“And yet here you sit,” Ronan says.
He leaves the rest unsaid, but I hear him loud and clear.
Here you sit—while my son is dead.
“Budimir left me lying in the dirt beside Cillian,” I tell him. “He left me to bleed out slowly. He believes I’m dead just like your boy.”
“So you’re nothing but a ghost.”
“I am precisely that,” I admit. “One that is soon going to be unleashed.”
“With my resources?” Ronan says sardonically.
“That is why I’m here,” I say, looking between the handsome couple, wondering how good my chances are.
“This is not about avenging Cillian,” Ronan comments. “This is about taking back what you think is yours.”
“It’s about both.”
“And if I say no?” Ronan asks.
“I’ll walk out of here and find another way,” I say firmly. “And I will find another way. I will be don of the Bratva once more. And Budimir will pay for what he did to your son.”
I stare him in the face. Ronan understands the subtext here. It’s politics at the end of the day, after all.
Wouldn’t you rather make an ally of a Bratva don?
Ronan sighs and steeples his fingers on the table.
“I will consider your request,” he says. “You’ll have an answer tomorrow.”
“I appreciate that, Don O’Sullivan.” I stand, leaving my whiskey untouched, and get ready to depart.
“We have a room you can use tonight,” Sinead says suddenly. She lurches up with me and rests a kind hand on my forearm.
Ronan growls deep in his chest but says nothing. I’m sure he doesn’t like the display of softness.
But Sinead doesn’t give a damn.
I hadn’t expected an invitation to stay. I incline my head with gratitude.
“Thank you,” I say. “But I’ll decline. I have a place in mind for the rest of my trip in Ireland. You can find me at The Free Canary when you’ve made up your mind.”
My mind flashes back to an ancient memory.
“Byrne’s again?” I ask. “We went there twice already this month. That pub is fucking rank.”
“I know,” Cillian laughs.
“So the fuck do you love it so much?” I demanded.
“Reminds me of The Free Canary,” he says softly..
“An Irish institution, huh?”
Cillian snorts. “More like an Irish travesty. It was a shitty little bar wedged in between a better pub and a porn shop. But fuck… that bar was my whole fucking adolescence.”
“Pity I missed it,” I drawl sarcastically.
He ignores me. “Had my first drink in that bar. Fucked my first woman in one of the rooms upstairs. Had my first fight by the cash register. Fell in love in that pub.”
His eyes are dreamy. Distant.
He’s remembering a place he might not see again in this life.
“You think you’ll ever go back there?” I ask.
“Maybe one day,” Cillian says with a shrug. “When I’m old and grey and I’ve lived so fucking much that I ache all over. Then I’ll go back and order a pint of Guinness. I’ll sit at the bar and sip my beer and fall asleep to old Irish songs.”
I laugh. “Jesus, that’s sad. And by sad, I mean pathetic.”
“Fuck you.”
Our laughter fills the empty streets as we head to the next bar.
The memory fades away. I wish I had more of it. More of him.
“The Free Canary,” Sinead echoes. The clench in her jaw melts under a wave of grief. “He loved that damn pub.”
“He loved a lot of the things he left behind,” I say. I turn once more to leave. Before I do, something else occurs to me. I pivot again and say to Ronan, “Oh, and I should apologize.”
“For what?” the grizzled man asks.
“I believe I killed three of your men at O’Malley’s.”
His expression is blank. “If the three of them couldn’t handle one fucking Russian, then they deserved to die.” He laughs scornfully and waves me off.
Ronan remains seated, sipping the whiskey straight from the bottle and staring out into the lush garden.
But Sinead gets up and walks with me back towards the entrance of the house. She’s quiet—weighed down with memories, no doubt.
I wish I had the ability to comfort her, but I’ve never been good with grief.
I can barely handle my own.
“He must have loved you,” Sinead says just before I cross through the front doors once again. “To have died for you, I mean.”
I turn to face her. The sunlight hits her blue eyes and makes them sparkle like the ocean.
“He would have died for any one of you, too,” I tell her solemnly. “If he’d only been given a chance.”
24
Artem
One of Ronan’s men is waiting out front with a car to take me anywhere I want to go.
I tell him, “The Free Canary,” then settle back into my seat.
The bartender is nowhere to be found. He must’ve left while I was inside.
Smart man. If I ever see that bastard again, I’ll kill him.
The ride is swift and silent. We stop outside the tavern, which looks just as run down and neglected as Cillian had always described.
True to his word, there’s a foul-looking porn shop on the right side and another pub on the left that looks warmer, brighter, livelier.
The Free Canary squats in the middle. Dank and unloved. The sign overhead shows a yellow bird flapping its way out of a shattered iron cage. Looks like a six-year-old fingerpainted it, to be honest.
I sigh and shake my head.
Of course Cillian would love a shithole like this.
I step out of the car. It speeds off the moment I’m clear of the wheels. The weather outside has gotten colder and greyer since we left Ronan’s mansion.
I pull my jacket closer around me and step through the front doors.
The moment I walk inside, I feel like I’ve walked into a time capsule. Old posters and maps of Ireland from centuries ago dot the walls. The music is Irish through and through, which means it’s equal parts cheerful and mournful.
I go to the bar and flag down the
