He nods. I note the panicked swallow of his Adam’s apple.
“Excellent. Did you know Cillian O’Sullivan?”
“Not personally,” the bartender stammers. “But I know… of him.”
“Fair enough.” The gun in my hand is still aimed at the bartender. “I assume you know his father.”
The bartender stills and his pale deepens. Then he nods.
“Also excellent. Where do I find him?” I ask.
“Listen—”
“Just so you know, I don’t take kindly to excuses,” I tell him. I tap the butt of the gun on the countertop to remind him who’s still in charge here.
“He’ll gut you. Ronan O’Sullivan is not a man to be trifled with.”
“Clearly, neither am I.”
The bartender looks past me at the bodies of the thugs littering his pub floor. “I know where you can find him,” he sighs, with resignation and defeat in his tone.
“There’s a good man.” I tuck the gun back into my waistband. The man droops with audible relief.
“I’m reaching for a pen and paper,” he calls to me as I stand up from the barstool. “I’ll give you the address.”
I laugh and shake my head. “Oh, no, friend. I’d rather you just took me yourself.”
“You… you want me to take you?” His pallor is back and sicklier than ever. I just killed three men in the blink of an eye, right in front of this sorry bastard, and yet he’s still almost as scared of Ronan O’Sullivan than he is of me.
The Irishman’s reputation is impressive.
A lesser man might be afraid of that, of him.
But not me.
I’m the most dangerous man on the planet, and I have nothing left to lose.
* * *
The bartender closes up and we head out onto the street. He leads me to a pretty nice car, certainly one that’s above the pay grade of a simple bartender in a podunk pub on the outskirts of Dublin.
But I don’t question him as I fold myself into the passenger seat of his car.
We drive through the town, but I can’t seem to concentrate on anything. My mind is racing.
This was Cillian’s home. He grew up on these streets. He got into fist fights and chased girls down these streets. He loved these streets up—until the day they spat him out on a one-way flight to America.
And yet, I can’t picture him anywhere.
I can’t see him fitting in here.
His family’s betrayal had forced some quintessential Irishness out of him. Like a part of his soul never left his home country.
“I’ve got my blonde hair and blue eyes,” Cillian would always tell me as we stumbled drunk from one club to the next in our younger and more reckless teenage years. “Gifts from Mother Ireland. And they’re the only things I’ll keep.”
The memory stings worse than I expected.
“Do you have a name?” I ask the bartender. Anything to distract myself from the storm raging inside my head.