SAOIRSE
It’s very quiet. Fire pops softly in the grate, Patrick’s chains drag once on the wood floor as he shifts his weight, and Cillian stands at my side with blood on his cuff and a fresh bandage around his hand, watching me instead of watching the man who raised me. Gavin is breathing too fast behind him. Maeve’s jaw is set. Declan looks ready to end this himself if I hesitate.
I don’t.
Patrick looks older than he did in my head all these years, and that unsettles me more than the blood on his mouth. He is not larger than the room. He is not the force that bent every life around him. He is a tired man in ruined clothes with mud on his boots and my mother’s death still on his hands.
“Daughter,” he says again, trying for control, trying for history.
“My name is Saoirse,” I answer.
His eyes narrow, then soften in that false way I know too well. “You’re upset, and you’ve been manipulated. He took advantage of your confusion. He always wanted what was mine.”
I almost laugh, but the sound would come out wrong. “You still think this is about territory.”
“This is about survival,” he snaps, and for a second the old voice comes through, the one that could fill a room and make men stand straighter. “I taught you that. I kept you alive. I made you useful in a world that eats girls like you.”
“You made me useful to you.”
He shifts his focus to my stomach, and the look is brief but I see it. Calculation. Ownership. Future leverage already forming.
Cillian takes one step forward, and I put my hand on his wrist without looking at him.
“Let me do this,” I say.
He goes still, then nods once.
Patrick sees that and smiles with blood in his teeth. “There he is. The gentleman king, letting the woman make the ugly choice so his hands stay clean.”
Cillian’s voice is calm. “My hands are not clean.”
“No,” Patrick says and turns back to me, “but his lies wear better than mine.”
The words hit old bruises, old instincts, old training, and I feel all of it rise in me at once. Fear. Grief. Anger. Shame. Love. I could drown in any one of them if I let myself. I don’t let myself.
I step away from Cillian and into the center of the room.
“You want to talk about lies?” I say. “Good. Let’s do that while everyone can hear.”
Patrick’s mouth tightens.
“You told me my mother slipped and hit her head when I was twelve, and I saw bruises on her wrists.” My voice is steady now, and I keep it there. “You told me she was unstable when she tried to leave. You told me she forced your hand. You told me grief made men hard and I should learn from it.”
No one moves.
“You stood beside her coffin and told me Cillian killed her, and I built my life around that story. I carried your rage for years. I walked into another man’s house for you. I lied for you. I watched for you. I became what you trained me to be, and every time I flinched from what that meant, you called it weakness.”
Patrick’s eyes sharpen. “I gave you purpose.”
“You gave me a target.”
He opens his mouth, but I keep going.
“You killed my mother before you ever sent me after Cillian. You killed her when she tried to leave with me, and then you killed her again every year after by forcing me to love the story that covered it.”
The silence in the room changes. It is not waiting anymore. It is witness.
Patrick straightens as much as the cuffs allow. “You think shooting me fixes that?”
