Declan

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“Aengus, why the fuck are you answering Grace’s phone?” I asked.

My voice was calm, crystal clear, though I was anything but. I thought I would go insane with my emotions, but showing them wouldn’t help Grace, and Grace was all that mattered.

I looked at Sean, whose expression reflected how I felt. He looked like he wanted to start murdering people, and I understood the feeling well. But I ignored that as best I could. Because flying off the handle wouldn’t help and I knew Grace was in danger. Anyone who was near Aengus was.

“I needed to get your attention,” Aengus said. “Looks like it worked.”

“Where is she?” I said.

I listened to the other end of the line, and was certain I could hear Aengus’s disappointment. My first instinct had been to yell at him, swear that I was going to rip his balls off and feed them to him. I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t do just that, but I also knew his game. He was taunting me, trying to get me off my game so that I wouldn’t be focused.

It wasn’t going to happen.

“Where do you think she is, son? She’s right here next to me. You want to talk to her?” he asked.

“Put her on the phone,” I said.

He huffed, and I could easily picture the smirk that was on his face.

“Gracie, you have a call,” he said, his voice muffled because he had taken his face away from the phone.

“Hello, Declan,” Grace said.

She sounded a little bit worried, but not too afraid, and knowing that calmed me a little bit.

“Has he hurt you?” I asked, almost unable to choke the words out of my throat, but still trying to stay calm.

“No,” she said. “I’m fine—”

Her voice was gone in an instant, and Aengus got back on the phone.

“See,” he said, “she’s fine. Now it’s up to you to make sure she stays that way.”

“I’m going to kill that fucker,” I heard Sean mutter.

Michael glared at him and shook his head, and Patrick just stood, his expression intense as he listened, and no doubt plotted a plan.

“What do you want, Aengus?” I asked, putting thoughts of Grace, how worried she must’ve been after hearing him say that, out of my head.

“What I wanted was your respect, I wanted you to recognize a good deal when you saw one. But it doesn’t look like I’m going to get that, so now I’ll just take your money,” he said.

“How much?” I asked.

“Damn, you just jumped right into that offer. This chick must mean a lot to you. You care about somebody that much, you shouldn’t let them go,” he said.

I thought I would break my teeth from how hard I clenched them, so I forcibly relaxed my jaw and kept talking.

“How much?” I repeated.

“I’ll take an honorarium, let’s say fifty grand for my trouble.”

“And?” I said, knowing full well that fifty thousand dollars was barely a drop in the bucket. Aengus would run through that in a week, and he knew it.

“And let’s just call this the beginning of a new business arrangement. I tried to cut you in on this, but you’re too fucking stubborn to pay attention. So I had to make things happen,” he said.

It was always like that with him. Nothing was ever his fault. We didn’t do X, so he had no choice but to do Y.

It had been bullshit when I was in elementary school, and it was bullshit now.

“Aengus, I don’t know about your deal, but it’s shady. You got caught up in some crap that you don’t want to be in,” I said.

“Would it be your job to keep me out of trouble?” he said.

“Aengus, you know that’s not how this works,” I said.

“Fine, if you don’t want to do the deal, you can piece me into whatever it is you have going on.”

I looked at Patrick, who could clearly hear Aengus’s voice through the speakerphone. He shook his head slowly, but doing so wasn’t necessary.

We’d all be dead or in jail in less than six months if Aengus got within a ten-foot radius of our business.

I suspected he knew that we would never allow him that close, and I suspected this was a test.

“No deal,” I said.

I thought back to the last time I had said those words, how they had led to what was the beauty of my relationship with Grace, and I felt sickened.

To imagine something so beautiful ending up like this was almost more than I could bear.

But I had to put that aside and keep the focus on Grace, so I did.

Aengus chuckled, and then said, “I figured you would do that. You might care about this little sweetheart, but I know business comes first. So, you gonna take this deal, help me out with this new client I have?” Aengus said.

“Yeah,” I responded. “But first, you’re going to let Grace go.”

“What do you mean let her go? I just dropped by her house for a little visit,” he said.

Sean had clenched his fist tight, but I shook my head at him. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was able to be the voice of calm, not when I felt like I would go insane, but I tried.

“I’ll be there in thirty minutes with your fifty grand. Aengus, I don’t have to warn you, do I?” I asked.

“What? All your pomp and circumstance about what you’ll do to me if I harm a hair on her head? You can go ahead and save it, and besides, Grace over here is pretty pleasant. And a damn good cook. I wouldn’t hurt her. Unless you made me.”

He hung up the phone then, and I stared at it for a moment, trying to will myself not to throw it against the wall and then go on a rampage.

“He’s gone too far this time. I’m gonna fucking kill him,” Sean said.

“I’ll handle it. Get the money,” I said.

“You’ll handle it?” Sean said. “He has Grace.”

“I know that, Sean. And I’ll handle it.”

Even I was surprised by how calm I was being, but it seemed that my brothers were not surprised.

Michael had gone to the safe and came back with five $10,000 bundles while Patrick had grabbed the phone and began making a few calls.

But Sean looked at me, and for the first time in his life, I didn’t see unconditional trust.

“It’s fucked up that you kept all that shit from us, Declan,” he said.

“I know,” I responded.

“And you know if anything happens to Grace, he won’t see the next sunrise,” Sean said.

“I know.”

“Then go get her,” he said, some of the trust seeming to come back into his face.

Michael handed me a manila envelope with the cash stuffed in it and Patrick tossed me a set of keys.

“Take the bulletproof one, just in case,” he said calmly. “We will be behind you but will stay out of the way.”

I shook my head. “You—”

“It wasn’t a question, Declan. And you’re out of your fucking mind if you think we’re going to send you out there alone. Haven’t you learned anything? You don’t have to do shit by yourself. We’re here, and we’ve got your back. Always. No matter what.”

I looked at my brothers, from one to the other to the other, and knew that all had been forgiven.

We’d have to talk about this. I owed them more of an explanation, but for now, things were as they always had been with us.

And now it was time for me to go get the woman I loved.