Liam
When I walk into the place I’ve shared with Danny and Ryan for the past couple of years, I find my brother standing in front of an open kitchen cabinet.
“I need you to do something for me.” I don’t beat around the bush or waste time with pleasantries. I should have talked to him yesterday, but my beautiful wife was too great of a distraction. Fortunately, Ryan isn’t big on social graces anyway.
“Okay,” he agrees easily, going back toward the refrigerator for his overnight oats.
He makes them in a container every night and eats them every morning.
Precisely a half cup each of plain Greek yogurt, oats solidified with almond milk, fresh sliced strawberries, all topped with exactly two tablespoons of dark honey.
Some might find Ryan’s devotion to his various routines strange.
I love the predictability. It’s a breath of fresh air in a world where nothing else is as it appears on the surface.
“I need you to trace a bank account,” I say with a sigh, before sitting at the kitchen table. I explain the situation to my brother, who makes his way to the table, oats and orange juice in hand.
He nods as he sits beside me. “Okay.” He spoons in a mouthful of the fruit, yogurt, and oatmeal mixture.
“I don’t imagine this will be easy, Ry, but I need it done this morning.”
He groans. “I have a paper to finish.”
“How about I work on your paper while you work on getting access to the account?”
He gives me the side eye. Considers. “Give me what you have on it. Let me see how long this should take and then we can negotiate.” My brother’s hacking skills are phenomenal, so I’m hopeful that it won’t take too long.
I managed to steal the file that Darragh had been carrying, which listed the investors in the Greek shell company along with their account information.
I’m going to have to tell him that I found it on a side table near where my father had been sipping his whiskey.
Darragh won’t believe that story, but it doesn’t matter. I got what I needed. I hope.
“I’m sure the Greeks have everything locked down pretty well.”
Ryan waves a hand. Sips his orange juice. “They had to have created some holes when they intentionally leaked the information on Taryn. I just have to replicate them. With any luck, they forgot to close a loop. I’ll figure it out.” He inhales another huge spoonful of his breakfast.
I would say that was arrogant, but my brother doesn’t know how to be cocky.
Every family at St. A’s has some pretty high-end security systems surrounding their business.
Yet, Ryan is unperturbed by the thought of getting past the Greeks’ firewalls.
His interest in technology is going to make him the finest hacker that our clan has ever seen.
That is, if my father ever decides to give him the time of day.
He has managed to successfully avoid my brother—and his “special brain” as my mother calls it—for most of our lives.
Ryan’s autism often disconcerts people. He’s different, and the underworld is not a place that appreciates anyone who doesn’t fit a certain mold.
We all have legacies to uphold. We are born and bred to fit into neat little boxes, and Ryan definitely colors outside of those lines.
It’s like people don’t know how to act around him.
Some scoff. His random facts and awkward nature irritate them.
Others talk to him like he’s a child, despite the fact that he is likely more intelligent than they are.
I think it’s hard for people to understand him because most have this two-dimensional view of what they perceive autism to be.
They usually picture a nonverbal kid who needs a ton of support for basic life skills, or, on the other end of the spectrum, Sheldon Cooper.
Ryan is neither. He’s just Ryan. He hates crowds and loud environments, but he doesn’t freak out about either.
He can be irritatingly honest and maybe a little abrupt, but he also has a good sense of humor.
He gets hyper-focused on certain things, but so far, only computers and technology have held his interest long term.
He definitely went through a geology stage in high school, which I suppose explains the random facts about diamonds and emeralds he shared with Taryn at our engagement party.
Funny, I mainly recall hearing about magma when he was younger.
He’s smart. Loyal. Kind. Reserved. And I worry about him every single fucking day.
I am heartened by the easy way that Taryn has interacted with him so far.
Yeah, I know. It shouldn’t be a big deal.
Hell, Ryan has conversations all the time.
But, the first time they spoke, he did a bit of that self-soothing thing with his fingers that sometimes freaks people out.
She also saw the way he sent his food back at Titus last night when the various dishes touched on the plate.
She didn’t even flinch. She carried the dialogue back to neutral ground.
And, weirdly enough, they had a discussion she appeared to be genuinely interested in.
She cared what my brother had to say. Spoke to him like the man that he is.
I wish our father could see him the same way. Interesting. Smart. Focused.
“Is Taryn okay?”
Ryan’s question catches me off guard. “Why would you ask that?”
He raises an eyebrow at me. “Really, Liam?”
I sigh and tunnel my hands through my hair.
“I have no fucking idea.” She’s run hot and cold over the past twenty-four hours.
I have no idea what the next twenty-four will bring.
She’s either been seducing me or crying on my shoulder since our wedding.
While I love having her close, I realize we need to normalize before too long.
“Hey! Look who’s here!” Danny comes ambling into the kitchen in just his boxers, steals a strawberry from my brother’s bowl. Ryan growls. The normalcy of it all fills me with relief. The whole world hasn’t changed.
“Thanks for packing up my shit, dickhead.” I frown at him.
Danny laughs. “When did I turn into your butler?”
“Taryn’s girlfriends packed up her stuff,” I mutter.
He grins like a wolf. “Of course they did. Hell, if you looked like Taryn, I’d go out of my way for you too.”
I give him a warning look, and Danny chuckles. “What? Too soon?”
“Too stupid,” I growl, and Ryan smirks into his overnight oats like this is better than TV.
Danny throws up his hands. “Alright, alright. Guess this is the end of an era, huh? No more teasing you about your women. Can’t believe the day has finally come—Liam McGuiness, married man.”
I snort, grabbing the last beer from the fridge. I don’t care that it’s before 10 a.m. “Yeah, well, you’d better believe it. I’m married now.”
The words land heavier than I expect. Married. Christ.
Danny claps me on the shoulder, still grinning, but his voice fades under the weight of my thoughts. Married. Was it supposed to feel like this? I can’t tell if the knot in my chest is because of the vows I just took—or because of the woman I took them with.
Ryan finally looks up from his bowl, his expression as flat and unreadable as ever. “You don’t look like a guy who signed his life away,” he says. He tilts his head. Studies me. “You look…different. Serious. You’ve already decided you’re in this, whether you want to be or not.”
I stare at him, momentarily thrown. Ryan doesn’t say much, but when he does, it lands. He’s too fucking observant, my brother.
“Guess marriage suits you,” he adds with a small shrug, going back to his remaining strawberries like he didn’t just pin me to the wall with a single observation.
I open my mouth, but there’s nothing to say. He’s not wrong. I’ve been pushing for this marriage since the second I saw my chance, but what sounded fun in theory—marrying the gorgeous, sassy Walsh girl—feels like something bigger now. Real. Raw. A weight I want to carry.
“What’s the look?” Danny asks with a grin.
“Just thinking about the ball and chain.”
He bursts out laughing. I meant it as a joke to lighten the mood. Yet, it feels off somehow.
“Yeah, can’t wait to see her marching you around campus with a to-do list. Bet she already has your nuts in her purse.” Danny looks delighted. “That chick is definitely a ball breaker.”
I growl before I can stop myself. The sound is low, warning, and both Danny and Ryan freeze. She isn’t some chick. She’s my fucking wife.
“Whoa, easy,” Danny says, raising his hands with a laugh. “It’s just a joke, man.”
But it’s not funny. Not when it’s about her. Not when she’s mine.
Ryan studies me quietly, spoon halfway to his mouth. “Yeah. You’ve changed,” he says finally. “Didn’t think I’d see the day when my big brother stopped laughing at jokes.”
I want to deny it, but he’s right. Maybe I’m finally growing up. Just like my father always wanted. Except… I’m not doing it for him. I’m doing it for her.
“Don’t you have an account to crack?” I grumble at Ryan.
He nods as he rises from the table.
“There’s a folder on my nightstand,” I tell him. “You’ll have everything you need in there.”
“I doubt it will be everything I need,” he responds. He’s not being sarcastic. He’s stating a fact. “But, I’ll figure it out.” Again, fact.
“Thanks, Ry.”
He nods again as he heads to the stairs. “Don’t thank me yet, Liam. Give me about thirty minutes and I’ll let you know what can be done.”
“I’m gonna go shower,” Danny informs me, “but I can help you move your shit into your new place after that.”
I nod. “Not going to class?”
He shrugs. “Fuck chemistry.”
I smile and head up to start packing.
I’ve changed clothes and am only twenty minutes into shoving my crap into black garbage bags—because who needs boxes—when Ryan taps on my door.
“I’m in.”
“Already?” Ryan is good, but this is too good.
He shrugs. “They leaked the fund data intentionally for Bobby to find it. They made it too easy to find, so of course, he did. To do that, they weakened one of their own firewalls to allow him entry. I watched how they did it and mapped their entry sequence. Now I have their pattern.” He sighs as I watch him with my mouth hanging open.
“I’m inside their network. I left a small executable that keeps a persistent connection.
They won’t see it unless they’re actively looking for anomalies, which I suppose they could do.
I have an alert set to tell me if they find it. ”
“I don’t know what half of that meant,” I confess.
He sighs. “It means I have root access now.” At my look of confusion, he shakes his head.
“It means that we have a way in, Liam. I can control the account if you want me to. But, like I said, I have a paper to write. I didn’t know what information you wanted from their accounts, so I bypassed their authentication and mirrored their transaction logs.
Right now, I’m mapping all accounts connected to that fund. There appear to be a lot of them.”
“I—wow, Ryan. It’s only been twenty minutes. This is unbelievable.” I am in shock as much as anything else.
He begins his finger tapping. “Like I said, they weakened their own firewall when they leaked the information. That showed me their sequence. It was only—”
“Okay, Ry, okay. I wasn’t questioning you. I was complimenting you.”
“Oh.” He frowns. His hand stills. “Oh. I see. Well, thank you.”
“No, thank you. This is amazing. Really.”
My brother blushes. “So, uh, yeah. When you tell me what information you want about the transactions, I can get that for you. I need a couple hours to write this history paper first, though, okay?”
I grin. “Can’t ChatGPT write it?”
My brother looks scandalized. “ChatGPT? Please tell me you don’t use AI to write your papers, Liam. That would be cheating. You could get expelled.”
I can’t help my roar of laughter. God. I adore my little brother.
He blushes harder, so I try to contain my chuckles.
“Sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you.” I am perfectly aware he thinks I am, so I explain.
“I’m laughing at the irony of you breaking into the Greeks’ accounts and then lecturing me about cheating. ”
His brow furrows. “One criminal breaking the law to hurt another criminal is not synonymous with cheating the educational system that is meant to prepare us for the future.”
This time I manage to hold back my laughter. My brother. So logical. “No. I suppose you’re right.”
He frowns.
“Seriously, Ry. You are the best. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
He nods and tries to hide his small grin as he turns away from me.
“Hey, one more thing.”
He turns back around.
“If Da or Darragh ask, you did this a couple days ago. Before my wedding. I may have told Da I already had account access when the wedding happened.”
Ryan nods slowly. I’m asking him to lie. To our father. “Okay, Liam.”
“Thank you.”
He starts to turn and then stops himself. “What would you have done if I couldn’t get access?”
“Never even crossed my mind, Ry. I knew you’d get in.”
This time, his smile is wide. I have to restrain myself from ruffling his hair like when we were kids. Instead, I watch as he shuffles down the hallway, headed to his room to write a paper.