She eyes me like she’s not sure whether she wants to fuck me or rob me.
As long as she doesn’t pull a gun on me like the last bartender I might, I don’t give a damn.
“What can I get you, handsome?” she asks in a rolling brogue.
“Water.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
She starts trying to tempt me into barbeque wings. But she falls silent when I hold up a hand to cut her off.
I shake my head. “Just water,” I tell her. “And silence.”
She bites her lip and nods. “Aye, understood.”
A few moments later, she places a glass of water in front of me and disappears down to the opposite end of the bar.
Satisfied, I take the chance to look at the walls of the bar that had built Cillian.
His words, not mine.
“That fucking pub built me.”
“You sound like a country Western song.”
“And you sound like a sourpuss bitch.”
I hear his voice in my head, but the words are all recycled. Ancient history. Ghosts from the past.
Another one occurs to me. One I haven’t thought about in a long time. Curious, I slide off my stool, grab my duffel bag, and walk outside again.
A light drizzle has started up. To my surprise, it’s warm. Each drop like a soft kiss on my skin.
I take a few steps away from the building and turn around to face it again. Cillian’s voice is playing in my head like he’s guiding me.
“There was a little alleyway on the side, hardly big enough to fit through. Always left my fat friends behind here, the poor bastards.”
My gaze tracks down. Sure enough, wedged between the porn shop and The Free Canary is a little sliver of an alley. If I turn sideways, I’ll be able to shuffle down.
“So we’d go on down that way. Suck in your gut. You’ll pop out soon enough. A rusty-ass ladder hung off the building. Riddled with tetanus, no doubt, but I never gave a damn.”
I hold my duffel bag overhead and start the creep-walk between the buildings. The stone walls are slick with the rainwater, with moss, with years of grime and sweat.
I keep moving.
At the end, there’s a ladder. It’s rusted to shit and I’m wary that it can support my weight.
But I just sigh, loop the duffel bag over my shoulder, and start the climb up.
And then I emerge onto the rooftop of The Free Canary.
It’s mostly empty. Scant gravel across the top. A few crushed beer cans here and there, cigarette butts, the shit left behind by the drunken kids who made the journey I just made.
“The fuck’s so special about this, Cillian?” I mutter under my breath.
Then I turn and face the south, and I get it.
The city opens out in the distance. Sprawling. Lights sparkle against the oncoming darkness of night.
The last rays of the sun sneak out from under the bank of gray clouds.
Dublin looks like a place worth remembering.
I sink to a seat with my back against the low wall, duffel bag at my side. Part of me is racking through my conversation with the O’Sullivans. Wondering what they’ll decide.
I ought to set that aside. Take this moment to remember my best friend.
I decided on the flight to Ireland that he must be dead by now for certain. Maybe I’ll never know for sure. I don’t have a body to bury, after all.
But all the blood on the ground in the forest left little room for doubt.
He’s gone. I feel it in my bones.
All that’s left of Cillian O’Sullivan are my memories.
I’ll keep those until the day I join him.
I think for a while about the man. Growing up with him at my side. The trouble we caused and the trouble we found alike. The past is full of things that make me laugh.
But it’s the future I can’t stop running through again and again.
If Ronan turns me down, what will I do?
I had contacted the men still loyal to me just before I’d left the States. They swore they’re behind me and I was assured of their loyalty, but we’re still too few to take back the Bratva.
We need a show of force and power in order to gain the upper hand from Budimir. I know that with money, I could buy the men I needed.
But I’ve never been a fan of that method. It was the one of the few matters on which Stanislav and I had agreed.
Win a man with money, and he will stab you in the back the moment another offers him more.
Loyalty is in the blood, not in the wallet.
A man who fights for money fights for himself alone.
Stanislav had a dozen more sayings like that. He had drilled each of them into me over the years from the time I was old enough to listen.
The lessons had stuck.
Apparently, Budimir wasn’t paying attention.
All the better. You have a few lessons still to learn before you die, motherfucker.
I can only hope that he’s made just enough mistakes to undo him. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Truth is, I’m living on a sliver of hope and the dirty fuel of revenge.
But that’ll be enough.
It has to be.
I don’t know when I fell asleep. I dreamed all night of strangling Budimir until he spluttered and choked and turned blue under my fingers.
But the sun wakes me up.
A little rudely, to be honest.
Yesterday’s clouds are gone and the dawn this morning is bright as fuck. I open my eyes and wince against it.
And then I realize there’s someone else on the roof with me.
Adrenaline surges through me at once. I leap to my feet, halfway to drawing a knife from my boot to gut the motherfucker…
When I see who it actually is.
I sigh and sheathe the knife again.
“Good morning, Sinead.”
She sinks gracefully to a seat on the ground across from me. Removes her dark sunglasses and stows them in her purse.
She’s wearing black checkered
