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Not.
There’d been a long while where Ma was scared of Da. Only as they got older, as we left adolescence behind, did she grow some balls. Even those were hard won, mostly through what she’d endured at the Aryans’ hands.
In apology, I admitted, "Jurkavic deserved worse than being run through with a sword for what he did to Paddy."
Her shoulders relaxed the faintest amount, and I knew she was relieved by my response. Not because of what I was saying, but because it meant I believed her. It was a leap of faith, but we had so many fucking officials in our pocket, I was pretty sure not even God himself would be able to worm his way out of letting any Five Pointer into heaven.
"Maybe before, but Jurkavic was innocent of killing your uncle. I’m pretty sure he was guilty of a whole lot of other stuff, but killing your Uncle Padraig, no."
Though she’d been as predictable as I’d anticipated, had strived to find the answers to this story before I took it away from her, I was mostly relieved that she’d figured this out so I didn’t have to get involved. I’d have taken over if I’d had to… I was just glad that wouldn’t be necessary.
Finn wasn’t wrong. Me and the written word weren’t the best of friends.
Audiobooks, sure. Just regular books? No.
Twisting around so I could stare at her, I asked, "What’s your proof?"
Her face lit up at my question. Literally. As in, she suddenly beamed with energy. Like this was her life’s blood. Like this was the reason she got up in the morning and went to bed way too late at night.
Her hair was a mess from running her hands through it too much, and I was pretty sure the toast she’d sent back this morning was smearing her mouth again, meaning she’d attempted another round of breakfast after I left the restaurant. Her clothes were no longer clean and wrinkle-free, but stained with coffee and rumpled, and she looked a thousand times hotter than this morning.
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed could have described her at breakfast. Now she just looked like a wreck. A hot wreck. One I’d bend over the sofa, grab a handful of that thick hair just so I could make sure she never moved out of place.
"You have to be amenable to accepting the impossible."
Because my thoughts and hers were clearly on two different train tracks, one heading for Mexico and the other for Canada, I had to laugh.
Rubbing my chin, I moved closer to her, stepping around the various shit on the floor and perching my ass on the end of the ‘L’ part of the sectional.
Once I was seated, I murmured, "That sounds like you want me to suspend reality."
"That’s pretty much a big part of it, but I do have proof. Of sorts."
I squinted at her. "Circumstantial?"
She nodded quickly.
"Well, I’m not a court of law. Make your arguments, councilor, make them good and I’ll listen."
She beamed a beatific smile at me, and fuck if that didn’t make me lean back so my dick wasn’t trapped.
Christ.
"Okay, so the Albanians hated Milano as much as your father did. Did you know that?"
"I think everyone hated that SOB. Even his fucking mother. He was the type of bastard who’d turn his grandma in to the cops if he thought he could make a profit on her arrest."
She dipped her chin. "Right? That fits with everything I’ve found. He was cruel and abusive to his family, and to his men, he handed out severe punishments for light insubordination. Anyone who questioned him was whipped, for God’s sake."
"He created an army of yes-men," I agreed. "Da used to bitch about them all the time. ‘Like a bunch of robots,’ he said."
"That’s right. But even robots have a breaking point. When your father came calling for Jurkavic, no one even stopped their compound from being overturned."
I blinked. "I mean, I wasn’t there so I don’t know for sure, but that doesn’t sound right."
She shrugged then showed me some pictures.
As I stared down at them, I frowned. "What am I looking at?"
