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“Enough!’ Liam snaps, his voice deeper and more angry than I’ve ever heard it. “I want to talk to my brother, not fight him, or sic you on him, Niall. Just stayback.” Liam looks at me again, letting out a heavy sigh. “Our father was past our helping him, Connor. Yes, I voted to sacrifice him for the sake of peace. Graham, who stands at your side now, did the same. Viktor, who stands at your side now, delivered the bullet who killed him. Your hands are not cleaner than mine, brother, no matter how much you’d like to think otherwise.”
“So are you willing to sacrifice yourself on the altar of peace then?” I raise an eyebrow at him. “You weren’t even willing to marry the woman you were told to, and yet you talk about our father’s life being the price of peace?”
There’s nothing Liam can say to that, and he knows it. His lips thin, and a silence falls over the cemetery.
“We should go,” the third man says, with a hint of urgency.
“Who is this?” I gesture to the man. “Some new lackey of yours? Niall’s replacement, if I decide to cut his hands or his balls off for getting too close to Saoirse?”
“I’d like to see you try,” Niall hisses, and Liam glares at him.
“This is Maximilian Agosti,” Liam says coolly. “He’s a friend.”
“An Italian friend? I thought you’d lost all those when Luca threw in with me—much to his wife’s consternation, apparently.”
“He’s a priest,” Liam says tightly. “He keeps his own counsel. He married Ana and I.”
“Ah, so hehasthrown his lot in with you.” I smirk. “Well, it’s good to have someone around to give out last rites, if it comes to that.”
“And will it?” Liam holds my gaze, his own measured and chilly. “I don’t want to fight with you, Connor. I hoped you’d stay in London—not because I don’t want to see you again, but because we shouldn’t be at odds like this. We’re brothers, and you gave all this up of your own accord. You don’t even want it, I don’t think. There’s no reason for you to come back.”
“The reason is standing right in front of me.”
The silence falls again, thick and solid between us. We’re a foot from one another, but it might as well be an ocean.
“I don’t want you dead, brother,” I say quietly. “I want you to step down. Sacrifice your desires for the sake of peace, as you sacrificed our father. You couldn’t let go of the woman you claim to love, so let go of this.Leave, and you and your wife and child can live a happy life together.”
“Boston is my home.” Liam swallows hard. “I want to raise my child here.”
“And I made a home in London. But I left it, because I was told your life was at risk. I didn’t want you to die like our father, on your knees in shame. So I came home. Now I’m telling you,brother, that the only future for you is far away from here. I can’t stop the Kings from ousting you. But I can save your life.”
“So noble of you,” Liam hisses. “If you hadn’t left in the first place—”
“Liam, we need to go.” Niall gestures to the back gate of the cemetery, where I can see out of the corner of my eye that Jacob and Quint are standing, a long black car behind them. “You’re in danger here. It’s too exposed.”
Liam hesitates, but Niall doesn’t. His hand closes around Liam’s elbow, tugging him backwards, and after a moment’s resistance, he follows, glancing once over his shoulder at me before Niall hustles him away towards the front gate of the cemetery.
The third man doesn’t leave, though. His hands are in his jeans pockets, and he turns towards me, an unreadable expression on his face.
“Don’t you think you ought to go too, Maximilian?” My voice doesn’t hold a hint of warmth, but the man doesn’t appear to flinch or show even a bit of fear.
“Just Max is fine,” he says with a twitch of his mouth. “I stayed back because I was curious, and I thought you might have more to say. I’m a good listener, if you need one. I thought perhaps you might, what with—” he gestures to my father’s grave, and I feel my jaw tighten.
“That’s very presumptuous of you,” I say tightly. “As if I’d say anything to you that you might give Liam to use against me. You’re on his side after all, right?”
Max shrugs. “I’m not on anyone’s side in this, unless there’s a side where this doesn’t end up like Cain and Abel, Biblically speaking. And in the end, I’m under Viktor Andreyev’s protection, so since he’s thrown his lot in with you I’d have to think of that, if ever I needed to choose a side in all of this. But I’m hoping that I don’t—that the two of you both see sense, in all of this.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Liam said you performed his wedding. Why, then, if you weren’t going to be true to him?”
Max hesitates. “I’m bound to Viktor through his offer of protection, and to Liam through friendship. I believed, to the very depths of my soul, that the love between him and Anastasia was pure and true and good. So I married them, because it has always been my purpose, I believe, to find love in this difficult and often cruel life wherever and whenever it can be found.” He pauses, as if considering his next words carefully. “The love between brothers is sacred, too, Connor McGregor. I think you know that—or you wouldn’t be here now.”
“You say that as if you know.” I look at him curiously. He’s oddly mysterious, this strange dark-haired Italian man who seemingly has split his loyalty between a Russian and an Irishman.
“I do,” Max says simply. “I had a brother once.” A flicker of sadness enters his gaze, and I frown.
“What happened to him?”
“He’s dead.” Max’s lips thin. “And now I, who was once a man of the cloth, am under Viktor Andreyev’s protection. Infer what you like from that.”
