Eye of the Falcon (Psychic Visions #12)(99)

He shook his head. “How dare you say those things about our mother?”

“I say those things because they are true.”

Liam struggled with the truth. She understood how he felt.

“Every time you and Dad were out and Mother was alone, Angus was there.” She shook her head. “You’ve held an ideological view of your mother. And I held an ideological view of my father. Because I already knew what my mother was. I loved her anyway,” she said clearly. “Love is like that. You love them despite their faults, not just for the good things.”

“Get to the part about the bloody falcon,” somebody roared. “Where’s the gold we were promised?”

Issa turned to study them. “How is it you were all promised gold?”

“We’re all part of it,” Barney said, walking over from the bar. He handed her a second cup of coffee. “This one’s on me as long as you don’t throw it at anybody.”

She accepted it. “That’s if nobody else here deserves it. And when you say, you are all part of it, what does that mean?”

“Your da paid us all a little bit all the time. It helped put food on our tables, and we all knew there was a big score coming. We were all anticipating a much larger piece of the pie.”

“And so, for twenty years, that hatred inside you festered, while you dreamed of something that never existed? Did you get a payoff from the girls? According to Angus, they weren’t there when he regained consciousness. Did that make it worthwhile to kidnap me, beating, torturing me over four long weeks?”

Several of the men stepped back, and one said, “Look, we didn’t have anything to do with that.”

She studied them. “As long as you are associated with my brother, you are part of it. The same as you were part of the smuggling ring my father ran. You don’t get to pick and choose the pieces you want. And then you say that nothing happened, but there were murders. Because my father and my two brothers were killed. And my brother here has murdered many more.”

Liam snorted. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Ordering your men to murder is the same as having done the deed yourself. That you found it easier to keep your hands clean by ordering your henchmen to do it does not make your hands clean,” she said, her voice harsh. “Not being in the same room where your men sliced my ankles and the soles of my feet, kicked me day after day after day, in my ribs and my kidneys, not to mention burning my breasts with lit cigarettes, does not make your hands clean.”

“I was trying to bring the stressors back into your life so you would bring the damn bird back. With the added advantage, if you knew anything of the gold and jewels, you’d give up the information under torture,” he said candidly.

She studied him for a long moment. “You thought I had Hadrid with me? And that, through your torturing, I would be forced to connect with him? And then what? You would have tied him down on a perch and interrogated a falcon? Did you think he had something to do with the gold?” She stared at him in disbelief. “That was twenty years ago. I never saw Hadrid after that day. He was like another part of me. I lost all three of my brothers, supposedly, my father, Angus, and Hadrid all at the same time. What I was left with was a mother who hated the sight of me. Oh, she came around a decade or so later, but I was a reminder of all she’d lost. And, while we lived here, I was a reminder of all she couldn’t have. Angus wanted her to leave with him. But Dad was never one to let go of something that was his.”

Several men muttered in the background, “Aye, he was like that.”

“I assume one of you shot Hadrid?” she asked, her voice hard. But no one would answer or even look her in the eye. She turned her attention to her brother. She barely recognized this twisted vindictive man. He’d hated her so much … “Did you kill our father?” she asked Liam.

He shook his head. “I was trying hard to survive myself.”

“So then who is buried in my brother’s grave?”

His gaze fell to the floor. “Danny is.”

“And his family, did they know too?”

He nodded. “Danny was already dead. His folks took me in because I was still alive, and, if they couldn’t save their own son, they could save Da’s. They took me up north. They became my family as they nursed me back to health. But, at the same time, they wanted vengeance for their son’s death.”

“There isn’t any vengeance to be had,” she said. “I highly doubt anyone involved is left alive.”

Liam shook his head. “No, nobody was left alive. But I needed that gold. It was there. So I told them you would know, that you had watched and ordered the falcon to hide the coins. That, if we were careful and bided our time, you would be the one to order the bird to show us.”

She lifted her gaze to the old man behind Liam. He stared down at her brother. “And you?” she asked him. “Are you Danny’s father? Barney’s brother-in-law?”

He raised a tortured gaze to her and gave her a clipped nod. “I am. I’m Dylan.”

“So, to appease your son’s death, you help another in need, then you torture his innocent sister based on his twisted vengeance? That was okay by you? By your moral code? How is it you can look at yourself in the mirror?”

Danny’s father said, “I started out believing it was just and right. But I lost that belief a while ago. For what we did to you, I have no excuse. I would say I was blinded, and I did not know how to get off the path I had traveled.”