He nods as he rubs his hand at the side of his neck. I realize he’s bleeding from four parallel scratches. “Orla Lynch always was the fighting sort.”
“How badly is she hurt?”
“She broke a couple of fingernails. And she was complaining she felt a migraine coming on, right before I tied the gag around her head.”
I’m supposed to come to her defense, to rescue her even. But I realize I don’t much care what Malloy means to do with the woman who sold out our clan.
The three of us—Malloy, Cameron, and me—stand silent in the moonlight while the Sawgrass men finish inside. I wonder how many hours of sleep I’ve had over the past week. It can’t be much more than the four hours a night Cole famously gets.
My body is exhausted. Every time I turn my head, it takes my vision a moment to catch up. My fingertips tingle as if I’ve been breathing deep. My bones feel too heavy for my skin.
It seems to take hours for the soldiers to complete their task, but I suspect it’s no more than ten minutes. When they confirm the house is safe, I head for the porch. Cameron puts his body between Malloy and me.
“Alone,” Malloy reminds him, his voice free of emotion.
Cameron isn’t happy, but he complies once I agree.
The instant the front door is closed behind us, I turn on the lights in the foyer. The shadows didn’t lie. Malloy’s hairisblack. His eyes, too. And that scar somehow manages to look even more fierce.
Mam begins squealing from the parlor and kicking her feet against the floor. Ignoring the racket, I ask, “Where’s the clan? Where is all the Canton Crew?”
“Quiet!” Malloy hollers, turning his head toward the parlor. “One more sound out of you, and you’re leaving this house without a stitch of clothing on your back.”
Mam breaks off, mid-shout.
Malloy turns back to me and pauses, as if he’s translating my question, or maybe he wants to be very sure of his answer. “I gave them a choice. Fight me or go on home. They chose to leave.”
I wonder how many men were here. A Thursday night in August… There should have been a handful—playing cards, drinking Da’s whiskey, telling lies in the parlor.
“Did Mam get the same choice?” I don’t actually care if I ever see her again, not after all she did for the bratva. But I’m curious.
His lip curls, as if he smells milk left too long out of the fridge. “She’s going to Glenswilly. Back in County Donegal.”
“Mymother?” Mam hates everything about the Old Country—the cold, the wet, the slower pace of life. I can’t count the number of times she told Breagha and me growing up that the single best day of her life was the one she got on a plane in Dublin and flew in a back-row center seat, all the way to Baltimore. “Why is Mam going to…Glenswilly?”
“Because I told her to.”
“And why did you tell her to?”
“She’s joining the Little Sisters of Humility.”
I laugh, because I’ve always appreciated a good Irish joke. But Robbie Malloy isn’t laughing. “Wait,” I say. “My mother is becoming a nun?”
“She is.”
“Poverty, chastity, and obedience? That sort of nun?” The thought is so outrageous, I can barely string the words together.
“As a novitiate, her only vow will be silence. For the first year.”
“Jesus Christ,” I breathe, and if Malloy has a problem with blasphemy, he doesn’t give a sign. Shaking my head, I ask, “Where’s Da?”
Malloy turns his back and heads for the stairs. I follow, automatically avoiding the squeaky places on the third and seventh steps.
We walk past the room Mam turned into her office. The guest room with the wallpaper of the River Swilly, where Pyotr Tarasov slept. Breagha’s room. Mine.
The hallway is dark, pools of silvery light barely reaching through each open door. This time, I don’t turn on the overhead.
My parents’ room is at the end of the hall. The king-size bed is in disarray. I can make out a clear rectangle on the comforter, the size of a suitcase Mam must have hurriedly filled. Clothes are tangled around the space—formal dresses and lingerie mixed with jumpers and dependable wool trousers.
