Page 86 of Crown of Thorns

Roisín Doyle's father would move now. While the Gallaghers were fractured. While Lorcan's attention was fragmented between running operations and trying to convince his wife not to hate him. While the council was unstable and the lines of succession were suddenly negotiable.

This was coordinated. This was inside intelligence meeting outside opportunity meeting calculated timing.

My hands steady on Father Eamon's arm. I'm wrapping the cardigan, creating pressure, creating stability. The clinical part of my brain is functioning. The other part, the part that belongs to the organization now, that ordered violence against the Doyle shipment in September, that understands blood and leverage and consequence, is already three moves ahead.

Cillian appears in my peripheral vision. "We need to move you," he says quietly. "The safe house on Leeson Street."

I nod. I let him guide me. I'm cooperative and compliant, even as I'm thinking about Roisín's last message, a coded text about needing to talk about supply routes, about watching her back, about her father planning something that frightened her.

We reach the car outside. Cillian holds the door. I slide into the backseat, and the Dublin street disappears behind tinted glass.

My phone is in my pocket. I pull it out with hands that have stopped shaking.

I don't call Lorcan.

I call Roisín instead.

She answers on the first ring. The sound of her breathing tells me she already knows. “The community centre,” she says. Not a question.

“Your father’s people?”

A pause. Then: “Your father was my godfather.” The words arrive without warning, without the strategic framing I’ve come to expect from her. “Padraig stood for me at my christening. He paid for my education, a university fund my father never knew about. When I was seventeen and Da wanted to pull me out of school to work in the warehouses, Padraig made one phone call. One. And my father changed his mind.”

I’m sitting in the back of Cillian’s car with blood on my cardigan and Roisín Doyle is telling me that my dead father saved her life the same way he tried to save mine, quietly, structurally, without claiming the credit.

“I owe the Gallagher name a debt I can’t calculate,” she says. “And I’m paying it to you because you’re the only one left who carries it without the blood on the ledger.”

The car moves through Dublin’s streets. The tinted glass makes everything grey. I think about Padraig, about the €2,000 monthly deposits, about Maura’s letters, about a man who loved from a distance because proximity would have destroyed the people he was trying to protect. And now here is Roisín, another person he chose. Another life he invested in without claiming.

“Roisín.” My voice is steady. The clinical register. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Survive. That’s what he’d want.”

She hangs up. I stare at the phone. My hands have stopped shaking.

I open my messages and find Roisín's contact. The numbers are there, dates, times, shipment locations. She's been feeding me information for weeks. Slowly. Testing me.

I type: "We need to talk. Now."

The response comes in thirty seconds: "The Barking Dog. Back room. One hour."

I send: "Done."

The safe house looms ahead. Cillian will report to Lorcan. Lorcan will come, blood still hot, needing to confirm I'm alive because he can't afford to lose me, not operationally, not strategically, and not in the ways that have nothing to do with the organization.

But I have one hour.

I have one hour to find out if Roisín is playing me, or if she's the only person in this organization who can see the cancer from the inside.

Shay moved. That means he's confident. That means he thinks Lorcan is broken enough to crumble. That means there's a window.

I watch the Dublin streets pass. The rain is starting. It's November's rain, cold and honest.

When Cillian glances in the rearview mirror, I'm already dialing Roisín back. She answers on the first ring.

"Tell me everything," I say. "And don't lie. I'm too tired for lies."

The line is quiet for a moment. Then: "My father received an inquiry two weeks ago. About your movements. Your schedules."