Declan
Restlessness gets into a man like rust. Slow at first, harmless looking, then it spreads under the surface until everything feels fragile to the touch. That’s what these last weeks have done to me.
Even when nothing is happening, everything feels like it’s about to. The Russians have gone quiet—too quiet—and silence from them has never been a relief.
Conor corners me just past noon, in the warehouse office where we’re reviewing container manifests and security schedules.
He leans against the desk with that look in his eye—the same one he gets right before he tells Liam a hard truth.
But his focus has been more on me lately.
I’m starting to wonder if they have some kind of deal for Liam’s bestie to look out for me, the crazy, out-of-control brother.
“You’ve been off,” Conor says. “Weeks now.”
“I’ve been busy,” I mutter, flipping through the spreadsheet again even though I’m not seeing a goddamn number on it.
“You’ve been distracted,” he corrects.
I shut the binder harder than necessary. “Everything’s running. Shipments secure. Boys trained. Russians quiet. What exactly am I distracted from?”
“Everything,” he deadpans. “But start with the obvious.”
“And that would be?”
“Ailish.”
Her name slams into my chest like someone fired a nail gun through it. I give him a look. “I’m not doing this with you.”
“You don’t have to,” Conor says, pushing off the desk. “But maybe you should stop pretending you’re fine when you look like you’re thinking about setting half the city on fire.”
It’s ridiculous, the way she haunts me. How she’s been in my head like a splinter that no amount of whiskey or violence or strategy can dislodge.
She’s safe at Liam’s now, under double guard with the Italians hovering like overattentive uncles.
She’s working, surviving, even participating in Ronan’s self-defense sessions. She’s—Under Liam’s roof. Under Liam.
It’s irrational, I know it. She’s not his.
Liam isn’t that man. But logic has no place in whatever the hell it is that coils tight through my chest every time I picture her in that house, moving through those hallways I used to walk freely, laughing in rooms I can’t enter without a war to justify it.
Conor watches me too closely. “You know, you could just talk to her.”
I snort. “I’m not looking for advice on my love life.”
He blinks at me slowly. “Love life? Just how far into denial are you?”
“Deep enough to ignore that question.”
“Uh-huh. Well, while you’re ignoring reality, the Russians are making moves on the northern docks again. Maybe try thinking about that instead of whatever you’ve been brooding over.”
But that’s the problem. I have been thinking about that.
Constantly. There’s a hardened instinct inside me that won’t quiet—the sense that we are missing something obvious, that the Russians are baiting us, that every quiet hour is a noose tightening.
And Ailish… she’s the kind of target you pick if you want to destabilize an entire syndicate from the inside out.
She’s smart, visible, strategic, and she gets under everyone’s skin—Liam’s in the old days, mine now, and half the lieutenants who’ve ever been foolish enough to underestimate her.
“Security is getting adjusted,” I say flatly. “I have men running sweeps every six hours. Italians have the perimeter. Russians aren’t getting through.”
Conor lets out a breath. “That’s not what I meant.”
And I know it. I know what he’s implying, and I resent him for being right.
Because the truth is I’ve been running every scenario in my head—every outcome, every weakness, every point where I might lose control over this situation—and she is in every one of those calculations, whether I want her to be or not. It’s maddening.
Later that afternoon, when I still can’t focus, when even the weight of a gun on my hip feels like clutter instead of grounding, I find myself driving out to Liam’s compound like some idiot moth pulled to a flame that’s already burned him once.
I tell myself it’s strategy. I tell myself it’s about verifying the Italian and Irish guard rotations.
It’s none of those things. It’s her.
The house is busier than usual. Italians are stationed in the hallways.
Liam’s men stand scattered along the staircases.
Liam’s men stand scattered along the staircases.
A hum of tension is thick enough to taste, and in a room near the end of the corridor, I hear her voice—low, focused, issuing instructions like she was born doing it.
When I step inside, she looks up sharply. Her eyes widen, then narrow. “What are you doing here?”
“Checking security protocols,” I lie.
“Funny, because Ronan already did that this morning.”
“Then I’m double-checking.”
“You mean you’re avoiding your own work.”
She doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t have to. Every clipped syllable hits like a thrown knife. I cross my arms. “I don’t answer to you.”
“No,” she says, “you just show up unannounced, bark orders at everyone, and glare at the walls like they personally offended you.”
The room empties around us—quietly, efficiently—because even the new recruits know better than to get caught between us. Ailish stands from the desk, shoulders straight, eyes bright with heat. “Why are you really here, Declan?”
“I told you.”
“Coward,” she snaps.
The word cuts sharper than it should. I take a step toward her. She doesn’t back up. She never does.
“You handed me off in a parking lot,” she says, voice tight. “You looked at Mackenzie and said ‘she’s yours,’ like I was a set of keys. And then nothing. Weeks of nothing. If you think you get to walk into my workspace and pretend you don’t owe me anything, think again.”
I should walk away. If I had an ounce of good sense left in me, I would. But hearing her say coward sends something dark snaking through my veins, something possessive and reckless and starved.
I crowd her back toward the desk. She presses her palms to the edge, keeping distance between us. “Don’t,” she warns.
But I’ve already leaned in, breath brushing her cheek. “You think you know what I owe you?”
“I think you’re hiding,” she whispers. “From me. From yourself. From everything you felt that night.”
My hand finds her jaw before I can stop myself, thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. And despite every reason not to, despite the war, the Russians, Liam, the danger, the goddamn guarantees that this will only wreck us both—I kiss her.
It’s not soft. It’s not gentle. It’s a collision—weeks of restraint snapping like a bone.
Her breath shatters against mine. Her fingers clutch at my shirt for a single heartbeat, dragging me closer—Then she pushes me back hard enough that I actually step away.
Her chest heaves. Her eyes are glassy with anger, frustration, hurt, things I put there.
“You don’t get to do that,” she whispers, voice trembling.
“You’ll tear this city apart for me and you won’t sit in a room with me.
You do it all where nobody can see it, and then you leave, and I’m supposed to work out from the wreckage that you cared.
” Her jaw clenches. “I don’t need you as a distraction when the Russians are still watching me.
And I can’t work out whether being watched from inside this house is better or worse than being watched from outside it. ”
It isn’t the rejection that lands. It’s that she’s right, and that she got there on partial information, and that I’m the one who gave her the partial information.
She steps around me toward the door. “Focus on your job, Declan. You’re in charge of the speakeasy, the shipments, and half the security operations. Start acting like it. The Russians aren’t waiting for you to get your head on straight.”
Her words slide under my ribs like a blade. She doesn’t raise her voice, but the blow lands anyway.
I watch her disappear down the hall, shoulders squared the way they get when she’s furious enough to cry but refuses to.
I stand there too long. Long enough that Conor texts me:
Conor; Opening week tonight. You showing up or letting the boys drink without you?
I stare at the screen. At the empty hallway. At the imprint of her mouth still burning against mine. Then I text back:
Declan; Pour me a drink. I’m on my way.
And I leave the office with every intention of getting drunk enough to stop thinking about her.
The trip is short, or maybe it’s just the fact that I will my mind to go blank so I don’t notice the distance.
The boys are already loud by the time I reach the speakeasy, their voices spilling up the back stairwell like heat from a boiler room.
The pub upstairs is packed—opening week draws in half the neighborhood—but the real party is below, where our investment is meant to thrive and rot at the same time.
A legitimate business upstairs, a shadow operation downstairs. The Italians’ brilliant idea. Mine and Conor’s burden to keep clean enough not to attract the wrong kind of attention.
The door guard spots me and stiffens. Not because he’s scared—he’s loyal—but because he knows what my face looks like when I’m trying too hard to look calm. “Good evening, sir,” he says, stepping aside.
The basement is half lit, smoky, warm with bodies and spilled whiskey and the thrum of a jazz-blues fusion band the Italians insisted would ‘guarantee atmosphere.’ The leather booths shine under dim lighting; the wallpaper looks like it belongs in a 1920s brothel.
It’s aesthetic, indulgent, and dangerous—like everything in our lives.
Conor lifts a glass when he sees me. “Twenty-two minutes. I told Rory thirty.”
I drop into the booth beside him, snatching the nearest glass. I don’t ask what’s in it before drinking half of it in one swallow. It burns. Not enough.
Rory slides in opposite me. “You look like shit.”
“Feel fine,” I lie.
“You always say that when you’re two minutes from punching someone,” Conor mutters, motioning the server for another bottle. “Who is it this time? Liam? Me? Yourself?”