Chapter 23
Dervla
Roisin isn’t my enemy.
Siobhán loved my father.
My mother signed the divorce papers.
Whitmore is a facilitator.
The Board wants my grandfather exposed.
I’m the pressure point.
It sounds deranged. “Absolute fucking clown show,” I mutter to the walls.
I need something solid. Something that is mine. Not legacy, not bloodline, not one more secret handed to me by someone with sad eyes and too much information.
Going to the desk, I yank open the drawer harder than necessary. Picking up the notebook and pen, I sit down on the bed, open it, and write one line across the top of a blank page.
What do I know for sure?
The pen digs hard enough to nearly tear the paper.
Dad mapped people. Mum left. Whitmore wanted me here. Roisin wanted me stronger. Siobhán was in love with Dad. Séamus ó Briain is watching. The Board seat matters.
I stare at the list.
It is shit.
It is not enough.
Cillian and your dad go way back. Went.
Cillian and your dad go way back.
Go way back.
Go.
Went.
Freudian slip or the slip of a woman who still wishes the man she loves was here?
I growl at myself. I’m being absurd. I was the one who found my dad dead in the dining room. I saw him with my own two eyes.
Didn’t I?
Now, I’m starting to second-guess myself over some women’s grief-stricken slip-up.
Dad is dead. What I need to figure out is where my mother fits into all of this. She married Dad, had me and left. Was it staged? Planned? An accident?
The more I learn about who these people really were, the more I’m convinced none of this is how I saw events. I write DAD and MUM on the page, and then two arrows down where I write ME. Then I draw a line between them and write MARRIAGE? beside it.
Under Mum, I write ó Briain.
Under Dad, I write Board.
Under me, I write Bait.
I sit back and stare until the words stop looking like words and start looking like a threat.
If Mum is a daughter of Séamus, and she really was estranged, then marrying Dad could have been protection.
Or infiltration. Or both. If Dad knew exactly who she was, then he stepped into it on purpose.
If he didn’t know, then he was played by a woman who left me behind like I was a coat she forgot she owned.
My chest goes tight.
No. That last one is too easy. Too neat. It makes her the villain and him the victim, and nothing in that house, this university, this entire rotten web has been that simple yet.
I write another line.
WHO BENEFITS?
The answer comes too fast.
Whitmore. The Board. Whoever these liaisons are that sit above them. The mafia as a whole. Anyone trying to get to Séamus through me.
I tap the pen against the page. Once. Twice. Three times.
Is the bigger question… who benefits from Mum leaving?
Dad, maybe. If she was dangerous.
Séamus, maybe. If she was compromised.
Siobhán because she went after my single dad and caught him.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I mutter and fling the pen across the room. It hits the door harmlessly, and I flop back, staring at the ceiling.
Mum has got more to do with this than it first appeared.
You are not a daughter of the most infamous criminal in Ireland, and you walk away from that.
You just…don’t. Is that why Nan Alanna hated her so much?
She prides herself on being a great judge of character.
Did she know something was off? Or just know full stop.
She is the only person in all of this I can actually talk to because I have her number; she’s not missing, nor is she dead.
I sit up so fast the room tilts.
Alanna is old enough to have watched this shit happen in real time and is mean enough not to dress it up for me.
I snatch my phone off the bedside table and stare at the screen. I pull up her number and hit call before I can talk myself out of it.
It rings four times before she answers. “If you’re drunk and need me to pick you up somewhere dreadful, or worse, expect me to bail you out of jail, you will have to wait until morning. I’ve already had my sherry.”
“Alanna,” I say, trying not to laugh. “It’s neither of those things.”
“Then what is it?”
“Why do you hate my mother so much?” I ask bluntly.
Alanna snorts delicately. “Do you have all night?”
“Yes.”
A pause.
“It means that much to you?”
“It does,” I say.
Another pause, longer this time.
“Well,” she says at last, “that is unfortunate.”
“For who?”
“For your mother, mostly.”
Despite everything, a short laugh escapes me. “You really do hate her.”
“I dislike stupidity. I despise cowardice. Your mother managed both while wearing good tailoring and pretending it was principle.”
“Start at the beginning.”
“The beginning is never where people think it is,” she says.
“But for your purposes, start with this: your mother was not weak. She was not helpless. She was not some tragic romantic girl swept up by forces beyond her control. She knew what family she came from. She knew what that meant. She knew the kind of danger that follows a name like ó Briain.”
My grip tightens on the phone. “So marrying my dad was deliberate.”
“Yes.”
The word hits hard because of how cleanly she says it. No hedging. No maybe.
“Deliberate in what way?” I ask.
“Are you asking whether she loved him? Don’t flatter her. Love may have arrived later, if at all. The marriage came first as a decision.”
Ice slides under my skin. “A decision for who?”
“For herself. For her father. Potentially for both. I never got a signed confession, Dervla, so if you want courtroom standards, call a solicitor. If you want the truth as I saw it, listen.”
“I’m listening.”
“She was already half out of that family by the time she met your father. Not because she had suddenly discovered a conscience. Because she wanted autonomy and thought herself clever enough to carve it out without paying for it. Foolish mistake from a foolish girl.”
“Autonomy by marrying the head of another mafia family?”
She doesn’t react for a moment. “You know about that?”
“I know a lot of things, Nan.” I call her that out of spite. She hates it.
“Now you are just being rude,” she sniffs.
“Answer the question,” I say. “How did she think that was autonomy?”
“Because she was young and arrogant. A lethal combination in a woman raised to believe she was exceptional. She thought marriage to your father would give her distance from Séamus without severing the connection entirely. A new power base. A respectable one. She thought she could stand between families and remain answerable to neither.”
I let that sink in.
My mother didn’t run into love. She made a move.
“And Dad agreed to this?”
“Yes.”
“So, he knew.”
“Of course he knew.” Alanna sounds almost offended I’d ask. “Your father was many things. Obtuse was not one of them. He knew exactly who she was before he married her. He also knew exactly what marriage to her would mean.”
I press my fingers to my temple. “Then why?”
“Because he wanted what it gave him. Access. Legitimacy in certain rooms. A line into the ó Briain orbit without having to kneel for it.”
My mouth goes dry.
Dad. My father, who made tea in chipped mugs, corrected my essays in the margins, and looked like ordinary grief when Mum left. Dad, who apparently saw a dynastic crime family and thought, yes, that seems useful.
I swallow hard. “You’re saying they used each other.”
“I’m saying they married with their eyes open.
” Alanna’s voice goes crisp as cut glass.
“Whatever tenderness came later, and I do believe some did, it was not the foundation. It was built on terms. On ambition. On strategy. On two very intelligent people thinking they could manage forces bigger than themselves.”
I stare at the far wall and feel something ugly split open inside me. Not grief exactly. Not shock. Something colder. A rearranging.
“So what changed?” I ask. “If they both knew what they were doing, why did she leave?”
“You know I am not one to sugarcoat things, Dervla. Are you sure you want to ask me that question?”
“If you know the answer, then yes.”
“The short version is because she was jealous. Of you.”
I frown. “What?”
“You were an accident. You were a legacy that didn’t end with her.”
“What?”
“She tried to have you… removed, your dad found out, and she ran as far as she could, so he didn’t kill her.”
My heart is stuttering, and I can’t breathe. “Please tell me this is a joke?” I whisper.
“I never joke, darling.”
“My own mother tried to have me killed because I would inherit what she wanted? Is that right? Tell me exactly what you mean,” I demand, because if I let myself react to the shape of that sentence, I might start screaming and never stop.
Alanna is quiet for a beat, as if measuring whether I am sturdy enough for the truth and deciding that is no longer her problem.
“I mean,” she says, each word clipped and precise, “that when your mother realised you were not merely an inconvenience but a complication with legal, familial, and symbolic consequences, she attempted to solve the problem. Not personally. She wasn’t brave enough for blood on her own hands.
But she made enquiries. Indirect ones. The sort of enquiries one makes when one wants a thing done without ever having to say it plainly. ”
My fingers go numb around the phone. “No, this is bullshit. Dad would never have let her near me again if he knew that.”
“He didn’t.”
I stop breathing for a second.
“What?”
“He did exactly what you think a man like your father would do. She was found out. He threatened her. She ran. He hunted. He found her and ended her miserable life two months before he died.”
The words sink into my soul and tear prick my eyes. I close them briefly, but then they snap open. “Two months before he died?”
“Yes,” she drawls. “Coincidence? I think not as well.”
Coincidence, I didn’t even think about. All I’m thinking about now is Siobhán saying Mum signed the divorce papers two months before Dad died. That’s one hell of a euphemism.
I’d laugh if I weren’t so cold inside. But it’s not because my mother tried to have me killed, or that dad killed her. It’s because I was walking around with my head in the fucking clouds while all of this went on around me, and I had no fucking clue. None.
I had a pony. That’s what I had.
“I’m sorry, darling,” Alanna says quietly. “I know this is a lot.”
I ignore her sympathy. “I know you were at the house the other day. I was there as well. Why were you there?”
When Alanna speaks again, her voice is acidic. “Because your house had already been tossed by the Gardaí and they claimed to find nothing. I needed to find the thing I knew was there before… someone else got it. This was my third search.”
“The hard drive?”
“You found it?”
“Yes.”
“My God, Dervla. That wasn’t for you!”
She sounds panicked, and it makes me panic.
“What?” I croak.
“Do you have it now?”
“Yes.”
“Dear God. Lock it down, Dervla, until I can get to you.”
“Wait. Why did Dad leave it for you?”
“He didn’t,” she hisses. “He left it for Séamus. It is the only thing that can protect you.”
The line goes dead, and I stare at it for a few moments before I gulp. Alanna doesn’t do panic or drama. She does facts, cool and collected. That tells me everything I need to know about how far up shit creek we are. “Oh, fuck.”