Chapter 22
Gregor
I was at the gate house when the threat arrived in a cream envelope with a wax seal.
I turned it over twice. The paper was heavy, and smelled of peat smoke and expensive ink.
Fergus sniffed the corner and sneezed.
"Agreed," I told him.
The man who'd delivered it was already walking back toward the main road, his shoulders hunched against the October damp. Gray wool coat. Battered features. The look of Irish street muscle who'd been sent on an errand he didn't fully understand and didn't like.
I could have stopped him. I didn't. He was a courier, not a combatant, and I had a terrier in a camouflage sweater waiting for me to finish the morning patrol.
"Come," I said to Fergus. "We have a job to do."
Fergus looked at the man, then at me, then produced a single bark that was clearly a warning.
We walked the long curve of the driveway toward the house. The frost was still melting in the shaded patches, and the mist clung to the hedges. Behind us, the guards at the gatehouse were changing shifts. Ahead, the house glowed gold in the pale morning, every window lit against the gray.
"The letter is from Callum McCarthy," I told Fergus.
Fergus trotted faster. His sweater had a small tag on the back that said Security, which Mary had ordered online before she left and which I had not removed because I liked it.
"He wants his daughters back."
Fergus's ears twitched.
"No doubt he wants the deal enacted."
We walked in silence for another twenty yards. The gravel crunched under my boots. Fergus stopped to investigate a patch of something that had probably been interesting to a rabbit several hours ago.
"I should tell Maeve immediately," I said.
Fergus lifted his head.
"But I will tell Artem first. That is protocol."
Fergus stared at me.
I exhaled. "Because Artem will know what to say to her.
He always knows what to say. He reads books and leaves sticky notes and touches her face like he's been doing it for decades.
I've known her for the same amount of time and I still hand her water bottles and hope she understands how much I want her. "
Fergus sat down.
"Don't look at me like that."
He continued looking at me like that.
"I am not jealous," I said. "I am... observing a skill deficit. It’s a good trait to identify ones weaknesses."
Fergus yawned.
"Fine. I'm jealous."
We reached the house. I left Fergus in the mudroom with a towel and his motivational rations. He'd earned them, the patrol had been thorough, and surprisingly I enjoyed his company. I walked to Artem's office with the envelope still in my hand.
Artem was at his desk. Ivan was in the leather chair by the window, field-stripping a sidearm with the ease of someone who could do it in his sleep and probably had.
I dropped the envelope on the desk.
Ivan's hands stopped moving.
Artem picked it up. Wax seal. Irish crest. The sort of stationery men used when they wanted to remind you they had heritage while threatening your family.
He read it. His jaw clenched so hard I heard a crack.
"Well," he said, setting the letter down. "Callum is coming."
Ivan slammed the magazine back into his gun with more force than necessary. "When?"
"Friday."
"That's four days."
"Yes."
"We could kill him at the gate."
"We could," Artem agreed. "And then we'd spend the next three years fighting every Irish syndicate from Dublin to Chicago while the council decides whether we're worth the headache." He leaned back. "Maeve deserves to know. This is her father. Her decision."
Ivan shifted in his chair. "She just stopped flinching at doors."
"She's stronger than you think. She held her own in front of the council."
Ivan looked at me, surprised. I rarely offered opinions. It wasn't my role.
But I'd been watching Maeve for a long time now.
I'd seen her stand in a room full of Bratva bosses and insult Yuri's tailoring.
I'd seen her walk into a Vegas chapel with a scar bared and her chin up.
I'd seen her feed our son at three in the morning while humming something Irish and sad, and I'd stood in the hallway outside the nursery like an idiot because I didn't know how to go in and offer company without a tactical reason.
"We've been treating her like glass," I said. "She's not glass. She's the woman who survived a forced bond and three years alone and still stopped to pick up a freezing dog on the side of a road."
Fergus, who had somehow escaped the mudroom and followed me to the office, barked once in affirmation.
"We don't hide this from her," I continued. "We bring her in."
Artem's mouth curved. "I agree."
"You already knew that."
"I did. I was waiting for you to say it."
Ivan looked between us. "Is this a test? Were you testing us?"
"No," Artem said. "I was testing Gregor. He passed."
I didn't know what to do with that, so I went to get Maeve.
She was in the kitchen when I found her, wearing one of my sweaters which did something to me I couldn’t work out. I’d had sex with Maeve. Knotted her many times. Shared her with my pack mates but this. I inhaled deeply. She was wearing my clothes. Not Artem’s. Mine
I stood for too long watching her holding a mug of tea. Her hair was in a loose knot on top of her head. There was a crease on her cheek from where she'd fallen asleep against a cushion while feeding Mac.
She looked soft. Domestic. Callum McCarthy had spent his life underestimating his daughter because he confused gentleness with weakness.
"You're staring," she said without turning around.
"I’m observing."
"That's what Artem says when he's staring."
"Artem and I share a vocabulary."
She turned. The smile on her face flickered when she saw my expression. "What's happened?"
"Artem needs you in the office. It's about your father."
The smile didn't fall. It changed. Became something older and harder, a blade being drawn so slowly you didn't hear the scrape.
"Okay," she said.
We walked to the office together. I matched my pace to hers. Artem would have put a hand on her back. Ivan would have pulled her against his side. I walked beside her with eighteen inches of air between us and hoped proximity was enough.
She took my hand. “It’ll be okay.”
“I’m supposed to say that to you,” I replied, lifting her hand and pressing my mouth on the palm.
We stopped outside the door. Just for a moment. Maeve reached up on her tiptoes and pressed her mouth against mine. “You taste so good.”
My hard heart softened.
In the office, Artem handed her the letter.
She read it standing up. Her hands were steady. Her breathing hitched once at the beginning and then settled into something slower and deeper than before.
Not fear exactly.
"It says he's coming Friday," she said.
"Yes."
"To collect what he's owed."
"Yes."
She set the letter down and smoothed the front of my sweater. A small, deliberate gesture, the kind women made when they were collecting themselves. I'd seen her do it before the council meeting. I'd seen her do it in Vegas.
"Good," she said. "That gives me four days."
Ivan blinked. "Good? Your father is coming here to—"
"I read the letter, Ivan. It had his usual charm. Very ransom note, but with superior penmanship."
“You’re not frightened," Artem asked.
"Of course I'm frightened. I'm not suddenly made of marble because I married into a family with too many firearms."
"Then why good?" I asked.
She looked at me. Her green eyes were very clear.
"Because for once I know he's coming. I know the date, the time, and the door.
That's practically luxurious compared to my usual trauma arrangements." She grinned, looking at each of us in turn. “And he thinks I’m dead. Imagine that, he expects Mary and he’s going to get the daughter he tells everyone is dead.”
Ivan stared at her for one more beat, then laughed under his breath.
Maeve pointed at him. "Don't look so proud. I'm still angry with organized crime as a concept."
"All of it?"
"Most of it. I'm willing to make exceptions for good childcare and excellent security."
She walked out. The door clicked shut behind her.
“That’s our omega," Artem said. There was a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, the one that meant he was proud of her and trying not to be obvious about it.
I left them to their strategy and went to find Fergus.
He was back in the mudroom, lying on his comfy dog bed with a chicken treat between his paws. He looked up when I came in.
"She’s brave," I told him.
Fergus tilted his head.
"Her father is about to see her alive and her response was good."
The treat crunched.
"I don't understand her," I said. "I've been watching her for weeks and I still don't understand how she does it. How she takes something that should break her and turns it into—" I stopped. "Fuel. Ammunition. Whatever the word is."
Fergus finished the treat and waited for another.
"She held my hand." I pulled a treat from my jacket pocket and held it out. Fergus took it delicately. "And kissed it."
Fergus chewed.
"I am very good at threat assessment and adequate at hydration reminders. I am not good at—" I gestured vaguely. "The emotional stuff, but I’m trying."
The dog offered no solutions. This was the problem with canine counsel. Supportive, but limited in practical application.
Later that afternoon, I passed Mac's nursery on the way to check the second-floor windows. Security was security, even when emotions were running high. Especially then.
The door was cracked open.
I stopped.
Maeve was inside, sitting cross-legged on the rug with Mac in her lap. Her voice was low and melodic, a rhythm I didn't recognize. It took me several seconds to place the language.
Irish.
She was speaking in Irish to our son.
I couldn't understand the words, but I understood the cadence.
Then she spoke in English. She was telling him a story.
The grandmother he'd never meet. The country she'd been forced to flee.
She was taking the pieces of her past that had been weaponized against her and turning them into something she could give away.
Ivan appeared beside me. We stood together in the hallway, neither of us moving, neither of us speaking.
Her voice rose and fell. Mac made a soft sound.
Ivan reached out and pulled the door gently shut.
Neither of us said anything. We walked back down the corridor in silence.
At the staircase, Ivan stopped. "You should tell her you like her."
"Everyone likes her," I said. "Of course I like her, she's the omega of the pack."
"That's not what I meant."
I didn't answer.
"You should tell her," Ivan said.
"Tell her what? That I watched her tell Irish stories to our son and it made my chest feel like it was being reorganized by someone who didn't know where anything went?"
"Yes. That." He grinned.
"Artem is the Pakhan."
"Artem is your pack mate. He is also a man who reads baby books and leaves sticky notes."
"I didn't leave sticky notes."
"You laminated a feeding schedule."
"That was operational."
"It was romantic. You just don't know it yet."
As I considered this, Ivan clapped me on the shoulder and went downstairs, leaving me at the top of the staircase with Fergus, who had reappeared from somewhere and was looking at me expectantly.
"What?" I asked.
Fergus barked once.
"Your opinion is noted."
He trotted down the stairs, presumably to guard the house, which was apparently his role now. He forgot that we have Dobermans guarding the grounds and house.
I stood at the top of the stairs for another minute. Through the window at the end of the hall, the grounds stretched gray and green toward the tree line. Somewhere beyond the gates, Callum McCarthy was preparing to collect a debt.
But inside the nursery, Maeve was teaching our son the language of a country she'd been forced to leave, and somewhere in that act was the answer to a question I hadn't known how to ask.
How do you make someone you when they’ve been broken once before by love?
Fergus was right. I was being stupid. You don't make them or fix them. You hand them the pieces and let them decide what to build.