Page 71 of The Endless Want

She takes the turn toward the speakeasy entrance, the old brick façade already glowing with warm bulbs and neon accents. Music leaks from the alley in a low thrum, vibrating through the car tires.

I grip the ultrasound picture in my pocket.

“One last chance,” I murmur.

Mackenzie places a hand on my shoulder. “Call me if anything goes wrong.”

“I will.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

With that, she lets me go. I step out into the alley, the sound of laughter and clinking glasses drifting from the hidden door below street level.

My heart pounds like it’s trying to escape my chest.

Inside, the speakeasy is alive—low lights, amber shadows, velvet-lined booths, and a haze of warm perfume and liquor curling in the air. The place is packed. The Italians had been right: this was a gold mine.

Men lounge at the bar. Women in shimmering dresses laugh near the stage. Music thrums through the floor.

It should feel safe. But my nerves are frayed to threads.

I know Declan’s patterns by now. He always stations himself near the back hallway where security feeds into his office—far enough from the bar to avoid drunken nonsense, close enough to intervene if needed.

The moment I turn toward that hallway, I see him.

Head bowed over a ledger. Shoulders tense under a charcoal dress shirt. Jaw tight, eyes scanning numbers with a practiced precision that never used to belong to him.

For a heartbeat, I simply stare.

He looks… Untouchable.

Like a man I couldn’t possibly walk up to with a truth as fragile as mine.

But I make myself move forward.

My boots thud softly against the polished floor. He lifts his head as I approach, his eyes sharpening the second he sees me. A flicker of something crosses his face—something like annoyance, something like dread, something like longing—but he crushes it almost instantly.

“Ailish.” His voice is flat. Controlled. Cold.

I swallow. “We need to talk.”

“No.” He doesn’t even pause. “Not here.”

My chest tightens. “Declan⁠—”

“Not here,” he repeats, harder. He returns to the ledger as if I’m an interruption rather than a person.

I step closer, lowering my voice. “It’s important.”

He freezes. Just briefly. Enough to show he isn’t unaffected. Then he straightens, placing the ledger down with an eerie calm. “Ailish,” he says, meeting my eyes. “You don’t get to decide when we talk. Not after you threw me out of your room.”

“You were screaming at me.”

“I know what I was doing.” Something moves behind his face and gets buried. “I know exactly what I’ve done, all of it, and I don’t need it recited to me in my own club.”

I flinch. “That isn’t fair.”