Page 89 of Crown of Thorns

"He's going to burn everything," Cillian says quietly.

I don't respond because he's right.

"It makes him dangerous," Cillian observes.

It does. The word I didn't use in the safe house, the word I was too afraid to speak, is the word that sits between us now. He's not dangerous to the Doyles or to outside threats. He's dangerous to the Gallaghers. He's dangerous to the structure that he's supposed to be protecting.

The warehouse door opens. Lorcan emerges. He's cleaned his hands. He's changed his shirt. His hair is wet. He's made himself presentable.

That might be worse than the blood. That might be the most terrifying thing I've seen all day.

"It's done," he says. His voice is steady. His eyes are clear. He's reassembled himself into the shape of the man I've known for twelve years, and it's a performance and we both know it's a performance, but he's doing it anyway.

"The Doyles?" I ask.

"Will be receiving a message in the morning. Two of their contractors won't be returning from Dublin. They'll understand what that means."

He will escalate. The Doyles will move against us. This is the moment that Lorcan was preventing for three weeks while he was broken and grieving and trying to stitch his marriage back together. This is the moment he created by making a decision from rage instead of strategy.

I should be angry. I should be furious. I should be preparing to step in and take over before this organization collapses under the weight of his compromise.

But I'm watching him walk back toward the car, and I'm watching the exhaustion underneath the performance, and I'm realizing something that I don't have a word for.

He'd burn this entire operation for her.

He'd burn Dublin. He'd burn the structure that Padraig built. He'd burn twelve years of careful positioning and strategy and power consolidation, and he'd do it because Renny was nearly killed and he couldn't stop it and he couldn't protect her the way he needed to protect her.

I get into the car beside him. Cillian drives. The city passes outside the windows, indifferent and rain-soaked.

"I don't think you're unfit to lead," I say quietly.

Lorcan doesn't respond.

"I think you're the most dangerous man I've ever known," I continue. "But I don't think it's because you're compromised. I think it's because you're finally being honest about what you're willing to do for power. And the power isn't power, it's her. It's your wife. And that makes you unstable in ways I've never seen before."

"Is that meant to comfort me?" His voice is flat.

"It's meant to tell you that I see you. I see what you're doing. And I'm not going to stand against you, because if I did, I'd have to be willing to accept your death, and I'm not that man. I'm not as strong as you are."

Lorcan turns to look at me. His eyes are still wrong, still too bright, still aimed at something beyond immediate reality. But there's something in them now that looks like recognition.

"Get some rest," he says. "We need to move the contingency routes tomorrow."

"Okay," I say.

He leans his head back against the seat and closes his eyes, and in the dark car, in the cold Dublin evening, I think about power and love and the cost of choosing one over the other.

I think about the fact that Lorcan Byrne just chose love, and in choosing love, he might have finally become the strongest or the most dangerous man I've ever known.

I can't tell the difference anymore.

Chapter forty-five

The Open Books

Lorcan

The ledgers are beautiful in their terrible honesty. Every transaction documented. Every payment accounted for. Every human consequence reduced to numbers on a page.