AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“He murdered my da,” I said flatly. “Plus, I thought your mom was just a walking uterus now that you know she was a double agent?”
Her chair scraped back as she shoved away from the table. I half expected her to leave the room, but she didn’t. She moved over to the window. Then, she did the saddest fucking thing… The windows looked onto the ocean—the view was pristine even with the moody sky overhead—and she closed the blinds, tipping them so she could peer through them, then stood to the side as if evading a bullet.
God, what we did to our soldiers blew my mind.
Eoghan and she were so alike it was unreal.
I rubbed my eyes at the thought, but I refused to apologize for what I’d said. The truth stung. Our truths more than most.
Dagda should have been sent up for the murder of the First Ladyandmy da. He was walking around free and clear because my brothers and I had framed a traitor in the Five Points to spare him. Did I tell her that? Did I tell her we’d done that to force him into stepping down from the IRA-adjacent group, theÉire le chéile go deo, so Aidan could take his place at the top of the tree?
Rather than feed the silence, I fed myself. Picking up another cinnamon bun, I chowed down as she stared out at nothing, evading bullets I knew wouldn’t be coming.
A couple emails came in and I dealt with them while she sulked. Then, God only knew how long later, she muttered, “Why didn’t he want us to avenge her?”
Her question had me blinking, but the only answer I was capable of was: “Huh.” Turning it over in my head, I eventually reasoned, “Either because the shooter is already dead and Dagdawasn’tbehind the killing or because he doesn’t think she needs to be avenged.”
“Meaning she betrayed him too?”
“Perhaps.”
“Wouldn’t he lay the guilt on me?”
“Not unless he’s religious,” I grumbled. “‘Sins of the fathers’ and all that crap.”
Reaching up, she rubbed her temple. “Why does everything have to be so complicated?”
“That’s what you get for playing with spies, I guess.”
She snorted. “Iwasa spy.”
My lips quirked but I just asked, “I’ve gone digging for pile-up crashes in Cincinnati in the last ten years. There’s a lot to wade through, but maybe something will be of interest to us if we look for diplomatic plates.”
“Eoghan never mentioned diplomatic plates.”
“He did in the message he sent me.” I thought back to the conversation we’d just had. “He said they were an emissary for the Russian government.”
“Diplomatic immunity,” she breathed, something flicking to life in her expression that I couldn’t read.
“Star?” When she didn’t reply, I repeated, louder this time, “Star!”
She jolted. “What?”
“Why did that ring a bell?”
“N-No reason.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s really nothing,” she argued, sounding more annoyed this time.
“That clearly triggered some kind of memory.”
“A stupidly minute memory.”
“Stop being pedantic.”
“I’m not being pedantic. It’s impossible. Her father’s name was Bogdan Belyaev.NotKuznetsov.”
