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My father alienated everyone who might have done that for him before he died in the most ignominious way possible, with a Russian bullet to the back of the head.
I lean forward, plucking some of the weeds away from the gravestone and tossing them aside before I step back, my hands in my pockets. “I don’t know how I feel,” I say quietly to the empty air. “I can’t say I miss you. But I also can’t say that I don’t wonder how it might have been different, if I didn’t leave. I don’t regret it—not exactly. I’ve made a point of not looking back. But now that I’m here—that’s easier said than done.”
There’s the sound of someone clearing their throat behind me, and I turn sharply. There’s three men standing there a few yards away—Liam, Niall, and a tall dark-haired man in slim cut jeans and a linen button-down with the sleeves rolled up that I don’t recognize.
“I wondered if you’d ever show up here,” Liam says quietly, his green gaze meeting mine.
He doesn’t move to step towards me—doesn’t move at all really, or look antagonistic. Niall looks angry, the third man looks wary, but Liam just looks sad. His face holds a weight that wasn’t there the last time I saw him, before I left, and it tugs at my heart to see that expression on his face—the expression of a man who has seen too much. More than he should have.
It makes me wonder, just for a moment, what kind of woman Anastasia Ivanova—now McGregor—might be to have made my brother risk so much. To have made him endure so much, just to have her.
What would it feel like, to be willing to endure anything for love of someone?I hadn’t stayed, not even when my father put himself and my brother at risk. I can’t imagine putting so much on the line for a woman. And yet—
Liam is willing to risk even his life, to keep Anastasia and their child.
“I thought I should pay my respects,” I say stiffly, my hands shoved firmly into my pockets. I’d come here alone, without Jacob or any other backup despite their advice, wanting to be alone here in the cemetery. Now, though, I’m wondering if that was the right choice. Niall looks as if he’d like to shoot me on the spot, and I wonder for just a moment if Liam has had him watching me, waiting to catch me alone so that he can put an end to me and all this madness. He could take the deal the Kings offered him then, agree to disinherit his child, and move on.
I’ve wondered all along if I could stand to put my own brother in the ground, if it came to that.Could Liam?I don’t know the answer to that, because I no longer knowhim.
“It’s a long time coming.” Liam presses his lips together. “He’s been dead months, Connor.”
“I only just found out.”
“You’d have known, if you’d been here.”
If you’d never left, maybe he’d still be alive.I can hear the undercurrent in Liam’s voice, what he’s not saying. His gaze doesn’t leave mine, heavy and unflinching, and I can hear the rustling of the leaves all around us in the warm summer breeze as I look at my brother.
“Are you saying you wish he was still alive? He hated you.” I stare my brother down, knowing my words will hurt, wanting them to. I want to know who my brother is now, because I don’t see any trace of the happy-go-lucky, reckless boy I once knew and tried to protect. “He blamed you for our mother’s death, called you a changeling. He wanted nothing to do with you.”
“That doesn’t mean I wanted him on his knees for Viktor Andreyev’s bullet,” Liam says tightly. “I wouldn’t want that fate for any of us.” His face tenses, and I can tell in that moment that he’s imagined it a hundred times or more—our father kneeling behind a warehouse, the warm asphalt soaking through the knees of his suit trousers, the smell of the docks and garbage in his nose, knowing that the last thing he’ll smell will be the waste of the Chelsea piers, that the sun warming his head is the last sun he’ll ever feel, aching for more of it before the gunshot that sends him into that dark, permanent coldness.
I can tell that he’s imagined it for himself, looking into the dark Boston waters by the Kings’ shipping warehouse, looking out to the city skyline and envisioning the moment when Anastasia is told right as the muzzle presses to the back of his head. And yet—he’s still fighting anyway.
We’ve all pictured it, though. No man lives this life without being well-acquainted with the idea of his own end.
“Yet, you didn’t do anything to stop it.” I narrow my eyes at him. “Weren’t you given a vote?”
“I wasn’t even the heir when he died,” Liam says, his voice cutting. “He tried to givethathonor to our bastard half brother. So no, when the table voted to hand him over in exchange for peace among our three families, I only had the vote that any other man at the table would have.”
“And what was that vote?”
Liam doesn’t flinch. “I voted for death,” he says quietly.
“Because you hated him?” My voice takes on a different, harsher note. I’d wondered if my brother had fought for his life, or if he’d agreed to our father’s execution. “I hear you were punished, yourself, for your betrayal of your betrothal vow. What comes around and all that, I suppose?”
Liam’s right hand twitches, and I catch a glimpse of the scarred flesh on his thumb and forefinger. “No,” he says in the same quiet, measured tone. “Because it was his life, or the life of many others. The streets of Manhattan and Boston would have run red with mingled blood—Irish, Italian, and Russian all together. Ironic, right? We’d come together one way or another, in peace or in violence.” He takes a step towards me, and I see both men flanking him flinch, but they don’t move to stop him.
“Our father was mad with power,” Liam says, his tone slightly more urgent now, as if he’s pleading with me to understand. “He was willing to throw everything away—what little relationship he had with his only remaining son, the respect of the other Kings, even risk his life to gain the power and wealth he craved. All those lessons he gave us as children about frugality, about not flaunting money and wealth like the Italians or the Bratva? He lost sight of all of that. You left just as it was getting bad, Connor—you didn’t see him at the end. There was no reasoning with him. It was like—” Liam lets out a shaky breath. “It was like putting down a mad dog.”
“I should strike you for that.” My fist clenches, and I see Niall take a step forward, but Liam just snorts, raising a hand to stop him.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in the boxing ring, brother,” Liam says with a short laugh. “I’m not the child you remember, Connor, and I can hold my own. So if you think you ought to give me a thrashing for our father’s honor, consider that you might lose.”
“I can take care of it,” Niall says, edging closer to Liam’s side, but he waves the hand he’s holding up at Niall as if to physically push him back.
“I’m sure you’d love to,” I snort. “Then you could try and have Saoirse for yourself, eh? Sweep the brokenhearted bride to be off her feet, and straight to your bed?”
“She’d likely not be brokenhearted,” Niall growls, even as I see Liam give him a quizzical look.
