Chapter Fifteen
Cian
Sal called Duncan and Mac, while I walked to my office and retrieved the files from their hiding place. I’d sent Liam off to check on Maddie and let her know Caity was fine. I told him to watch over her until tomorrow, when he could bring her to my apartment to see her mother.
When Mac and Duncan arrived, they both stared at Caity. She rolled her eyes and walked away from them.
“You kidnapped her?” Mac asked with a smirk.
“I didn’t fuckin’ kidnap her.”
“No, Liam did,” Caity informed them.
Duncan threw his head back and laughed.
“Why are you laughing?” Caity asked, her hands on her hips.
“Because I should have sent Liam to watch Freyja in New Orleans instead of Rian.”
A few months ago, when we were in New Orleans chasing down Nolan Kelley, Rian, one of Ronan’s men who was supposed to be protecting Freyja, let her leave and get on a plane. She was kidnapped by Tyran, and we almost lost her.
Of course, if you asked Freyja, Lucille Ball had it all under control. I shook my head, thinking about what could have happened.
“Is there anything to eat?” Freyja asked, digging through my fridge.
“I’ll order some food.” Duncan pulled his phone out. “Anything specific?” he asked Freyja.
“All of it. I just want all the food.”
We all chuckled at her frustration. Since she’d gotten pregnant, Freyja was hungry all the time.
“Did all of you know about Sal’s daughter?”
“Sal has a daughter?” Freyja asked.
“All of us except Ty,” Mac answered.
“Wait, how did Ty not know? He was your best friend?” Caity asked, looking at Sal.
“I don’t know. He was with Eamon somewhere when I found out, and something told me not to tell him.”
“How old is she?” Freyja asked. “And where does she live?”
Sal looked down at the floor. “She’s twenty-eight and...” He looked over at Freyja. “She lives in Rosewood.”
“What?” Freyja shouted. “Who? What’s her name? Oh God, please tell me it isn’t Bailey. Literally anyone but Bailey.” Freyja closed her eyes, but then they snapped back open as she gasped, “Wait, no, scratch that. Tell me it isn’t Marlene.”
“Who is Marlene?” Duncan asked.
“She’s a whore.” Freyja’s head spun around to Sal. “It’s not Marlene, is it?”
“No,” Sal said. “Her name is Morgan.”
“Morgan Delany?” Freyja asked with a smile.
“Do you know her, Freyja?” Duncan asked, wrapping his arms around her waist.
“I do. I love Morgan. She’s a little crazy, but now it makes sense why.” She asked Sal, “Does she know you’re her father?”
“She does. I’ve always been in her life.”
“Does she know she has a brother?” Mac asked. “’Cause I’m pretty sure King still doesn’t know he has a sister.”
“No, and until this shit is over, neither of them will know. I won’t put Morgan’s life at risk.”
“Is that why she never talked about her father? She kept you a secret all these years,” Freyja commented.
“Yes, it was a decision her mother and I made together.”
“I can’t believe you never told me,” Caity whispered.
“You never told me about Maddie,” Sal countered.
“I didn’t know. Not for sure.”
“Okay, before you two start, let’s talk about the files Caity found. Sal, you said at the house you knew about the files.”
“I knew there were secrets in that office. It was why I told Caity to stay out of it,” he said, glaring at his sister.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have insisted on me moving in there,” Caity snapped back.
“Stop it, you two. What’s done is done,” Freyja ordered. “We can’t go backwards, so let’s move forward.”
I handed out the files so everyone could see what we were dealing with. “As you can see, most of these people are dead now.”
“Except him.” Sal pointed to the name on the list. The only person we knew was still alive.
“I have a hard time believing he was anyone important. He ran a motorcycle club. They were the muscle for the Society. George Stone was the brains behind that particular division. With him gone, everything fell apart,” Duncan explained.
“Everything fell apart long before then,” Freyja offered as she stared at the list of names. “Eamon O’Malley was the bookkeeper. After he died, these divisions started to scramble.”
“What do you mean?” Mac asked, leaning his arms on the table.
“Eamon died in what... 2001?” She looked to Sal for confirmation. When he nodded, she continued, “So there is nothing here after 2001. Who took over as the bookkeeper?”
“We don’t know,” I added.
“How do we know anyone took over?” Caity asked.
“Someone had to. The Society wasn’t brought down until a few years ago.
Jane Craven died just a few months ago. Someone had to take his place.
Someone had to take all their places. These men and women all died over the last twenty-four years.
But the Society kept going. We need to dig into each of these names and find out who took their places,” Freyja explained.
“Valentino Valentinetti, for example. He died in a car bomb in 2014. Giovanni took his place in the family, but Giovanni was instrumental in bringing down the Society,” Mac elaborated.
“And Baranov? We know Maxim and the Golden Skulls took him and Petrovich out.”
“How do we know that Maxim didn’t just take Petrovich’s place?” Mac asked.
Caity gasped, her hand covering her mouth. “Henry.”
I moved over next to her and pulled her into my arms. “He won’t hurt Henry. Illyria won’t let him. I want him back as much as you do, but Salvatore and Illyria had a special bond. She won’t let anyone hurt his son.”
“I can promise you Maxim did not take Petrovich’s place with this shit,” Freyja said adamantly. “After what Remi went through, Vladmir would kill Maxim himself.”
“We need to go through each name,” Mac said. “It’s the only way we’ll find who took their place.”
“Kelley,” Sal said.
“What?”
He looked at me. “Kelley took Eamon’s place.”
We all stared at Sal. His hands were fisted on the table. “It would have been Eduardo. Eamon brought him in to run the books, but he was stealing from the family. When he took off, that was when Nolan stepped in. Eamon already had him running New York.”
“If Eduardo hadn’t betrayed the family, Father would have trained him to take over from him. But when you killed him, the other divisions started to scramble. That was when Nolan must have reached out,” Caity said.
“But to who?” I asked. “He couldn’t just walk up to Petrovich, or Jane Craven. He had to have an in somehow.”
“Tyran,” Caity whispered.
“What?”
“Tyran was his in. He was always taking those trips with Dad. Tyran wasn’t smart enough to run numbers and keep everything together. He needed Nolan to be the frontman.”
“Tyran made the connections that put Nolan in place.” Sal stood up and walked to the bar on the far side of the room. He filled a glass with whiskey and gulped it down. “How did I not know? How the fuck did I miss all this shit?”
“Because you were too caught up in Declan, King, and Morgan,” Duncan said. “And you were grieving your mother. Eamon trained you to take over the family because it was expected. He refused to do what his father had done to him.”
“What did he do?” Freyja asked.
“My grandfather was the head of the IRA,” Caity explained.
“When my father was thirty-three, he raped a woman. One of Baranov’s mistresses.
Baranov didn’t care; grandfather did. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
My father had gotten into a lot of trouble, thinking he was untouchable.
Grandfather banished Eamon to the States.
And when Grandfather was ready to retire, he handed the IRA to my uncle, Sean Buchannon, who had married Casper’s daughter. ”
“So he raised Sal to run the family, but didn’t think he was fit to run the really bad shit he was into?” Freyja mused. “I guess that says a lot about who Sal is.”
“I should have fuckin’ killed him sooner.”
“You didn’t know,” Caity said, trying to soothe her brother.
“I fuckin’ knew he was an asshole. It was why I hid my daughter.” Sal turned to face his sister. “I wasn’t letting him use my little girl the way he used you. The way he would have used Maddie.”
“Thank you,” Caity whispered before she launched herself at Sal.
“We need to call Cal. When I spoke to him the other day, he said they had found a reference to another possible office. One he shared with someone else.”
“Most likely Ty. There has to be someone else, though. With Kelley gone, where is Ty hiding? He’s too stupid to do this shit himself,” Mac commented.
“I’m sure he’s learned a thing or two over the years. He’s managed to keep this shit from us,” Sal said.
“We need to divide these files. If we each take a division, we can dig into the people listed and hopefully find the men and women that took over.” I looked at Sal. “You want to take the clubs? Might give you an in with your son.”
“Do I have a choice?” he asked. “You take the Italians.”
“Why? The Russians have my grandson.”
“Which is exactly why you will stay the fuck away from them. We don’t need another war brewing while we dig into this shit. Talk to Maddie and see what she can tell you. She was married to Valentinetti without any of us knowing. She may have answers but doesn’t realize.”
Sal turned his back on me, letting me know his decision was final. I didn’t agree with it, but I understood it.
“Mac, you take the Russians and the Mexicans. Duncan, you take the Society.”
“What about us?” Freyja asked.
“What about you?” Sal asked, clearly not reading Freyja’s tone.
“Caity and I can help. I told you before I would not be one of those Mob wives you see on TV, happy to ignorantly just spend your money and not be involved. I have my own money to spend.”
“Baby, you’re pregnant.”
“That means I can’t read?” she asked, spinning around on Duncan.
“No, you can help me with the Society. You probably know more about the members than any of us. But you are information only,” Duncan commanded.
“Fine,” Freyja conceded. “What about Caity?”
Caity’s eyes widened. She’d never been included in family business, and I didn’t want her involved now. Unfortunately, she was in the middle of it.
“Caity can help me,” I offered. “We can talk to Maddie together.”
Caity nodded, but bit her lip. She was thinking about something and wondering if she should share it.
“What?” I asked her.
Her head popped up, and the look on her face told me I read her correctly.
“What?” she asked innocently. “I can help you.”
“No.” I moved closer to her again. “You have something on your mind. What are you concocting in that head of yours?”
“Nothing. I was thinking about Maddie.”
“Bullshit,” Mac said from the other side of the room. “What haven’t you told us?”
Caity looked at each of us and sighed. “I already talked to Maddie a little. I asked her how she found out that Cian was her father.”
“What did she say?”
“Where is my purse?” she asked.
“In my office.”
She looked up at me with innocent eyes that she thought hid the scheming woman beneath.
“There is an envelope in it with pictures and a recording. It was sent to me, but Maddie opened it.”
“Pictures of what?” Sal asked.
Caity bit her lip again. When she’d locked herself in the guest room the first night, the only thing I’d pulled from her purse was her phone. I didn’t want to invade her privacy more than I had. I’d thought she’d hidden everything in the house, so it never occurred to me to look in her purse.
“Pictures of what, Caity?”
She swallowed and answered, “You and me the night Maddie was conceived.”