He said nothing.
And this invoice is not from the past.
It is fresh, postdated three weeks ago.
And worse, there is a reference number beside the transfer that links back to a logistics chain I remember all too well.
Red moss.
That was the internal name for it.
Not a plant, not anything medicinal, but a designer compound distributed in capsule form and moved under false classifications—volatile, profitable, and quietly buried by my father in the final months of his life.
He said it brought too much heat, said it would outlive us all if we let it.
And yet here it is.
So either Ruairí restarted it without telling me or someone else is using the name.
9
RUAIRÍ
The next morning, breakfast is quiet, and it is not the sort of quiet born from sleep-worn comfort or the softness of a shared domestic routine, but the brittle, glacial silence of a woman actively choosing to ice me out.
Keira butters her toast with military exactness, reads the back of the honey jar like it contains something worth discovering, and does not once lift her gaze.
I sip my coffee, black as usual, and consider asking if she slept well just to see what she'd do with the question.
But provocation has never been my vice, not first thing in the morning.
I know she was in my office again.
She left no mess, no prints, no sign visible to anyone but me.
But the paperweight was off-center, and the chair had been pushed back an inch farther than I ever leave it.
I know she deserves answers, but I cannot give her those until I know who's still using her family's name and why.
So I leave soon after breakfast, making up my mind to only meet her when I have more to say.
My destination has been set—The old Donnelly betting house that sits half-dead just a few miles from my home.
Ithas been gutted, but the bones are familiar.
They left the glass counters, scrubbed the walls down to plaster, and bolted the till with a timed lock that was standard in the old Donnelly days.
Someone—probably Fiachra—has stripped the silent alarm, though the white plastic dome still clings to the ceiling above my head, empty as a hanged man's skull.
The windows are shuttered with corrugated steel, light coming through in slatted ribbons, stripes on the Formica and the floor tiles and the face of the man across from me.
Sean Boyle, Keira's uncle, is one of the old breeds.
He wears a suit that's two decades out of fashion and three sizes too large; shoulders padded for a man who died at least two drinks ago.
His hair is shaved tight on the sides, the stubble at his jaw silvered, and the only part of him that looks alive is his hands—long, pale, and restless, never flat on the table, always tapping, drumming, rearranging the invisible deck of cards he thinks will save him.
He does not speak first.
