Michael sighed; he could see that Patrick wasn’t listening to him, was unaware that he was even in the same room. ‘Are you even listening to me, Pat? I’m talking away to you and you’re off with the fucking fairies again. Get a grip, will you? We are already haemorrhaging fucking money. You keep missing meetings, and when you do bother to turn up you pick fights with men you have known all your life – men who rely on you because they trust you, because you have always been so reliable in the past. If you don’t fucking sort your head out, Patrick, we will be seconded. We are already losing custom but, worst of all, we are losing face. Our credibility is shot thanks to you.’

Declan could see that his brother was too far gone to listen to reason. Patrick was already tuning Michael’s voice out. When he had these episodes, he had the knack of only hearing what he wanted to hear. In truth, his brother rarely listened to anything he didn’t want to hear anyway. It was part of Patrick’s psyche, his inability to ever be wrong. It was this unpredictability that gave him the edge over everyone else. He was not going to listen to anything unless it suited him, unless it was directly concerned with this latest fixation. Michael had never really experienced Patrick like this before; Declan knew how dangerous it could make him.

He had always accepted that his brother lived outside normal human parameters. It had once been his strength, the reason he instilled fear into everyone without even trying. Anyone with half a brain could see that Patrick Costello was marching to a different beat to the rest of the world. Now his brother had descended into utter chaos. This latest episode went far deeper than ever before. Declan had seen him paranoid, but never against his own. Who would ever have thought Patrick could have been brought so low by his own children?

Assumpta had destroyed her father. She had unknowingly unearthed the man’s only known weakness, and Declan, like Michael, could see that, if they weren’t careful, someone else was going to step up and take over the businesses. This kind of weakness was treated with the scorn it deserved in the world they inhabited. Patrick was far too influential to let something so personal take precedence over anything else. This kind of trouble was sorted quietly, and that suited everyone concerned. It was the law of the pavement, and was how it would always be. It was how the Costellos had made their mark, how they had taken over someone else’s business. The trick was to make sure that the same thing never happened to you.

Declan shook his head, and said quietly, ‘Leave him, Michael. You’re wasting your fucking time.’