7. Maeve #2
Each word returns us to the call. Declan shouting from the airport while engines roared behind him.
My hand wrapped around the bathroom sink because nausea had struck before dawn.
A pregnancy test lay beside me, two blue lines forming while the man I loved promised my death through the phone.
I had imagined telling him differently. I planned to place the test inside the small wooden box where he kept his cuff links, then complain when he failed to notice it quickly enough.
He had once told me he did not want children because enemies could turn love into leverage.
I believed the lie because I saw him watching fathers lift their children onto their shoulders in Central Park, his expression hungry and carefully blank.
“I learned I was pregnant that morning.” My palm settles against my stomach, remembering a child small enough to be hidden from the entire world. “Ten minutes before you called.”
Declan goes motionless. “You knew while I was threatening you.”
“Yes.” My throat tightens, but I refuse to look away. “I was holding the test when you said you would kill me. I kept waiting for you to stop being angry long enough to ask whether the evidence made sense. You never did.”
The colour drains beneath his skin. Declan has faced guns without blinking and corpses without regret, yet this breaks through every defence he possesses.
His gaze drops to my stomach as if seven years might reverse themselves and show him the life he could have protected.
I remember his hands there before either of us knew Cillian existed.
He used to press his mouth below my navel after dragging pleasure from me, then complain that I became sentimental when I touched his hair.
Our son began in a body Declan knew intimately, and I fled before that body had time to change.
“What happened after the call?” His voice is rougher now. “Tell me everything.”
“An envelope arrived at my apartment forty minutes later.” I press my nails into my palms. “Inside was an execution order bearing your name, your seal, and the code used by your office that year. My photograph was attached, along with instructions authorising any Irish operative to kill me on sight. The order said I was to be silenced before federal protection could extract me.”
“I never signed it.” He rises, then stops himself from coming closer. “Maeve, I swear to you, I never ordered your death.”
“I know that now.” The admission hurts because knowing today cannot comfort the woman I was then.
“That morning, I had your threat in my ear and your name beneath instructions to put a bullet through my head. I had no reason to believe you would separate me from the child I carried. You did not know Cillian existed, but I knew. Protecting him became the only decision that mattered.”
Niamh collected me through the service entrance while Irish soldiers watched the front of my apartment.
We used a Gallagher shipping route not yet entered into the central system, travelled in the cargo section of a veterinary transport, and crossed into Canada with documents belonging to two women who had died years earlier.
From there, we moved through Iceland, Scotland, and finally Ireland before hiding in a village where no one cared why a widow and her pregnant niece avoided photographs.
I destroyed my phone, abandoned my accounts, and cut contact with everyone who might lead Declan to me.
Before leaving New York, however, I accessed one old Gallagher shell company and moved eleven dollars into an account Declan once used for private operations.
Eleven was the date we first met. The transfer note contained a single word only he should have understood.
“Raven.” Declan says it before I can. His eyes close for one tortured second. “The name of the hotel where we spent our first night.”
“You found it.” Hope, old and humiliating, cracks open inside me.
“I left one trace because part of me still believed you would investigate. I thought you would see the amount, read the note, and realise I was telling you I was alive. I thought once your anger cooled, you would examine the evidence and come after me.”
“I did find it.” Declan circles the table and stops in front of me. “Three days after the raid.”
The room loses its air. For seven years, I told myself he never noticed.
That explanation hurt less than knowing he saw my message and chose not to follow.
I stand because I cannot receive the rest of this sitting beneath him.
The movement brings us too close. His scent reaches me, smoke and cedar and the memory of waking with my face against his throat.
My body leans toward the past before my pride drags it still.
“You found my trace and left me there.” My voice is barely more than a whisper. “You knew I was alive.”
“I ordered my office to follow the transfer.” His hand lifts toward my face, then closes before touching me.
“The investigation came back within hours. Documents showed you had entered federal witness protection voluntarily. Your new identity was classified, your location sealed, and the transfer described as an attempt to provoke me into violating an agreement between the Crown and a federal contact.”
“And you believed that too.” I step away before his restraint fails or mine does. “How convenient for everyone except us.”
“I believed you had chosen protection over me.” His composure fractures, exposing something savage and wounded beneath it. “I thought Raven was cruelty. A message telling me you remembered what we were and had used it to escape.”
The confession changes the shape of my anger without reducing it.
He did follow. Someone placed another wall of evidence in his path and let his pride finish what the execution order began.
We spent seven years believing the other had made a choice neither of us made.
I carried his son in hiding because I thought Declan wanted me dead.
He let me vanish because he thought I had traded our life for immunity.
“Who handled the witness-protection verification?” I ask, though part of me already knows.
“The request passed through Eamon’s office.
” Declan’s face turns cold again, but his eyes remain fixed on mine.
“He supervised external intelligence and federal contacts then. Several analysts, clerks, and couriers worked beneath him, and any one of them could have inserted the documents before he reviewed the file.”
“That is suspicious, not proof.” Valeria’s advice returns to me with unsettling clarity. Give him the truth and let him decide what loyalty is worth when it demands blindness. “Eamon may have believed the same lies you did.”
“He may have.” Declan reaches for me again, and this time his fingers touch my cheek. “Or the man who raised me helped steal you from me.”
I should move. Instead, I remain beneath his hand while his thumb follows the line of my cheekbone with unbearable care.
Once, that touch meant safety. My body remembers even if my mind refuses.
Declan lowers his forehead to mine, and neither of us speaks for several breaths.
Grief stands between us, but so does the life we made before everything broke.
Two people can be deceived and still be responsible for the wounds they inflict.
His threat drove me away. My silence kept his son from him.
The conspiracy explains our choices, but it does not absolve them.
“I waited for you.” The truth escapes before I can make it less vulnerable. “For months, every unfamiliar car made me think you had found us. I was terrified you had come to kill me, and some pathetic part of me was still relieved you had come.”
Declan’s hand slides to the back of my neck. “If I had known you were carrying my child, no border would have kept me from you.”
“That is not romantic.” My breath catches as his mouth hovers too close to mine. “It sounds like an international incident.”
“For you, I would have made it several.” His lips brush my temple rather than taking the kiss neither of us is ready to survive. “Someone did not merely drive you away. They made certain I would never follow.”