“Does Da know?” I ask. “About how little you want to take over for him?”
“Of course not,” he scoffs. “He sees only what he wants to see.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I reply. “There are two gravestones out back with the wrong names on the front.”
Kian’s expression turns sheepish. Like he’d decided not to tell me and hoped I wouldn’t ever notice.
“You saw that then?”
“My first night here,” I confirm.
“He did that a few months after you left.”
“I didn’t leave,” I say harshly. “I was kicked out. I was fucking driven out.”
“That’s not how Da saw it.”
I frown. “Explain to me how Da saw it.”
“Maybe it’s best if you and Da—"
“Fucking hell, Kian,” I interrupt impatiently. “Don’t make me break your other leg.”
He sighs. I can tell he doesn’t want to get into it with me. I know I’m being selfish about this.
But I need to know. It’s an unanswered question that’s bugged me for the last thirteen fucking years.
“Da… expected more from you,” Kian says without mincing his words. I appreciate the directness, but it still stings like a motherfucker. “He expected you to know the stakes. To act smarter. He felt you chose some random girl over the family.”
My jaw twitches and I stiffen. “Is that honestly what he thought? What he still thinks?”
Kian stays silent. He’s watching me like I’m a ticking time bomb waiting to go off.
But it’s plenty of answer in itself.
“I didn’t realize it was a choice between her and the family!” I exclaim, throwing my arms up in frustration.
“It was the Kinahans, Cillian,” Kian says slowly. “It was Brody fucking Murtagh. You stood between them and the girl.”
“Her name is Saoirse. Not ‘the girl.’”
“I know what her name is,” Kian says. “Just like I know she’s on the compound right now, under your protection. Again.”
I jerk my chin up. “You’re saying I should have left her in that cell?”
“I’m not saying that at all.” Kian sounds affronted by the very notion. “I’m just saying, your priorities were different than Da’s back then. They still are. That’s not necessary a bad thing. It just means that the two of you are not seeing eye to eye. You may never see eye to eye.”
“And what do you think?” I press. “Do you think that I don’t have my priorities straight?”
“Does it matter what I think?”
“To me, it does.”
Kian nods slowly. “I’ve never been in love,” he says after a long pause. “But I think that if I were—if I felt the things you felt, the things you feel—I would’ve done the same.”
I stare at him.
As I do, I lose the boy for a moment.