Chapter 3 - Shadows in the Harbor
Over the next three weeks, the east wing of the Callahan estate transformed. While the contractors worked on the HVAC by day, the grand music room on the third floor echoed with piano scales and soaring, heart-wrenching vocals late into the night.
Ronan found himself drawn to the third floor with a frequency that didn't go unnoticed by his inner circle.
Cormac cornered him in the private study one rainy Tuesday afternoon, slamming a dossier onto the desk. "You're spending hours behind closed doors with a domestic worker, Ronan. The board is asking questions. The media is starting to circle—they caught a glimpse of her leaving through the private gates."
"Let them circle," Ronan said coldly, not looking up from his laptop. "Maeve Murphy is performing at the winter gala. That's the official narrative."
"And the unofficial one?" Cormac asked, his voice tightening. "Because half the waterfront thinks you're grooming a new mistress, and the other half thinks you've lost your mind. More importantly... her background check came back."
Ronan finally looked up. His expression went flat. "And?"
"And nothing—that's the problem," Cormac said, leaning over the desk. "Clean record, scholarship student at a local community college, mother with chronic illness. But her father... her father wasn't just a music professor in Dublin. He was tied up in a messy currency counterfeiting ring that collapsed twenty years ago. The man who put him out of business, the man who seized his assets and drove him to an early grave..." Cormac paused, letting the weight of the words drop. "...was your grandfather, Patrick Callahan."
The room went dead silent. The grandfather's shadow—long, bloody, and ruthless—stretched across the decades to land squarely in the center of the room.
Ronan stood up slowly, his jaw set like iron. "Is she aware of this?"
"I don't know," Cormac said. "If she found out why her family lost everything, why she's scrubbing floors in your house to pay her mother's rent... she wouldn't sing for you. She'd put a knife in your ribs."
Ronan stared out the rain-streaked window toward the grey Atlantic. A dark, gnawing guilt twisted in his gut—a feeling he wasn't used to accommodating.
That night, when Maeve arrived for her rehearsal, Ronan was waiting for her in the music room. The grand piano was open, but he wasn't playing.
"We need to talk," Ronan said before she could even take off her coat.
May you like
Maeve stopped, reading the hard, guarded tension in his face. "About what? Am I missing a note?"
"About who you are," Ronan said, his voice dangerously low. "And why you're really standing in my house."
