And it hurt my damn heart knowing there was nothing I could do to ease it. Nothing aside from the downfall of the Five Points, which meant the downfall of my family…
For the first time, I understood his sadness.
Twenty-One
Lena
“Stay here, Jamie,” I directed before tapping on the door to Michael’s hospital room.
“Come in,” he croaked out, his voice weak and frail.
Wincing at the sound, I headed on in with a smile I wasn’t feeling.
I didn’t need a medical degree to know that Michael’s cancer treatment wasn’t working. I’d only been away two days to celebrate Declan’s nuptials, but he looked to be even thinner than before.
As I plunked the carrier bag on the side of his bed and began pulling out some crossword books I’d bought him as well as some grapes, I chided, “You’re looking like a hot mess this morning, Michael. Don’t you shave for the ladies anymore?”
He sent me a sleepy smile as he reached for the remote on his bed to raise the backrest. As he did, the sleeve on his gown pulled taut around his arm, and when the loose fabric gathered high on his bony bicep, I saw the ink on the ball of his shoulder.
It was a testament to how thin he was that the fabric had shifted that much, but as I looked at the design, a design I’d seen practically every day during my childhood, for a second, I froze, unable to process that the past and the present were blurring in front of my eyes.
My father, his shirt off, suspenders hooked over his white undershirt as he ate dinner… Shoulders hunched because of how he ate, elbows on the table, one hand hovering over his plate as he scooped up food.
The flag that damnable phoenix was holding seeming to flicker like it was caught in the wind with the movements of his muscles.
Then my brothers had gotten one, and I’d been surrounded by phoenixes.
I thought I’d escaped them when I married Aidan, but the way Michael’s hand snapped up to his sleeve and he tugged on it, I knew my eyes weren’t deceiving me, and I knew they hadn’t left me alone.
As I flashed him a look, he sighed and stopped fussing with his sleeve. Instead of trying to cover the ink, he raised it. Which was when I saw his pride.
God, they were always so prideful.
“How—” I broke off, tried again, “When?”
The time he’d have enlisted, seeing as he was a good fifteen years younger than me, Father would have been in the nursing home. My brothers were all dead, most of them in that bombing in London, and my connection to the ECD had been cut short.
By chance, I’d bumped into a cheile on the way out from visiting my father in the nursing home, and I’d learned the new leader was Eamonn Keegan. On a personal level, that was about all I’d heard of the group for over twenty-five years.
I guessed the when and the how didn’t matter. He was a cheile. The web I’d felt certain I’d escaped years ago clung to me as tightly then as it did now.
My throat felt choked, but I managed to croak, “Does Aidan know?”
He nodded, and the sight had me staggering back, slumping into the chair beside his bed.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen one of them,” I whispered dumbly, staring at the phoenix that had haunted me for years, trying to reconcile that Aidan was aware of his real identity.
What did the ECD have on him?
That was what it boiled down to.
They had to have some leverage, otherwise he’d never have trusted Michael with me.
“Since your father?” Michael asked.
For a second, I didn’t know what he was answering, then I realized it was about the ink and the last time I’d seen that godforsaken phoenix with the flag of a unified Ireland between its talons—a white shamrock on green.
I swallowed. “You knew Father?”
“Yes. Not well. I joined too early for that, but he’s beloved. Your brothers too. Their memories live on through the cheiles.” He tugged on his sleeve. “The phoenix doesn’t mean much here.”
“Wouldn’t mean much to anyone,” I countered, “unless they know what it signifies.” Our gazes collided and I questioned gruffly, “How many ECD brothers are in the Five Points?”
His gaze shuttered. “Does it matter?”
“Is Fenris? Is he a cheile?”
“Whether he is or isn’t, it doesn’t matter,” he said firmly, and his tone told me to drop it.
Michael had never spoken to me like this before; but then, if he were a cheile, everything we’d ever discussed, endured together, was a lie.
God, everything.
“It matters,” I snarled, hands bunching into fists as I thought about how long and how deep this betrayal truly ran.
“Aidan Sr. is loyal to the cause,” he grated out. “We’re no harm among his ranks.”
“You’re a harm,” I denied. “You cheiles always put the cause before anything else.”
Why had Aidan placed him as my guard when that was nothing but the truth?
Michael’s mouth tightened, confirming that we were on the same page—that he would put the ECD’s goals before me.
They were all the same. Always sacrificing the people who mattered for a cause that would never come to pass.
“You lied to me. For years,” I breathed. “Even though you know my roots.” I wasn’t a sympathizer, but I’d never go against the ECD.
Only a fool would do that.
He looked away. “I didn’t lie.”
“You lied,” I reiterated. “If ever there was a time to come out with the truth, Michael Byrne, it’s on your deathbed.”
“I think you should go.” He turned up the TV, and the news blared on before I could argue.
‘Footage of a heated conversation between President Davidson and Irish Prime Minister Nathaniel O’Leary has leaked online.
‘The recording appears to show both leaders standing in the Rose Garden, with the First Lady acting as a go-between for both men.
‘A leak from within the White House said that the conversation was tense, with Prime Minister O’Leary repeatedly raising his voice at the president.
‘The video, since its posting, has had over two million views because of the unprecedented support the president has given to the concept of a unified Ireland—’
As I watched the footage, I lifted a hand to scratch at my neck, and from out of nowhere, a distant memory floated to the surface.
Elizabeth Davidson, our First Lady, taunting me outside Michelle Keegan’s tearoom.
Michelle Keegan’s death. By my hand.
Michael jumping into the car and yelling at me to drive away.
But what I knew now changed everything, didn’t it?
It was all too much of a coincidence.
Aoife was Alan Davidson’s daughter, not Aidan’s.
Finn was Aidan’s son.
Michelle Keegan had nothing to do with my husband. Nothing whatsoever.
Keegan.
Eamonn Keegan.
Aoife Keegan—her maiden name.
Why hadn’t I made the link? Seen the connection?
Because I hadn’t known Michael was a cheile, that was why. I’d had faith in a snake in the grass.
“You told me Michelle Keegan was Aidan’s girlfriend.”