21. Final Acts
Chapter twenty-one
Final Acts
MICK
Kara and I are early.
It's judgment day for Kenneth-fucking-Shaughnessy and the gym has been stripped of everything that usually defines it. Heavy bags, benches and training mats have been moved out or stacked against the far wall.
Rows of folding chairs face the raised stage where the old wooden table waits beneath the projection screen.
The table predates every man who will sit in judgment today.
The first Boss used it when the organization was still learning how much power could be built from men who understood that loyalty had value.
Brogan will sit at the center. He will hear the evidence, address his men and pass sentence. That is his right.
Until Labor Day.
I set my laptop on the table and confirm the connection to the projection screen. The opening recording is queued up, ready to go. Every other file is arranged in the order I intend to use it.
Kenneth made himself a problem. Today, we eliminate that problem.
Wearing black trousers and a fitted jacket, her hair pulled away from her face, my wife looks both beautiful and like a force to be reckoned with. "Everything ready?"
"Aye."
Her gaze moves over the rows of empty chairs, then to Brogan’s place at the center of the table, evaluating the setup. "They’re going to question the confessions."
"Aye. Some of them." The foolish ones.
The ones who think I'll forget the risk dissension represents to the safety of my family.
"Do you think my father will give him a chance to defend himself?" Kara asks.
I know what's worrying her. Wraith participated in Kenneth's interrogation and I guided us away from any mention of Karl Nystrom and his plans for Fitz.
Thinking he was still going to get revenge against me through my son, Kenneth didn't say a word about the Swedish assassin's father and his plans to kidnap and kill Fitz.
"Nah. Even if he does, Kenneth isn't going to say anything about Karl. It incriminates him and he's still hoping the Swede is still in play." He's not. Karl Nystrom is dead and I didn't make it quick.
He wanted to kill my son. And he made my wife cry. Karl sobbed and begged for death at the end.
I put my hand against the back of Kara's neck and draw her closer until her shoulder presses against my chest. She settles into me automatically.
Kara does not need protection from what will happen in this room. She stands at my side because we are a team. A man’s life will be declared forfeit today. Kara is strong enough to witness that without looking away.
Voices carry from the propped open door. The first of the soldiers are arriving.
I kiss Kara once, then release her.
By the time Brogan walks onto the stage, the gym is full.
Nearly two hundred men sit facing us. Lieutenants in the front, captains behind them and soldiers filling every remaining row. Wraith stands off to the side, his attention fixed on Kenneth as two soldiers bring him in.
Kenneth limps.
His left cheek is purple from Wraith’s fist. One knee no longer bends properly after meeting my flapjack during questioning. His lips are split, and one eye is swollen enough to interfere with his vision.
He still tries to carry himself like a man who belongs at the table.
The soldiers put him in the chair at the side of the stage.
Brogan raises one hand. The room stills.
He speaks first. He reminds the men that six years have passed since the organization sentenced a traitor. He calls that proof of loyalty, then looks at Kenneth and acknowledges the exception sitting a few feet away.
When he says my name, I stand.
"What you’re about to hear is Kenneth Shaughnessy in his own words." I play the recording of his conversation with Agent Fisk.
The voice filling the gym is Kenneth’s. No distortion. No edits beyond cutting away everything the men do not need to hear. He promises a federal agent evidence against me. He talks about using áine. He promises Fisk money and advancement after he becomes boss.
Kenneth watches the men instead of the screen. He's looking for doubt. He finds shock first, followed by anger as I move through the rest of the evidence.
The call with the head of the Swedish mafia changes the room. Men who shifted restlessly during the recording go rigid when they hear Kenneth offer our weapons technology in exchange for Brogan’s murder.
Kenneth laughs and accuses me of believing the Vanta belongs to me.
"It belongs to the mob and currently accounts for forty-two percent of our income from weapons dealing," I tell him. "You were willing to give that up to hire a hitter."
His face reddens.
I put the ledgers on the screen.
áine’s work is meticulous. She found the first irregularities in records Kenneth assumed no one would ever digitize. McLaren followed the corporate filings. Wraith’s men traced the transfers through the shell companies and into businesses connected to the Hollow Point Kings.
I explain the structure without embellishment.
Kenneth used legitimate Shaughnessy companies to launder money from human trafficking. He profited from women and girls being sold. He approved the plan to put Wraith’s daughter into that same pipeline.
The men understand what I am telling them.
Some of them do not want to. I note every face. Disgust is easy to recognize. So is disbelief. There are men in the room who will need time to reconcile the Kenneth they drank with at weddings with the man who sold children.
Then there are the others.
Three men avoid looking at the screen when the records appear.
One of them is O’Grady. He sits near the aisle in the fourth row, his arms folded across his chest. He does not look at Kenneth either.
Interesting.
I continue through both attempts on áine’s life.
The hospital photograph of Allison appears behind me. Bruising covers one side of her face. A cut near her hairline has been closed with sutures, and one arm rests in a sling.
"Allison Shaughnessy was used as cover for the timing of the second attempt on áine’s life."
Kenneth’s head snaps up. "Leave my wife out of this."
"If you’d left her out of it, she wouldn’t be in that condition," Kara says, her voice sharp with fury and disgust.
Her anger is a feckin' turn on and I have to think of firing range statistics to keep my cock from stretching out the front of my trousers.
The door at the side of the gym opens.
Allison enters with one hand on a soldier’s forearm. Her hair is pulled back, exposing every bruise along her cheek and temple.
Each step is slow and halting, but she does her best to hide her physical pain. Allison looks at Kenneth once.
He looks away.
That is the first evidence of shame I have seen from him.
He did not care that his son helped target a girl for rape. He did not care about selling Sadie or arranging áine’s death. He did not care that his plans would leave his uncle dead and put me in a federal prison.
But he cannot meet his wife’s eyes now that she knows he used her.
Allison climbs the two steps to the stage and faces the room.
She tells them Kenneth convinced her that talking to Kara and áine would help her get Kenny Jr. back. Instead, he used her movements to time an attempt on áine’s life.
Then she tells them the part Kenneth hoped she would never discover. He knew she would be driving the same route where the accident was arranged.
He did not warn her.
She nearly died because her husband considered her expendable.
"You don’t understand," Kenneth says.
Allison does not turn toward him.
"I understand Kenneth was willing to bury me for a chance at a chair he was never worthy to sit in."
Kenneth goes pale beneath the bruising.
Allison addresses Brogan, tells him she has nothing more to say and leaves the stage with the soldier’s help.
She will move to live near her son. Brogan ordered her exile, but the order is no punishment to her. Allison has no desire to remain in New York as the wife of a traitor.
áine Veseli nee Gallagher knows what that title costs.
Once the door closes behind Allison, I wait until the last whisper fades.
"To summarize, Kenneth Shaughnessy is a rat. Worse than a rat, he’s a piece of shite human-trafficking scum."
Kenneth laughs. It comes out high and strained.
"You expect them to believe this?" He jerks his chin toward me. "He’s been waiting years to get rid of me."
No one answers.
He keeps going in his last desperate attempt to save his own skin. He tells them I am a sociopath. If any of them don't already know that, they're muppets and don't deserve their place in our mob.
He tells them I made my first kill at eleven and that my family sent me away from Dublin. He claims I have no humanity and no sense of tempered justice.
All true. Except the last.
Kara and our chislers are my tether to humanity and my wife will always be the weight on the other side of the balance for justice.
"He exiled my son and the other boys for being a little rough with a traitor’s daughter."
"Not a traitor’s daughter," Wraith barks. "My daughter."
Kenneth turns that into an accusation against me. Outsiders elevated over Shaughnessy blood. Men without the right name taking positions that should belong to men born into them.
His gaze swings to Brogan. "You let him do this."
Brogan does not answer.
Kenneth continues. Fake recordings. Artificially generated images. Tortured men saying whatever we wanted so the pain would stop.
A few men shift in their seats.
Not support. Discomfort.
Kenneth cannot tell the difference.
"They even frightened my wife into turning against me."
A captain rises from the middle rows and questions whether confessions obtained under chemicals and interrogation should be enough to justify death.
Before Brogan responds, another man stands.
"Those boys he sent away are our sons. The future of this mob." He points toward Wraith. "He can claim that girl as his own, but we all know her real dad was a traitor."
Wraith tells him they will discuss it later.
The man blanches and sits.
Near the back, another soldier stands and says Shaughnessy blood should lead the Shaughnessy mob.
I know him. Noah plays basketball with him. Noah also told Wraith he ran his mouth about my becoming boss.
I move him from nuisance to threat, right next to O'Grady.
Brogan rises and the men still talking shut their traps.
He tells the room he did not want to believe his own flesh and blood had become a flesh peddler and a rat. Then he tells them they either trust him and the leaders he chose or they do not.
"If you don’t, speak now."
No one does.
The men who objected understand the offer.
Brogan has given them an opportunity to declare themselves disloyal in front of every ranking member of the organization. The penalty for disloyalty is death.
Brogan sits.
Kara rises and steps around the table. The first time Kara stood against Brogan, I stood beside her because he was wrong and she was mine.
Six years later, she walks to the center of the Bunker under her own authority.
She reminds them that the confession exists in Kenneth’s voice and the financial records came from his companies. She offers every man in the room the opportunity to inspect every page if he believes the numbers lie.
Then she turns to the captain who defended the exiled boys.
"You said those boys are someone’s sons."
He nods.
"They are. And every one of those boys has a father in this organization."
Another nod.
"What punishment does our organization impose for rape?"
The captain does not answer.
Kara does. "Death."
The word carries through the gym.
She explains what those fathers were spared. The organization could have imposed their sons’ punishment on them. The evidence could have been handed to the civil authorities, leaving the boys in youth detention rather than fostered with another mob family.
None of the men who complained considered that mercy.
Kara’s eyes harden.
"If even one of those boys had succeeded in what they attempted, my son would have killed every last one of them." She looks across the room, forcing the men to meet her eyes before she moves on. "And I wouldn’t have punished him for it."
Pride moves through me with the familiar violence of possession.
My wife.
My partner.
The mother of the boy who will one day rule every man in this room.
I stand and take my place beside her.
"Kenneth is right. I was made at eleven years old. My son could just as easily have been made at twelve." I'm glad he wasn't.
Fitz is like me, but he is not me. I don't want his soul twisted. I didn't have one, not until she promised to be my wife in front of most of the men seated here today.
"Fitz will lead this mob one day, and he will do so with ruthless strength." The matter of blood is finished.
Fitz carries the Shaughnessy name. Brogan’s blood runs through him. More important, he has the intelligence, judgment and will to hold what is ours when the time comes.
Kara’s hand brushes mine.
Only once.
Enough.
Brogan stands for the final time and calls Kenneth’s name.
He lists every charge.
Betrayal. Conspiracy against the organization. Trafficking women and children. Attempting to sell a child under our protection. Unsanctioned murder. Conspiring with federal law enforcement. Conspiring to murder his Boss.
Then Brogan sentences his cousin to death.
His gaze meets Wraith’s. "He’s all yours."
Wraith crosses the stage.
I remain beside Kara while Kenneth begins to beg.
His promises and threats overlap until none of the words carry meaning.
Wraith draws his skean.
I gave him that blade when he entered the brotherhood. His name and the year of his induction are engraved beneath the Claddagh.
He pulls a pair of forceps from his pocket and tells the soldiers to hold Kenneth’s head.
Kara does not look away.
Neither do I.
Wraith cuts out Kenneth’s tongue because he used it against áine and their daughters. Then he drives the skean through Kenneth’s heart because betrayal is why he dies.
The body strikes the stage when the soldiers release it.
No one speaks.
I look past Kenneth’s body to O’Grady. He is staring at the floor. He knows enough to be afraid. Not enough to save himself.
The room empties slowly.
Captains gather their men and lead them out. Lieutenants remain long enough to speak with Brogan, then follow. Wraith leaves with the soldiers who will dispose of Kenneth’s body.
Brogan pauses beside me.
His eyes move from Kara to me.
"Labor Day," he says.
"Aye."
He leaves without adding anything else.
When the door closes behind the last soldier, I turn to my wife.
She is looking at the blood on the stage. Her eyes are not haunted. She isn’t smiling either.
"It’s done," she says.
I cup her face, losing myself in her serious hazel gaze. "You were magnificent."
She always is.
"We are in this together." She holds out her hand.
I take it and lace our fingers. "Always and forever, mo chiste is a stór."