His split lip dripped a thin line of blood. Sweat popped to join it.
And now, Eve thought, over to you.
Reading her signal, Roarke spoke for the first time. “They’ve got your mother, Cobbe, and I’m sorry for that. A mother’s a precious thing.”
“You leave my mother out of it.”
“I would if I could, but it’s not up to me, is it? Then again, the old man didn’t leave my mother out of it, but beat her, killed her, tossed her in the Liffey. Did he brag on it when he told you, all those years later?”
“Why wouldn’t he? She was nothing but a whore, palming you off on him. I was his firstborn. I have the right to his name.”
“I nearly tossed that name aside, but someone I respect told me to keep it and make my own out of it. You could’ve done the same for all I cared. For though you’re not Patrick Roarke’s son in blood, you’re his in your cruelty, your bloodlust, and the rest.”
“I am his blood!”
“If that were true, and it’s bollocks, he’d be shamed of you now, wouldn’t he? Getting nicked this way, and by a woman at that, going about your work sloppy, leaving such a trail a noseless hound could follow it. Taking no pride in that work, refusing to stand for it, stand up to the bloody cops and tell them to get fucked, as it took them twenty years and more than four hundred dead before they pulled you in.
“That’s a run,” Roarke continued, with some admiration. “That’s a right glorious run. And here the one thing in this life you’ve done better than any, better even than the old man himself, and you take no pride in it. Refuting, you are, the way you made your fame and fortune, how you gave your mother a grand house, a grand life. So much more than I was ever able to do for my own, as I never knew her. There you bested me, didn’t you, as I never saw the joy for me, the pride in me, shine in her eyes.”
“She was naught but a muckshit.”
Roarke said nothing a moment, and the ice in the room could’ve frozen fire.
“She was a Clare woman. But you? What are you but a sniveling coward? So feared of cops are you, you deny the only true legacy the man you call father left you. And there, you shame his name.”
“I’m not feared of cops.” Cobbe pounded his restrained wrists on the table. “I’ve run them in circles all my life. It’s those who know me are feared. They give me what I want, pay me what I want, and speak of me in whispers lest I hear and take offense.”
“So you say, a man I bloodied and beat to the ground, a man locked in a cellar with the turnips and potatoes. A man who won’t stand up for who and what he is.”
“I’m Patrick Roarke’s son. You’re but one of his by-blows.”
“And yet you couldn’t lift a lock or wallet without bungling it. It’s why he sent me to the streets and alleys.” Roarke wiggled his fingers. “I had the skill for it. You were best at slicing up little dogs.”
“Practice. I’d’ve killed the boy as well if you hadn’t set a cop who didn’t know his place on me.”
“Little dogs, little cats, they’re a sick boy’s kills, not a man’s. Not a Roarke’s.”
The sneer came back to the bloodied lip, the fury returned to the blackened eyes.
“You never had the stomach for it, for the ease and power of sliding a blade into flesh—soft as pillows some of them. He saw it in me, my skill, and took pride in it.”
“And his pride set you on that path of fame and fortune.”
“As a father sets his son. His true son. And I feel his pride every time that blade slices through. Four hundred, you say. Oh, there’s more, many more. Do you think I don’t keep an accounting? Double it. That cheating cunt in the New York park, that was business, but the whore who sang like a nightingale? That was for the pleasure. I’ve built a fortune my father would envy, and can afford to kill for the pleasure of it when it suits me.”
He sat back, his blackened eyes glinting. “He should’ve killed you that day, in the alley where you lolled around with a fucking book like a little lord. His fist in my face was worth the hope he would when I told him.”
“He came close,” Roarke murmured.
“I’ll finish it for him. I took a vow, and I’ve waited a long time to keep it. I can wait longer yet. Do you think this worries me? These cops? I’ve money enough for all the lawyers I need. I’ve friends who’ll do the job for me if needed. I’ll get out, and I’ll come for you, you and the whore you’re fucking so the cops look the other way.”
“You’ve no money a’tall, Cobbe,” Roarke told him. “It’s not just this one account they’ve frozen you out of, but all of them, as I found them, every one. It’s not just your mother’s house they’ll lock away so the grand life you gave her from blood’s at an end, but the one you kept for yourself as O’Karre, and put on the market this very day. If you have others, they’ll find them as well now. Because you’re done.”
“I wouldn’t count on those friends, either,” Eve put in. “Or associates, as I doubt you have a friend in the world. Word’s going to get out you helped take down the Privet empire, whining for a deal. Call me a liar.” She shrugged. “Call me a whore, or whatever you want. I won’t be the one thousands of miles off-planet in a concrete cage, wondering if Alicia Privet has any associates in the vicinity.”
“She knows me.”
“She knows she let you use the house you ran from, where we found her tunnels, and lots of interesting data on her unregistered equipment. Her knowing you? That’s a shaky ledge you’re standing on. From what I hear, she’s not the forgiving sort.”
Eve leaned forward again. “Think of this, and think of it often while you sit in that cage. You gave Roarke a black eye. He got justice for everyone you killed, and took your freedom. He won.”
She looked at Abernathy. “Have you got enough?”
“Oh, yes, indeed.”
“Okay then. Dallas and Roarke exiting interview.”
“I’ll come for you!” Cobbe shouted. “Be sure of it. I’ve killed better men than you.”
“You’ve killed plenty of them,” Feeney said as Eve and Roarke started out. “But none better. Not one better.” He sat, and Whitney with him. “Let’s talk about the Solomen family.”
They went up to the kitchen, where cops and family spilled from there into the dining room, with enough food to feed the army they were.
“You’ll sit and eat now,” Sinead told them.
“We have to get back as soon as the commander and Feeney finish downstairs. And I’d say Abernathy wants to get Cobbe out and in an actual cell as soon as he can.”
“Then we’ll pack food for those who don’t have time to eat first.”
“I want the air more than food at the moment,” Roarke said. “But I … I said something to Cobbe that wasn’t altogether true.”
Sinead let out a psst sound. “And what of it? He deserves nothing from you than what you gave him outside.”
“No, it’s personal. I said to him I’d never seen joy for me or pride in me shine in my mother’s eyes. But that’s not altogether true, because I’ve seen it in yours.”