Ailish
Declan stands in my doorway, shoulders rigid, jaw clenched hard enough I can hear the faint grind of his teeth. He doesn’t look at the overturned envelope. He doesn’t look at the ultrasound photo on the floor. He only looks at me.
A storm. Contained by a thread.
I force myself to inhale. My lungs fight it. “Declan… I’m pregnant.”
The words land with a weight I’ve been holding in my chest for weeks. They fall into the tiny space between us and echo like a confession in a cathedral.
For a heartbeat, two heartbeats, ten—he’s still. Then the muscle beneath his eye twitches once. “I see,” he says quietly. A whisper. A warning.
My throat tightens. “It’s yours.” Nothing changes in his posture, but everything changes in the air.
“Of course it is,” he says coldly.
My stomach drops. “Declan—”
“You think I’m an idiot?” he cuts in sharply, stepping forward. “You think I need you to tell me that?” he cuts in sharply, stepping forward. “There’s been one night, Ailish. One. I’ve gone back over it more times than I’ll ever admit to you.”
His voice rises—not loud, but sharp, serrated. “Of course it’s mine.”
I step back instinctively. He notices. “You’re afraid of me now?” he whispers. “After everything?”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I say. “I’m afraid of what you’ll assume.”
He laughs once—quiet, bitter, humorless. “Oh, I already have assumptions,” he says. “Plenty.”
My chest tightens. “Declan, please—just listen.”
“I am listening,” he snaps, stepping farther into the apartment, forcing me to back toward the small table where the envelope still lies open. “I’m listening to the woman who’s known for five weeks and let me find out off a floor.”
“I tried to tell you. You told me not here.”
“No.” His voice is a blade, sharp enough to cut skin. “It’s exactly the same pattern.”
I flinch. His expression twists. “Oh, don’t do that. Don’t look at me like I’m the villain here.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“But you’re thinking it.” He gestures to the ultrasound photo with a flick of his hand. “You hid this. You went to a clinic in secret. You were followed there, Ailish, and you didn’t tell me.”
“I found out I was followed three days ago. From Ronan.” I make myself hold his eyes. “You ran a car off the access road and decided I didn’t need to know it happened.”
He stops. It’s the first time tonight he’s had nothing loaded.
“That’s different,” he says.
“It’s the same sentence. You just get to say it in a lower voice.”
His jaw works. “Until what?” he demands.
The accusation hits like a slap. I stare at him, stunned. “You think I’d use a child like that?”
“You used me like that,” he murmurs, stepping closer. “You let me stand in Liam’s office and defend you while you knew something I didn’t.”
“Don’t,” I whisper, pain spiking under my ribs. “Don’t rewrite the past like you’re the only one who bled in it.”
His voice drops to a near-silent growl. “You said his name. In front of every man in that room, you said his name.”
“And you told me I was the reason everything fell apart.”
“Maybe you are.”
Those words. Those four words shatter something inside me. My breath stumbles. I raise a hand, pressing my palm to the table behind me to stay upright. “Declan… stop.”
But he barrels on, too angry to hear the tremor in my voice. “You knew exactly what you were doing. You always do. You calculate every move. Every word. Every breath.”
“That’s not—”
“And now you’re telling me this?” His jaw flexes. “Now? When the Russians are circling? When Liam’s barely keeping the alliances steady? When you’re already under suspicion?”
My voice breaks. “I wasn’t trying to manipulate—”
“Yes,” he hisses. “You were.”
I go still. There’s only so much pain a person can swallow before something inside them tilts. “Get out,” I whisper.
He doesn’t move.
“Get. Out.”
“Ailish—”
“You don’t get to accuse me of using a baby,” I say, voice shaking but sharp. “You don’t get to come into my home and tear me apart and then pretend you’re the victim.” I wipe at my cheeks with shaking hands. “If you can’t hear me without turning it into a battlefield, then leave.”
“Ailish, you are not thinking clearly—”
“No.” My voice rises, hoarse. “I’m thinking perfectly clearly. For once.” I step forward, squaring myself to him despite the tears on my face. “If you can’t be a father without being a soldier first, don’t come back.”
He freezes. The silence that follows sinks into the walls. Into my skin. Into the air around us. Declan’s expression is unreadable. Blank. Masked.
But his eyes—
His eyes look like a man watching something he didn’t realize he needed slip through his fingers.
“Ailish…” he says quietly, and for the first time, there’s something like shock in his tone.
“Go,” I whisper.
He swallows hard, chest rising once, sharply, as if it hurts him. Then—slowly—he steps backward.
One step. Then another.
He doesn’t slam the door when he leaves. He closes it gently.
The soft click breaks whatever was holding me upright. I collapse to the floor.
I don’t know how long I sit there. Minutes. Hours. A lifetime.
Tears come in waves—heat, cold, anger, grief, all tangled until I can’t tell one from the other. I sob until my ribs ache. Until my throat burns. Until my body trembles with exhaustion.
I press a hand to my stomach more than once. Whisper apologies to a child who can’t hear me yet. Apologies for letting fear and war and Declan poison everything sacred and fragile.
I don’t know how to breathe around the knowledge that he looked at me and saw strategy instead of someone he loved. And I don’t know how to face the world without falling apart.
Eventually—after I can’t cry anymore—I reach for my phone. My hands shake the entire time.
Mackenzie answers on the first ring. “Ailish?” Her voice is soft enough that I break all over again.
“He… he left,” I manage, trying to steady my breath. “We argued. I told him. He said… awful things.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” she murmurs, already rustling like she’s grabbing her keys. “I’m coming.”
“No,” I say quickly. “Just stay on the phone. Please.”
“Talk to me.”
I tell her everything. The envelope. The photo. The note. Declan’s reaction. My words. His.
Mackenzie listens with the kind of quiet only a friend who has weathered storms herself can give. She doesn’t interrupt. She doesn’t judge. When I falter, she waits. When I cry, she doesn’t fill the silence.
And when I finish, she exhales hard. “You did the right thing.”
“I didn’t,” I whisper. “I pushed him away.”
“You gave him a boundary,” she says. “And he reacted poorly because he’s terrified and volatile and in love with you in a way he doesn’t know how to survive.” She pauses. “That’s not your fault.”
“Mack…”
“You listen to me.” Her voice sharpens—not harsh, just firm. “You are not alone. You have people behind you. You have me. You have Nadia. And Liam? Liam will protect you with his last breath. He’d never let anything touch that baby. Not even Declan’s temper.”
The mention of Liam tightens something in my chest. “I don’t want to tell him like this.”
“You may not have a choice,” she says gently.
“What do you mean?”
Mackenzie hesitates. “Ailish… the Russians escalated. Something happened earlier. Liam’s been tense all afternoon. I think Conor or one of the watchers saw Declan somewhere he shouldn’t have been. There are rumors spreading.”
My blood chills. “About what?”
“I’m not sure yet,” she says. “But I think Liam suspects something’s off with you too.”
I close my eyes. Of course. Of course the world wouldn’t give me even a day to breathe.
“Ailish,” she says softly, “whatever happens next… I’m with you. We’ll keep you and that baby safe. I swear it.”
My throat tightens painfully. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For being here.”
She sighs. “Always.”
We stay on the phone a little longer before she insists I eat something. She makes me promise to text her every hour. She makes me take slow breaths, grounding breaths, until the panic subsides enough for me to move.
I stand. I walk to the bathroom. I splash water on my face. I stare at myself in the mirror, pale and puffy-eyed and exhausted, but still standing.
And that’s when the knock comes. Two soft taps. Then silence.
I tense. “Mack… someone’s here.”
“Don’t open it,” she warns. But the familiar cadence of the knock tells me exactly who it is.
Liam.
I open the door. He stands in the hallway, not guarded, not commanding—just steady. His expression is serious but not angry.
“Ailish,” he says quietly. “May I come in?”
I nod. He steps inside and closes the door behind him. He takes in my swollen eyes, the tissues on the counter, the discarded envelope on the table.
He sees everything. His voice drops. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Threatened?”
“Not… exactly.”
He nods slowly. “Then this is personal.”
I sit on the edge of the couch. He sits across from me, elbows on his knees, hands loose between them. Not a leader interrogating an asset. A man worried about someone he cares for. “I heard something,” he says. “Someone spotted Declan leaving your building. He was… upset.”
My heart thuds.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he adds gently. “But I want you to know I’m here. Whatever’s going on—you have a family behind you. Irish, Italian, the girls, me. You’re not alone.”
My throat constricts. “He was angry,” I whisper. “We fought.”
He nods, waiting.
“And… I’m pregnant.”
Liam closes his eyes. When he opens them again, his voice is thick but gentle. “Ailish…”
“It’s Declan’s,” I add quietly.
“I know.”
I swallow. “How?”
“Because you’re not a liar,” he says. “And because I know how he looks at you.”
A tremor moves through me. “He didn’t take the news well.”
Liam exhales slowly. “He won’t stay that way.”
“He accused me of manipulating him.”
Liam’s jaw tightens—not in anger toward me, but toward Declan. “I’m sorry,” he says softly.
The words unravel me more than anything else today. “I don’t know what to do,” I whisper. “I don’t know how to protect myself. Or the baby. Or everyone else caught in this mess.”
Liam rises. Walks to me. Places a hand on my shoulder—light, grounding, brotherly. “You don’t need to have all the answers today. You only need to know this: you are safe. I will not let anything happen to you. Or your child. Declan or not.”
Tears fill my eyes again—silent, trembling tears.
“You have a family behind you, Ailish,” he says, voice low and steady. “Whether Declan steps up or not.”
I still hurt, but I believe him.