Chapter 20 Liam
After Roxy stepped outside to make a call, I stood and started gathering plates, more out of habit than anything. My mother, before her untimely death, had drilled manners into all of us boys young, whether or not the family business ever suggested we were gentlemen.
"Look at this one," Mary said, nudging my arm as I stacked her plate onto mine. "Volunteering for dish duty. Wife hasn't even signed the papers yet and he's already trying to earn brownie points."
"Somebody's gotta do it," I said. "Might as well be me."
"Careful," Aunt Orla called from the kitchen doorway, amused. "Word gets around that you're helpful, and suddenly it's expected every Sunday."
I was halfway to the kitchen, arms full of plates, when my phone buzzed against my hip. I balanced the stack awkwardly against the counter and checked the screen.
Sean.
My stomach dropped straight through the floor. Sean didn't call during family dinner unless it was important.
"Duty calls?" Da said dryly from his seat, not even glancing up from his coffee.
"Just a work thing. Two minutes." I was already moving toward the stairs, phone pressed to my ear before I'd even cleared the dining room.
"Keep it short," Mary called after me, laughing. "Dishes don't wash themselves, cousin."
"I only need two minutes," I promised again. I climbed up the stairs, the sound of my family's activities fading as I reached the second floor.
"Talk to me," I said, moving into the first bedroom on the right.
"I found it," Sean said, and something in his voice made the hair on my arms stand up before he even got to the name. "Traced the shell all the way through. Confirmed it, cross-referenced with banking records, the whole thing. It's airtight."
"Who."
"Declan."
I stopped pacing.
I don't know what I expected. Some small, cowardly part of me had been bracing for it since Sean first mentioned the shell company weeks ago.
Hearing it said out loud was worse than the sour taste of suspicion I'd been carrying these past few days.
My knees actually went weak for a half-second, some old, animal part of my brain refusing to process it.
Declan. Who taught me how to throw a punch when I was nine years old. Who sat across from me not three hours ago, refilling his wine, calling Roxy back into the family like he hadn't spent a year having her tracked, watched, hunted.
Who I now had to assume—God help me—had done something terrible. Something worse than skimming money. It was the only reason why he'd turn against Roxy. Us. His family.
"You're sure," I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
"Positive. That time when Niall supposedly pulled out of the Silver Anchor?
Never happened. It looks like Declan moved the funds to a new account and stayed on.
Making himself rich on the side, with your father's money.
At least until the casino went bust." A pause, heavy with everything neither of us wanted to say.
"Man's smarter than any of us ever gave him credit for.
Careful, too. If Roxy hadn't come back to town, we might never have caught it at all. "
That was the part that terrified me most, standing there in my father's driveway with my family's lively voices still audible from downstairs.
Declan wasn't some hotheaded cousin who'd made one desperate mistake.
He was patient. Controlled. Capable of sitting across a dinner table from the woman whose silence he needed, without so much as a flicker of guilt crossing that charming face.
If he was capable of that kind of performance, I had no idea what else he might be capable of.
"I'm coming to you," I said, already rushing back downstairs. "I need everything you've got, tonight. And I need to figure out how to tell my father his own nephew's been—"
I didn't finish the sentence. Something cold and sharp cut through my chest, an instinct sharper than reason as I arrived downstairs. I found myself scanning the dining room, the kitchen, the sitting room where the men usually sat after dinner for whiskey and coffee. Declan was nowhere to be found.
And neither was Roxy.
"Sean, I'll call you back." I hung up before he could respond, already moving fast toward the front door, shoving through it hard enough that it banged against the wall.
“Liam?” one of my aunts called out.
I ran out to the driveway where my truck sat parked at the far edge near the tree line, half-swallowed by shadow.
That's when I heard it.
A scream, sharp and terrified, cut through the quiet night air from the direction of the truck. It was Roxy's scream, and the sound of it chilled me straight to the bone.
I ran.
My lungs burned, gravel crunching hard under my shoes, the warm gold light of my father's house falling away behind me as I sprinted into the dark. And then I saw them, illuminated by the pale wash of my truck's dome light spilling out through the open passenger door.
Declan was standing rigid a few feet from the truck, one arm extended, steady and cold, a gun leveled directly at Roxy, who stood frozen just a few feet away. The manila folder was tucked under his left arm.
"Declan!" My voice tore out of me, raw and desperate, echoing across the dark yard. "What the hell are you doing?"
He didn't turn to look at me. His eyes stayed locked on Roxy, his easy, charming face gone utterly cold, a stranger wearing my cousin's features.
"Stay back, Liam," he said, his voice terrifyingly calm.
I didn’t have time to think. I sprinted, moving too fast and too slow all at the same time. Roxy screamed again, raising both hands in submission.
“No!”
There was a flash of light, followed by the impossible volume of the gun firing.
I fell to my knees.