanting to put his head through the nearest wall.
“We move him now.” Maeve releases me. “You can terrify him after he has slept somewhere without mould.”
“I am not staying at O’Rourke’s estate.” Keane disconnects the portable drive and slips it inside his coat. “The last safe Irish property I used was searched within six hours.”
“That is useful information.” I straighten. “Tonight, we will discover whether the leak takes six hours or has become ambitious.”
The safe house belongs to an Irish property company that does not appear on any operational ledger.
It sits above a closed printing shop in Brooklyn and was last used three years ago to protect the daughter of a Crown witness.
I inspect it personally before Keane enters.
Steel covers the rear door, sensors guard every window, and an internal camera records the narrow stairwell.
Two armed men remain inside, while another four control the street from unmarked vehicles.
The security system requires Irish clearance and a rotating biometric token.
No one reaches Keane without leaving evidence.
I send the location through three separate encrypted channels.
Callum receives it because intelligence protection falls beneath his authority.
Ronan receives it because his men control the perimeter.
Eamon receives it because the emergency protocol requires my adviser to hold a sealed recovery location if both chiefs are compromised.
None is told the other two have been informed.
The Crown knows Keane is alive and under my protection, but Lorenzo’s people, Elena, Adrianos, Volkov, and Santiago receive no address.
Maeve returns to my estate with me shortly before dawn, though sleep never enters either of our rooms.
At seven sixteen the following morning, Ronan calls.
I answer before the second vibration and hear breathing that is too controlled.
He does not waste time asking whether I am awake.
Behind him, an alarm pulses at measured intervals.
Maeve appears in my doorway while I listen, already dressed, her face changing as she reads mine.
“Keane is dead.” Ronan’s voice carries the blunt weight of failure. “One shot beneath the chin. Both interior guards are alive but unconscious. The safe house has been torn apart.”
I reach for my gun and keys. “The drive?”
“Gone, if he brought it inside.” Ronan exhales once. “Every floorboard has been lifted. The walls are cut open, furniture destroyed, drains dismantled. Whoever killed him was searching for something and did not find it.”
The journey to Brooklyn takes eighteen minutes because my driver understands that traffic laws are written for men with less urgent reasons to commit murder.
Maeve sits beside me without speaking. I do not tell her that Keane’s death confirms the traitor is one of the three men closest to me.
She knows. Callum, Ronan, and Eamon received the address.
One arranged the murder, one failed to prevent it, and one may still be loyal.
I built my life around these men. Now every memory involving them feels contaminated.
Keane lies in the bedroom with blood dried beneath his head.
The portable drive is missing, but the killer has not found the evidence hidden elsewhere.
That is why the room was gutted after his death.
Ronan shows me the security logs. The alarm never triggered during entry.
No window was forced, no lock picked, and no exterior camera captured an intruder.
At two thirteen, the reinforced door opened through the central Irish system.
A valid security token disabled the interior cameras for eleven minutes, then restored them after the killer left.
The murderer did not break in. Someone with Irish security clearance opened the door.