Chapter 9
Dervla
The room is very quiet.
I stare at the floor between my boots and try to pull it apart. The memory. I’ve had it locked behind glass since it happened because every time I looked at it directly, it fell to pieces and took me with it.
Now I need to look at it.
“He was at the table,” I say. “I came down from my room. I heard nothing before that. No argument, no raised voices, no front door. Nothing that sounded like a threat. It was a normal morning. Or so I thought.”
“Was he eating?” Aidan asks. Not leading. Just moving me through it.
“There was a cup of tea and toast with jam in front of him.” I press my thumbnail into my palm to keep my voice level. “He was shot once in the head. He was sitting back in the chair. Not slumped forward, not sideways, not reaching for anything.” I stop.
“What about before? You said it was quiet, but there must be something,” Aidan says.
I close my eyes. I need to strip it back to the raw detail and stop letting the grief colour over the edges of what I actually saw.
“The night before,” I say slowly. “He was on the phone late. I heard him from my room. I didn’t catch what he was saying, just the tone. Quiet. Not angry. Patient, the way he got when he was managing someone.”
“Managing how?” Roisin asks quietly.
“Like he was reassuring them. Or placating them.” I open my eyes.
“I assumed it was work. I didn’t think about it after.
In the morning, I came down around half seven.
The kitchen light was already on. He always had the radio on while he ate.
He liked the morning news, even when it was shit.
” My voice stays flat because if I let it move, it’ll crack, and I’m not doing that in front of everyone.
“Was it on or off?” Declan asks.
“On. Like always. Nothing was out of place.”
“There must be something,” Roisin says and then presses her lips together when I shoot her a look.
“I’m trying. This isn’t easy.”
“Go back to the phone call. Do you think he could’ve been talking to Siobhán now? You said he was placating someone. Did he use that tone often?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I only ever heard it with me.” I pause and breathe in and out again. “So yeah, maybe they fought, and he was trying to fix it, but that is me making things fit. I don’t know.”
“Do you have access to the phone records?” Aidan asks.
I blink and then nod slowly. “We used the same service. It was managed through an app. But I don’t know if they’ll have eight months back.”
“Have a look and see.”
Nodding, I pull my phone out and open the app with hands that are steadier than I feel.
The loading circle spins for a second too long.
Aidan crouches beside the chair, close enough to read the screen if I let him.
I do. At this point, privacy is a quaint fucking concept.
Declan is on the sofa, elbows on knees. Cormac stands by the window with the curtain cracked, watching the drive and the road beyond it.
Roisin stays near the fireplace, still and bruised and impossible to ignore.
The account dashboard opens.
I click into billing and usage history. Dates. Numbers. Logs.
“Can you get the date?” Aidan asks.
I nod. “Yeah.”
My throat tightens as I scroll back to the week Dad died. Every line feels like a stab to the heart. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Calls. Texts. Data usage. The ugly little admin trail of a life that stopped.
“Here,” I say.
Aidan takes the phone from me, not gently, not roughly. Efficient. “Last outgoing call before the time of death?”
I lean in. “That one. Ten fourteen pm. Seven minutes.”
He pulls out his phone and starts dialling the number.
“Are you serious?” I hiss.
“Why the fuck not?” He puts it on speaker.
The call rings once.
Twice.
It connects. “Who is this?”
“Aidan O’Connell. Who is this?”
A pause.
I wave my hand at the room. “Maeve? This is Dervla Callaghan. Are you okay? After you got cut off—”
“I’m running for my life,” she says, but her tone is almost droll.
“And you stopped to pick up the phone?” Aidan says. “Forgive me if I’m not convinced.”
She chuckles. “Just because I’m running, doesn’t mean I don’t have time to answer the phone.”
“Who are you running from?” I ask.
“How much do you know?”
“A lot,” Roisin interrupts.
“Ah, Miss Brennan. I wondered if you were lurking.”
“Always, you bitch. Answer the question.”
Maeve hums lightly down the line. “Still charming. Good to know the campus isn’t sanding your edges off.”
“Who are you running from?” I repeat, each word clipped.
“A better question,” she says, “is why you’re all suddenly so eager to hear me out. Has somebody finally put enough bullets into the wrong people to make you suspicious?”
Roisin’s face goes hard. “You don’t get to be smug.”
“Oh, I absolutely do. I’ve earned it.”
Aidan looks at me and mouths to keep her talking.
I bare my teeth at the phone. “Start with this. Did you kill my father?”
The silence on the line is brief. Not shocked. Not guilty. Calculating.
“No,” Maeve says at last. “I went there that morning to stop something. I got there too late.”
My pulse pounds in my ears. “If you got there too late, then why the fuck did you vanish?”
“Because when a man is dead in a house I should never have been near, and the people who arranged it are already moving, only an idiot stays to explain.”
“What people?” I ask.
“The same ones who are now trying very hard to topple Séamus ó Briain. Nasty people. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of them.”
“You don’t want to get on the wrong fucking side of me,” I growl. “What do you know?”
“Enough,” Maeve says, and for the first time, the amusement thins. “Enough to know your father used the wrong woman. Enough to know she was never alone in it. Enough to know he realised that too late where her loyalties really were.”
The room stills around me.
Aidan’s eyes cut to mine. Roisin’s jaw locks.
“Name,” Cormac clips out. “Cormac O’Byrne,” he adds, “in case you’re wondering.”
“Siobhán Fitzpatrick.”
“And you expect me to just take that on faith?”
“I expect nothing from you,” Maeve says. “I’m giving you what I can while moving. If I stop long enough to package it nicely, I die.”
“Cry me a river.”
A short exhale. “You really do sound like your mother when you’re angry.”
“I’ll be thrilled about that later. Tell me why you were there.”
“Because Cillian called me the night before. He finally understood that what he had with Siobhán was compromised. He thought he could contain it.” Her voice goes colder. “He was wrong. He asked me to take care of it. We were meant to meet off the road first. He didn’t show.”
My fingers dig into my knee. “My intel has it that you hated him.”
“And who gave you that idea? Alanna?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I grit out.
“I didn’t hate him. I envied him until he saw my value and was going to give me what I rightly deserved all these years.”
“He was going to let you become a true Callaghan,” I murmur.
“He was. I earned his trust when I tracked down that bitch mother of yours.”
“You tracked her down.” I chew my lip. My gut is telling me to believe her. But Alanna told me not to. “Why does Alanna hate you?”
“Why do you think? I was a constant reminder that her husband had bedded other women before her.”
“She is not that petty. You must’ve given her a reason.”
“She needed one,” Maeve says. “Alanna likes order. I am evidence that order is a story wealthy people tell themselves while the rest of us bleed for it.”
“That is a very rehearsed answer.”
“Because it is an old wound.” Her tone sharpens. “Do you want family politics or your father’s murderer?”
“My father’s murderer,” I admit, knowing she’s got me.
“Then listen. Siobhán did not work alone. She was fed, protected, and positioned. She made herself useful to Cillian, and to others watching him. By the time he realised how many lines ran through her, it was already too late.”
“Did she pull the trigger?”
“Yes.”
I breathe in deeply. “How do you know for a fact?”
“Because I saw her come out of the house before I went in to see what had held him up. Newsflash. He was dead.”
Nobody in the room moves.
Rain ticks at the windows. Somewhere in the house, a pipe knocks once. My pulse goes hard and ugly.
“You’re lying,” Roisin says flatly.
Aidan’s eyes never leave my phone. “This is all very convenient.”
“Oh, don’t be tedious, O’Connell. If I had killed him, I wouldn’t be trying this hard to keep his daughter alive.”
“Keep me alive? How?” I jump on that. It’s news to me.
“By stopping you from doing the one thing every Callaghan does when blood gets personal,” Maeve says. “Running straight at the knife because pride tells them they can catch the blade before it cuts.”
I nearly crush the phone. “Try again. How are you keeping me alive?”
“By speaking to you at all. By making myself visible. By forcing the people around you to question the wrong story before they bury you under it.” Her voice dips lower. “If Siobhán thinks I’ve reached you properly, she’ll move faster. Fast is sloppy.”
Declan mutters, “I fucking hate her.”
“Join the club,” I say.
Aidan grunts in frustration. “If you saw Siobhán leave the house, why didn’t you go to the Gardaí?”
Maeve laughs, and it is sharp and humourless. “Because I enjoy breathing. Because the Gardaí aren’t some magical priesthood immune to pressure. Because I had no proof except my own word, a dead man, and timing that made me look guilty. Next stupid question?”
“Careful,” I growl. “You’re still not in the clear. Too many people think you’re guilty.”
“Fine,” she says after a beat. “Tell your grandfather that the Romans are coming. He’ll know what that means.”
“The Romans?” I ask with a frown.
“Yes. They came, they saw, they conquered. We are almost at the finish line.”
“The conquering,” I mutter.
“I have to go. Pass that on, even if you end this call and don’t believe me.” The line goes dead.
For a second, nobody speaks.
Then Aidan says, “Call him. Now.”
“You want me to pass this on?”
“No harm, no foul. If he thinks you’ve lost your mind, so what? If it is something he needs to know, then your conscience is clear.”
“Fair enough,” I mutter and call Alanna, only because I don’t have Séamus’ number.
She answers on the first ring.
“Dervla.”
“I need Séamus.”
A pause. “That sounds ominous.”
“It is. Put him on.”
I hear movement, muffled voices, then the faint scrape of a phone being passed.
“Are you hurt?”
I sit forward in the chair, phone pressed hard to my ear.
“No. I have a message for you. From Maeve Doyle. She says Siobhán killed Dad. She says Dad called her the night before because he’d finally realised Siobhán was compromised.
She says she saw Siobhán leave the house before she went in and found him dead.
And she told me to tell you the Romans are coming. ”
That lands.
Hard.
And with a hiss from Alanna.
“What does it mean?” I ask.
He hesitates, but Alanna says, “Tell her.”
“The Romans,” he says, “are an old internal name. Not a nationality. A cell.”
The word sits in the middle of the room like a lit fuse.
“What kind of cell?” I ask.
“The kind that believes institutions are empires to be taken, not governed. Years ago, a faction formed around the idea that the old structures had grown weak. Too visible. Too sentimental. Too domestic. They wanted a cleaner model. Ruthless. Expansionist. Total control of the pipelines that feed money, influence, bodies, and futures.”
“St. Augustine’s,” Aidan says quietly.
“Yes,” Séamus replies. “Among other things.”
I press my hand harder against my knee. “And Siobhán is part of that?”
“It would appear so. I need to do more digging.”
“Maeve said they’re almost at the finish line. Meaning what?”
Séamus is silent for a beat. “Meaning whatever your father built into that drive has accelerated matters beyond what either side intended. If the Romans think exposure is imminent, they will stop consolidating and start cutting.”
“Cutting who?”
“You, for a start.”
Declan mutters, “Shocking development.”
I grimace at him. “Then you need to pull the plug. Dad built that thing for a reason. I can’t decipher it. It was made for you.”
“I am,” he says. “As we speak, numerous factions are up in smoke, more are being set on fire.”
“And then what?” I ask with a gulp because I don’t think I’m going to like the answer.
“Ireland will burn, and you will rise from the ashes.”
“Me? This is all about me?”
“It’s always all been about you. Haven’t you listened to a word we’ve said?” Alanna clips out.
“I’ve been listening. I just hoped you were wrong.”
“Not wrong,” she says. “Go now so we can work.”
The line goes dead.
“Next time someone calls me, or I call someone, I’m hanging up on them,” I mutter. “Arseholes.”