My feet carry me down the stairs. Each step feels inevitable. I'm thinking about the burn of the whiskey. The warmth spreading through my chest. The way the edges of everything get blurry after the third glass.
Aoife would be disappointed.
The thought cuts through, and I stop on the landing. Grip the banister until my knuckles go white.
Aoife, who held a bucket under my chin for three days. Who flushed my cocaine without blinking. Who stayed when she should have run.
She'd be disappointed. And I'd have to see it in her face every time she looked at me.
I stand there in the dark, breathing hard, fighting myself.
The office is down the hall. Aidan's whiskey is definitely there. But if I go looking, I know what I'm really doing. I know what it means. One drink becomes two. Two becomes the bottle. The bottle becomes whatever I can find to chase it.
I think about Matty.
After I shot Frank, after the room went silent and everyone stood frozen, I was the one who left first. Walked out without looking back. But later, when I passed the dining room, Matty was still in there. Alone with the body. He'd sent everyone else away and was making calls, arranging things. He didn't ask permission. Didn't wait to be told.
He just handled it.
That surprised me. He’s been surprising me since this started.
I let go of the banister.
I don't go to the office. I turn the other direction, toward the kitchen, because I need coffee or water or something that isn't a drink. Something that keeps me on this side of the edge.
The lamp above the stove is on. Someone else is awake.
Matty.
He's sitting at the table with his phone in one hand and a pack of mints in the other, scrolling through something with that blank expression he wears like armor. The lamp above the stove casts half his face in shadow.
He doesn't look up when I walk in. Just shifts the pack of mints to his left hand and keeps scrolling.
I go to the sink. Fill a glass with water. My hand shakes slightly as I bring it to my mouth, and I drink the whole thing standing there, letting the cold settle in my chest.
When I turn around, Matty is watching me. He doesn't say anything. Doesn't have to.
I pull out the chair across from him. The scrape of wood against tile is too loud in the silence.
"Can't sleep either," I say.
He grunts.
I let the silence sit. Matty doesn't respond well to pressure. Never has. You push him, and he retreats further into whatever space he's built inside his head. You wait, and sometimes he comes out on his own.
Tonight, he comes out.
"Viktor Tarasov," he says. His thumb stops moving on the screen. "I found his next meeting."
Everything in me goes still.
"Where?"
"The old grain warehouse outside Drogheda. Friday night. He's bringing six men. Maybe more." Matty's dark eyes lift to mine. They're the same eyes our father had, and looking at them still costs me something. "He thinks we're still scrambling. Still licking our wounds after the house."
"Aren't we?"
"We've been strategic." The correction is quiet but pointed. "There's a difference."
