Chapter 45
KATE
Ilook up from my phone as we pull off the freeway for Baltimore. I just sent a text to Breagha, one she’ll see in an hour or two, when she wakes in Indonesia.
Things are changing here
All good
Danilov no longer a problem
You and Nate can come home any time
She surprises me by writing back immediately.
Nate and I live in Indonesia now
Because we want to
Not because of any stupid Russian
Did you know they have monkeys here?
I think I like them even more than pandas
Come and visit soon?
I type as fast as I can.
I’d like that
A lot
Talk soon
And I add three hearts, because I know my sister will like that.
The sun has set by the time we arrive at the house where I grew up. It looks like a deserted castle, not a light on in the place. There’s no guard to stop us at the gate.
“Go on, then,” I say to the driver. “Use the keypad.” As I give him the six digits that haven’t changed since I was a child, I wonder what Cole would think about such a lapse in security.
Drew Cameron extends an arm across my body after I unlatch my safety belt. “Stay here,” he says. “We’ll go in first.”
I shake my head. “This is Lynch territory. I’m safe here.”
“We’re paid to guarantee that. Let us do our jobs.”
After I reluctantly agree, the two Sawgrass soldiers head for the porch. Before they reach the first step, a massive shadow detaches from the building. Both men train their weapons on the dark shape that settles into the form of a man.
The yoke is tall. He’s broad through the shoulders, like he spends his spare time chopping down trees. His hair is dark and his eyes too; in the moonlight, both look black. The planes of his face might be handsome, if a jagged scar didn’t slice from his left ear to his chin.
“Robbie Malloy, I assume,” I say, as if I always find giants waiting outside my childhood home.
“Kaitlín Minola Lynch.” It’s the same rumbling voice I heard on the phone, the same Irish lilt, managing the vowels in a way no American ever gets quite right.
Taking his time descending the steps from the porch, he moves like a panther, his muscles rippling subtly under his skin.
When he reaches the drive, he holds his arms out at his sides, like he’s showing he’s innocent, or maybe like he belongs on some wooden cross.
“Let’s get this bit done,” he says, nodding to give the Sawgrass men permission to approach.
They frisk him with cool efficiency, taking extra time to check his hair, his belt, and the insides of his dark leather work boots. Malloy tolerates the attention like a patient getting jabbed with a vaccine.
“Clear the house too,” Malloy commands. “And then I’ll speak with Herself alone. There’s a woman tied up in the parlor. You won’t want to slip off her gag.”
He’s the one giving orders now, here in the heart of the Canton Crew. At least Cameron waits for me to nod acceptance before he sends in his men.
“That’s Mam you’ve got tied up?” I ask.
He nods as he rubs his hand at the side of his neck. I realize he’s bleeding from four parallel scratches. “Orla Lynch always was the fighting sort.”
“How badly is she hurt?”
“She broke a couple of fingernails. And she was complaining she felt a migraine coming on, right before I tied the gag around her head.”
I’m supposed to come to her defense, to rescue her even. But I realize I don’t much care what Malloy means to do with the woman who sold out our clan.
The three of us—Malloy, Cameron, and me—stand silent in the moonlight while the Sawgrass men finish inside. I wonder how many hours of sleep I’ve had over the past week. It can’t be much more than the four hours a night Cole famously gets.
My body is exhausted. Every time I turn my head, it takes my vision a moment to catch up. My fingertips tingle as if I’ve been breathing deep. My bones feel too heavy for my skin.
It seems to take hours for the soldiers to complete their task, but I suspect it’s no more than ten minutes. When they confirm the house is safe, I head for the porch. Cameron puts his body between Malloy and me.
“Alone,” Malloy reminds him, his voice free of emotion.
Cameron isn’t happy, but he complies once I agree.
The instant the front door is closed behind us, I turn on the lights in the foyer. The shadows didn’t lie. Malloy’s hair is black. His eyes, too. And that scar somehow manages to look even more fierce.
Mam begins squealing from the parlor and kicking her feet against the floor. Ignoring the racket, I ask, “Where’s the clan? Where is all the Canton Crew?”
“Quiet!” Malloy hollers, turning his head toward the parlor. “One more sound out of you, and you’re leaving this house without a stitch of clothing on your back.”
Mam breaks off, mid-shout.
Malloy turns back to me and pauses, as if he’s translating my question, or maybe he wants to be very sure of his answer. “I gave them a choice. Fight me or go on home. They chose to leave.”
I wonder how many men were here. A Thursday night in August… There should have been a handful—playing cards, drinking Da’s whiskey, telling lies in the parlor.
“Did Mam get the same choice?” I don’t actually care if I ever see her again, not after all she did for the bratva. But I’m curious.
His lip curls, as if he smells milk left too long out of the fridge. “She’s going to Glenswilly. Back in County Donegal.”
“My mother?” Mam hates everything about the Old Country—the cold, the wet, the slower pace of life.
I can’t count the number of times she told Breagha and me growing up that the single best day of her life was the one she got on a plane in Dublin and flew in a back-row center seat, all the way to Baltimore. “Why is Mam going to…Glenswilly?”
“Because I told her to.”
“And why did you tell her to?”
“She’s joining the Little Sisters of Humility.”
I laugh, because I’ve always appreciated a good Irish joke. But Robbie Malloy isn’t laughing. “Wait,” I say. “My mother is becoming a nun?”
“She is.”
“Poverty, chastity, and obedience? That sort of nun?” The thought is so outrageous, I can barely string the words together.
“As a novitiate, her only vow will be silence. For the first year.”
“Jesus Christ,” I breathe, and if Malloy has a problem with blasphemy, he doesn’t give a sign. Shaking my head, I ask, “Where’s Da?”
Malloy turns his back and heads for the stairs. I follow, automatically avoiding the squeaky places on the third and seventh steps.
We walk past the room Mam turned into her office. The guest room with the wallpaper of the River Swilly, where Pyotr Tarasov slept. Breagha’s room. Mine.
The hallway is dark, pools of silvery light barely reaching through each open door. This time, I don’t turn on the overhead.
My parents’ room is at the end of the hall. The king-size bed is in disarray. I can make out a clear rectangle on the comforter, the size of a suitcase Mam must have hurriedly filled. Clothes are tangled around the space—formal dresses and lingerie mixed with jumpers and dependable wool trousers.
My eyes, though, barely register the scrambled clothing.
Instead, I’m drawn to a hospital bed set up next to the window.
It glows like a spaceship from another planet, the white sheets grabbing moonlight from outside.
A cluttered nightstand sits between the bed and the wall, jumbled with shadowed necessities.
Da lies flat on his back. His head is centered on a thin pillow. His arms rest by his sides. A crisp white sheet is pulled over his rounded belly, neatly turned back across his chest to reveal his black pajamas.
“Is he…”
“Alive,” Malloy says.
I realize I can just make out his breathing, the slight rise and fall, but it looks too shallow for a man his size. He’s in far worse shape than when I served him colcannon at Sunday Roast. I wonder if he’s had another stroke.
“Your da’s a shite captain,” Malloy says.
I’m supposed to defend my family. I should explain how Da’s had a difficult time.
Baltimore’s not the valuable port it used to be.
Money has all moved north or south. It does something to a man, needing to accept money from his daughter.
The Tarasov bratva has turned every skirmish into a battle.
The bratva, the bratva, always the bratva.
Before I can summon the energy to lay it all out for Malloy, he says, “He ate too much. Drank too much. Smoked too much. He forgot a captain is supposed to be a soldier.”
I stare at the slope of the sheet over Da’s swollen belly.
“He ignored his pew on a Sunday. Skipped alms for the poor. Forgot holy days of obligation. He forgot a captain is supposed to be a man of faith.”
I can’t remember the last time Da set foot in St. Brigid’s when it wasn’t Christmas or Easter—or my wedding.
“He got sloppy on the job,” Malloy says. “Leaned too hard on the milk run. Let his men skim from his take. He couldn’t be bothered to learn banking and transport, anything new. He forgot a captain is supposed to lead his men.”
Da claimed he liked the old ways. But the truth was, he didn’t understand the new. He barely used his mobile. He hired Cole to run his computers because he didn’t have a man in the Crew he could trust.
“He let the Russians run wild. They took his whores. They took his card games. They took his docks. He let them take his daughters. He forgot a captain is supposed to drive out the enemy.”
He let them take his daughters.
My cheeks heat with shame. But no—that’s not the emotion that flushes my cheeks. I’m angry.
“Go on, then,” Malloy says. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
Da was supposed to do better. He was supposed to lead the Canton Crew. And if he wasn’t man enough to manage, he should have done what I’ve done. He should have turned back to family, back to Ireland, back to County Donegal. Da should have done whatever it took to make things right.
Instead, he let the Lynch clan wither on the vine.
“You’re not wrong,” I say to Malloy.
He moves faster than a man his size should do. His hand lands cleanly on the nightstand, amid the pill bottles and the cups with straws, Kleenex and alcohol wipes, all the wreckage of an endless, hopeless illness.
He comes up with a gun.
It’s a pistol. It’s heavy in his hand. It’s perfect in its form, made to do one thing, and to do it well.
Malloy settles the weapon against Da’s ear, and for just a moment, I’m back in Cole’s garage in Georgetown. I’m watching Sawyer Best handle a traitor. I’m seeing what happens when a bad man fails.
The sound is enormous. It fills the room. It fills the house. It fills the entire world. The bedroom smells of cordite and blood and after a stunned few seconds, shite. Blood blooms beneath Da’s head, soaking the pillow and spreading down to the sheets.
Feet pound on the stairs, and then down the hallway. Cameron leaps into the bedroom, gun drawn, eyes wild. The other Sawgrass men follow behind him, settling into tactical stances as Cameron orders Malloy to drop his weapon.
Malloy's hands frame his head, scarecrow-style. “Easy, mate,” he says, waggling his fingers to show they’re free from his trigger. He’s back to the controlled aggression of a wild cat, moving with absolute control as he inches his gun down to rest upon Da’s knees.
Cameron sweeps up the weapon. One of the other men finally thinks to flip a light switch, flooding the room with dingy yellow light.
“Over here, Kate,” Cameron says, gesturing with his chin.
But I shake my head. “I’m just fine, gentlemen. Himself was just explaining his plans, now that he’s running the Canton Crew.”