My first thought is, Fuck him. I can do what I want.
But then I grit my teeth and put my feet back down.
Because sometimes, you just have to be a fucking grown-up.
Even if it kills you.
The overhead lights are dimmed almost to blackness and the curtains are heavy and thick over the windows. I walk over and hurl them open to let in the moonlight, then I crank the dimmer dial up.
Da liked his office space to be dark and cut off from the rest of the house.
Not me. I want the light coming in.
I dial in Artem’s number and switch to speaker. The dial tone reverberates around the room as the portrait of my grizzled grandfather stares at me from across the room.
Old bastard looks angry. Disappointed in me already.
“Yeah,” I murmur to his painted face, “I’m not what you expected. But maybe that’s a good thing. Someone to let the light in.”
“Hello?”
“Artem,” I croon. “Miss me yet?”
“Yet?” he replies, and I can sense the smile in his tone. “You disappeared on me for a whole fucking year, and it still took eleven and a half months for me to remember you weren’t there.”
I choke back laughter. “I was fighting for my life, you son of a bitch.”
“Allegedly,” he jokes. “How do I know you weren’t just kicking back on a beach in Hawaii with a model and a bottle?”
“That’s a Kovalyov kind of move,” I hit back. “Us O’Sullivans do things differently.”
“So you’re an Irishman again, eh? They haven’t re-kicked you out of the clan yet?” Artem asks. “Esme bet me you’d last a month. I said twenty-four hours.”
“Liar! Your wife would never bet against me. She loves me.”
“She’s good at pretending.”
“To be the one sleeping with you, she’d have to be, wouldn’t she?”
His laughter dies. “Too fucking far.”
I laugh anyway. “Don’t mess with the master, Don Artem.”
“Seriously, though,” Artem says, switching gears abruptly. “How are things over there?”
I take a deep breath. “Well… Shit hit the fan almost from the moment I stepped foot on Irish soil.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“Turns out the shit with the Kinahans is a lot more complicated than anyone knew, including Kian.”
“What happened?”
I fill Artem in. I start from the beginning and talk him through every last detail. From the second I walked out into the Irish sun to see Saoirse at the airport, all the way up to the moment Da and Ma were dragged away by Kinahan thugs. I leave out the part about springing Saoirse from jail at gunpoint.
He doesn’t interrupt me even once. My only indication that he’s still on the line is the slow and even breathing from the other line.
When I’m done, he sighs. “For fuck’s sake, you really know how to stir shit up, Cillian.”