Chapter 6
LOCHLAN
I come here when I need to remember the man I refuse to be.
The cemetery is quiet this time of day. The sun drops low, shadows stretching over the headstones. I park at the bottom of the hill and walk up, just like always. It gives me time to get my head right.
Mom’s grave is simple. White marble headstone with clean lines. She’d have hated anything flashy.
EILEEN MAEVE MOLLOY
BELOVED MOTHER
2015
No “beloved wife.” I made sure of that when I ordered the stone. Dad didn’t fight me on it, either. Dick that he is. He probably didn’t even notice.
I pull out the wilted, brown tulips from the little metal holder and place a bunch of fresh yellow ones in their place. Staring at the dead flowers as I toss them into the nearby trash can, a pang assaults my heart.
I should come more often.
“Hey, Mom.”
My voice sounds rough. I clear my throat.
“I’ve got some news. You’re not gonna like it.”
The early evening breeze whispers across my skin. Trees rustle overhead. I take that as a sign that she wants me to keep talking.
“So… I’m getting married. Not by choice, though. It’s Dad’s doing.” I let out a humorless laugh. “Shocking, I know. Eamon Molloy, manipulating his kids for power. Like we never saw that coming.”
I sit back on my heels and clasp my hands together.
“Her name’s Adriana. Adriana DiMicheli. She’s…
” My voice trails off, and suddenly I’m back in her conference room again remembering the way she walked in like she owned the place.
Because she did. I think back to how she laid out her terms like she was closing a billion-dollar deal instead of signing her life away.
And then an image of her almost-smile pops into my mind. I pulled that out of her.
“She’s something else, Mom. Smart, tough, doesn’t take shit from anyone.” I pick at a blade of grass. “You’d like her. Or maybe you’d tell me I’m in over my head. Probably both.”
I stand up and circle the headstone, not talking. Just breathing. Letting my reality sink in.
This is the only place I feel close to her anymore. The house is Dad’s. The business is Dad’s.
But this spot? This is hers. And mine.
I settle onto the bench in front of the stone.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I ignore it. Then it buzzes again. And again.
I pull it out. Five texts from Gavin.
Where are you, Loch?
Answer your phone.
I swear to God!
Tracked your location. Waiting for Uber.
Ok, on my way. You better not be dead in a ditch.
I turn my ringer back on. I silenced it before the meeting with Adriana and forgot to turn it back on.
I send a reply.
I’m fine. At the cemetery.
His response is almost immediate.
I know. I’m walking up the hill.
I look toward the path that leads up the hill and sure enough, Gavin appears with his hands shoved in his jacket pockets.
“You know, normal people just call,” I say when he gets close.
“Normal people answer their phones.” He drops down next to me.
“Your face looks worse today,” I say. The bruise has deepened to a nice purple-green and his lip is still swollen.
“Thanks. It’ll heal.”
“Why’d you Uber here? What’s wrong with your car?” I ask.
“It’s in the shop. Transmission’s fucked.” He shrugs.
“And you were so desperate to see me that you Ubered to a cemetery?”
“I Ubered to find my brother who wasn’t answering his phone after a big meeting with his future wife.” He raises an eyebrow. “How’d that go, by the way?”
I can still feel Adriana’s hand in mine, how soft and warm it was. Her pulse definitely jumped when I brushed my thumb across her knuckles. She tried to play it off, but I saw. Felt it, too.
“Fine.”
“Fine? That’s all I get?”
“What else do you want? She laid out her terms. I agreed. We shook hands. And it was done.”
Gavin stares at me. “You agreed to everything she said?”
“Pretty much.”
“Just like that?” His eyes widen.
“What was I gonna do, argue? She wants separate bedrooms, control of her company, transparency on threats. None of that hurts me.”
“And what about the part where you have to actually marry her?”
“That part’s happening regardless. Might as well not be a dick about the details.”
Gavin snorts. “Look at you. Being all mature and shit.” He looks at Mom’s headstone, the smile fading from his face.
“You always come here before big things,” he says. “Before you started the security firm. Before you told Dad you were leaving the family business. I noticed.”
“Yeah. I guess it’s the times when I feel like…” I sigh. “Like things are a little too much.”
“I get it.” He pulls his knees up against his chest and wraps his arms around them. “I come here, too, sometimes. When shit gets heavy.”
I didn’t know that. The thought cracks open my chest. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Usually at night when no one’s around.” He stares at the grave. “I talk to her. Tell her stuff I can’t tell anyone else. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“I mean, I know she can’t hear me. I know she’s just… here in spirit. But it helps. I feel closer to her.” He glances at me. “Does that make me crazy?”
“If it does, we’re both crazy,” I say.
A faraway smile lifts his lips. “I was so young when she died. I hate that I can’t remember everything about her. I feel like visiting keeps me close to her.”
We sit in silence for a while. The sun keeps sinking, the sky deepening to a dark blue.
“She missed a lot,” Gavin says. “Watching us grow up. Cillian opening the bar. Wolfe becoming a genius. You starting your business.” He pauses, a glimmer in his eyes. “And, of course, me being a fuckup.”
“You’re not a fuckup. Not a total fuckup, anyway.”
“But I’m a little bit of a fuckup.”
“Can’t argue that.”
He shoves my shoulder. I shove back. For a second, we’re just brothers again. Not Molloys. Not pawns in Dad’s game. Just two guys sitting at their mother’s grave, missing her.
“Do you still use them?” I ask. “The breathing tricks. The grounding stuff.”
He knows what I’m talking about. The techniques I taught him after Mom died. He was ten years old and falling apart, waking up screaming every night, and I was seventeen and trying to hold everything and everyone together.
“Sometimes.” He stares at the ground. “When it gets bad. The counting thing mostly. Five things I can see, four things I can hear. You know.”
“Good. That’s good.”
“Wolfe uses them, too. I’ve seen him do it when Dad’s being…” He trails off.
“An asshole?”
“I was gonna say ‘particularly psychotic,’ but sure.”
I almost laugh. Almost.
“She taught me that stuff, you know,” I say. “Mom. The breathing techniques. She had anxiety. Never talked about it, but I saw her do it sometimes when things got tense with Dad.”
Gavin looks at me. “I didn’t know that.”
“There’s a lot you didn’t know. You were young.”
“Tell me more. Something new.”
“Mom had a garden behind the house before Dad paved it over for that stupid ass tennis court nobody uses. We used to pick tomatoes together. There were so many, she couldn’t give them away.
” My lips curl upward. “I loved her laugh, too. It was real and loud, like a full-on belly laugh. It cracked me up.”
“I remember it but only because of the videos I’ve seen,” he says. “I fucking hate that. I want to remember on my own.”
“Hey, remembering is remembering. If you need a little help from a picture or a video, that’s not a bad thing. Don’t beat yourself up over that.”
He gives a half-shrug. “I guess.”
“And she had such a sweet tooth.”
“Like you,” Gavin says.
“Yeah. And we both loved mint chocolate chip ice cream. Sometimes when I came home after you guys were all in bed, I’d find her in the kitchen eating a bowl of it. She always put one out for me, too.”
“That’s where you got it,” Gavin says. “The ice cream addiction.”
“Probably.”
“It’s nice that you have those memories,” Gavin says.
“Yeah.” It’s one of the few I have left that Dad hasn’t poisoned.
My brother is quiet for a long moment. “Dad always gets what he wants, doesn’t he?” he asks, his voice hardening.
I don’t have to answer. We both know it’s true.
“Threatens us. Uses us. Moves us around like chess pieces.” He unfolds his legs and bends down to tear a chunk of grass out of the ground.
“The shit he pulled with you and this marriage. Threatening Cillian’s bar, Wolfe’s work, me.
” He shakes his head and lets go of the grass. “There’s no line he won’t cross.”
“No. There’s not.”
“You ever wonder how far he’d go? To get what he wants?”
An icy sensation twists my gut. “What do you mean?”
Gavin stares at the headstone.
“I was ten when she died. I didn’t understand anything. I just knew she was there one day and gone the next. Everyone said it was a car accident.
“Gavin—”
“But I’m not ten anymore, Loch.” He turns to look at me. His eyes are heavy with a mix of anger and sadness. “I’ve seen how he operates. How he uses people. How he plays them against each other. How he always seems to know shit before it happens and somehow always fucking wins.”
I grind my teeth. “What are you asking me?”
“Was Mom’s accident really an accident?”
The question hangs in the air between us, the jagged edges of his words sharp enough to cut.
I should lie. Tell him it was a tragedy, nothing more. Protect him from the suspicion that’s been eating at me for eleven years.
But he’s not ten anymore. And he deserves the truth... or as close to it as I can get.
“I don’t know,” I say slowly. “I’ve never been able to prove anything.”
“But you suspect.” His eyebrows fly up. “I’d wondered about it, but shit… you really think he had something to do with it?”
“Yeah. I do.”
Gavin’s jaw tightens. “Why?”
I stare at Mom’s name carved into the marble. Eileen Maeve Molloy. She deserved so much better than the life she got.
“A few weeks before she died, Dad had gotten information about a threat. Someone was looking to make moves against the family. I overheard him talking to Ronan about it. They were planning to beef up security, get new drivers in case anyone’d been compromised.”
“And?”
“Then the accident happened and Mom died. The threat disappeared. And Dad came out of the whole thing more powerful than he was before.” I let out a slow breath.
“It took me a little while to put things together. But the timing… the way he barely grieved her… the way he had her buried and had moved on within a week…”
Ire claws up the sides of my throat, fingers balling into tight fists.
“You think he let it happen.”
Fuck. Hearing Gavin say the words out loud makes them so much more real.
“I think he had options,” I say. “And I think he chose the one that benefited him most. Even if it meant she’d have to die.”
Gavin scrapes a hand down his face. “That’s the same thing as killing her.” He turns to look at me. “Isn’t it?”
I don’t have an answer. I’ve been asking myself that question for eleven years.
The sky is now an inky black. We should probably leave, but neither of us moves.
“Is that why you hate him so much?” Gavin asks. “I know you’re pissed about the way he’s treated you. But is it more because of Mom?”
“It’s all connected.” I stand up from the bench.
“He’s a sick, self-absorbed, controlling son of a bitch.
The guy who’d let his wife die for power is the same guy who’d force his son into a marriage to build an empire.
There’s no version of Eamon Molloy that isn’t willing to sacrifice the people closest to him. ”
Gavin stands up, too. He glances at the grave one more time.
“She deserved better.”
“Yeah. She did.”
I put my hand on his shoulder and squeeze. He nods.
We walk down the hill together, silence stretching between us. When we get to my car, I click the alarm to unlock it. I press the ignition button once we’re both inside and the engine rumbles to life.
“I’ll drop you off at home,” I say, pulling onto the road.
“Thanks. And Loch?”
“Yeah?”
“The thing about Dad. And about Mom.” Gavin stares out the window, his jaw tense. “I’m not gonna let it go. I want to know the truth. Whatever it takes.”
My hands tighten on the wheel.
“Gav. Some truths won’t ever set you free. Some truths just break you. Or worse.”
“Maybe.” He turns to look at me. “But I’d rather be broken and know than whole and ignorant.”
I nod. Because I understand exactly what he means.
I’ve been carrying this weight for a long damn time. Suspecting. Wondering. Never able to prove anything, but never able to let it go, either.
I don’t want my youngest brother to be saddled with that burden. I should protect him from it. That’s what I’ve always done. I’ve shielded him and the others from the worst of our family to protect them.
But maybe he’s right. Maybe he’s not a kid anymore. Maybe he deserves to know what kind of monster our father really is.
Or maybe we’ll both end up destroyed by the truth.
I guess time will tell
“Okay,” I say finally. “We’ll look into it together. But carefully. If Dad catches on to us digging—”
“He won’t.”
“Gavin.”
“He won’t.” His voice is firm. “I’ve learned a few things growing up in this family. How to keep my head down. How to watch without being seen.” A hint of a smile appears. “I’m not as reckless as everyone thinks.”
I glance at his bruised face. “The evidence suggests otherwise.”
“That was different. That was on purpose.”
“How is getting your ass kicked on purpose better?”
“It’s not. But at least it was my choice.” He shrugs. “In this family? That’s worth something.”
I turn onto his street and pull up to the curb outside his building.
“Thanks for the ride,” he says with his hand on the door handle.
“Thanks for finding me.” He pauses to look back at me. “And Loch?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think Mom would’ve liked Adriana?”
Mom had such a sharp wit and zero tolerance for bullshit. And Adriana is so strong and driven and fearless in the way she refused to back down from my father.
“Yeah,” I say with a nod. “I do think she would’ve.”
“Good. Don’t fuck this up. Whatever this thing is… don’t let Dad ruin it before it even starts.”
He pushes open the door and steps out before I can respond.
I watch him walk into the building, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched forward.
My little brother. Not so little anymore.
I sit there for a minute, engine idling. So many fucking secrets, ones that could destroy everything.
Gavin wants the truth about Mom. Fine. I’ll help him find it.
But the truth about the gala? About what I knew and when I knew it? About the damage Eamon did and can still do?
That one stays buried.
For now.