“There’s no easy way to say this,” Patrick said. “Somebody attacked Liam last week. There were three of them, and they stabbed him in the gut. They meant to kill him.”

She sucked in a startled breath. “How do you know? Were you there?”

He held up his right hand. “I broke two fingers during the brawl. Yes, I was there, and it was an unprovoked attack. The ringleader came from New York and was promised a small fortune to take him out.”

Her gaze flew to Liam. Someone like him surely had a lot of enemies. The report submitted by Oscar’s detectives contained a long history of rabble-rousing likely to provoke resentment.

Liam hadn’t moved a muscle from where he sat, but he’d been watching her intently from the moment he walked inside. “I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot the other day,” he said to her. “I gave your ring back to Patrick. I shouldn’t have shamed you out of it.” He glanced at her bare hand. “Where is it?”

She covered her hand. The decision to stop wearing her wedding ring was a deeply personal choice she refused to discuss with a stranger. But Liam probably wasn’t a stranger, and the prospect made her queasy. He looked so much like her father it was scary.

The silence lengthened as Patrick looked between her and Liam.

Finally, Liam spoke. “My mother confessed that Mick Malone brought me to her when I was three years old. That makes me your brother.”

The news was not entirely unexpected but still drove the breath from her lungs. “Oh,” she said.

It was such a puny word and couldn’t begin to encompass the whirlwind of emotions triggered inside. This rough, hard-eyed man with a bitter heart wasn’t who she’d imagined her brother would be.

She clasped her hands to stop them from trembling. She couldn’t assume anything, and they’d always had a plan to identify her brother should someone come forward to assume his identity. They’d never told the police or the newspapers. They needed to keep this tiny detail private so it could never be faked. It was time to use it.

“Take off your right shoe,” she said.

“What?”

“Your shoe. If you’re really my brother, I’ll be able to tell.”

She eyed his shoes. They were battered and worn at the heel, the leather so scuffed it was beginning to split. He didn’t lean over, merely used his left foot to nudge the right shoe off.

“And the sock,” she said.

He gingerly leaned over to insert a finger into the top of his sock and tug it off. His foot looked shockingly white compared to his bronzed face, but he was a man who worked in the sun and had the weathered skin to prove it. His foot looked as pale as her own.