Chapter 1 - The Engagement He Could Not Remember
Faye did not answer at once.
She picked up the coffee pot and poured more into Cormac’s cup even though he had not taken a sip. Then she placed the pot on the table with a soft click, as if she needed something steady to do with her hands before saying something that might change both their lives.
Cormac sat on the edge of the bed, his bare feet against the cold wooden floor.
The room was small enough to make him uncomfortable.
It held a narrow bed, a low dresser, one crooked lamp, and a tiny kitchen table covered with unpaid bills. On the dresser sat a box of colored pencils, a pink plastic hairclip, and a framed picture of a little girl with dark curls missing one front tooth.
He looked at the picture.
“You have a daughter,” he said.
“My niece,” Faye answered. “Her name is Elsie.”
Cormac nodded once.
He had spent half his life learning what not to ask. In his world, personal questions often came with consequences.
But he could not stop looking at the picture.
“She lives here?”
“Sometimes.”
The answer was careful.
Too careful.
Cormac lifted the coffee, took one sip, then set it down again. His head pounded with the kind of hangover that did not come only from alcohol. Something else lived beneath it—fragments of last night.
A private room at O’Malley’s.
Men laughing too loudly.
Glasses raised.
His brother Declan standing near the bar.
Faye carrying a tray through the crowd.
Then the image that would not leave him:
Faye kneeling beside him on a sidewalk in the rain.
Her hands pressed against his chest.
Her voice saying, Stay awake. Please stay awake.
Cormac looked at her.
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
Faye crossed her arms.
“You really don’t remember?”
“I remember pieces.”
“That is convenient.”
Cormac’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“You think I am lying?”
“I think men like you remember what helps them and forget what hurts other people.”
The words landed harder than they should have.
No one spoke to Cormac Brennan that way.
Not his men.
Not rival crews.
Not city officials who pretended they had never taken his calls.
But Faye did not look afraid.
She looked tired.
That was different.
“I was at the party,” he said slowly. “Then what?”
“You drank too much.”
“I gathered that.”
“You were celebrating something.”
Cormac’s memory shifted.
He had been celebrating a new shipping contract. A legitimate contract, at least on paper. Brennan Maritime had won control of an old freight terminal near South Boston, a deal that would bring in millions.
Declan had called it the beginning of a cleaner future.
Cormac remembered hating the phrase.
Cleaner future.
As if a man could wash blood off an empire by putting his name on new buildings.
“You stood up in front of your people,” Faye continued. “You said you were done letting other men decide who got protected and who got used.”
Cormac stared at her.
“I said that?”
“You did.”
“And then?”
Faye’s fingers tightened around the edge of the table.
“Then you pointed at me.”
Cormac’s throat went dry.
“You were looking at me like you knew me,” she said. “Like you had been trying to find me for years.”
“I had never seen you before last night.”
“I know.”
“Then why did I—”
“Ask me to marry you?” she finished.
Cormac said nothing.
Faye gave a small, humorless laugh.
“You got down on one knee in front of forty men. You took off your ring—the one with your family crest—and put it on my finger.”
His eyes dropped to her hand.
A heavy silver ring sat on her thumb because it was too large for any of her fingers.
Cormac recognized it immediately.
His father’s ring.
The ring Cormac had worn since he took control of the Brennan family at twenty-one.
He had never let anyone touch it.
“You said,” Faye continued, “‘You’re under my name now. No one gets near you.’”
Cormac’s chest tightened.
He remembered the words.
Not clearly.
But enough to know he said them.
Then Faye’s expression changed.
The exhaustion became something closer to pain.
“And I said yes,” she whispered, “because I needed you to mean it.”
Cormac looked at her for a long moment.
“Why?”
Faye looked toward the picture of Elsie.
Then back at him.
“Because your men took my sister last night.”
The room went silent.
Cormac’s face went still.
“What?”
“My sister, Nora. She works at Harborline Records. She found something she was not supposed to find—payments, shipping manifests, names.”
Cormac stood up so quickly that the chair beside the bed scraped against the floor.
“What names?”
Faye reached into a drawer and removed a folded piece of paper.
She placed it on the table.
Cormac unfolded it.
It was a list of containers scheduled to arrive at the new freight terminal.
Most looked ordinary.
Machinery parts.
Imported wine.
Construction materials.
But three shipments carried a code he knew.
A code used by his late father’s old organization.
A code Cormac had ordered erased thirteen years ago.
His pulse slowed.
That was never a good sign.
It meant anger had turned into calculation.
“Who gave this to Nora?” he asked.
“She found it herself. She called me crying. She said someone from Brennan Maritime had been moving records late at night.”
“Who?”
“She did not know.”
Cormac looked again at the coded shipments.
Then he saw the signature at the bottom.
Declan Brennan.
His younger brother.
The only family Cormac had left.
Before Faye could say another word, Cormac’s phone began ringing on the dresser.
Declan.
Cormac answered.
“Where is Nora Vale?” he asked.
There was silence.
Then Declan exhaled.
“You should not be there, Cormac.”
Cormac’s eyes darkened.
“Where is she?”
Declan’s voice turned calm.
Too calm.
“She is safer than you think.”
Faye reached for the table to steady herself.
Cormac looked at her.
Then back toward the phone.
“If one thing happens to her,” he said quietly, “there will be nowhere in this city you can hide.”
Declan gave a short laugh.
“You still think this is your city.”
The call ended.
Cormac stared at the blank screen.
Then he picked up his shoes.
“Get dressed,” he told Faye.
She looked at him warily.
“Why?”
May you like
Cormac slipped his father’s ring off her thumb, then placed it carefully in her palm.
“Because if you said yes to me last night,” he said, “then I have a promise to keep.”
