47. Saoirse
Saoirse
The Truth Never Choked A Man
By the pricking of my thumbs, I’m pretty damn certain something wicked this way comes.
I hear the whisper of someone taking a step and sliding their shoe over the floorboards.
My knowledge of guns consists of loading the cylinder, cocking the hammer, and pulling the trigger.
What should I do? I can’t shoot a stranger or—God forbid—one of the Dugans.
I make one of those last second, ultra-panicked decisions.
I move to sit at the foot of Patrick’s bed so I have my back against the wall, and aim the gun at him.
Da’s astonished. “What the feck? You know our code, Saoirse. Liam betrayed me and so he died!”
I’m not looking at him. I’m looking at the door. I should’ve closed it, but it felt safer to have an exit strategy at the time.
A shadow looms in the doorway. I bite back a moan of terror.
“Stop right there, or I shoot Patrick. I will shoot him. Don’t think I won’t!”
A snigger of laughter and a man steps into the room.
Rian.
His gun is bigger than mine, and it’s pointed at me.
My gun is pointing at Patrick.
Da is empty-handed and looking fucking confused.
“Rian, lad. Long time no chat. Help me sort this out, will you?” Patrick jerks his head in my direction.
I shake the gun. “Don’t make me do it, Rian. I’ll shoot him!”
Rian levels the pistol…at me.
“You’ll be saving me a bullet, you pure haughty crow. He’s my next target.”
Declan’s given the order. The last of the Byrne clan must die.
I keep my eyes open and watch Rian’s finger tighten.
No goodbye. Nothing to leave behind. Just a wasted space where my life should have headed.
Bam.
Both Patrick and I levitate off the mattress as the gunshot goes off.
I wish I’d closed my eyes when I see Rian’s head explode. It’s awful.
He seems to float sideways as one side of his skull caves in and the other side bursts out.
I’m screaming and screaming. Then I gasp a deep breath, but it’s only so I can scream some more.
A nightmare steps into the room, his blood-spattered face grinning with wild delight.
“She says so, and so it must be done.” It's Finn. It’s Finn. I didn’t even hear him coming. He moves as quiet as Death.
Patrick says it first.
“Finn O’Shea.”
Finn bows. “The man himself.”
Finn shot Rian in the head like it was a Halloween pumpkin. His sneakers crunch on the floor as he grinds the skull fragments into the floorboards.
He steps over to Rian’s twitching body and gives it an experimental kick before standing over the body and firing into the man’s shattered head again. I scream, again.
Finn explains. “‘Tis the base of the spine that makes it twitch like that. I was only severing the spinal cord.”
It’s slowly dawning on me that he just saved my life. I would be that bloodied corpse right now if it wasn’t for him.
Patrick is irate. “Be gone to the devil with you! How did you get in?”
Finn grins. “Your one here,” he kicks the body again, “must’ve come over the wall. As for myself, I walked up the drive.”
“But I have over ten men guarding it.” The old man is asking all the questions for me.
“Here’s the problem, Patrick. They’re all my men out there. Loyal to me. Sworn to fight my causes. You want to know why?”
Patrick shakes his head and looks shell shocked.
“Because my causes are their causes. All we want to do is live, work, and pray in peace. We want to be able to afford the simple things in life.”
Patrick blusters. “You, pray? Don’t make me laugh. You’re a reaper. There’s no place for you in heaven.”
I’m nodding in agreement until Finn drops another bombshell.
“But you two thought to feather your own nests instead of looking after the men who built your houses and fixed your fancy fucking cars.”
Is he including me in this? Finn’s still holding his pistol. Without thinking, I move my gun and aim it at him as the blood spreads and pools around his sneakers.
“And I’ll carry on feathering my own nest, thank you, Finn. It’s called building an empire, and in case you’ve forgotten, it’s the American way. Don’t try bringing your Irish version of equality over here.” I sound more confident than I feel.
He stares down the barrel of my gun with a smirk. “Why d’you run from me at the convent, mo chroí?”
He’s the same blood-stained boy from the chapel, but I’m so far away from being that chapel girl on her knees.
Looking around the room, I hardly recognize it as the same place where I would play dress-up with my sister using our Mam’s accessories, clothes, and shoes.
She would watch us pull evening gowns off hangers and silk negligees out of drawers and fight over who got to wear her prettiest shoes.
All those boxes of Chanel pearl necklaces and Bulgari chokers are in the dresser at the Maguire mansion now. I don’t know if I will ever see them again.
“Do you love me, Finn?”
Our guns are pointed at one another. I couldn’t think of a more accurate depiction of our relationship.
“I’m the prince of lies, Saoirse. I wouldn’t mean anything if I told you I did.”
Oh, God, how free would I be if I could only pull this trigger?
He doesn’t shift from one foot to the other, doesn’t lower his guard. Finn has superhuman control over everything in his life, but he can’t control me.
He gives me silence and doesn’t interrupt my chain of thought.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Patrick relax. Two Byrnes against one O’Shea and he’s the only one without a gun trained on him? I bet my father likes those odds.
“When I left you at the convent, Finn, it felt good to be alone. Feels like forever since I was.”
He nods, but doesn’t answer.
Patrick does. “That’s a load of rubbish. Folks are alone more than they think. There’s only one person inside your head, Saoirse, and that’s you.”
It’s a strange moment to get a lump in my throat, but I do. My eyes sting and my throat compresses when I swallow. Something monumental is building inside me, and I’m close to erupting with it.
“It’s not who is in my head I’m worried about, Da. It’s who is lodged inside my heart!” The pain is real. I’m stating a fact.
Patrick points. “He’s a low-class thug! He’s the son of a thug. He’s a reaper, for God’s sake, Saoirse, use your eyes!”
I’m in love with an assassin.
I guess I always knew. Finn might be a warrior inside the cage and a dangerously charming sex symbol with the ladies when he’s outside of it. But his job, at the end of the day, is to kill people.
My captivity didn’t blind me to this. It stripped away all those self-soothing lies I would tell myself just so I wouldn’t feel bad for wanting to fuck him.
“Say something!” I demand for Finn to defend himself. “Don’t just stand there!”
He must fight for me to make up for leaving me.
Finn left me.
No…he was banished after his Uncle Eamon sold him… us out.
I have to shift so I can address Patrick while keeping an eye on Finn at the same time.
“Finn couldn’t have written that note, Da.”
Patrick looks confused. “What note?”
The words come out a bit jumbled in my rush to get it out.
“The note! Note! The one you said that Finn left. It’s seared into my fecking memory like a Goddamn tattoo! A game of chess doesn’t need a pawn to win! A game of chess doesn’t need a pawn to win!”
My father calls my bluff.
“O’Shea lied about marrying you. You know why? You heard the boy, Saoirse. He’s the Prince of Lies. Because Connor O’Shea was the Father of Lies. The family was proud of it.”
Finn smirks. “It’s right, you are, Patrick. I’m a devil because my old man was Satan himself. Cunning, he was. He’d say one pint, and it would turn into twenty.”
I drag my attention back to Patrick with an irritated huff.
“There’s one thing I know for sure that Finn can’t lie about. He can’t write script—never learned. And he doesn’t know how to play chess—has never so much as laid eyes on a board full of pieces.”
The blood drains out of my father’s face as he tries to think of something to counteract the facts.
But both of us have the same memory… The beautiful flowing script mentioning chess and the most insignificant piece on the chessboard. The pawn.
“It’s a heathen you are,” Patrick spits in Finn’s direction. “An abomination before the Lord.”
Finn continues to grin. This is the hill on which he wants to die.
My Da continues. “He killed your project manager and compliance officer, you know that? Plucked them out of existence in his quest for vengeance.”
And yet Finn swore up and down the street that he had nothing to do with that…
Finn gives a wild laugh. “It’s warning you I am, Patrick Byrne. I lie about everything—except love.”
When he turns that grin on me, I feel like vomiting. Those two men were my friends and allies.
Da hisses next to me. “Kill him, Daughter. End this now.”
Finn shakes his head. “Ah, I’ll die a happy man at the hands of a storí, Patrick. But first, you must tell Saoirse what you said at Maire’s graveside. What? Silence? All right, I’ll tell her.”
He tucks his gun behind him after doing something to disarm it and leaves me pointing my gun at him. He gives me the nod.
To show he’s ready to die if I don’t believe him.
“Your dear old Da promised your Mam on her deathbed that he would let her two darling daughters marry for love. Isn’t that right, Patrick? You broke your promise to Maire so you could score your own vengeance against Connor.”
I face Patrick. What I’m feeling right now rises and crests into a tsunami of bad karma. It’s as if Finn has me by the throat all over again and he’s squeezing.
“Is that true?”
Patrick Byrne has the gall to nod. “Aye, but—”
I shut my eyes and pull the trigger.