CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Aoife
SLEEP WON'T COME.
I've been lying in this bed for two hours, staring at the ceiling of a room that smells like clean linen and old wood and something underneath that's distinctly masculine.
The mattress is decent, the sheets are soft, and the pillows are the kind someone actually chose rather than grabbed off a shelf.
William clearly spends time here. Enough time to make it comfortable. Enough time to make it feel like his.
Yet I still can't sleep.
Every time I close my eyes, the world explodes.
Not the Murphy house. Not tonight's explosion, though that's there, too, lodged in my brain like shrapnel.
No. It's Reilan. The image my mind created in the back of that SUV when I thought he was burning alive.
I can still feel it in my chest, the absolute certainty that he was gone.
The way my lungs collapsed around the knowledge of it.
The sounds I made didn't belong to any language.
He's alive.
William told me. Aidan confirmed it through encrypted messages. Everyone is safe. The plan worked. The decoys burned, not people.
But my body doesn't believe it yet. My body is still in that SUV, still screaming, still clawing at leather seats while the sky burned orange behind me.
I roll onto my side. The room is dark except for a thin strip of light beneath the door. William is still out there. I heard him moving around when I first came to bed, the creak of the couch, the sound of a cabinet opening and closing. Then silence.
I wonder if he's using.
I asked him not to. The words came out before I could think about them, before I could question why I cared. He's an addict who let me believe my brother was dead. I shouldn't care what he puts into his veins tonight.
But I do.
And that bothers me more than the insomnia.
I sit up. The old t-shirt of William's falls past my thighs, soft cotton that's been washed enough times to feel like it belongs to someone. I didn't have a choice. It was the only thing clean in the closet. That's what I tell myself.
The room is sparse. I cataloged it earlier when I first came in, that old habit kicking in before I could stop it.
Single bed pushed against the wall. A wooden dresser with three drawers.
A small wardrobe with a mirrored door that reflects my own pale face back at me in the darkness.
One window, curtains drawn, the glass thick enough that I can't hear anything outside.
No photographs. No personal touches. Just a room designed for hiding.
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. The floor is cold. Bare wood that creaks when I stand, and I freeze, listening.
Nothing from the other room. Maybe he's asleep.
I should try again. Should lie back down and close my eyes and force my body to rest because tomorrow will be harder than today, and the day after that will be harder still. That's how this works now. Each day is worse than the last until something breaks.
But I can't lie still. Can't be alone with the images playing on loop behind my eyelids. The explosion. Father's blood. Reilan's name torn from my throat. William's mouth on mine and the desperate fury of it.
I need to move. Need to do something with my hands, my mind, anything to stop the circling.
The dresser catches my attention. Three drawers. Earlier, when I was looking for something to sleep in, I only opened the wardrobe. Didn't touch the dresser.
This is his safe house. His private place. The place he comes to when he needs to disappear.
I shouldn't.
I walk to the dresser anyway.
The top drawer slides open with a soft groan. Clothes. Men's t-shirts folded in neat stacks, a pair of joggers, socks. Basic things. Essentials for somewhere you don't plan to stay long.
The second drawer. More clothes. A heavy wool jumper. Underneath it, a flashlight and a pack of batteries.
The third drawer sticks. I have to pull harder, and it comes free with a sound that makes me wince. I go still again. Listen.
Silence.
Inside the drawer, beneath a folded blanket, my fingers find something hard. Rectangular. I pull it out.
A notebook. Black cover, leather-bound, the kind you'd buy in a stationery shop without thinking much about it. The edges are worn, the spine creased from being opened and closed dozens of times.
There's another one beneath it. Same style, different color. Dark brown. And a third. Navy blue, smaller than the others, the leather softer, more weathered.
Three journals.
William Murphy keeps journals.
The thought is so incongruous with everything I know about him that I almost laugh. The man who punches heavy bags until his knuckles split. Who snorts cocaine to feel invincible. Who kissed me like he was trying to set us both on fire.
That man writes in journals.
I should put them back. Should slide the drawer closed and return to bed and pretend I never found them. These are private. Whatever's in these pages, he didn't intend for anyone to read them. Certainly not the woman he suspected of being a mole six hours ago.
I carry all three to the bed.
I sit cross-legged on the mattress, the journals spread before me. My fingers hover over the black one. The leather is smooth, warm from being tucked under the blanket.
I open it.
The handwriting surprises me first. I expected something jagged, messy, matching the chaos of the man. But it's neat. Small and controlled, each letter carefully formed. Handwriting that belongs to someone who thinks before they write. Someone who chooses words deliberately.
The first entry is dated eight months ago.
Day 187 sober. Went to the gym twice today.
Hands still shake in the mornings, but less than last week.
Matty came over. We watched some terrible film about a dog that dies at the end.
He didn't react. Just sat there with his phone in one hand and a pack of mints in the other, staring at the screen like it was wallpaper.
Didn't laugh. Didn't flinch. Nothing. That's the thing about Matty.
He's somewhere none of us can reach, and he's not sending directions.
I read it again. Then a third time.
The voice on the page doesn't match the voice I've heard from William Murphy. Not the snarling, taunting man who called me princess in the basement. Not the cold, strategic leader who told me to smile at a party while my father was dying.
This voice is quiet. Thoughtful. Observant.
I turn the page.
Day 192. Jason called. Brief. He wanted to check in, but neither of us knew what to say.
Asked about the business. I told him everything was fine.
We both knew I was lying. He didn't push it.
That's the problem with this family. We're so used to lies that truth feels like a foreign language.
We can spot it, recognize the shape of it, but speaking it? That's beyond us.
My chest tightens. There's a self-awareness here that I didn't expect. A clarity that contradicts everything I've been told about William Murphy. The wild one. The reckless one. The one who can't keep himself alive.
The man who wrote these words knows exactly what he is. Knows exactly what his family is. And writes about it with an honesty so sharp it reads like a confession.
I flip forward. Past entries about training and meetings and the slow erosion of sobriety. Past observations about his brothers that are so sharp they make me uncomfortable, like I'm looking through a keyhole at something too intimate to witness.
Then I find it.
The entry has no date. Just a line at the top, written in handwriting that's less steady than the rest. The letters are still formed carefully, but there's a tremor in them. A shake that the others don't have.
I need to write this down because if I don't, I'll drink. And if I drink, I'll use. And if I use, I'll end up like him. So I'm writing it. All of it. Everything I remember about that day. Because maybe if I put it on paper, it'll stop playing in my head.
My breath catches.
I know what's coming. Know it the way you know a storm is approaching, the air changing, the pressure dropping, everything going still before the violence.
The door was unlocked. That's the first thing.
Father's office door was never unlocked.
He was particular about it. Had a specific lock installed, Italian, expensive, the kind that requires a key even from the inside.
I'd watched him lock it a thousand times.
Turn the key, test the handle, pocket the key. Every time. Without fail.
So when I pushed the door, and it swung open, I knew.
Not consciously. Not in any way I could have articulated. But somewhere in my body, in the part of me that runs on instinct rather than thought, I knew that whatever was behind that door was going to change everything.
The room was dark. Curtains drawn. The only light came from the hallway behind me, cutting a thin line across the floor.
I remember thinking the room smelled wrong.
Not Father's usual smell of whiskey and cologne, and the wood polish he used on his desk every Sunday.
Something else. Something chemical and sharp and human in a way that made my stomach turn.
I saw his shoes first.
Black Italian leather. The ones he wore to every meeting, every negotiation, every funeral. Polished until they reflected light. Hanging two feet off the ground.
My mind couldn't process it. Couldn't connect the shoes to legs, the legs to a body, the body to the rope. It was like looking at a puzzle with the pieces scrambled. I could see each individual element, but couldn't assemble them into something that made sense.
Because it didn't make sense.
My father, Edward Murphy, the man who terrified half of Ireland, who built an empire through sheer force of will, who never once showed weakness in front of his sons, was hanging from the ceiling beam of his own office.
I press my hand against my mouth.