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She giggles. “Fair. And all too true.”
“How is Ares, anyhow.”
She gives me a look. “Beating himself up. You know how he is: the king that never wanted to be king, who ends up being way too good of a king in the end. He’s considering it a personal character failing that he got Callie into this predicament.”
I frown. “He did no such thing. Their greedy father did.”
She rolls her eyes and raises her glass. “Well, here’s to shitty dads, I guess.” She frowns as she glances at me. “You never talk about yours.”
“Nope.”
And it’s going to stay that way.
Neve already looks up to me like I’m her personal Superman. The big brother she never had. The caped crusader who’s rescued her on more than one occasion. She knows about my time in the Rangers, and she’s obviously smart enough to put two and two together and realize that I clearly saw combat and must have taken lives.
But she never needs to know that one of those was my own father’s.
“That bad, huh?”
“That bad.”
She frowns. “I used to think ours was the crappiest dad out there. But he was just…not around. And a jackass besides.”
About two years ago, Eilish found out that the real cause of Erin Kildare’s too early death—Erin, as in Eilish and Neve’s mother—wasn’t the brain aneurism they’d been told it was. It was that she’d figured out that Declan was fucking around on her for years and years with fuck knows how many women, and was planning to leave him, taking the girls with her.
Then Declan put a stop to that by injecting an air bubble into Erin’s bloodstream, which popped in her brain.
I had never heard a whisper of this. Neither had Neve. And I guess Eilish was originally going to keep it to herself. But she recently spilled it apologetically to both of us over drinks. I think she was worried about hurting Neve, and that’s why she kept quiet. But I think it actually gave both of them some closure.
Years after he killed Erin, Declan ended up meeting with Gavan Tsarenko’s adoptive father, Vadim, who confronted Declan about the decades-long affair he’d been having with Vadim’s sister, Svetlana. Apparently, the affair even produced a kid, though no one knows what happened to the poor bastard. In the end, Declan ended up killing Vadim that night, which set into motion all the events that eventually led to Eilish and Gavan getting together.
Something else to file under “Life is fucking weird sometimes”.
“Yeah, well, Declanwasa jackass.”
She shakes her head. “I’m just sorry he was always such a dick to you.”
I shrug. “I was an outsider. He never wanted to hire me at all. That was all Cillian’s idea.”
“Well, cheers to Cillian, then. And to the best bodyguardever.”
I chuckle and do a fake, deep, dramatic bow as she laughs.
Neve turns to eye me. “You know, you’re doing the right thing here, Castle. For Callie, I mean.”
“Jesus, you make it sound like I knocked her up.”
Neve raises a brow.
“I haven’ttouchedher. Christ,” I grunt.
Which is a lie.
“I’m doing this because if I don’t, our family could potentially lose alot. Cil has a lot more invested in Thermopylae Acquisitions than you know.”
“Oh, no, I know,” she mutters darkly. “Who the hell do you think helped him invest it?”
She sighs, and I reach over and pat her arm. “Well, that’s why I’m doing this. Gotta save the Kildare bank account.”
