I’m not running. Not today. But I could. I look out the window at Declan and see him still waving. Joshua’s right. It feels like goodbye.
34
DECLAN
I returnto the club where it all started. Where everything went wrong. Where everything, somehow, will end.
I slip in through the back, my boots echoing on the concrete floor. The place is empty tonight. There’s no music, no laughter, no bodies writhing under colored lights. Just lights and flowing curtains hanging loose and moody across the walls. The lights are low, strung like soft constellations above a dead sky.
No fog machines tonight. No distractions. Smoke is for illusions, for theme nights when people fuck on furniture and plan drug deals between songs. Not for coups.
I haven’t been back here in years. It’s technically still part of what we run—laundered, layered, legitimate enough on the surface—but I’ve kept to the shadows since the night Caroline ran. This place hasn’t felt right since. Too loud. Too full of memory. It felt haunted by her, by her screaming at the blood, by her seeing us and rejecting it. Loudly. Nakedly.
I shove open the metal door to the back lounge. It groans like it’s remembering me. Rian and Kellan look up, both nursingglasses of whiskey. They’re hunched in a booth over a small pile of papers and a few plastic army figurines.
A rough laugh escapes my throat. The great man that old man Crowley is, and he’s going to be taken down by a couple of toys that look stolen from a child’s chest. “An bhfuil tú dáiríre?” I call out—seriously?—stepping closer as my voice echoes through the mostly empty space. “This is how it ends? With G.I. Joe on a cocktail napkin?”
Rian smirks without humor. “Well, theoretically. Hopefully.”
I stand over the table, turning one of the papers around to read. It’s a crude layout of our dining room. I sketched it a week ago when this was still just a fantasy. Red scrawl marks possible entry points, placements, fallback routes. I recognize my own handwriting and drawings. I remember the desperation when I made it, the hope. Back when we didn’t know if we’d actually go through with it, but when I knew I wanted to.
Somewhere deep down, I always knew I would be the one to kill my father. It had to be me. The man who asked me to kill my sick mother before I even had chest chair. That sick fuck was always going to die by my hand.
Now, I see some clear mistakes in my passion plan. We’ll fix those, sketch something better, and by the end of the week I’ll be ready to stab through the heart of dear old Dad. I would never use a gun for something this personal.
“She’s on her way to Alaina’s,” I announce, eyes still on the map. “She couldn’t just hand the boys off to the pilot. So, she’s going too.”
“Can’t blame her,” Kellan murmurs, swirling his drink. “She’s scared. Doesn’t know who to trust. Not even us.”
“Good,” I mutter, tracing my finger along the marked hallway in the sketch. “Fear keeps you sharp.”
He gives me a look. One I’ve known since we were kids. Annoyed, skeptical, too soft to say what he really wants to. “She doesn’t need to be sharp,” he says finally. “She has us.”
I lift my gaze. “Everyone needs to be sharp.”
“She’s not a soldier,” he snaps, voice low but firm. “She’s not us.”
“She doesn’t have to be,” I shoot back, “but she’s walking into the center of a battlefield. You want her to go in blind?”
“Don’t twist it,” he says, jaw clenched. “I’m not saying she shouldn’t know the risks. I’m saying she shouldn’thaveto.”
Rian’s been quiet until now. He reaches out and flips one of the army men on its side, letting it lie there. Dead plastic. “If we’re carrying her weight, she might as well stay home,” he says simply. “Declan’s right. She needs to stay sharp. And we need to learn this plan well enough to do it with our eyes closed.”
We stare at the map, at the stupid toys. At the nightmare we’re about to turn real.
“He won’t be alone,” Rian says after a beat. “He’ll have someone watching him, right?”
“Maybe,” I answer. “But not many. Not in his sons’ home. He won’t expect us to turn. Not really.”
“He still thinks he’s in control,” Kellan mutters.
We’re all dancing around it, calling our father “he” like he’s a mythical being. I put a name to it. “Da always thinks that,” I reply. “He’s a narcissist and a sociopath. He isn’t capable of thinking of himself in any other way.”
Silence falls. Thick, hot, and heavy with everything we’re not saying.
Patricide isn’t just a word. It’s the weight of it. I’m more ready than them, but even I know it’s not just murder. It’s not the same as a gun to the head of somebollixthat betrayed our family. It’s not pulling fingernails out of a stranger and dumping him in the water. If we kill him, we don’t just walk away. Webecomehim. Or we burn everything down trying not to.
I grab the bottle of whiskey from the table and pour one for myself, downing it in one brutal pull. Letting it sear a hole in me big enough for clarity to crawl through.
