25. Keira #2
I've seen Ruairí angry before, but this is something different—a cold, bright clarity, like the world has shrunk to a single, unwavering point.
Lena is on his left, wet hair unravelling from its braid, face pale but focused, gun already up and steady.
She sweeps the room, registers the chaos, the blood, the broken glass, and then fixes on Liam, finger tight on the trigger.
Killian and Fiachra are behind them, less dramatic but no less lethal.
They fan out in practiced formation—Killian cutting off Liam's retreat to the window, Fiachra heading for the sideboard and then flanking toward the fireplace.
Liam tries to get up, but Fiachra is on him in a blink, pinning his arm and driving a knee into the back of his thigh.
There's a brief, ugly struggle where Liam thrashes, landing a wild punch to Fiachra's jaw, but Fiachra absorbs it and responds with a headbutt that leaves Liam glassy-eyed and bleeding from his nose.
Blood pours, fast and wet, splattering Niamh's boots and the carpet.
Niamh pulls herself upright, hands shaking, face twisted in pain but also in a kind of grim satisfaction.
This isn't her first fight, and it won't be her last.
Ruairí looks at me, then at Niamh, then at Liam, making a cold inventory of damage and threat.
His gun is still holstered, but everyone in the room knows it wouldn't take much to change that equation.
He says nothing until he's standing over Liam, who's been forced to his knees, head swimming, both nostrils flooding red.
"You tried to touch my wife," he says then, voice even.
"You don't come back from that."
Liam spits blood onto the rug.
There's a sick, defiant energy in his eyes but it's fading fast, eclipsed by the realization that there's no cavalry, no last-minute escape.
He tries to laugh, but it's a ruined, watery sound.
Ruairí crouches, bringing his face level with Liam's.
He looks at him like a scientist examining a failed experiment.
The room is so quiet, I can hear the rain guttering in the downspouts outside.
"You're going to tell me exactly what Padraig's next move is," he says.
"You're going to give me names. Details. Timetables."
He reaches out, almost gently, and wipes a smear of blood from Liam's cheek.
"And if you don't, I'm going to start taking things from you one inch at a time until you forget what it felt like to be safe."
I can see the moment Liam's pride cracks—the way his eyes dart from Ruairí to Lena to Fiachra, then to me, searching for some sign of mercy.
There's nothing.
My own hands are trembling so hard I nearly drop the knife, but I keep it up, pointed at his heart.
Lena hasn't even blinked.
"You think I scare that easily?" Liam tries, voice breaking high and thin.
"You think I don't know what comes next?"
Ruairí stands.
"No," he says.
"But you're weak. And weak men always break when the pain doesn't stop."
Fiachra hauls Liam to his feet, holding him steady as Killian ties his hands behind his back with a cable zip.
Niamh leans against the table, blood running from a cut on her hairline, but her posture is still straight, her eyes sharp.
"We use him," Ruairí says, glancing at me.
"He's bait now."
I nod.
"Let's bleed him for every name he's got."
They drag Liam to the dining room.
The long table there has been cleared.
It will serve the purpose.
An hour later, the dining room looks more like an intelligence bunker than the place we once ate Christmas supper.
Liam is tied to a chair, wrists secured behind his back with zip cable, one eye already swelling shut, his mouth bloodied from Fiachra's last corrective blow.
A laptop sits open on the table, screen casting a cold blue light across the sheaf of printed documents scattered between the whiskey glasses and bloodied napkins.
Killian's tablet is synced to the satellite feed that cross-checks Liam's every claim with the live data pulled from the shell company registries we've been scraping for weeks.
We push him harder than necessary.
Not out of cruelty, but because time is finally short, and pain still works when pride won't.
What spills from him is equal parts smugness and panic—a list of shell corporations and offshore accounts, financial front doors that lead nowhere, until Killian traces the names backward and starts hitting on a pattern.
Padraig didn't just launder money for Moretti.
He structured the entire network himself.
Four fake businesses operating out of Brussels, all tied to a property manager whose passport expired in 2019.
A film production company in Berlin that's never released a single reel, currently holding five million euro in phantom expenses.
A logistics firm registered in Cork, running empty hauls to Oslo and back, signed off with customs stamps from a dockmaster who died two years ago.
An export license under the name of Padraig's dead cousin, renewed twice using a Garda login that traces back to Liam's own IP.
Then there's the flight manifest—a Bombardier Challenger scheduled to land at Shannon Airport under a clean alias, set to arrive in forty-two hours.
The passenger list is redacted, but the tail number has been used twice before.
Once to land in Palermo, once in Tangier, both times matching dates when high-profile assassinations occurred within a day.
Killian cross-checks the airstrip handlers.
One of them made a deposit three days ago to an unlisted account that shares a routing path with the Brussels firms.
It's not circumstantial.
It's designed .
Ruairí reviews the spread in silence, then nods.
That's enough.
We call Padraig.
Ruairí dials the number from the landline.
No encryption.
No burner.
No intermediary.
He doesn't mask the number because he wants Padraig to know who it is.
He doesn't bother with preamble either.
When the call connects, he speaks with the kind of restraint that draws blood all on its own.
"Liam's here," he says, tone flat, clipped only by choice.
"He's not dead. Yet. But he's talking. And we didn't need much to start matching your money to Moretti's books."
There's silence on the other end.
No attempt to deny, no quick demand for terms. Just the sound of Padraig O'Duinn breathing like a man who knows the fall is already halfway done.
Ruairí doesn't wait for an answer.
He lays it out clean.
"Here's what we have. Four dummy firms registered in your name, two in Brussels and two in Berlin.
A logistics company in Cork running false manifests through a dead man's name.
A customs officer bribed through Liam's proxy accounts.
A production house with no films but several shell payouts routed through a Luxembourg clearing bank that traces back to you.
We know the structure. We've got the routing numbers. We've got signatures."
Still nothing.
Just breathing.
The long, cold kind of silence that precedes collapse.
"The Bombardier Challenger set to land at Shannon in forty-two hours," Ruairí says, voice steady.
"Tail number ending in 6XQ. Registered out of Gibraltar under a fake holding company that traces back to one of your Brussels firms. The same plane landed in Palermo last month and Tangier before that—both times within twenty-four hours of confirmed hits on targets connected to Moretti's debt collections. "
He pauses for one second, just to let the effect sink in.
"We know what it's bringing in this time.
Two of Moretti's men, likely armed, with diplomatic cover arranged through a shell export office registered to your dead cousin.
The handlers at Shannon are on your payroll.
The refueling invoice was paid through an account we just pulled from Liam.
That's your money, Padraig. That's your operation.
And that is more than enough to charge you with conspiracy and state-sponsored organized crime.
Unless you want me to walk that evidence in to Interpol and the Garda commissioner, you'll do exactly what I'm about to tell you. "
At this, Padraig speaks a single word.
"What."
Ruairí doesn't raise his voice.
"Deliver Moretti to me. In person. On neutral ground. Not his villa, not yours. Here. At the Crowley Donnelly headquarters in Dublin. If you want to protect what's left of your position, your access, your family name, you'll bring him to us. And you'll make sure he understands it's not a request."
A long beat passes.
No denial.
No outrage.
Just breaths again, slow and shallow now.
Ruairí leans in slightly, hand flat on the table, his thumb grazing the edge of the photo we printed of Padraig's forged signature on a wire transfer to a known Sicilian arms broker.
"We know it all, Padraig. Every number you thought was safe is in my hand.
Every ledger entry you thought disappeared is printed and stacked.
You want to gamble your future on the Italians keeping their mouths shut when they smell smoke in your office, be my guest. But once this goes public, they'll toss you out of the network before the ink dries on your indictment. "
Then finally, Padraig speaks.
His voice is hoarse, stripped down to bone.
"I'll get him there."
Ruairí hangs up.
I sit on the edge of the table with my hand resting on my stomach.
My shoulder still throbs.
Niamh presses a cold cloth to her face without flinching.
Killian leans against the wall, still watching Liam like he might lunge again.
Fiachra reloads the pistol without speaking.
This is it.
The final play.