Shadows in Death (In Death #51) - J.D. Robb Page 0,116
up the Privets, brother and sister. Imagine how pissed—and vindictive—Alicia’s going to be when she finds out you flipped on her, gave us chapter and verse on her organization.”
“That’s a lie! I’ve said nothing, will say nothing.”
“Really?” Eve studied her file again, smiling. “Things do get tangled up in translation, don’t they? She’s going down, so’s her brother, so are you. I wonder what conclusion she’ll come to, with a little help in that tangled translation.”
His split lip dripped a thin line of blood. Sweat popped to join it.
And now, Eve thought, over to you.
Reading her signal, Roarke spoke for the first time. “They’ve got your mother, Cobbe, and I’m sorry for that. A mother’s a precious thing.”
“You leave my mother out of it.”
“I would if I could, but it’s not up to me, is it? Then again, the old man didn’t leave my mother out of it, but beat her, killed her, tossed her in the Liffey. Did he brag on it when he told you, all those years later?”
“Why wouldn’t he? She was nothing but a whore, palming you off on him. I was his firstborn. I have the right to his name.”
“I nearly tossed that name aside, but someone I respect told me to keep it and make my own out of it. You could’ve done the same for all I cared. For though you’re not Patrick Roarke’s son in blood, you’re his in your cruelty, your bloodlust, and the rest.”
“I am his blood!”
“If that were true, and it’s bollocks, he’d be shamed of you now, wouldn’t he? Getting nicked this way, and by a woman at that, going about your work sloppy, leaving such a trail a noseless hound could follow it. Taking no pride in that work, refusing to stand for it, stand up to the bloody cops and tell them to get fucked, as it took them twenty years and more than four hundred dead before they pulled you in.
“That’s a run,” Roarke continued, with some admiration. “That’s a right glorious run. And here the one thing in this life you’ve done better than any, better even than the old man himself, and you take no pride in it. Refuting, you are, the way you made your fame and fortune, how you gave your mother a grand house, a grand life. So much more than I was ever able to do for my own, as I never knew her. There you bested me, didn’t you, as I never saw the joy for me, the pride in me, shine in her eyes.”
“She was naught but a muckshit.”
Roarke said nothing a moment, and the ice in the room could’ve frozen fire.
“She was a Clare woman. But you? What are you but a sniveling coward? So feared of cops are you, you deny the only true legacy the man you call father left you. And there, you shame his name.”
“I’m not feared of cops.” Cobbe pounded his restrained wrists on the table. “I’ve run them in circles all my life. It’s those who know me are feared. They give me what I want, pay me what I want, and speak of me in whispers lest I hear and take offense.”
“So you say, a man I bloodied and beat to the ground, a man locked in a cellar with the turnips and potatoes. A man who won’t stand up for who and what he is.”
“I’m Patrick Roarke’s son. You’re but one of his by-blows.”
“And yet you couldn’t lift a lock or wallet without bungling it. It’s why he sent me to the streets and alleys.” Roarke wiggled his fingers. “I had the skill for it. You were best at slicing up little dogs.”
“Practice. I’d’ve killed the boy as well if you hadn’t set a cop who didn’t know his place on me.”
“Little dogs, little cats, they’re a sick boy’s kills, not a man’s. Not a Roarke’s.”
The sneer came back to the bloodied lip, the fury returned to the blackened eyes.
“You never had the stomach for it, for the ease and power of sliding a blade into flesh—soft as pillows some of them. He saw it in me, my skill, and took pride in it.”
“And his pride set you on that path of fame and fortune.”
“As a father sets his son. His true son. And I feel his pride every time that blade slices through. Four hundred, you say. Oh, there’s more, many more. Do you think I don’t keep an accounting? Double it. That cheating cunt in the