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“Fucking tell me!”
Raphael shuffled back to the cot. He took a seat, leaned against the wall, and folded his arms over his chest. “Give me your word you won’t turn me over to the Albanians, and I’ll tell you everything.”
An incredulous laugh rolled up from my chest. I aimed the Glock at his knee. “You have it. Now fucking tell me. Before I make you spill more than words.”
Raphael held his hands up in surrender. “Very well. At ease, Lucifer.”
I lowered my aim, but not my guard.
“Jack told Aiden the truth about our mother’s death during one of their trips to Foxwoods.”
I remembered those times. The earlier generations of Flynns and Brennans had been competitors in Ireland—not enough to be considered rivals, but enough to despise each other all the same. But once the Flynns moved to the US, the tensions between the families eased, and when the Brennans were stateside, my father welcomed them into our home.
“They were drinking, gambling, sharing women, swapping family stories ... all of which were harmless until Jack told Aiden the truth about how Máthair really died.”
On an intellectual level, I’d accepted that our father—not I—was responsible for my mother’s death. But the emotional impact of that realization was still at arm’s length. “Why would Athair tell Jack?”
Raphael shrugged. “I’m not certain—a drunken confession, perhaps? Athair and Jack could drink any Irishman under the table. I don’t know how long Jack knew, or on what trip he told Aiden. All I know is Aiden used the information to blackmail Athair into turning over Jack to Tiernan, and then Tiernan turned around and used the same tactic on me. He told me that if I didn’t take him to Jack’s ex-wife and kid that he’d tell everyone our family secret—that our father had killed our mother. By that point, the lie was as much mine as it was Athair’s.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“I imagine every bloody Brennan knows—but why they told Willa that it was me instead of him? That, I don’t understand. As far as anyone in our syndicate—not that I’m aware of. That was the whole point of creating the lie. Our father had a reputation that others had bought into.” Raphael struck his chest with his fist and deepened his accent. “He had his proud Irish honor to uphold.”
Ignoring his mockery, I heard myself ask, “Was it an accident?”
I was getting farther away from Willa’s abduction and deeper down the rabbit hole of my mother’s death. Her possible murder.
Silence.
“Raphael,” I gritted through clenched teeth.
“I don’t know . . .”
“Then how do you know—”
Raphael’s body hitched. “I saw it, Lucifer. As did you—only you were asleep. Well, sleepwalking. You know what the fuck I mean.”
“What did we—you—see?”
“I can’t speak to how it started ... I can only tell you what I know.” The back of Raphael’s head hit the wall, his gaze landing on the dark ceiling. “I’d come out of our bedroom, searching for you. I found you in the guest wing. We were on our way back to our room when I heard them arguing on the stairs. Máthair was hysterical. She was saying something about Athair’s whore, and how dare she come to our home—how dare she demand money for an abortion ... I heard them scuffling—wrestling—whatever you want to call it. By the time we reached the top of the stairs, Máthair was falling. We both watched her ... well, you know ...”
We watched our mother crash headfirst into the Virgin Mary statue and die.
The memory hit me like a battering ram to the gut.
The image had always seemed more like a nightmare than a distant recollection, but as I listened to Raphael recount the details, my mind began to fill in the blanks.
Athair had stood between us and our mother. If she’d fallen from the top, he could have intercepted her or gone down trying. But he didn’t.
“He blamed you because he was a coward, Lucifer.” Raphael’s voice pulled my gaze up from the white-knuckle grip I had on the gun handle. “He was afraid Niall wouldn’t believe it was an accident, and he’d either kill him or have the old guard unseat him. Athair told me that I was the heir and that no one would respect me if they believed I’d killed our mother—even if it was an accident. He said that everyone was aware of your sleepwalking, and they’d accept that Máthair had slipped and fallen while trying to get you back into bed. He made me believe there was no other choice, and I’ve hated him for it every day since.”
My reeling thoughts stopped dead. His last sentence struck a chord. “What happened between you and Athair when we were ten years old?”
Raphael snorted. “You remember that—aye?”
I wasn’t certain what I remembered. But what I knew was that something had shifted between my brother and father around that time. Raphael became sullen. Withdrawn. Angry. He refused to look our father in the eye unless ordered to do so. The tension between them had only magnified after Raphael became underboss. They treated each other with the forced civility you’d find between business colleagues and never with the compassion you’d expect between father and son. My brother couldn’t even bring himself to visit our father’s bedside after his stroke.
“Emilio and Stefano Lombardi,” Raphael supplied, unable to hide his disdain. “The dumb Italian fucks.”
