A simmering, smoking ember sizzles to life in my chest and blazes hotter and hotter with each breath.
Declan glances up at me, and for a moment the ember calms, soothed.
Okay, maybe this isn’t a total loss yet.
He knows how much energy this took. He’ll give me a little props, a little respect, for?—
He snaps his fingers. “Brody, fetch me a drink from the bar downstairs. Whiskey.”
That’s the last straw.
The casual snub of all my effort. The mockery of how I dealt with everything over this last week. The knowledge thatI’mthe one who nabbed all this info on Finn and the Irish Kings yet receive disdain instead of praise. Not Connor. Not Declan. Me.
My injuries, my struggle, mylife… None of that means anything to him, and none of it ever will.
A guard dog would be more important to Declan. I might as well be a ghost or gum on the bottom of his shoe. He’ll never view me as an equal. He’ll never truly see me as a son, not the way he does Connor.
He doesn’t value my devotion or acknowledge the risks I’ve taken. The training I’ve endured, the bullets I’ve dodged, the fists that landed…
I’m nothing to him.
But Trinity…
Her friend was everything to her. She believes she’s a loner, that she needs no one, but she dedicated her entire life to a single person.
Trinity loved Angelica, and she gave her youth—her life—for justice.
Compared to that level of loyalty, Declan’s childish desire to bring down the NYC Gallaghers is meaningless.
I look at my father and brother as they huddle over the laptop and dissect the files Trinity spent years gathering.
Declan is nothing but a scavenger digging for scraps, waging a war he can’t even define.
Do either of them know why or when the East and West Coast Gallaghers severed ties? Do they even care? I imagine the answers are in Trinity’s hard drive, but do they matter?
Declan’s married to the imagined insult of being part of the lesser branch of the family, and Connor acts as his loyal dog.
What the actual fuck am I doing here?
The only person who’s ever truly cared about me since Mom passed is Maeve. She’s the only one in this family whose chest cavity houses an actual beating heart.
And she risked everything for Kellin. For love. Just like Trinity.
The pair of them embody devotion.
Meanwhile, I’m just an errand boy. A glutton for punishment who’s chasing a participation trophy that never made it off the factory line.
This past week, I had something worth a million hard drives.
I had Trinity, and I let her go.
I swallow down the rush of bile that rises in my throat, pace away from the couch, and shove a hand through my hair. The wound on my thigh twinges, a reminder of how Trinity remained at my side even after she found freedom.
How she tricked me toget me to staywhen I was wounded and had no chance of following her if she ran off.
I study the wall where I pinned her and fucked the anger out of us both. The duffel bag sits on the side of the bed, a t-shirt she bought last night spilling out of the zipper. The remains of the beignets still lie in a sad pile on the ground.
She’s everywhere except where she needs to be.
