Like we said. We’ve said so much now, and it all amounts to the murder of our father. A sickness boils over in me, thinking about Caroline’s purity and all the ways we’ve dirtied it. Declan seems to like it, the rawness of her splitting open. I want to keep her whole. Neither of us is getting exactly what we want. She isn’t quite as vulnerable as he thinks, nor as clean as I’d like.
I think of Caroline. Of her laughter last night when Isaac asked if the jet had cupholders. The boys didn’t know she was breaking when they hugged her goodbye. I did. I watched her face, saw her fall apartquietly.
“I still don’t know if this ends with him,” I mutter. “Even if we pull it off—if we kill him—do you really think it all goes away?”
Declan gives me a look like I’ve just threatened to burn the whole plan down. “You sound like you’re getting cold feet.”
“I’m not,” I snap. “But we kill him, and what? His alliances vanish? The people he’s made promises to just back down? The Valacchis? The Slaters? We cut off the head—what if the body keeps twitching?”
“We deal with it,” Rian says quietly. He’s leaning on the fridge now, glass sweating in his hand, watching me like I’m some kind of flame he can’t decide to feed or smother.
“Do we even know how?” My voice cracks. “Do we even know who we are without him?”
That stops them. Declan looks away first. That means something. Rian doesn’t answer. He just takes a drink.
I drop into the nearest chair and stare out the window. It’s damp outside—puddles from the morning rain still clinging to the walkway. There are tiny, muddy footprints near the step. Joshua, probably. He always stomped straight into the mess, never around it.
I blink too hard. The world smears. “I just…” My voice breaks. I start again. “I can still feel that day. The day we let her do it. We let her kill for him.”
Declan slams his glass down. “You want to go back to that again? You want to unpack every fucking regret? Fine. But do it on your own time, Kellan. Because we’re out of time.”
Rian cuts in, softer. “We all made mistakes. But this is how we fix them.”
I look down at the blueprint. At the lines, the angles, the sharp precision of what we’re planning.
This is how we fix them—kill the man who made us.
I nod because I have to, because I have no alternative. I don’t have an alternative in this moment, nothing I can do besides nod. And I don’t have an alternative in this situation. I can’t let him keep chasing her forever. Eventually, he would kill her, and then he would kill our children. Or shape our children. I don’t know which is worse.
No, he can’t survive this. And my brothers are right. She wants to help, so I have to let her help. I have to let go of the idea of her to make room for who she really is.
The front door creaks. I stiffen, rising too fast.
Caroline walks in slowly, like she’s still in a different life and has to reacclimate to this one. Her coat is unbuttoned. Her eyes are hollow. She smells like wind and expensive fuel.
And expensive grief.
She pauses when she sees the counter. The waffles. The fruit. And the blueprint still smeared with Declan’s fingerprints. The whole picture of our fucked-up lives. The little family we’ve been pretending to be. The little army we’re becoming.
It’s our life; the mundane and the disgusting are never separate.
“Fáilte ar ais.Welcome back,” I say hoarsely, handing her a plate, and she takes it with a thin but grateful smile before pushing it aside to drop herself against my chest.
This is the real Caroline Johnson. Warm and grateful, purring against me like the kitten I say she is.
37
CAROLINE
“Are they safe?”Declan asks, his finger still pinned to the blueprint, the sheen of the paper reflecting the ceiling light in soft, rhythmic pulses like a dying heartbeat.
I peel myself off Kellan and lower into a chair at the counter, where the waffles are already cooling. My stomach growls so hard it feels like something inside me is gnawing through bone just to survive. I nod, mouth already full, the sweetness of syrup blooming across my tongue like a drug. It tastes like relief. Like something almost normal. Still, I can’t help but think how happy waffles with syrup would have made the boys. “Gone,” I say around the bite, swallowing hard. “With Alaina and James.”
Declan’s jaw clenches. His eyes flick upward, but he doesn’t say anything right away. He doesn’t have to. The silence says it all: if something goes wrong, that choice might be the only thing that saves them.
“They’ll make good parents if this all goes sideways,” I add, half laughing, but the words hang in the air like something dead. No one laughs. Not even Kellan, who usually cracks a smirk at the worst times. The truth in the words cuts too deep. I stab astrawberry and the juice bleeds onto the plate. I force my voice to steady. “So…what’s the plan?”
Rian straightens, stepping in like a scalpel, clean and deliberate. “It’s simple, really. We’ll invite him for dinner. Your presence will throw him off—he won’t be expecting it. You give a code, and I’ll move in.”
