Chapter 2 - HER MOTHER PULLED THE TRIGGER AFTER DISCOVERING SHE COULD SEE—BUT THE SECRET INSIDE HER DEAD FATHER’S SKETCHBOOK WAS WORTH MORE THAN THE MAFIA EMPIRE ITSELF
Rosalyn fired.
Kellan moved before Maeve heard the shot.
He slammed Maeve to the floor.
The bullet struck the wall.
Kellan’s men stormed inside.
Rosalyn dropped the gun.
“Don’t shoot!”
Kellan stood.
His calm terrified Maeve more than anger.
“You aimed a gun at your daughter.”
Rosalyn sobbed.
“I was scared.”
Maeve laughed.
Scared.
The word was almost impressive.
“You blamed me for the crash.”
Rosalyn looked at her.
“You lied about being blind.”
“You drove drunk.”
“You distracted me!”
“No.”
Maeve stood.
“No more.”
Rosalyn stopped.
Maeve removed her dark glasses.
“You don’t get to tell that story anymore.”
Rosalyn’s expression crumbled.
“I’m your mother.”
“And I’m your daughter.”
Maeve stepped closer.
“You were supposed to protect me.”
Rosalyn looked toward Kellan.
“Victor made me do things.”
Kellan’s eyes sharpened.
“What things?”
Rosalyn refused to answer.
Kellan ordered his men to leave.
Then placed the gun on the table.
Far from everyone.
“Tell us about Patrick.”
Rosalyn began crying.
Maeve felt nothing.
Her mother had used tears as currency for years.
Finally:
“Your father worked for Victor.”
Maeve closed her eyes.
“He discovered Victor was moving more than stolen goods through the port.”
“What?”
“People.”
Kellan’s expression darkened.
Rosalyn continued.
“Women. Runaways. Immigrants whose documents were taken.”
Maeve felt sick.
“Dad found records.”
“He copied them.”
“The sketchbook.”
“Yes.”
“Victor killed him?”
Rosalyn looked away.
Maeve understood.
“You knew.”
“I had you!”
“You knew.”
“I was terrified!”
“So you stayed with the man who killed Dad?”
“No.”
Rosalyn looked toward Kellan.
“I worked for him.”
Maeve almost laughed.
Of course.
Rosalyn had spent years pretending to be helpless.
Perhaps mother and daughter had both lived behind performances.
The difference was what they protected.
Maeve’s lie protected herself.
Rosalyn’s protected her choices.
“Why my accident?”
Rosalyn covered her face.
“You found Patrick’s storage unit.”
“How did Victor know?”
“I told him.”
Maeve felt something inside her finally detach.
Not break.
Detach.
Rosalyn continued.
“Victor thought Patrick had hidden evidence with you.”
“So you drove me somewhere.”
“I was supposed to scare you.”
“You were drunk.”
“Yes.”
“You crashed.”
“Yes.”
“And afterward?”
“Victor told me if you remembered anything—”
“You told everyone I caused it.”
Rosalyn nodded.
Maeve turned away.
Kellan said:
“And Eleanor Holloway?”
Rosalyn looked at him.
“Your mother discovered Victor’s trafficking operation before Patrick did.”
Kellan’s face hardened.
“She tried to expose him.”
“I don’t know everything.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Victor moved her.”
“When?”
“Twenty-nine years ago.”
Kellan had been eight.
Maeve looked at him.
He seemed carved from stone.
“She didn’t abandon me.”
It was barely audible.
Rosalyn shook her head.
“No.”
The mythology of Kellan Holloway’s life collapsed in one sentence.
He had believed his mother left him.
That abandonment had become the first brick in the wall around him.
Nobody stays.
Nobody can be trusted.
Now it might all have been manufactured.
Maeve understood something uncomfortable.
Kellan and she had built their lives around lies other people gave them.
She had become blind because her mother made truth dangerous.
Kellan had become untouchable because someone convinced him love had abandoned him.
Victor Ashby had shaped both of them.
Kellan contacted federal authorities.
Maeve was surprised.
“You’re calling the FBI?”
“Yes.”
“You’re Kellan Holloway.”
“I’m familiar with my name.”
“You have crimes in those ledgers too.”
“Yes.”
“You could go to prison.”
“Yes.”
Maeve studied him.
“Why?”
Kellan looked at Patrick’s sketchbook.
“Because if these records prove trafficking, this stopped being about my empire.”
For the first time, Maeve wondered whether the man behind the nickname was more complicated than the legend.
Rosalyn was placed in protective custody after agreeing to cooperate.
Maeve did not forgive her.
She did not promise to.
The following weeks became dangerous.
Victor learned the sketchbook survived.
Finn Gallagher disappeared.
Two warehouses burned.
A sniper fired into one of Kellan’s vehicles.
Maeve was moved to a secure property outside Boston.
She hated every minute.
“I’m not a prisoner.”
Kellan answered:
“No.”
“Then stop putting guards outside my door.”
“There are men trying to kill you.”
“Then teach me how to recognize them.”
Kellan stared.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
So he did.
Maeve learned security routines.
Situational awareness.
Emergency procedures.
But she refused firearms.
“I spent four years pretending not to see violence. I’m not building my next life around preparing to create it.”
Kellan respected that.
Instead Maeve became useful in another way.
Patrick’s sketchbook contained thousands of disguised entries.
Maeve could decode them faster than anyone.
Her visual memory returned.
So did something else.
Her desire to draw.
One night Kellan found her at the kitchen table.
She was drawing his hand.
“What are you doing?”
Maeve immediately covered the page.
“Nothing.”
“You’re drawing.”
“No.”
“I can see it.”
“Congratulations.”
He sat opposite her.
“Why did you stop?”
“You know why.”
“You lost one eye.”
Maeve looked up sharply.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not minimizing it.”
“It sounds like you are.”
Kellan nodded.
“Fair.”
Silence.
Then:
“But losing one eye did not remove what was in your hands.”
Maeve looked at the drawing.
“I was scared.”
“Of failing?”
“Of finding out I wasn’t who I used to be.”
Kellan understood.
That made her angry.
Because she understood him too.
“Why Undertaker?”
He sighed.
“You’re changing subjects.”
“Yes.”
“People started calling me that when I took over.”
“Did you make people disappear?”
“Some.”
Maeve stopped drawing.
Kellan did not soften the truth.
“I have done things you would hate.”
“Do you regret them?”
“Some.”
“Not all?”
“No.”
She appreciated the answer more than a lie.
“Then why help the FBI?”
“Because Victor built an empire on people who couldn’t fight back.”
“And yours?”
Kellan looked at her.
“Built on fear.”
“Better?”
“No.”
The answer surprised her.
“What happens when Victor is gone?”
Kellan leaned back.
“I don’t know.”
Maeve studied his face.
Then resumed drawing.
“You’re going to need a better answer.”
Three days later, investigators found Eleanor Holloway.
Alive.
Sixty-eight years old.
Living under another name in a care facility in Maine.
Kellan did not believe it until he saw the photograph.
His mother had advanced multiple sclerosis.
Her memory was inconsistent.
But she remembered her son.
Kellan stood outside her room for twelve minutes.
Maeve waited.
“You coming?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“This belongs to you.”
Kellan looked frightened.
Maeve had never seen him frightened.
“She left.”
“No.”
“She didn’t come back.”
“She was imprisoned by Victor’s people for six years, then escaped.”
“She could have found me.”
“Maybe.”
“What if she chose not to?”
Maeve said:
“Then ask her.”
Kellan entered.
Eleanor looked at him.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then she whispered:
“Kell?”
The Undertaker broke.
He knelt beside her wheelchair.
His mother touched his face.
“I looked for you.”
Kellan closed his eyes.
Maeve quietly walked away.
Later, Eleanor explained.
After escaping Victor, she had tried to retrieve Kellan.
Victor threatened to kill him.
She stayed away.
Years later she attempted contact again.
Victor intercepted it.
Then illness took her independence.
Kellan listened.
He did not instantly forgive.
Maeve respected that.
Reunion was not magic.
Love did not erase twenty-nine years.
But it created somewhere to begin.
Meanwhile, Maeve decoded Patrick’s final pages.
One contained a map.
A warehouse beneath an abandoned shipping terminal.
Federal agents searched it.
They discovered an underground records room.
Documents.
Passports.
Photographs.
Names.
Evidence stretching decades.
And one photograph changed everything.
Victor Ashby standing beside Patrick Donnelly.
Between them was a much younger Kellan.
Age eight.
On the back:
INSURANCE.
Maeve showed Kellan.
He stared.
“What does it mean?”
Eleanor knew.
Victor had threatened to kill Kellan if she exposed him.
Kellan had not merely lost his mother.
He had been used as leverage.
The revelation did something unexpected.
It did not make Kellan angrier.
It made him tired.
“I built my whole life because I thought she abandoned me.”
Maeve sat beside him.
“And I built mine because I believed being unseen was safer.”
He looked at her.
“What do we do with that?”
“Build something else.”
Kellan touched her cheek.
Slowly.
Giving her time to move away.
She did not.
Their first kiss was quiet.
No dramatic confession.
No ownership.
Just two damaged people discovering closeness did not have to be a trap.
Then Kellan’s phone rang.
Victor Ashby had taken Eleanor from the care facility.
A message followed.
Bring Patrick Donnelly’s original sketchbook to Pier 19.
Come alone.
Or this time, your mother disappears permanently.
Maeve read the message.
Kellan reached for his coat.
“You’re not going.”
He looked at her.
“That wasn’t a question.”
Maeve stood.
“Good.”
She picked up the sketchbook.
“Because neither was my answer.”
Kellan stared.
“Maeve.”
“You need someone who understands the book.”
“No.”
“You need someone Victor still believes is blind.”
“No.”
She put on her dark glasses.
Lifted the white cane.
And transformed before him into the woman the entire city underestimated.
Kellan went silent.
May you like
Maeve smiled.
“Let him believe the lie one last time.”
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