Page 14 of The Endless Want

I open the laptop again, run the footage frame by frame. There—a detail I missed before. The person in the video wears gloves, black leather, smooth. Ailish hates gloves. Says they slow her down when she types.

Not proof, but a thread. And I’m good with threads.

I close the laptop, start the engine.

The tech office sits above an old printing plant, one of the few places in the city that still belongs entirely to us. Ryan, our systems guy, looks up from his monitors when I walk in. “You look like death warmed over.”

“Do me a favor.” I drop the laptop on his desk. “Find me everything about this footage—metadata, edits, origin. I want to know what camera, what IP, what coffee the bastard was drinking.”

He blinks. “That bad, huh?”

“Just do it.”

He nods and gets to work, fingers flying over the keyboard. I pace behind him, the hum of servers filling the silence.

After ten minutes, he stops. “Okay, this is weird.”

“Define weird.”

“The video’s stitched together. Half of it’s genuine feed from the dock cameras. The rest—different lens signature, different compression. Someone spliced two recordings to make one continuous shot.”

“Meaning the image of Ailish⁠—”

“Could be pasted in. Deep-fake level clean. You’d need to know what to look for.”

My pulse steadies. “Whoever did this wanted her framed.”

Ryan nods. “And they knew you’d be the one to see it first.”

“Can you trace the source?”

“Already on it. Give me twelve hours.”

I clap his shoulder. “You’ve got six.”

I leave, feeling like I am waiting for fate itself to call me.

Outside, dawn edges the horizon. I drive until the sun breaks over the Liffey and paints the water gold.

For a moment, it almost feels like calm, but it’s the kind that comes right before everything falls apart.

My phone buzzes again—unknown number. I answer without thinking.

A distorted voice crackles through the line, male, Russian accent. “Mr. Costello. You’re chasing ghosts. Stop before you make more of them.”

The line goes dead. I stare at the phone until the screen goes dark. Then, I toss it onto the passenger seat and start the car.

Whatever game this is, they just made it personal.

CHAPTER 4

Ailish

Three days pass, and every one of them feels like a test. I keep moving through Liam’s offices as if nothing is wrong, my schedule uninterrupted, my temperament sharp: morning meeting, menu revisions for the charity gala, two hours reviewing supply routes with Kellan, and a check-in with the Italians that should have been simple but isn’t anymore.

Everyone is polite, respectful, careful. I wonder how many of them are watching me for cracks.

But the worst part is I keep replaying those moments with Declan.