Chapter 9 - Sins of the Fathers
By 5:00 AM, the fire was dead.
The local volunteer fire brigade never received a call; at Ashgrove, the Kavanaghs handled their own ash.
Three bodies had been loaded into the back of a sealed livestock trailer by two silent, weathered men who had worked for Declan’s father since the 1980s. The trailer had already departed toward a deep limestone quarry thirty miles north, where fifty feet of black water would keep their secrets forever.
Rowan sat on an overturned feed bucket in the tack room. Her jacket was gone; Declan had wrapped a thick, fleece-lined Kavanagh stable blanket around her trembling shoulders.
The stable was quiet again. Midnight Reel stood in an undamaged stall in the west wing, his muzzle buried in a bucket of sweet mash, his coat damp with sweat but his breathing slow and steady. He had let Rowan touch his neck for five solid minutes without flinching before the shock wore off.
Declan walked into the tack room carrying two tin mugs of black coffee laced heavily with whiskey. He handed one to her, taking the stool opposite.
His face was streaked with soot, a clean gash along his jawline dripping a slow thread of blood onto his collar. He looked like an archangel who had survived a fall through hell.
"Viktor Vance won't stop with three men," Rowan said quietly, staring into the dark surface of the coffee. "You should have turned me over to them, Declan. You could have brokered a truce. Now you’ve killed his best crew."
Declan took a slow sip from his mug.
"Viktor Vance doesn't understand this country," he said, his voice smooth and lethally calm. "He thinks Ireland is like London or Berlin—a place where you can buy politicians and push people off pavements. He doesn't know that out here, in the dirt, we don't negotiate."
"He has hundreds of men."
"He has employees," Declan corrected. "I have blood."
He set his mug down on the workbench and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his gaze pinning Rowan in place.
"Tell me the truth, Rowan. Why did you run from Boston?"
Rowan swallowed, the whiskey burning her throat.
"My father didn't just fix cars for the mob," she whispered, her voice cracking under the weight of years of silence. "He kept their ledgers. Every shipping container coming through the docks, every bribe paid to the port authority. When he died, Vance thought I had the flash drives. He put a team in my apartment. I jumped from the second-story fire escape. That's where the bullet caught me."
"Do you have them?" Declan asked.
"No," Rowan looked straight into his gray eyes, her voice fierce and clear. "My father was a crook, but he loved me enough not to leave me a death warrant. I don't have the files. I have nothing. Just my clothes, my hands, and the horses."
Declan studied her. The long silence stretched between them, filled only by the distant murmur of the morning rain against the tin roof.
He stood up, stepped toward her, and reached out.
Rowan flinched instinctively, anticipating pain.
Instead, Declan’s fingers gently gathered the edges of the blanket around her shoulders, pulling it snug against her neck. His knuckles brushed against her bruised jaw, lingering there for a beat longer than necessary.
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"You don't have nothing, Rowan," he said, his voice dropping into that deep, intoxicating timber. "You have Ashgrove."
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