Page 50 of Crown of Thorns

"I'm proud of you," he says.

Not for the work. Not for the specific disputes resolved. For the choice to do the work the way my father would have. For the choice to build instead of control. For the choice to be something other than what I was raised to be.

I stand. Move toward him. His hands come up to my waist. The contact is simple. Just holding. No performance. No strategic touch.

"Thank you for letting me do this," I say.

"Thank you for building something that matters," he replies.

We stand like that. The clinic around us is quiet. The animals are in recovery. The world outside is Dublin's night. And in here, in this space, we're not performing. We're just existing in the same space and acknowledging that something has shifted fundamentally.

"I got a text," I tell him. "From Roisín." His jaw sets, unsurprised. "She reached out to me too," he says. "What did she say to you?" His voice is very quiet.

"That we should talk. That her father and she aren't on the same page. That she thinks there are things I need to understand about the situation."

"Not alone," he says.

"I might."

His hands tighten on my waist. "Renny—"

"I'm building my own network. That includes making my own decisions about who I talk to and why. You don't get to control that."

He pulls back. His jaw is working. The muscles are tense. He's fighting the instinct to control this. He's fighting the fear that she represents something he can't manage. That she knows something about him that he's not ready to reveal.

"She's connected to something in my past," he says finally.

"I know. You're going to tell me about it."

"Tomorrow. After the meeting with her family. After you see what it means to negotiate across that table with people who want things from you. After you understand what's at stake."

"Okay," I say.

He pulls me back toward him. Holds me like I might disappear. Like the discovery of the Roisín contact has reminded him that I'm a separate person with my own agency. That he can't control my choices any more than he can control the past.

"I love you," he says.

"I know."

The night settles around us. And I make the decision in the silence of it: I will meet with Roisín. I will listen to what she has to say. I will build my understanding of this world without waiting for Lorcan to give me permission.

Because that's the ground beneath me now. Not his control. Not his fear. My own capacity to make choices and stand on them. And if that capacity threatens something in him, then that's something we'll have to navigate together.

Chapter twenty-eight

The Blood Price

Renny

The meeting is neutral ground. A private room at the Clarence, overlooking the Liffey. The grey is heavy this morning. Rain comes in from the east. Dublin looks like it's underwater.

Roisín is there. She's sitting beside an older man with her face — the same sharp bones, the same eyes. Her father. She smiles at me. Not threatening. Not overly warm. Just the acknowledgment that we're both operating in a space where we understand the rules.

Across the table from me is Declan. Beside him is a man I don't recognize — another Gallagher operative, I think. Lorcan hasn't arrived yet. He's always late to these things. It's tactical. It allows him to read the room before committing his own presence.

The Doyle father — I hear him introduced as Micheal — opens the conversation.

"We have mutual interests that have been complicated by recent developments," he says.