Page 2 of The Irish Arrangement

Yet, I wasn’t prepared for how much he’d worsened. He was barely able to breathe, gaunt and thinner.

“Dad,” I greeted somberly. I didn’t check my tone, though, and it came out sounding like a scolding.

“How bad is it?” Ian said as he approached the bed with me.

Riley glanced at us, her brows raised, and backed out of the room with the tray of an untouched dinner.

“How bad is it?” Dad growled. “I’m dying. What do you expect?”

He’d been saying that for years.

“You don’t look well,” I commented as neutrally as possible.

“Looks like you need to check a mirror too,” he shot back, spry in his attitude. He thumbed his chin, indicating where I’d taken a hard hit from the Boyles’ fighter earlier.

I shrugged, glancing at the oxygen tank positioned near the head of the bed. Like usual, the thin, clear hose was lying on the mattress. The plastic nose piece rested, unused.

You stubborn, spiteful man.

Ian picked it up and held it out, but Dad swatted his offer away. “Ah, don’t mess with that. What good would it do?”

“It’d help you breathe, for one thing,” Ian replied as he dutifully gave up and released the hose. We were both too used to him to ever push hard. What Donal Sullivan wanted, he got.

“Why make me suffer any longer?” He huffed a laugh, which turned into coughing and wheezing. “At this rate, I’d be asking you to put me out of my misery.”

Ian and I shared a look. He’d voiced the very thing both of us dreaded. If Dad ever asked us to do that, we’d struggle with obeying him in such a final wish. We didn’t want to lose him, but we understood how miserable he had to be.

“But it’s too soon. I’ll fucking die knowing you don’t have an heir.”

I rolled my eyes, dropping to sit on the bed.

“I can’t,” Dad insisted. “I can’t die until you have an heir. I refuse to go to the grave knowing our line, our family, will die out with you.”

Ian bit his lip and stuck his hands in his pockets again, his usual stance when he was uncomfortable about something. “It’s not like he hasn’t tried.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Dad argued.

But I did. I had tried. Twice.

“I don’t see you married right now,” he said, narrowing his light-blue eyes at me.

I opened and closed my mouth. At a loss for words, I struggled with figuring out how long I had to put that task off.

“Finding him a wife is, uh, easier said than done,” Ian quipped.

I shot him a look of annoyance. “Hey, you could always knock someone up too.”

He laughed as Dad shook his head. “I refuse to die until I know you’ve secured an heir to the Sullivan name, the Sullivan bloodline.”

Ian shrugged at me, nonplussed. It was common knowledge that he couldn’t be expected to satisfy Dad’s request. Not only was he younger than me, but he was also not a blood brother. I was the only one. The only son.

“It’s always been like that,” Dad argued. “I didn’t make the rules, but you have to produce an heir, Declan.”

And through marriage. I was always careful to glove up when fucking a woman. The last thing we needed was an illegitimate child to pay for and raise. And I didn’t welcome the headache of a gold-digging woman to get knocked up by me and expect money, either.

“You have to find someone,” Dad insisted.

“You think I haven’t tried?” I stood and crossed my arms. “I married Erin.”

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