“She died the next week,” I whisper. “They called it an overdose. Prescription pills. They said she mixed them wrong.”
I laugh, but it sounds broken. “My father told me the pressure broke her. He told me your expansion destabilized everything. That when you cut suppliers and tightened routes, families like ours were forced into chaos.”
I look at him directly now. “He said you made moves in clean rooms and let consequences bleed elsewhere, and you were responsible for her death.”
The words are shaking now, and I hate that they are.
“I stood beside a closed casket at thirteen while he told me you killed her.”
My throat closes, but I push through it.
“She wanted to leave with me,” I manage. “She told me we’d go somewhere quiet, by the sea. She said we’d disappear.”
The tears spill before I can stop them. “And then she died. And I told myself you stopped that from happening, that you killed her before she could take me with her.”
Silence stretches between us. He turns away first and walks to the window. When he speaks again, his shoulders are squared. “I never killed your mother.”
I go still.
He faces me fully now, and there’s something different in his expression. “You deserved better than that story.”
My head shakes automatically, because I know I’ll never be able to unhear what’s coming, and it’ll mean losing what little memory of a childhood I had left.
“I never ordered it,” he continues, voice firm. “I never touched her life. I never benefited from her death.”
The certainty in his voice makes my chest constrict. “My father said your consolidation cost her allies protection. He said when you shut down corridors, people lost leverage. He said she got caught in the fallout.”
“I shut down synthetic lanes,” he answers evenly. “That’s true. I closed corridors pushing pills through shell companies. That cost certain men money.”
My stomach drops. “He resented me for that,” Cillian goes on. “He lost reliable movement. Lost flexibility and margins.”
I stare at him.
“The pills she overdosed on came from a corridor I had just dismantled,” he says quietly. “That isn’t coincidence.”
“No.” The word leaves me before I can stop it. “No, that doesn’t mean?—”
“It means the product was already in circulation. It means someone with access kept it moving.”
My breathing turns uneven.
“He needed sympathy,” Cillian continues. “He needed distance from scrutiny. A grieving husband attracts less attention than a distributor under pressure.”
“Oh, God,” I choke out.
He comes to sit beside me and reaches for my hand. I give it to him. “You’ve seen him all your life, Saoirse. And you’ve seen me. You’re not unintelligent enough to not understand what I’m about to say.”
The finality in his tone doesn’t waver. “He told you I killed her,” Cillian adds. “Because that story protected him. It redirected your anger. It gave him a martyr’s shield.”
The room feels like it’s tilting.
“I can prove it,” he sighs. “But you won’t like what it costs you.”
Tears blur my vision. “She wanted to leave,” I say again, because that’s the only part that feels solid. “She wanted to take me and go.”
“And she might have,” he answers, softer now. “Which makes her inconvenient.”
The implication lands like a second gunshot. I press my palm to my mouth to stop the sound that tries to escape.
