Page 20 of Brutal Collateral

It took a few weeksto confirm everything Ares told us, including digging deep into my mother’s family history. Something we never had to do.

With common names like Sullivan, I needed assurances that Troi Keller’s Mary Ellen Sullivan was indeed my mother’s first cousin. Tragedy, wars, and drunken Irish stupidity left them both without siblings.

It burns me with curiosity why we never met Mary Ellen. Kai dropped off several of her photo albums. With one tucked under my arm, I approach my mother after giving her an hour to decompress from the visit with my da in the assisted living facility.

She goes every day. Fuck, I’ll have to put a guard on her. After all,she’sthe true heir. Without a wife and a queen of my own, my mother is it.

“Ma?” I call to her from the long hallway that leads to our kitchen. The place my mother always said was her space.

Steeping a teabag, her skin flushed from the cold, she says, “Aye.”

“Can I talk to you?” I ask from under the archway.

She lifts hopeful eyes to me. “Are you here to tell me you’ve met someone finally?”

Her words send shockwaves through me. She’s never asked me about my love life.

“No, Ma.” After all, I’ve notmetAva yet.

Ma folds her arms. “What are you bleedin’ waiting for? Ewan’s married. Siobhan and her billionaire husband are expecting a wee-one soon.”

And I’m the git for not preparing for her inquiry. God help me the day I tell her Ihaveto get married. To the enemy.

“Does the name Troi Keller mean anything to you?” I ask to get this conversation back on track.

The way the cup of tea stops in front of her lips and her eyes peer into mine, I have my answer. “Aye. What did he do?”

I go breathless. All this time my mother knew her cousin was a matriarch of a powerful mob family across the river and she never thought to fucking mention it. All the years we were in the investigation business, we never crossed paths with anything that led us to discover we’re related to the legendaryManhattanSullivans.

“Troi is dead.”

Ma sucks in a breath. “Oh.”

Oh?

“Did you know he was married to your cousin Mary Ellen?”

She clears her throat, and I have to hold on to something, thinking I’ll hear a doozy of a story. “My da and his brother, Mary Ellen’s father, had a falling out when we were in primary school.”

I can’t believe it hasn’t hit her. Unless she doesn’t know about Devlin’s death. Why would she? It sounds like she’s gone all these years as if the Kellers don’t exist at all. That’s the only part of this fucked-up, topsy-turvy mess, I’m truly curious about.

I take the photo album out from under my arm as well as the three-by-five photos Shane dug up and show them to her. “This is you and Mary Ellen, right?”

“Bullocks, where did you get these?”

“Shane found them in the family records. A lawyer who works for Troi confirmed that is Mary Ellen. Did you know she died a few years ago?”

Her jaw drops. “No.”

“Her son Devlin is dead, too. And Troi doesn’t have any other living heirs.”

“What?” Her eyes gape open and she pushes away from the breakfast island. “No. No, no.”

Yeah, she gets it.

I hold her by the shoulders. “Ma, we met with Troi’s lawyer a month ago, and we’ve been confirming everything.”

“Your da doesn’t want you boys to have anything to do with that... That bloodbath going on in Manhattan.” She holds her throat.

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