I am a chief engineer, Declan. I was writing and building systems while you were still in grade school. Did you genuinely believe that grief that the loss of your mother had hollowed me out enough for you to walk rings around me? Me? Did you think I'd simply ceased to function?
I moved one step toward him. He moved one step back. I'm aware of the Cayman Islands account, Declan. Account number 74229. That half million you shifted out last night.
Every cent of it and the one-way tickets to Dubai Emirates flight 202 departing tomorrow morning. Those two. His face went the color of ash. His knees buckled and he grabbed the back of a chair to stop himself from folding entirely. A sound passed through the room.
No one chose it. It just came. The specificity of what I had laid on that table struck them. The way a sudden impact strikes you. The body registers it before the brain catches up.
No man unraveling at the edges, no confused elder chasing old memories assembles that kind of precision. What they were absorbing was an accusation with teeth documented exact inescapable, and I still had the worst of it in reserve. One thing remained unspoken, the sharpest thing I had carried in silence across the length of that city to arrive at this moment. And I know what tonight was actually for Declan. I let the quiet stretch.
I made him stand in it. Taking me home after dinner was never the plan. The Southside was your destination for me alone, not for the two of us together. A manufactured diagnosis, a compliant judge, a locked ward in a state facility. You were going to wall your own father inside an institution so you could step onto a plane and raise a glass to yourself on some beach with my money funding every round.
A wave of revulsion rolled through the room audible and involuntary. Every man at that table had his eyes on Declan now, and not one of those faces held anything resembling surprise. What they held was disgust. One investor, the one who'd been savoring the expensive wine all night with such evident appreciation, pushed back from the table and got to his feet. He placed his napkin down flat unfolded.
Is this true, Dunore? Contempt threaded through every syllable. You were genuinely going to commit your own father. Declan's mouth parted. Nothing followed.
I It's not that simple. He requires proper care. I was acting in his interest. You were acting in your own. I cut him off before he could build any further.
The truth is that you lack the spine to earn your own way and the capacity to love a single soul beyond yourself. You are no businessman, Declan. You are a thief, and you are a stain on the Dunore name. Those words entered him the way a blade enters finding the gap between ribs going deep. Whatever standing he had carried into that restaurant was forfeit.