All my memories of my father are good.
The only regret I have is things unspoken. Things I should have told him when I found out we weren’t related by blood. But I never got the chance.
Sometimes opportunities come once, and never again.
I think of Riona, driving back to Chicago alone.
I think of our walk through the birch trees. Before Bo interrupted us, I wanted to tell Riona that I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about her. That I think I’m falling in love with her.
I almost said it.
I wish I had.
The moment passed. And it won’t come again.
“What’s wrong?” my mother asks me, quietly.
“I think . . . I might have made a mistake with Riona,” I tell her.
She looks at me with her clear blue eyes. Ellis had blue eyes, too. But I choose to think that my eyes came from my mother. My sense of humor and my cooking skills, too. From Waya, the desire to care for and protect the people I love. And the means to do it. He taught me to hunt, to shoot, and even to fight. He always said, “Be slow with your fists. But fight for things that matter.”
“Most mistakes can be fixed,” my mother says.
“I promised you I was home for good this time,” I tell her.
She gives me a smile that crinkles up the corners of her pretty blue eyes.
“I’m not worried,” she says. “You’ll come back when the time is right.”
I can tell she actually means that. My mother never says anything she doesn’t mean.
I give Bo the keys to the truck. She doesn’t ask me where I’m going, because she already knows.
I run out of the hospital and jog over to the taxi stand.
“I need to go to the airport,” I tell the driver.
25
Riona
The silence in the office building is almost total.
With Angela gone home for the night, only Uncle Oran and I remain.
The walk down to his office seems long. I can hear every soft thud of my boots on the carpet, as well as the gentle hum of the overhead lights.
Uncle Oran has the biggest office in the firm. Bigger even than Jason Briar’s, or Victor Weiss’s. It’s a beautiful room, with floor-to-ceiling shelves stuffed with expensive leather-covered books. The walls are covered with vintage maps and framed botanical samples. A massive painted globe sits on a golden stand next to Uncle Oran’s desk, which was built from old ship timbers like the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. The desktop is clean, other than his $1200 Caran d’Ache pen and his letter opener that looks like a medieval broadsword.
His office smells pleasantly of beeswax, cigar smoke, and brandy. The scent of Uncle Oran himself, which has always been one of my favorites. If Uncle Oran was coming over, it meant I could eavesdrop on good conversation and off-color jokes. And secrets, too. Because Oran always had secrets to tell.
His door is cracked only an inch. I pull it a little wider so I can step inside.
Oran looks up at once, his dark eyes deeply shadowed. The only light in his office comes from the lamp on his desk.
I can’t tell if he’s surprised to see me or not. All he says is, “You’re back.”
“Yes,” I say.
“Where’s your handsome bodyguard?”
“At home. In Tennessee.”
“Ah,” he says, nodding and setting down his pen. “So you gave him his walking papers.”
“I didn’t think I needed constant surveillance anymore. Since the Djinn is dead.”
I watch his face very closely when I say this. Looking for a response.
This time I do see a flicker of something in his eyes . . . not surprise. I almost think it’s anger.
“The hitman is dead?” he asks.
“That’s right.”
“Are you sure?”
“I watched him die. Then I buried him in a field. So yes, I’d say he’s pretty fucking dead.”
Uncle Oran leans back in his chair, his fingers steepled in front of him.
“Always so blunt, Riona. So frank.”
“You used to compliment me on my honesty when I was a child.”
“That I did,” he nods. “Come . . . have a seat.”
He gestures to the chair across the desk from his. It’s a large chair, comfortably upholstered. I’ve sat in it dozens of times. Tonight it looks different. The straight back and stiff arms look stern and unyielding. They remind me of the wooden chairs used to electrocute prisoners.
I sit down across from him.
“I don’t like this outfit,” Uncle Oran says with a tsk. “Or the hair. I’m sorry to say, my dear, you’re not looking your best.”
I could say the same thing to Uncle Oran. The lines on his forehead are the deepest I’ve ever seen them, and the bags under his eyes look like bruises. I think he’s even lost weight. His suit, usually so impeccably fitted, seems to hang off his shoulders.
Instead I say, “It’s been a strange couple of weeks for me. Very strange.”
“Nothing soothes a troubling week like a drink,” Uncle Oran says.
He stands up and walks over to the globe. I know from past visits that several bottles of liquor are concealed within, as well as cut-glass tumblers. He pours himself a glass of brandy, and scotch for me. Those are our usual drinks. But when he passes me the glass, I set it down on his desk without drinking.
Uncle Oran takes a long sip, leaning against the edge of his desk and looking down on me.
“I always thought if I had a daughter, she would be like you,” he says. “There’s a certain ruthlessness, an arrogance in you that I recognize from myself. But the honesty . . . I don’t know where that comes from.” He chuckles. “Certainly not from any Griffin.”
“I think it comes from my father,” I tell him, coldly. “He’ll at least stab you in the front, instead of the back.”
“Fergus?” Oran says, with a little curl in his upper lip. “He’s as conniving as they come.”
“Maybe you and I don’t have the same definition of conniving,” I say.
Uncle Oran drains his glass and sets it gently down on the desk.
“Perhaps not,” he says.
I’m studying his face, wondering how I could have misread it so long. I don’t always express myself as I’d like, but I’m usually good at reading others.
I always saw so much affection there. Now I think it was calculation, instead.
“Shame about Josh,” I say.
“How so?” Uncle Oran raises one eyebrow. “I thought you despised each other.”
“We did. But it was very inconvenient of him to blow his head off before Dante and Callum could talk to him.”
“Or before we could recover the money he took,” Uncle Oran says, smoothly. “How much did you say it was? Twenty million?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” I ask him.
Uncle Oran smiles, thinly. “You’re the forensic accountant. I’m just the man humiliated by the fact that all that money disappeared on my watch.”
“My father will be very angry about that,” I say. “But not as angry as he’ll be when he finds out that his own brother’s been stealing from him.”