This is not the man I was raised to believe in.
In my father’s stories, Cillian Byrne is a ruthless opportunist who blocks corridors and ruins alliances, a man who destabilizes networks and inserts himself where he isn’t invited. I’ve seen him cold and decisive, seen the way men shift when he enters a room, heard the quiet fear threaded into his name.
Here, he reaches across the table to wipe mashed potato off his nephew’s cheek with a napkin. He listens when his mother speaks. He tolerates his sister’s teasing with something close to affection.
He was a boy once.
The thought unsettles me more than it should.
He was a boy who packed a bag and dreamed about shipping routes, a boy who stood at the pier and imagined building something of his own. He lost a father. He took on a war. He hardened.
But this house remembers him before that.
I tear another piece of bread and let the butter soften against it, and for a moment I’m not calculating angles or anticipating leverage. I’m just sitting at a table that feels lived in, listening to stories about scraped knees and schoolyard fights and the time he refused to apologize to a teacher for correcting her math.
“He’s always been stubborn,” Siobhán says fondly.
“Disciplined,” Cillian counters.
“Stubborn,” Maeve repeats.
“And protective,” Declan adds, glancing at me with something knowing in his gaze.
Cillian doesn’t respond to that one. He just lifts his glass and takes a slow drink.
I swallow another bite of lamb and feel something unfamiliar settle low in my chest. It isn’t desire or practicality.
It’s grief.
Not for what I’ve lost.
For what I never had.
My childhood home never held this kind of noise, never carried stories that softened sharp edges. My father commanded respect and silence. My mother floated through rooms like a fragile ornament until she disappeared entirely. There were no arguments about toy boats or burned toast. No photographs of crooked braids taped to walls.
I look at Cillian again, really look at him, and for the first time I don’t see a rival’s son or a strategic target.
I see a man who grew up at this table.
A man who could have walked away from it and didn’t.
Siobhán reaches for my plate. “More?” she asks gently.
I hesitate.
“Yes,” I say and hand it over.
Dinner stretches longer than I expect, and it ends the way real dinners do, with plates half scraped clean and everyone talking over one another as chairs shift and dishes are gathered without ceremony. Siobhán refuses help at first, then accepts it anyway, pressing containers into Cillian’s hands while scolding him for not eating enough greens.
“You’ll take this,” she says, snapping a lid onto a tin of leftover lamb. “And the bread. And don’t pretend you won’t eat it later.”
“I won’t pretend,” he replies, kissing her cheek.
She turns to me with a warmth that catches me off guard. “You too. There’s more than enough.”
“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it.
Declan claps Cillian on the shoulder on the way out, Maeve hugs him without hesitation, and the baby waves a sticky hand in our direction like we’re heading off to war instead of a short drive back. It’s ordinary. It’s disarming.
