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Fifty-One
Brennan
“Mark O’Reilly cameto see me again,” Da rumbled as he took a deep sip of whiskey.
Conor tensed up. “What did he want?”
“Wanted to know if I thought Callum was a Sparrow.”
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I said that I hadn’t sanctioned his death. But if a Five Pointer had decided to take out a Sparrow, then they’d done us a service.”
He sank back the last finger of whiskey then poured himself another. It sloshed over the sides, pooling on the desk.
“Think you need to slow down, Da,” Declan said cautiously, frowning at the sight of the mess he’d made.
“I know my limits,” Da snarled.
“I don’t think you do,” I retorted, backing Dec up.
I narrowed my eyes on him, well aware that his volatile nature had been off the charts for the past six months.
Whatever sanity he had left was starting to fade away like the gray in his hair. White was slowly winning that particular war, and the batshit in Aidan Sr. was becoming more and more prevalent with every passing day.
“Calm down, Da,” Junior sniped. “What did Mark say to that?”
“What could he say if his son was one of those bastards?” His hand clenched around the tumbler before he raised his other hand to cup it too. The move caught my eye as he demanded, “How’s Finn?”
Declan’s voice was free of inflection as he said, “He’s fine.”
“I can’t believe Aoife pussywhipped him into breaking our family apart.”
My brow furrowed but it was Junior who bit off, “Finn ain’t a pussy, Da. Ma killed his mother-in-law. You think Aoife finding that out wasn’t going to change things? Did you expect her to come around for Sunday dinner and make no mention of that?”
“How the hell did she find out, that’s what I want to know.” He glowered down at his tumbler and rasped, “I miss him. Your ma misses him. I even miss Aoife even though she broke everything up.”
Uncomfortably, I shifted in my seat. I didn’t say anything because I understood. Our lives had changed, and not necessarily for the better.
I backed Aoife one-hundred percent and totally understood why she refused to come here and why Finn had put a blockade between her and the folks. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt or that there weren’t Aoife, Finn, and Jake-shaped holes around the dinner table.
Our new tradition of Saturday night was one thing, but it didn’t make up for Sundays.
“You talk with Finn,” Junior retorted.
“About business. He doesn’t want to talk about anything else. I’m his fucking da,” he snapped. “How could he do this to us?”
“I think you need to stop drinking,” I told him, watching liquor slosh around the rim of his glass.
“I need for my boys to stop telling me what to do.” He dropped the glass against the table and turned to face the yard.
At first, I thought he was doing as we suggested, holding off on the whiskey, but I watched him clutch at his wrist and rub it as if it were hurting him.
When he fell silent, we looked among each other, and Eoghan was the first to speak out, “No one else going to talk about the elephant in the room?”
“Which one?” Junior mocked.
“The one shaped like a phoenix. The Sparrows aren’t our only concern anymore. If you think the ECD have gone away—”
