31. Declan
Declan
The first thing I notice when I step into Liam’s temporary war room that morning is the hum. Not of people—no one’s talking yet—but the electronics. Screens running intel feeds. A new encrypted radio base lit in blue. Another set of monitors showing surveillance rotations.
The second thing I notice is that I’m already irritated.
I’m not meant for rooms like this. Not long-term. I can pretend for a while, keep my temper locked down, nod to protocols, but sooner or later, the walls start closing in. Strategy is necessary, sure, but strategy without fists behind it feels like drowning in paperwork.
But I asked for this. Stood in his office with my jaw set and made the case like a man applying for a job in his own family, and he let me sweat before he said yes. So I don’t get to complain about the chair. For Ailish. For the child I’m barely letting myself picture.
He’s leaning over a table covered in maps when I enter, his forearms braced on either side of a marked-up blueprint. Conor stands beside him, scrolling through something on a tablet. A few of Liam’s inner-circle men linger around the perimeter, waiting like they’re afraid to breathe wrong.
Liam doesn’t look up when I arrive, but his voice drops into the room like a blade anyway. “You’re late.”
I grit my teeth. “I’m five minutes late.”
“Five minutes is a lifetime in a war room,” Conor mutters, and for once he’s not being smug—just stating a fact.
I should let it go. I should remember this is for Ailish, for the baby she carries, for all of us trying to hold back a damn tide of Russians who refuse to die out. I should swallow the instinct to throw the closest object across the room and instead breathe.
I drop into the chair opposite Liam. “Let’s get on with it, then.”
He finally looks up. There’s something different in his expression these days—a tiredness that wasn’t there before and shouldn’t be there now. He’s younger than he looks this morning. But he also looks sharper. More dangerous.
It’s what happens when someone comes after the people he claims as his.
“We’re hitting their pipeline at the docks tonight,” Liam says, sliding one of the maps toward me. “You’ll take the east flank with five men. You’re not to break formation.”
I stare at him. “I don’t need formation. I need space to work.”
“No,” he replies. “You need discipline. So you’ll follow orders.” Neither of us says the thing that’s actually in the room, which is a November night, a yard, and Conor bringing ice afterward. Conor doesn’t look up from his tablet. He remembers too. He’s the one who brought the whiskey.
The tension snaps so suddenly my jaw aches. But I lean back, force my muscles to loosen one by one. I asked for this. Liam granted it. If I want to be part of this offensive, I don’t get to dictate every detail.
Even though every cell in my body craves it. “Fine,” I say, though the word tastes like rust.
Liam studies me for a long moment. Then: “Good.”
We go over the plan again. And again. And again.
Liam wants precision tonight. A clean strike that rattles the Russians without escalating into an all-out war—yet.
They’re expecting retaliation after the bombing on one of our supply hubs, but they won’t expect us to hit two different arms of their distribution network in the same forty-eight hours.
It settles something inside me, even as it stokes an old hunger.
Hours pass. I lose track of them. By the time Liam dismisses us, dusk is sliding in through the windows in strips of amber and violet. The men filter out, their voices low. Conor lingers long enough to toss me a protein bar like I’m his wayward toddler.
“You’ll need it,” he says. “You get feral when you don’t eat.”
I bark a humorless laugh. “I get feral when people talk too much.”
He shrugs. “Still eating it, though.”
I pocket the damn thing. Because he’s right.
The day keeps moving in a near-silent rhythm. Guns checked, then rechecked. Armor laid out. Coms synced. Extraction routes copied to backups. Men briefed again. Liam and I go over the timing once more because we both know timing is what kills.
By the time we move, a storm is curling over the city, thick clouds muting the moon. The docks are slick with earlier rain, the scent of diesel clinging to every surface. My men fan out beside me, disciplined for once. A strange quiet hangs in the air.
And then it shatters.
Everything goes according to plan, which is unusual enough to put me on edge.
But the execution is clean—quick takedowns, seizures of cargo, confirmation that yes, the Russians are running precursor chemicals through the city again.
We torch the crates and get the hell out before the smoke can announce our presence.
Liam’s voice comes through comms: “Pull back. West route. No stragglers.”
For the first time in weeks, something unclenches in my chest. We did something right. We did something together.
By the time we’re back at the vehicles, adrenaline is fading, replaced with bone-deep exhaustion.
I peel off my gloves and stare at the city lights, thinking of her.
Thinking of the way she held one hand to her stomach earlier without realizing she’d done it.
Thinking of the tiny photograph she’d tucked into her planner.
Thinking of the way I’d wanted to touch her more than I wanted to breathe.
Conor calls me an hour later to check in. He sounds too serious, which usually means he’s worried. “You good?” he asks.
“No,” I answer, because lying is pointless with him. “But I’m managing.”
He exhales. “Visit her.”
“I’ll see her tomorrow.”
“Not what I said.”
“I’m not barging into her place in the middle of the night like some lunatic.”
“You’re in love with her.”
“That’s not—” I stop, rub my forehead. “Goodnight, Conor.”
He only sighs. “Sort it out before it’s too late.”
I hang up before he can say anything else.
The drive back to Ailish’s safehouse is muscle memory now. Fifteen minutes of empty streets and streetlamps smeared with rain. I shouldn’t go, but my steering wheel turns as if it has its own orders.
I park. I sit there for a long time, rain pattering on the windshield like someone tapping their fingers against glass. I tell myself I’ll leave soon. I won’t go inside. I won’t make her uncomfortable. I won’t—
My phone buzzes.
Ailish; You’re outside.
Ailish; Stay.
The breath leaves me in one long, unsteady exhale. She saw me. And she didn’t tell me to go.
I step out of the car, climb the steps, and slip inside when the guard opens the door. The house is dim and quiet. I don’t go to her room. I don’t knock. I don’t even look toward the hallway where she sleeps.
Instead, I drop onto the couch. Stretch out. Close my eyes.
Sleep hits hard. And for the first time in months—it isn’t violent.
It’s Ailish. Standing in sunlight. Laughing at something I can’t hear. Hand resting over her belly.
Mine.
I wake before dawn, stiff and half-tangled in a blanket someone must have thrown over me.
For a moment, I don’t remember where I am.
The shadows in the room are still blue and quiet.
The faint hum of the refrigerator murmurs through the kitchen.
The couch beneath me is softer than the ones I grew up on, but not soft enough to account for the ache in my spine.
Then I hear it.
A soft pad of footsteps upstairs. Like she’s trying not to disturb me, even though she doesn’t know I’m awake.
Everything in my body goes still the way it always does when she’s near—as if I’m waiting for an impact I can see coming but can’t avoid. The dream clings to the edges of my mind. Her laughter, her warmth, the way she looked happy in the sunlight.
I know better than to trust dreams. But the feeling lingers.
I sit up slowly, scrub a hand down my face, and I stand, stretch out the tension, and head to the kitchen. There’s a mug waiting on the counter beside the coffee pot—clean, empty, placed deliberately where I’ll see it.
She didn’t bring it down here. But she thought about me being here.
That alone is dangerous territory.
I pour coffee, let the steam rise against my face, and debate my next move. Liam needs the report from last night. Conor will nag me if I don’t check in. The Italians will want proof of how solid the intel was. Business, war, strategy—they’re all pulling at me.
But none of it drags half as hard as the soft sound of her moving above me. A door opens upstairs. I look up instinctively. And then I hear her voice.
She’s talking to someone quietly—the guard stationed in the hallway or maybe Mackenzie, who sometimes stops by early. I can’t make out the words, but I hear the weight in them.
Before I can think, I’m moving.
By the time I reach the base of the stairs, I’ve already argued with myself a dozen different ways. Don’t corner her. Don’t push. Don’t make her regret letting you close again. A dozen warnings I have no faith in myself to obey.
But she appears at the top landing before I can climb even one step. Wrapped in a soft cotton robe, her hair pulled into a loose braid, her hand resting—unthinking, unconscious—over the small swell of her belly.
She’s alone and tucking her phone away. She must have been on the phone with MacKenzie, then.
My breath leaves me in a rough exhale I hope she can’t hear.
She freezes when she sees me. Her fingers tighten slightly against her stomach, but her face doesn’t close up the way it once did when I walked into a room. Not today.
“Morning,” she says quietly.
“Morning.” My voice comes out rougher than I want.
She hesitates a moment, like she’s deciding whether to approach or retreat. Then she starts down the stairs slowly, her hand gliding along the railing. I stay very still—as if any sudden movement might spook her—until she reaches the bottom step.
“You didn’t have to stay,” she murmurs.
“I know.”
“You could’ve gone home.”
“I know.”
She finally lifts her eyes to mine. “Then why didn’t you?”
I only manage: “You asked me not to leave.”