Chapter 4 - The Coffee at Table Four
Two days later, on a quiet Sunday afternoon, Declan Gallagher entered the Copper Anchor.
He did not come with his usual entourage of six armed lieutenants. He came accompanied only by Brutus, who was now secured by a heavy, professional-grade leather harness with double steel rings. The dog walked calmly at his master’s side, his massive head lowered, completely relaxed.
The tavern was nearly empty. Arthur, seeing Declan walk through the front entrance, nearly dropped a stack of clean pint glasses behind the bar before ducking into the back office to hide.
Declan walked straight to the small, dark corner booth in Mave’s section—Table Four—and sat down. Brutus immediately settled beneath the table, his heavy head resting comfortably on Mave’s worn leather work boots.
Mave walked out from the kitchen carrying a tray with a single mug of steaming black coffee.
She did not smile. She did not offer a polite greeting.
She placed the black coffee on the mahogany table in front of him, set her empty tray under her arm, and remained standing directly over his booth.
“You put Colin outside my apartment,” she said.
Declan picked up his coffee mug, taking a slow sip before looking up at her.
“Yes,” he said flatly.
“You looked into my mother’s medical debt at Saint Jude’s,” she continued, her voice trembling slightly with suppressed rage.
“Yes.”
“You knew I hadn’t spent the money in that envelope.”
“Yes.”
Mave leaned forward, placing both of her hands flat on the wooden table, bringing her face inches from his.
“You do not get to study me like a problem you’ve decided to solve, Mr. Gallagher.”
Declan’s dark gray eyes darkened. He set his coffee cup down with a sharp, heavy clack against the table.
“I’m keeping you safe,” he said, his voice dropping into that deep, dangerous register that usually made grown men back out of rooms.
“No,” Mave snapped back instantly. “You’re deciding what safe means, putting a cage around me, and telling me afterward that I should be grateful.”
“You are vulnerable, Mave,” he said, leaning closer. “You walk through South Boston at midnight alone. You live in a building with a broken front latch. You owe thirty-two thousand dollars to a private medical collection firm that sells its debt to local loan sharks when accounts go delinquent.”
“So is everyone in this neighborhood!” she shouted softly, mindful of the few patrons in the front room.
“Not equally!” Declan growled, his jaw clenching.
“That still doesn't make me yours!”
The words hit the small corner booth like a physical blow.
For the first time since she had met him, Declan Gallagher had no immediate answer. His mouth closed. His dark gray eyes searched her face, looking for the usual signs of submission, fear, or negotiation that he encountered in every other human being he interacted with.
He found none. There was only absolute, unyielding self-ownership.
Mave took his sudden silence and pushed directly into it.
“No cars outside my building,” she ordered, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper. “No men following me to the clinic. No investigating my family. And no paying a single dime of my mother’s bills without coming to me and asking for my permission first.”
Declan stared at her, his hands resting flat on the table.
“Someone is already asking questions about you, Mave,” he said quietly.
Her anger paused for a fraction of a second. “Who?”
“The men who were removed from the tavern the night Brutus broke his chain,” Declan said. “The men with the expensive coats.”
Mave’s stomach tightened into a hard knot, but she refused to step back. “Why?”
“Because you became visible,” Declan said simply. “Because three hundred people on these docks saw a night-shift waitress command my dog and talk back to me, and now my rivals think you are a weakness they can exploit to get to me.”
“You mean because you became interested,” Mave corrected him instantly.
Declan did not deny it. He sat in total silence, his eyes fixed on her face.
Mave’s breath hitched in her throat, the full weight of the situation finally crashing over her.
“Then your protection,” she whispered, her eyes burning with quiet fury, “is creating the exact danger you claim it fixes.”
That landed.
Declan looked away from her, his gaze shifting toward the rain streaking down the tavern’s front window.
When he turned back to look at her, the absolute, arrogant certainty was gone from his face. It was not replaced by weakness—a man like Declan Gallagher did not become weak—but by a cold, calculating realism that had been forced, for the very first time in his life, to account for an element he could not control.
Her.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked quietly.
It was the very first useful question he had asked her since he walked into her life.
May you like
Mave met his dark gray eyes without flinching.
“Start by listening.”
