Then he clears his throat and continues. “Sean has… Well, he’s always been a little different. I actually thought that he was the perfect heir to the throne because of those differences. He’s stoic and thoughtful and… super fucking serious.”
I nod, remembering the difference between the two brothers the day they’d barged into my life.
Sean had been stony-faced. Darkened with internal shadows.
Cillian was cocky and arrogant and bright. Making things up as he went along.
The two couldn’t have been more different.
“But now, I realize that’s exactly why he can’t do this. He doesn’t want to be the don. He never has.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“To my parents, it’s the worst thing. You don’t just walk out on your birthright like that. You don’t just turn your back on your family.”
“I’m sorry,” I say softly. “We were you close with him?”
“He was my brother,” Cillian says simply, looking down at his hands.
His shoulders hunch under the weight of his pain. I have to resist the urge to reach out and touch him.
“You’ll see him again,” I offer.
I have no idea if that’s true or not. But I say it anyway.
It’s what I wish someone had been able to say to me when Mama died.
In Cillian’s case, there’s at least a sliver of hope.
I had none.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think Da would let him come back.”
“Really?”
Cillian glances at me, and I can tell by his smile that I’ve just said something he considers naïve.
“We’re not like other families, Saoirse,” he says. “We don’t forgive so easily.”
“Do you?”
He considers that for a moment. “A part of me hates him for leaving,” he admits. “But another part of me admires him for it.”
“It’s always brave to leave everything you know and love,” I say.
“Yes, exactly,” Cillian replies. “I had to tell Kian myself.”
“Kian?”
“My younger brother. He’s ten.”
The lines of his face seem to relax into unease.
“It didn’t go so well, did it?”
“He yelled and threw things,” Cillian tells me. “He cursed Sean out and then he cursed me out.”
“At ten, huh?”