“That’s where you got it,” Gavin says. “The ice cream addiction.”
“Probably.”
“It’s nice that you have those memories,” Gavin says.
“Yeah.” It’s one of the few I have left that Dad hasn’t poisoned.
My brother is quiet for a long moment. “Dad always gets what he wants, doesn’t he?” he asks, his voice hardening.
I don’t have to answer. We both know it’s true.
“Threatens us. Uses us. Moves us around like chess pieces.” He unfolds his legs and bends down to tear a chunk of grass out of the ground. “The shit he pulled with you and this marriage. Threatening Cillian’s bar, Wolfe’s work, me.” He shakes his head and lets go of the grass. “There’s no line he won’t cross.”
“No. There’s not.”
“You ever wonder how far he’d go? To get what he wants?”
An icy sensation twists my gut. “What do you mean?”
Gavin stares at the headstone.
“I was ten when she died. I didn’t understand anything. I just knew she was there one day and gone the next. Everyone said it was a car accident.
“Gavin—”
“But I’m not ten anymore, Loch.” He turns to look at me. His eyes are heavy with a mix of anger and sadness. “I’ve seen how he operates. How he uses people. How he plays them against each other. How he always seems to know shit before it happens and somehow always fucking wins.”
I grind my teeth. “What are you asking me?”
“Was Mom’s accident really an accident?”
The question hangs in the air between us, the jagged edges of his words sharp enough to cut.
I should lie. Tell him it was a tragedy, nothing more. Protect him from the suspicion that’s been eating at me for eleven years.
But he’s not ten anymore. And he deserves the truth... or as close to it as I can get.
“I don’t know,” I say slowly. “I’ve never been able to prove anything.”
“But you suspect.” His eyebrows fly up. “I’d wondered about it, but shit… you really think he had something to do with it?”
“Yeah. I do.”
Gavin’s jaw tightens. “Why?”
I stare at Mom’s name carved into the marble. Eileen Maeve Molloy. She deserved so much better than the life she got.
“A few weeks before she died, Dad had gotten information about a threat. Someone was looking to make moves against the family. I overheard him talking to Ronan about it. They were planning to beef up security, get new drivers in case anyone’d been compromised.”
“And?”
“Then the accident happened and Mom died. The threat disappeared. And Dad came out of the whole thing more powerful than he was before.” I let out a slow breath. “It took me a little while to put things together. But the timing… the way he barely grieved her… the way he had her buried and had moved on within a week…”
Ire claws up the sides of my throat, fingers balling into tight fists.
“You think he let it happen.”
Fuck. Hearing Gavin say the words out loud makes them so much more real.
