Chapter Twenty-Three
Ronin
Paulie Shea has captained cargo runs for the Byrne family for fifteen years.
He knows the harbour. He knows our shipments.
And he knows better than to ask questions about things that don’t concern him.
I heard he’s been having money trouble lately and looking for a bigger cut.
His freighter is leaving in two nights, running empty across the Atlantic to Cork to pick up crates of Paddy’s whiskey for our operation.
So I make him an offer. Two crates of the Paddy’s if he takes me with him and keeps it between us.
Paulie takes my hand. “Done.”
I leave him to it and go home to pack a bag. The annulment papers are still sitting on the coffee table where Seamus left them. I haven’t even brought myself to look at them. I pick up the envelope now and slip it into the inside pocket of my coat.
I’m going to hand them to Malachy O’Connell in person and tell him to his face that I’m not signing.
Whatever process he has set in motion through the Church to end my marriage to his granddaughter—whatever channels a man in his position has access to—my name carries weight too, and I’m not going to make this easy on him.
Because Alannah is mine. She has been since the day I agreed to our betrothal. If I’m honest with myself, probably even before that.
The crossing takes twelve days.
The áille is a cargo freighter out of Boston, registered in Liverpool.
I’m the only passenger on board, and the crew mostly leave me to myself, which suits me fine.
I spend the first two days sick over the rail and the next ten in a cabin the size of a large wardrobe.
It has a porthole no bigger than a dinner plate, and the engines thrum beneath it day and night, making it hard to sleep for more than a few hours at a time.
There’s no comfort to be had on the North Atlantic in January. The cold gets into everything. The ship moves in ways that have no regard for the people on it. The days are short, grey, and all the same, and I have nothing but time and my own head for company. Mostly, I think about Alannah.
I think about the way she treats people—how she always seems to care about everyone around her.
The way she listens when someone speaks, like what they say matters.
I think about the freckles across her nose and cheeks, and the way they stood out whenever she blushed.
The way she looked at me when I asked her to marry me, when I slid the Claddagh onto her finger.
I think about how happy she looked walking down the aisle toward me.
I think about her birthday, not long past. Nineteen—the first one we didn’t spend together, even if it was usually just our families and a cake on the table.
But no matter where my thoughts start, they always end at the reception. I think about the look on her face when I called her na?ve—how heartbroken she was, and the strength it must have taken for her to leave.
Then I think about what I did to her. I’m not going to dress it up.
There are no words for it that don’t curl into excuses, and I was done with excuses by about the third day after she vanished.
What I’d done was wrong. The women I’d been with while I was promised to her.
Kathleen on my stag night. The way I treated her at our reception.
I’d been reacting—to Danny’s scoff, to my own pride, to a lifetime of being taught never to show weakness in front of my men. Alannah paid for all of it.
But I’m not signing those papers.
I’m going to get to her. I’m going to stand in front of her and apologize and try to make it right. I can’t imagine a life without her. Whatever it takes, I’m going to make it right. There isn’t any other choice.
On the twelfth morning aboard the áille, I’m already dressed and packed when the knock comes.
I’ve been awake for over an hour, watching the sun come up through the porthole.
The Irish coastline appeared the evening before—a dark line at first, then something more solid as we came closer.
I stood at the rail until I couldn’t feel my hands, watching it take shape.
The man who knocks is one of the crew—a quiet man from Waterford who has been bringing my meals to the cabin each day. “We’re docked,” he says. “Your contact’s on the quay. Car’s waiting.”
I pick up my bag and follow him out. The smell hits me before anything else—diesel, thick and heavy in the air. Men shout farther down the pier, hauling crates from another ship while gulls wheel overhead, crying as they circle the harbour.
I step off the gangway and onto Irish soil.
The only car I see on the quay is a dark saloon parked twenty feet away with the engine off.
Two men stand beside it, both of them staring directly at me.
I start toward them, but after a few steps, something makes me slow.
They still haven’t moved. They aren’t talking to each other or looking around the dock the way men waiting for someone usually would.
They’re simply standing there, watching me approach.
The older one is in his sixties, broad through the shoulders, built like a man who has spent his life doing hard work and never seen a reason to stop.
Silver hair shows beneath a flat cap pulled low against the wind.
His hands rest in the pockets of a dark wool coat as he looks me over, his face giving nothing away.
The younger one stands to his left, somewhere in his forties, dark hair beginning to grey at the temples.
Same solid build as the older man, heavy through the chest and shoulders.
He watches me just as closely, his expression just as blank.
There’s something about the two of them that feels familiar, though I can’t place it.
When I’m a few feet away, the older man takes his hands out of his pockets and steps forward. “I told you what would happen,” he says, “if you set foot on Irish soil.”
Oh fuck. I know that voice.
“I have to say, lad.” Malachy O’Connell looks me over. “I’m glad you did.”
The younger man steps up beside him. “My brother’s choices,” he says, “have cost this family enough.”
I reach into my coat. The envelope is there—the papers, unsigned, everything I’ve crossed an ocean to say. I open my mouth. “Look—”
The fist comes from the left. The crack of it snaps my head sideways and the world tilts. The envelope slips from my fingers and skids across the wet concrete. I go down hard.
The last thing I see is Malachy O’Connell standing over me, calm as ever, brushing his knuckles once against the side of his coat. “Stupid lad.”
Then everything goes black.