“I don’t know what started it. I doubt I’ll ever find out. But somehow my father ran afoul of a local mob leader named Eoin McGrath. He was the one who put the wooden stake through my gut.”
He pauses for a moment. He closes his eyes. After a moment of heavy silence, he continues.
“McGrath and his cronies started to harass my family. They chased my sisters home from school. Threw bricks through our windows. Killed the family cat and hung it over the front door. My mother lived in terror that one of us kids would be hurt, or worse, so she insisted we move farther out in the country to stay with her widowed sister, hoping the trouble would blow over.
“It didn’t. McGrath found out where we’d gone. One night we awoke to the smell of smoke and the sound of my mother screaming. When we ran outside, we saw why. My father had been hamstrung, tied to a tree, and lit on fire. He was still conscious, but engulfed in flames. In agony. Burning alive.
“It was Killian who had the presence of mind to go inside and get the gun.”
Liam stops abruptly and takes a breath.
I’m frozen in horror, seeing it all through Liam’s eyes. His mother screaming. His father burning. His brother raising his arm and pulling the trigger, the gun pointed at his father’s head.
It was mercy, but what a price Killian must have paid living with that ever since.
I can’t imagine.
“We buried what was left of my father under the blackened branches of the tree he died on, then Killian and I set out to find the men who killed him. We took the gun and my aunt’s car and drove back to town.”
“It wasn’t hard to find Eoin and his gang. They were in a bar. Celebrating. I had a butcher knife and Killian had the gun, but we were just boys, insane with grief, no match for half a dozen grown men.”
Into his heavy pause, I whisper, “How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
My stomach turns over.
“They dragged us out into the street, took the weapons away, kicked us around a while for some fun. Then they tied us up and drove us back out to the farm.”
His voice drops an octave. “For me, they broke off blackened branches of that same fucking tree. They cut them up and sharpened them. Then they held me on the ground and drove one through my gut and another through my shoulder, pounding them deep into the dirt with a rock so I was pinned down.
“Killian wasn’t so lucky. There were five bullets left in my father’s gun. They threw a rope over a high branch of the tree, strung him up by his wrists, and gave him a kick to set him swinging. Then McGrath used him for target practice. He didn’t miss once.”
Horrified, I blurt, “Jesus Christ.”
Ignoring my interruption, Liam continues.
“At the first sign of McGrath’s convoy pulling up, my mother and aunt should’ve run straight out the back door and taken all the other kids into the fields. It was dark. They might have escaped. But they didn’t. Instead they watched from inside the house as McGrath and his gang worked me and Killian over. Then they blocked the doors, poured gasoline all over the front porch, and lit the house on fire. They drove away laughing as it burned.
“I pulled the stake out of my stomach, then the other from my shoulder. With what strength, I don’t know. Then I cut Killian down from the tree. I didn’t check to see if he was alive before I ran back to the house, but by that time it was consumed in flames. Through the window, I saw my mother on the floor, her arms around my brothers and sisters, all of them huddled together. So I punched through the window with my bare fists and jumped inside.
“They weren’t moving. Smoke inhalation got them before the fire did. I tried to drag my mother to the window, but she was so heavy. And the smoke was so thick…”
He stops again. Jaw clenched, heart hammering, he lies still and silent, lost in memory.
After a long time, he says gruffly, “Killian pulled me out of there. Even shot five times, he managed to save my life. I don’t remember much after that until days later when I woke up in a hospital bed. He was in the bed next to me.”
It feels like an anvil is crushing my chest. A tear leaks from the corner of my eye, straggling down my temple to drip onto Liam’s shoulder. “It’s a miracle you survived.”
“We shouldn’t have. That’s what all the doctors said. And Killian became convinced as time went on that we survived for a reason. That our family’s massacre shouldn’t be in vain. We were sent to live at St. Stephen’s Home for Boys, an orphanage right out of a Dickens’ novel. That’s where we stayed until we aged out of the system.
“Then Killian joined the military, and I moved to Dublin and got a job in a book store. I met a girl there. I thought we’d get married, live a normal life. But a few years later, she was killed in an explosion. The mafia targeted an enemy, and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Julia died at a coffee shop at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, blown to bits. They had to use dental records to identify her remains.”
I gasp softly. Here ends the mystery of Julia, writer of love notes in philosophical books. Lost to senseless violence, like the rest of the people Liam has ever been close to.
No wonder he was so ambivalent about getting close to me.
Liam’s voice grows rougher. “That’s when I decided Killian was right when he said our family’s massacre shouldn’t be in vain. I decided Julia’s death shouldn’t be for nothing, either. There had to be a price to pay for these terrible acts men committed, and I’d be the one to extract it. That’s when I joined the DMI.”
“What does that stand for?”
“Directorate of Military Intelligence. It’s Ireland’s version of the CIA.”
I sit up abruptly and stare down at him with wide eyes and a thundering pulse, remembering what I overheard the night he was on the phone with Killian.
“Eighteen years is enough. It’s a miracle I’ve lasted this long!”
My heart in my throat, I shout, “You’re undercover?”
His eyes shine with emotion as he reaches up to cup my face. “Don’t be impressed. It’s not a noble undertaking. I’ve done everything I’ve done for revenge, not out of any sense of duty to my country. I wanted blood. I wanted the mafia to pay for all they’d taken from me. For that, I knew I had to work from the inside.”
I’m so astonished, I can hardly form a coherent sentence. “But how…all this time…how has no one found out?”
He closes his eyes briefly. “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.”
“What do you mean?”
His exhalation is heavy. “I mean I became very good at revenge. The reputation I have for ruthlessness…”
He opens his eyes and gazes at me. The view past his pupils is endless and dark.
“It’s earned. I don’t just pass information along to a handler in hopes the government will gather enough evidence to build a criminal case. I’m judge and jury. I render the verdict myself. And mercy is not what I specialize in.”
Trembling, I think of my brother and wonder if justice is better served Liam’s way or mine.
Do the ends justify the means?
Does it ultimately matter? Or is what matters that the bad guys get what’s coming to them one way or another?