Page 2 of The Dangerous Dance

"You told me at seven this morning, Declan. The meeting was at nine."

"I told you."

"You ambushed me." I keep my voice level. I've been keeping my voice level for six months. I am very tired of keeping my voice level. "I had to call Finn. Pull him away from a life he's trying to build with his wife — a life I gave him — because you decided the morning of that your principles wouldn't allow⁠—"

"My principles." He sets the glass down and stands. He's not smaller than me, not by much, and the anger in him has nowhere to go but out. "Don't talk to me about principles. You sat across from the man who put Gianna under surveillance for months. Who used his own sister as a piece on his board to trick us⁠—"

"That's not⁠—"

"You've rewritten history to make the alliance palatable, Liam, but I was there. I remember what they did. And now we're what — partners? Allies?" He says the word like it tastes wrong. "Da would have⁠—"

"Da is dead." Quiet, which is worse than shouted. We both know it. "And the things Da would have done got him killed. So I'd like us to stop using him as a compass."

He crosses the room faster than I track, and then his hand is in my collar and mine is at his chest — two men who love each other and can't find their way back to whatever used to sit between them.

I push him back. He doesn't go easily.

"Enough." Ailish's voice from the doorway. Not loud. It doesn't need to be. She's Declan's — has been since before our da died, in the way certain people become someone's, the close confidant, the one who knows the operation from the inside and has standing he gives no one else. Which means she has standing with me too, by extension and by her own merit, and she's the only person outside this family that Declan and I have ever genuinely listened to. She stands with her arms crossed, her expression composed in the particular way that means she's furious and choosing not to be yet. "This is done for tonight."

Declan steps back first, which surprises me. He picks up his jacket and his glass and walks to the window with his back to both of us.

I straighten my collar.

"Ailish," I start.

"I know," she says.

"I wasn't going to ask you to⁠—"

"I know," she says again, firmer. "I'll talk to him."

This is what I was going to ask. Declan doesn't hear me anymore, not really. But he hears Ailish. He always has. "Be careful what you push him on. He came from somewhere tonight before he sat down with that glass, and I don't think it was anywhere friendly."

Ailish looks at me with the expression she has when I'm telling her something she already knows. "I've got it."

"Maybe take a few days back. Let it settle. Things are⁠—"

"Liam." She says my name like a period at the end of a sentence. "I'm not going to pull back and lay low. That's not how I operate, and you know it." She glances past me toward Declan's silhouette at the window. Something in her face moves, then it's professional again. "But I will go greet Gianna. Finn texted they've arrived."

I exhale. "Good. She could use someone normal."

"She could use someone who isn't wrapped up in all of this," Ailish says, pulling her jacket off the hook. "Which is you and Declan both, tonight." She looks at me once more on her way out. "Go to sleep, Liam. You solved nothing tonight, and you won't solve anything more now."

She leaves.

I stand in the sitting room with my brother's back to me and the silence of a house that used to feel different. Declan refills his glass without turning around.

"I needed you today," I say to his reflection in the dark window.

He doesn't answer.

I go to bed.

CHAPTER 2

Liam

The morning after a bad night has a particular quality to it that I've never been able to adequately describe to anyone who hasn't lived this life. It isn't a hangover — I didn't drink. It's more like the emotional equivalent of sleeping with a stone on your chest and waking up to find it still there, just slightly repositioned.