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“Lack of justice!” he sputtered, clutching his bedsheet with two knobby fists. “What’d they expect me to do? Take on the whole damn Bratva again?”
The Bratva?
Again?
“Thanks to your contract-killin’ boyfriend, I’d already risked me arse once to put Alexi behind bars. Got that piece of shite three consecutive life sentences, and he still bribed and blackmailed his way out. What was I s’posed to do? Huh? If I poked that beehive again, they were gonna come for me next. I had to cover it up. I had ta!”
“So, a man in the Bratva named Alexi killed Kellen and me? Because you’d helped us send him to prison?”
“A man named Alexi?” he mocked. “Alexi Abramov is no fuckin’ man. He’s a goddamn disease. A blight on the whole human race. Just look at what he done to me city!”
Eamonn shoved a shaky finger in the direction of the glowing TV on the wall as aerial footage of a decimated Dublin scrolled by on the screen.
Then, his eyes went wide, and his mouth dropped open in horror as he slowly returned his attention to me.
“That’s what this is about, isn’t it? If I’d been brave enough to go after him again, to put him back behind bars for good, none of this woulda happened.”
Eamonn’s milky eyes lost what little focus they’d held as he cupped a hand over his mouth and stared into the depths of his own mortality.
“Uncle Eamonn, I need you to stay with me,” I continued, using my most soothing voice.
“I’m damned,” he whispered, shaking his head.
“Not necessarily,” I added. “I just need to ask you a few more questions …”
That got his attention. “Please,” he said, his eyes snapping back to mine. “Tell ’em it wasn’t my fault. Tell ’em I couldn’t take on the whole Bratva again. Tell ’em there isn’t a prison on earth that could hold a man with that much money and power. He woulda gotten out again, and when he did, he woulda come for me!”
“I understand that, Uncle. I do. And I will take it into consideration. Now, can you please tell me why the president of Russia would want to kill a young couple in Glenshire, Ireland?”
“I didn’t know this was gonna happen! I swear!” His tone bordered on panic, and I was afraid that I’d lost him.
“Uncle, please answer the question. We’re almost done. You’re doing grand.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Now, please state for the record why President Abramov wanted us dead.”
Eamonn nodded and took a few deep breaths. “Alexi wasn’t president back then, ya know, but he was one of the top dogs in the Bratva. And Kellen, from what I could gather, was a hit man for the United Irish Brotherhood, back before they became a political party and that rat bastard Séamus Rooney took over. That’s another one that I could never keep behind bars. Slimey fuck.”
“Uncle, please. Why did Alexi Abramov—”
“I’m getting’ to it! Christ. It was never proven, but me hunch was that Kellen had taken out somebody near and dear to Alexi, and as retribution, he came for Kellen’s head. The UIB must have sold him out because the two a yous conspired to get both Séamus and Alexi arrested at the same time. Which made yours truly look like quite the big shot back at the station, thank you very much.”
Eamonn smiled slightly as his eyes began to drift out of focus.
“You’re telling me that my husband was a contract killer for the UIB?”
“Ya didn’t know?” The old man laughed until he had a coughing fit. “Kellen was the best hit man I’ve ever seen! Untraceable. Completely clean. Never found so much as a fingerprint, but me sources on the inside said he was the UIB’s number one enforcer. They called him the Devil of Dublin.”
The Devil of Dublin. That name sounded so familiar.
I flashed back to the images Saoirse had shown me of Kellen fighting, bleeding, running, killing, and then us happy together in Glenshire. It all made perfect sense now.
The two men currently battling over the fate of Ireland, men who now had entire armies at their disposal, were once a couple of rival Mafia bosses that Kellen and I had tried to stop.
My head was reeling.
“Thank you, Mr., em, Uncle Eamonn.” My voice shook as I tried to process this onslaught of information. “You have no idea how badly I … and the angels … needed to hear that. This concludes your judgment hearing. I hereby declare you—get down!”
