Page 115 of Lucky Strike

“I’m not.” She winks. “One of the perks of my seniority is family medical leave.”

The next few weeks are a barely coherent blur of in-home doctor’s visits and near-constant supervision from whoever’s around: Lucky, Mom, Nola, Maeve, and especially Liam. He likes watching TV with me, playing with his toys and iPad, often falling asleep on the couch in my room. Owen and Sloane come by all the time, and Tristan, too, once he can move around. He’s still recovering from being shot in the arm. Mild nerve damage and possible future surgery means he won’t be ableto train or fight for a long time. I know this bothers him more than he lets on, but that’s Tristan—always making light of things. We trade war stories and sick jokes when no one else is around, finding levity in the dark humor of our shared trauma.

Shelby keeps me company too, sometimes sleeping on the floor next to my bed. It takes a while for Mom to realize Shelby’s not going to maul her, but once she gets used to her, she falls in love. “I might have to get a dog like this,” she says once, scratching behind Shelby’s ears. “She’s so smart. It’s like she understands.”

We still haven’t found Bacon. We finally tell Liam that he ran away, not knowing how else to explain his dog’s prolonged absence. Lucky finds me in tears more than once, brokenhearted over all of the loss. I try to blame the constant crying on my brain trauma, and that is part of it, but it’s been a relentless, horrible month. The guilt that Mitch died protecting Liam and me is unbearable. I wake up night after night covered in sweat and tears, wrecked from nightmares.

Liam also has nightmares, even worse than before, so he’s been sleeping with his dad. Lucky pulled him from Little Friends. He’ll go to kindergarten next fall, but for now, he needs healing and family more than preschool. Liam told us that he never wanted to go back to Little Friends, anyway, traumatized by what he saw the day we were abducted. At my prompting, Lucky finds a therapist through Alva and Teddy Walsh. Poppy’s an older woman with ties to Saoirse, someone Liam and I can talk to about the stuff we’ve gone through.

I’m trying to get Lucky to go, too, and Tristan, but they’re stubborn as fuck. It’s frustrating, but I can’t force someone to do what they don’t want to do. Lucky’s having a difficult enough time as it is without me nagging him. He’s holding down a job, running a syndicate, weathering his own injuries as well as mine, Liam’s, and Tristan’s—and then there’s his dad’s heart. He’s completely overwhelmed, running on fumes. All reasons he should talk to somebody. But he won’t.

He does, however, finally tell me everything that’s been happening over the past year. Every detail. How Heath and Steven Murphy had been undermining the Kellys since March—their reputation, their leadership, and their gun shipments—first on their own and then with the help of Ivan and Ilya Sokolov. Apparently, the brothers were acting independently of the local Bratva, with whom they’ve always had atruce, because they wanted in on the gun game. Heath and Steven wanted that, but they wanted to head Saoirse even more.

They let the Sokolovs think we’d been the ones to call the cops on them, which is why they attacked on Halloween, breaking into the house and hitting us on the road. Not knowing that Lucky and his boys wiped out the Sokolov crew, Steven set up the kidnapping with the intent to blame the Bratva. By the time Heath realized that the Russians were dead the next morning, his son had already set the ball in motion.

And by the time Steven realized that Lucky was on his way, it was far too late for him. He’d overstepped, and now he’d paid the ultimate price.

34.Lucky

Now

Forty-eight hours after the rescue, Dad, Donavan and I drive over to Heath’s house in Back Bay. It takes a minute, but he answers the door, grim-faced because he knows exactly why we’re there.

Standing aside, I point to my car, still idling in Heath’s circular driveway. “Let’s go.”

Patty Murphy appears in the softly lit foyer behind him, a mess of worry and grief. She looks at me with pleading, reddened eyes, then at my father. She touches her husband’s back. “Heath?”

“I’ll be back later,” he says.

She claps her hands over her mouth. “No more, please?—“

“Go back inside, Patty.” Stepping out, Heath pulls the door shut behind him.

We drive to my condo, which will be empty and back on the market by the end of the month. Once Teddy Walsh and Will O’Reilly arrive, we sit at the kitchen table, the atmosphere heavy with the consequences Heath Murphy is about to face. He won’t even look at me, nor should he.

“You know why you’re here,” I say, tapping the table.

He nods once, eyes remaining downcast.

I look at my father. “Were you able to check that IP address?”

Dad nods, sliding a manila folder across the table. A quick check tells me what I already knew: that the orders originated from Heath’s house. Not a surprise. Last night, after leaving Steven’s house in Weston, I sent another team to clear the bodies, deal with Steven, and search the house for anything of interest. They recovered a huge stash of guns, some of which had been stolen from our Mexico shipment as well as the ones they’d ordered over the past few months using my account.

“I’m pretty sure we’ve pieced together what you’ve been up to,” I say. “But I’d like to give you a chance to come clean.”

“And don’t leave anything out,” Donovan warns. “This is serious, Heath. You’ve betrayed years of trust. Generations.”

“Con’s doing you a solid by letting you live,” my father adds, his voice deceptively soft. It’s the voice he uses when he’s so close to the edge he’s afraid one false move will toss him over. “It’s time you did him one, understand?”

“My son is gone,” Heath says, his voice thick. “What life do I have?”

Rage rises up so fast that my temples pound with it. His son would still be here if he hadn’t fucked around the way he had. But I have a son too, and losing him would end me so I give Heath a minute to get his bearings.

“Saoirse was never meant to be run by just one family. That’s not how it worked in Belfast or Cork, and that’s not how it worked when our families came to Boston.” Heath raises his eyes, looking at me. “It never sat right with me, and it especially bothered Steven. Knowing he’d probably never get a chance to lead, to serve the syndicate, rubbed him wrong.”

“We all lead,” Dad says. “We all serve the syndicate.”

“You know what I mean.”

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