“And what is that?” the woman asks, dropping her gun from Ella’s face and glaring at Moira.
“That your husband is the only person in this room who promised fidelity and therefore, should be the one to die.”
Moira’s words spark a fury in Julio, and he lunges forward, intent on snatching Angelina’s gun from her grip.
Sol grabs Moira, tucking her aside with one arm and pulling a gun from the back of his waistband with the other. He aims and fires, and Julio stumbles back, a spot of red on his chest. With every second that passes, the red grows larger, until he falls to the ground.
Angelina screams when he hits the floor and drops to her knees, crawling toward him as a now terrified Ella disappears.
Just as Angelina turns, ready to unleash her fury on Sol and Moira, gunfire rains from outside and something crashes into the window. The hiss of smoke filling the room has Moira panicking. Sol takes his shirt off and covers her nose and mouth. He’s the last thing she sees before the room turns gray, thick with smoke.
“Run,” he instructs, taking her hand and leading her through it. When they reach a door, he opens it, pushing her into a darkness. “There are thirteen steps. Count them as you go.”
And she does, until she reaches the last one. Through the room, she can make out a small window.
“Go through the window, run to the trees, keep going as straight as possible, until you get to the abandoned cottage. I’ll meet you there.”
A swift kiss is pressed to her lips and then he’s gone.
Moira hears the dulled pattering of bullets spraying, the sounds becoming louder once she’s outside. The night air welcomes her, and she struggles to get all the way through the window when she feels someone in the house tugging at her feet. She kicks and pushes off the ground, running toward the tree line.
But she never makes it to them.
Thomas steps into her view and the men flanking him tackle her to the ground.
“Lovely to see ye again, sister,” he says before one of them strikes her and her vision goes black.
27
Moira learned not to fear something as trivial as death. In her whole life, she knew it to be an inevitable guest. Too many others gave it far too much power, and she refused to follow suit, knowing it was only as great as the strength she fed it.
For many of her years, she starved it—much like her mother starved her. Starved her from sustenance, from love, from warmth.
And just like Moira forced her vengeance upon her mother, death made its way to her. It took her power and left her to succumb to it.
She sits on the ground, thinking back to days ago, her wrists chained.
The words still ring in her mind and she squeezes her eyes shut, not letting the snapshot of the moment find its place in her secret room.
“That Spaniard is finally dead, you ken. There’ll be no savin’ ye,” Thomas leered at her once she finally came to, those chains like deadweight.
She did not know she could sink so low.
She did not know she could scream so loud.
“Kill me,” she’d begged. “I do not want to live.”
But her pleading fell on deaf ears.
“You did’nay ken that I couldn’t touch our fortune at seventeen years of age, Moira. We’ll clean ye up, gather control of the funds, and keep ye chained here.”
Moira, with every piece of the puzzle on full display, sat there, her eyes on the ceiling.
“And once I’m eighteen, I’ll have ye declared mentally unfit and hospitalized for the remainder of your days.” He smirked. “At the very least, it is better than death, sister.”
There’d been no days counted, no time tracked. Moira, who’d decided to never be a prisoner again, would not fight any longer.
So, when men would unlock the door and enter her dungeon, food in their hands, she’d shriek at them, shaking her chains until they left.
If they would not kill her, she would starve herself.
That was the plan anyway, until now, when Thomas comes in with someone he introduces as a colleague of his. This older man, with tubing and contraptions, smiles at her with teeth too perfect and eyes too calculating.
Two large men wrestle to still her as a tube is shoved down her throat. Tears well at the rough handling of her esophagus and she escapes back to the room in her mind.
Moira doesn’t know how long she’s been here, but the day eventually comes for her to gain access to her family’s fortune.
They clean her up, dress her in one of the gowns her mother bought her long ago, and even apply makeup to her sallow skin. They can dress her, they can push her, but there is nothing to be done about the death in her eyes. About the lack of words she speaks, about the tremors in her hands.
But the people at the bank, they don’t care. A signature transforms a scowling Thomas into a smiling one.
They don’t expose themselves, large hoods covering them from passersby’s eyes, and Thomas is the first to enter the car, of course.
Moira looks about town, wondering if or when she’d ever see it again.
Her eyes snag on familiar ones that widen when they see her. Her hood slips and Moira tugs it the rest of the way down.
Ella.
The woman covers her mouth with her hands at the sight of Moira.
If it weren’t for the very large man behind Moira, shoving at her already, she would try to make a run for it.
But there is nowhere for her to run to.
So, she climbs inside the vehicle and wishes a life she’d hoped to live—even for a small amount of time—goodbye.
Thomas has found his joy. In the weeks leading up to it, he enjoyed the watching and planning. But nothing had pleased him as much as this; finding his sister, killing the man responsible for the crumbling of his world, and now, gloating.
And he takes time from each day to do so. To walk about the unfamiliar home toward the cellar, to unlock the door and enter, and to see her lying in the corner, dirty and broken.
Broken by him.
His great dislike of her grew over the years, fertilized and tended to by his mother’s own hatred of her.
When he’d asked why, her answer made his skin feel too tight. Made his blood pause in its course.
She will bring forth the death of us all.
And Thomas recognized the desire for it in Moira’s eyes.
It was mirrored in his own.
One cannot be a monster without recognizing the ones that live in others.
Today, Moira speaks.
“How did you do it?” she asks.
As if it weren’t an easy feat. Thomas had snuck out into the night, through the tunnels below, and emerged in town.
Following his survival of the massacre, it only took a few calls to gather more men, more money, and more weapons than he knew what to do with.
The MacQuarrie name carries weight.
“An enemy of my enemy is a friend,” he answers around a grin. “Too many powerful families wantin’ revenge. Too many impacted by the deaths of their young sons. I merely took advantage of their sentiments.”
If only he could speak to his mother now, show her what he’s done and how he’s won. She would be proud.
Of course, she’d be upset that it wasn’t he who killed the Spaniard himself, but he’ll tell the world he did, if only to assuage the memory of his mother.