20. Declan
Declan
Cillian bites Eamon hard enough to draw blood.
My uncle’s pistol jerks away from the boy’s throat as he curses, and Maeve moves before anyone else.
She catches our son against her body and throws them both behind the steel control console.
Eamon swings the weapon toward them. I cross the distance between us before his finger reaches the trigger.
My shoulder drives into his chest and carries him into the engine controls.
Metal cracks beneath his spine. The pistol falls, but he claws for the knife inside his coat.
I break two fingers around its handle, twist his arm behind him, and force him face-first onto the grated floor.
Fifteen years of stolen executions roar through my blood.
Patrick’s body, Callum’s cut throat, Keane’s blood, Maeve holding a pregnancy test while my threat reached her over the phone.
Killing Eamon would require one movement.
Keeping him alive demands every fragment of discipline he ever taught me.
“Declan.” Maeve crouches behind the console with Cillian locked against her chest. “We need him breathing.”
“I am aware.” I press Eamon’s broken fingers into the grate until he cries out. “I am considering how much breathing qualifies.”
Ronan secures Eamon’s wrists with steel restraints while Crown soldiers take the remaining loyalists.
Above us, Volkov’s men control the bridge and Lorenzo’s crews detain the captain.
The engines fall to idle before the Carrick clears its berth.
Harbour water opens beyond the windows, close enough to promise escape and too far to provide it.
Cillian clings to Maeve with both arms around her neck.
His face remains buried against her shoulder until I approach.
Then he lifts his head and studies the blood on my hands.
I stop several feet away, unwilling to force him closer after he has spent hours trapped beside the man who taught me what family was supposed to mean.
“Are you hurt?” I ask. “Tell me the truth, even if you think your mother will worry.”
Cillian shakes his head. “He grabbed too hard, but I am green.”
Maeve closes her eyes and kisses his hair. Tears slip down her face without weakening the fierce grip around him. “You were very brave. You are also grounded until you are thirty.”
“I was kidnapped.” His voice trembles despite the objection. “That is not the same as leaving without permission.”
“Your appeal has been denied.”
I kneel and hold out my hand. Cillian stares at it before loosening one arm from Maeve and reaching for me.
His fingers are small, cold, and alive. When I pull them both against my chest, something inside me that has remained clenched since seeing the photograph finally breaks.
Maeve’s face presses into my neck. Cillian is held between us, protected by the family Eamon tried to keep divided.
The secure Irish facility beneath a Crown-owned clinic receives Eamon before dawn.
We use a location never connected to the execution branch and surround it with mixed teams from all five factions.
Eamon is searched twice, scanned, photographed, and placed in an interrogation room without furniture beyond a bolted chair.
A doctor treats his broken fingers and the cut across his forearm from the struggle aboard the ship.
The medical orderly assisting her has worked at the clinic for nine years and passes every security check.
That should reassure me. Nothing connected to longevity does anymore.
Maeve stays with Cillian through his examination while I enter the observation room.
The boy has bruising on his shoulder and mild dehydration, but no serious injury.
Niamh regained consciousness before we reached the harbour and demanded to speak to him.
Maeve holds the phone while Cillian explains that biting is effective but tastes unpleasant.
Hearing his voice through the wall steadies me more than whiskey ever did.
Adrianos and Elena work beside the interrogation feed, decrypting the ledger recovered from the ship’s control system.
Eamon carried an updated copy on an encrypted key sewn into his coat.
The entries contain payment routes, operational names, and remaining nodes within the Irish assassination network.
Most identities remain coded, but Elena has already connected three to men serving beneath Ronan and two to former Crown liaisons.
“We have enough to dismantle the current branch.” Adrianos points to a set of rotating transfers. “Not enough to identify whoever built OB6. Eamon received instructions through intermediaries whose accounts were emptied and closed after every operation.”
“He claims he never met the person above him.” Elena opens a series of authenticated messages. “The credentials are genuine, but they rotate between all five factions. Whoever issued them either has access inside the Crown or has been collecting credentials for decades.”
“Then Eamon gives us every node he knows.” I watch my uncle through the glass. “After that, he can discover whether exile is more comfortable when breathing becomes optional.”
Maeve enters before the interrogation begins. Cillian is asleep upstairs with Niamh and guards selected jointly by Volkov and Lorenzo. Her eyes find mine across the room. I touch the back of her neck when she reaches me, needing the contact more than I care who notices.
“He asked whether you killed Eamon.” Her hand settles against my chest. “I told him not yet.”
“Optimistic phrasing.”
“He has inherited your interest in efficient conclusions.” She looks through the glass. “Do not let Eamon turn this into another lesson about obedience.”
“This time, I am the one asking questions.”
Eamon raises his head when we enter the interrogation room together. His right hand is splinted. A white medical dressing covers the cut along his left forearm. He looks older beneath the harsh lights, but defeat has not cured his arrogance.
“I want exile.” He sits back as far as the restraints allow. “A neutral country, protected passage, and ten percent of the money Adrianos froze.”
“You kidnapped my son and placed a gun beneath his jaw.” I take the chair opposite him while Maeve remains beside me. “Your negotiating position lacks charm.”
“You need names.” Eamon glances toward the mirrored glass. “Kill me, and the remaining network disappears into your organisation. Spare me, and I give you every operative, courier, account, and dead channel.”
“I will consider exile after your information is verified.” I place a recorder on the table. “Lie once, and the offer ends.”
He begins with Maeve. Perhaps he thinks confessing to crimes already proven costs him nothing.
He admits ordering the anonymous federal tip from his office, copying her signature from the compliance report, and having his courier deliver the fabricated evidence to my desk.
The informant statement and witness-protection records were created after she fled.
Every attempt she made to reach me passed through accounts his office monitored.
“I needed you angry, not grieving.” Eamon looks directly at me. “If you believed she betrayed you willingly, you remained useful. If you learned she fled because someone forged your authority, you would have dismantled the system searching for her.”
Maeve stands perfectly still beside my chair. “You knew I was pregnant.”
“I knew by the fourth month.” Eamon shows no remorse. “The surveillance team confirmed probable paternity. Keeping the boy hidden preserved your disappearance and Declan’s rage. There was no reason to harm him then.”
“There was no reason?” My hands remain flat on the table because wrapping them around his throat would end the confession. “He was my son.”
“He was leverage I did not yet require.”
The room seems to narrow around that answer. Maeve’s fingers touch my shoulder, a quiet reminder that Cillian is safe above us. I continue because justice sometimes requires listening when murder would be kinder.
Eamon admits corrupting the execution system fifteen years ago through the concealed administrative route.
He used analysts, Crown liaisons, and couriers who believed they served separate operations.
Some knew the orders were altered. Others verified fragments without seeing the whole.
Callum discovered the pattern nine months ago, forcing Eamon to threaten his wife and daughter.
Keane found the archived access trail, so Eamon sent men to murder him and search for the evidence.
When suspicion shifted toward Callum, Eamon ordered a loyalist inside my estate to kill him and paint the wolf-crown symbol above his body.
“The order against Cillian came after Keane contacted Maeve.” Eamon’s gaze moves between us.
“Her return threatened the network. The plan was simple. Kill the woman and the child, recover the drive, and leave both deaths beneath Declan’s legitimate code.
The Crown would believe grief drove him mad.
The Irish captains would divide, and I would restore order. ”
“By taking my throne.” I hear my father’s voice in the words, though his brother no longer deserves the memory.
“By taking what should always have been mine.”
The ledger confirms payments for the safe-house attackers, Keane’s murder, Callum’s guards, Hanley, and the Carrick.
Eamon identifies nine remaining Irish nodes and three intermediaries outside the faction.
He provides account phrases, meeting points, and the location of a second authentication workshop. He cannot name the mastermind.