Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Colum: How do you know if you’re in love?
Franco: !!!!!
Franco: OMG.
Franco: I’M SO EXCITED FOR YOU.
Franco: I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS MOMENT.
Franco: (we’re going to ignore you’re already married because it doesn’t fit the narrative I have for you)
Franco: MY BEST FRIEND IS IN LUUUURRRRRVVVVV.
Franco: FINALLY!!!
Colum: …
Colum: I’ll ask someone else.
C olum unlocked the front door of the archive, slightly startled by the Spartan Guard who was currently stationed at the normally empty front desk. Eric was taking his promise to keep the archive safe seriously.
It had been another long day of travel, flying back across the Atlantic, just five days after the trek to New York. Dusk had fallen in Dublin, the darkness not jiving with his internal clock, which was still functioning as if it was midday.
Annie and Xavier followed him inside, dragging their suitcases. By tacit agreement, they’d obviously realized they would all be staying here together—well, in Colum’s flat in the basement—rather than in hotels.
Keanu greeted them. “Colum. Welcome back.”
“Alright, then?” he asked.
“It’s been quiet since you left. No more break-in attempts.”
Colum nodded his thanks, then told Annie and Xavier they could leave their suitcases by the door. They would grab them when they all retired downstairs later.
Climbing the stairs, they fell into what had become their routine, each of them claiming a workspace, unloading their laptops, notebooks, and pens.
“Should I make us some tea?” Colum asked, pointing toward the stairs to the kitchenette. “Not sure there’s anything to eat.”
“Why don’t we unwind for a little while,” Annie suggested, “and then we can decide what to do for dinner.”They’d been served dinner on the flight, but none of them had taken more than a few bites of the dry chicken.
“And what does tea have to do with dinner?” Colum asked, genuinely curious.
Annie smiled softly. “Nothing. You’re right, let’s have a cup.”
Colum walked up to the kitchenette, putting the kettle on to boil, throwing one bag each into Annie’s and Xavier’s cups, and two into his own. It was good to be back in Ireland, back to Barry’s Tea. Once it was a good color, the tea bags went into the compost bin, milk was added, and he placed the cups on a small tray to carry them downstairs.
It was nice to be preparing more than one cup of tea.
Xavier had made the coffee table his makeshift desk, but he hadn’t opened his laptop, instead propping his feet up next to it, his gaze fixed on the ceiling, clearly deep in thought. Knowing him better now, Colum was accustomed to Xavier sometimes falling silent for long periods of time, lost in his own thoughts. He imagined he was mentally composing a poem or thinking about something he’d just read. It was Xavier’s quiet times that called to Colum, made him feel closer, because like the Frenchman, he also had a tendency to spend a great deal of time living inside his own head.
Annie had been scrolling through her phone next to Xavier, but she rose when he returned, gratefully accepting the tea he offered before starting to clear off a small corner of Colum’s desk, opposite where he sat, to set up her own laptop.
Colum stilled when Annie picked up the photograph of Josephine, intent on moving it out of the way. His throat tightened as she looked at it more closely, studying it. It seemed strange to him that after all the three of them had shared over the past week, Xavier and Annie still didn’t know about one of the most important people in his life.
For the first time since she’d died, Colum wanted to talk about Josephine, but he hadn’t managed to get the words out. Initially, he’d been too worried about falling apart in front of them, but as more time passed, he was less afraid of that. Because he trusted them.
“She has your eyes,” Annie pointed out, smiling. “And your thick mass of wild curls.”
Annie was observant, clever. Of course, she’d spotted the family resemblance. Her words moved him, because he’d never really considered the things he and his sister shared, just their differences.
He nodded, forcing words past the lump in his throat. “That was all we had in common,” he admitted sadly.
Xavier, who’d still been staring at the ceiling, lowered his feet from the coffee table, turning to face them as Annie’s smile faded.
They’d both picked up on the past tense.
“Your sister?” she asked, as Xavier crossed the room, looking over her shoulder at the photograph.
Colum swallowed hard, forcing himself to say her name aloud. “Josephine.”
Annie glanced back down at the picture. “Pretty name. Pretty woman.”
“Was she sick?” Xavier asked gently.
Colum sank down into his chair, twisting it away from the desk, resting his elbows on his knees as he waited for the grief that consumed him whenever he thought of his sister to appear.
This time, it didn’t.
Glancing up at them, Colum took in their matching expressions, realizing they weren’t looking at him with pity but rather with concern. It gave him the strength to say the words he’d never uttered aloud. He’d had only himself for counsel for so long, and he was so bloody tired of silently screaming them in his head. “She was murdered.”
Annie gasped, her fingers flying up to her lips, as Xavier circled the desk quickly, his hand landing firmly on Colum’s shoulder, squeezing it.
“Colum,” he said softly, compassionately. He didn’t add anything else. He didn’t need to.
“It’s been a few years now. I don’t talk about it—her—much. Or, er…ever.” Colum ran a hand through his hair.
“I’m so sorry,” Annie whispered, her lashes wet with tears as she looked at the picture again.
Colum reached out for the photo and Annie handed it to him. The edges of his lips tipped up as he looked at her sweet smile, and he ran his finger over her beloved face. “She was pretty,” he acknowledged. “Looked just like our nan. Always cursed those red curls of hers, and for one whole summer, she was convinced if she rubbed enough lemon juice on her face, her freckles would fade.” Colum wasn’t sure where the hell that ancient memory had come from but rather than hurting, it made him smile. Only for a moment.
“Was she younger or older than you?” Annie asked.
“Younger, though you wouldn’t know it, given the way she had a tendency to take care of me,” Colum admitted.
Xavier grinned. “Did you need tending?”
“Not as much as Josephine thought I did. But taking care of others was in her nature, and, well, you’ve spent the last week with me, so you’ve probably noticed I’m not exactly the most organized when it comes to real-life shite, like eating or tidying up or getting outside for fresh air. Josephine was the one who always stocked the pantry in the kitchenette. She was the one who dusted the furniture whenever it got so thick, she could write her name in it.” Colum ran his finger through the thin layer of dust on the side of his desk, writing his name, giving them a self-deprecating shrug.
“She was a good sister,” Annie said, no question in her voice, just a statement of the truth, and Colum nodded.
“Aye. That she was. Since she’s been gone, I’ve just been…existing. She would have hated that, hated how I locked myself away in here,” he said, gesturing at the room. “How much I was drinking.”
“Drinking?” Annie asked.
“Alcohol was the only thing that deadened the pain.” Their eyes connected, and he held her gaze as he said, “I don’t do that anymore. Woke up too many times on the floor after a blackout drunk, feeling a hundred times worse than when I cracked open the bottle.”
“Depression is a slippery slope,” Annie said. “Once you start falling…”
“It’s hard to climb back up,” Colum finished, recalling how much guilt and sorrow she’d suffered after the death of that young child and her family during one of her missions with the CIA.
“Very hard,” Annie agreed.
“I don’t like this distance between us. Let’s go sit on the couch,” Xavier urged. Colum was tempted to point out Xavier was standing right next to him, but he didn’t because he agreed. He needed to feel them next to him, needed that closeness, so he allowed the other man to help him stand, guiding him to the middle cushion, while his lovers flanked him, both sitting so close their thighs were pressed right up against his.
Xavier wrapped an arm around his shoulders, while Annie took his hand, interlacing their fingers, hers soft, comforting.
“We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,” Annie said.
Colum appreciated that offer, but he wasn’t going to accept it. He’d spent too many years carrying this pain around on his own. Eric had reached out to him several times, tried to get him to open up, but Colum hadn’t been able to say what he was feeling. It was Josephine who always gave voice to his emotions, helped him express his fears, his pains, even his joys.
“She was my best friend.” Colum had never admitted that, never even really considered it, but it was true. They’d grown up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, with only each other for playmates.
Annie bit her lip and Colum got the sense she was trying to hold back tears, trying to be strong for him. The idea that she would cry because he was in pain warmed him all the way to the bones.
“She understood me. She understood that I love people, but I just…I don’t always have the patience for being with people. It was a fecking revelation when I first heard the word introvert.” He smiled. “But because I’m happiest by myself and get tired of people, I come off like a right arsehole sometimes. Josephine was an extrovert. All the way to her bones. She could talk for Ireland and would step in and either have a chat or get us out.”
“She could tell when your social battery ran out,” Annie said.
“Exactly so.” Colum looked at Annie. “I didn’t break into Eric’s cottage all those years ago to steal a book. I went in, hoping to learn more about him. I was fascinated, and wanted to know more, but I didn’t want to have to be talking to him. Meeting and talking to new people, especially adults when I was a child…” Colum shook his head. “But Josephine insisted on going with me that day.”
“Keeping an eye out for you?” Annie asked.
Xavier made a displeased noise. “You’ve talked about this. Without me.”
“Yes, we have,” Annie said with a big smile that made Xavier smirk at her.
Colum butted his shoulder against the other man’s chest. “Eric lived in a cottage on my family’s farm. This story is about the first time I met him.”
“And it involved breaking and entering Eric Ericsson’s cottage?” Xavier tsked, the scolding sounding oddly sexy.
Colum shook his head. “I was being a right eejit, but Josephine understood why I felt the need to see his things, why I wanted to discover what I could about him. When Eric caught us, she was the one who came up with the lie about stealing the books. I just stood there, frozen, silent, panicking.”
“Sounds like your sister was cool under pressure,” Annie observed.
“She was clever like a fox, quick-witted, intelligent. She was top of her class at uni, studied to be a linguist.”
“Was she a member of the Masters’ Admiralty as well?” Xavier asked.
Colum nodded. “She was. And because she was so clever, she was invited to join a think tank within the society, six great minds, all working together to help uncover who’d killed our previous fleet admiral. Called themselves the Librarians.”
Annie’s brows lifted. “Sebastian mentioned something about that when we were in New York. Your leader was killed?”
It was Xavier who replied. “Yes. And it was the admiral of Hungary who did it.”
Annie tilted her head. “Nikolett killed the previous fleet admiral?”
“Not her, the admiral before her. Petro Sirko.” Xavier practically spit the name, making no pretense of liking the man.
“Wait, was it a coupe? A necessary assassination? Basically, was it a good thing or a bad thing that the other fleet admiral died?”
“Bad,” Colum and Xavier said as one.
They were silent for a moment, and Colum used the time to plan out each word, hoping he could get them out. “Petro was pure evil, a sociopath. He was the one…” He swallowed hard, closing his eyes.
Xavier gripped the back of Colum’s neck. “He killed your sister?”
“Not himself, but he set the wheels in motion. Sent a serial killer after her because she was one of the Librarians. Eric blamed himself because he was the one who suggested her name and demanded that she be included in the Librarians.” Colum hadn’t let himself think about any of this for years. “Eric’s been swimming in an ocean of guilt ever since her murder.”
“He killed Petro,” Xavier said. “He twisted the man’s head off. Ripped it off with his bare hands. Primal. Brutal.”
“That’s not possible,” Annie murmured.
“Actually, it is. Because he did.” Colum glanced at Xavier, surprised. “Most members of the society don’t know that.”
Xavier shrugged but didn’t offer up where he got his information.
“Wait, if this Petro guy was the one who arranged for your sister’s murder, and Eric killed him, what happened to the actual killer?” Annie asked.
“Eric killed the serial killer as well. Spent months hunting her down. Actually, that’s how our societies started getting close. When he was hunting Josephine’s killer, the person Eric left in charge spoke to your Grand Master regularly.” There was another silence, and they gave him space to think and prepare his next words. “The worst part is…”
Colum felt his eyes well up with tears. God, when was the last time he’d cried? In the early days after her death, he’d nearly drowned himself in a sea of tears, but in the past year or so, they’d dried up completely.
Annie twisted on the couch, pulling their linked hands against her chest. “What’s the worst part?”
“I never told her how much she meant to me. Never thanked her for…everything. I didn’t even say goodbye to her the last time I saw her. She was sitting right here, in this room, and I had my nose buried in my research, ignoring her. She said she was going out for food.” Colum felt his throat grow tight. “I told her to bring me something back. Actually, I grumpily demanded it. She told me she loved me just before she left, and I blew it off, didn’t say it back. Then she told me I would miss her when she was gone. She meant it as a joke, a teasing jab, but…” Colum lowered his head, shaking it as the first tears began to fall. “I miss her so fecking much.”
Xavier used the grip on his neck to pull Colum’s face into the crook of his neck, wrapping his arm around him in a strong hold that told Colum he wasn’t alone anymore.
Annie curled into him, her arm looping around his waist as she offered the same relentless, powerful, warm embrace.
Colum didn’t even try to hold back the tears, his grief safe with them.