“And you trust these guys?”
“I hired them for years.”
“But that was before?—”
I stop myself. Cole used Apex before I let Tarasov into the house, before the bratva became a threat. Of course we’d rather have Best’s men. But they’re not an option right now. And my carping to Cole won’t change anything.
Pulling up to the gate, Cole rolls down his window. One man approaches, demonstrating excellent trigger control. “Good evening, sir,” he says in a clipped voice. “Welcome home.”
It’s a perfectly legitimate greeting. I tell myself it’s irrational to worry about the change in staffing. I try to ignore the fact that Cole looks worried too.
Cole parks on the drive, which probably means he’s trying to spare his battered body the walk from the garage. My phone rings as we’re standing in the foyer. It’s my mother.
“Katie,a stór,” she says.
My mother is calling me her love, after framing me and running us out of her house. “What the actual fuck, Mam?”
“You got home safe?”
“After you ordered us gunned down in the middle of Baltimore?”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Mam snaps. “That was a misunderstanding.”
“Amisunderstanding? The back window of our car was shattered!”
“Your father’s men were emotional, seeing him with such a bad dose.”
“Bad dose?” I repeat in shock. “That wasn’t a head cold, Mam!”
“Well your Da’s resting comfortably now.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means he’s resting in bed.”
“He should be in hospital!”
“Where he’d be resting in bed.”
“Mam—”
She clicks her tongue, the way she always does when I’m taking up too much of her time. “We have more important things to discuss, you and me.”
“What is more important than?—”
“Petya got the job done your father couldn’t do.”
Petya. NotPyotr.A metallic clank echoes inside my skull, like the telescope lens clicking into place after I dropped in a coin on the amusement pier in Donegal.
Mam is working with the bratva.
She was working with them at my wedding, when she invited Pyotr Tarasov into St. Brigid’s. She was working with them last night, when Pyotr slept beneath her roof. She was working with them today, when she refused to get help for Da, and when she ran me out of the house.
Mam has always fought for what she wanted—getting clear of three men at the Forge and Anchor, marrying into the Lynch clan, crossing the ocean to America. And what Mam wants most of all ispower. She saw Da build it. She saw Da lose it. And now she sees the bratva holding all of Baltimore, going forward.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. How long has she been working for the Russians? Did she make her choice before the Dogfight? Was she with the Tarasovs when Breagha and I were taken from the playground?
A snake squeezes through my belly, but I force myself to ask, “What job, Mam?”
