Conspiracies - Mercedes Lackey [108]
There was awkward silence for a moment. “Well,” Addie said judiciously, “that’s not the sort of thing I want to hear out of a guy, but—”
“That’s not why I’m here,” Muirin interrupted. “Okay, that was bad enough, because I don’t like being anyone’s substitute mama, but then he started telling me about his family. Only I mean Family, with a capital “F.” He’s Bratva.”
“Holy crap,” Loch swore. “Russkaya Mafiya. Maf. Russian Mafia. Now a whole lot of stuff starts to make sense.”
“Yeah,” Muirin said bitterly. “He told me all about his connections. His father is supposed to be pretty big stuff; specializes in murder-for-hire and he’s a high-dollar smuggler. Which is how Dr. Ambrosius met him and then met Anastus, and Dr. Ambrosius persuaded the old man to let Anastus come to Oakhurst.”
There was a shocked silence when Muirin stopped talking. “You mean—” Addie said in a small voice.
“Yes, I do. I don’t know that Ambrosius ever used him as a contract killer, but he’s been using him to get stuff into the country he wouldn’t be able to get legally.”
“Like?” Addie prompted.
“Magical stuff that also happens to be stolen artifacts.”
“Okay,” Loch said warily. “Well … I can kind of see the need, but that’s dancing really close to the fire. Look, you do not have friends in the Russian Mafia. You have people you’ve killed, people you haven’t killed yet, clients you might have to kill, superiors whose job you are gunning for, and your thug-puppets.” He paused. “My father ran an international financing cartel—Spearhead Venture Partners—and even though we weren’t close, there was just no way I couldn’t absorb a bunch of this stuff just from being around. He’d always get his security firm to investigate potential partners, and if there was even a hint of Bratva about them, he’d back off.”
Muirin nodded. “So Anastus kept talking when I stayed quiet. He told me that when he was sixteen, he took on two of his father’s jobs to prove to his father that he was worthy of being the old man’s heir. And he does the same for Mark Rider, contract killing, except these days he usually has his thugs kill people, he doesn’t do it himself.” Muirin swallowed hard. She looked very white, even in the dim light from the glowing ball in her hand. “And you know, I could almost have gone, ‘Okay, he’s kind of a vigilante, he’s just taking out people like the Shadow Knights, right?’ Except—he’s not. At least, not for Mark Rider. He got really drunk. He told me who some of those people were—some of his victims.” She stopped, and shrank into herself. “Burke … I am so sorry…”
Burke’s head came up, but he looked bewildered. “Huh? What?”
“Your foster parents,” she whispered, staring down at her hands. “It wasn’t an accident, Burke. He killed your foster family and burned the house down around them to cover it up, so you’d have nowhere to go.”
It took all four of them to hold Burke down. But it was Spirit’s shoulder he cried into when he finally broke.
* * *
Spirit stared into the darkness of her room for a very, very long time that night. It was more vindication for her, but—yeah. It was vindication she’d really rather not have had. This was the hard evidence that the Shadow Knights and the Gatekeepers were one and the same. Maybe not all of them, but certainly Mark Rider and his core group. Even Muirin agreed. Spirit had been vindicated.
But Burke …
Poor Burke.
She was pretty sure he wasn’t going to run off and do anything stupid now, although if they hadn’t restrained him, in those first few moments he probably would have. The big question now was, what were they going to do about all of this? They were in the middle of enemy territory. The enemy didn’t yet know that they knew, and the longer they kept that a secret, the better off they’d be, but …
Then she remembered what QUERCUS had said. Ignorance and powerlessness is your greatest defense. And now that made sense. The longer they looked stupid and weak, the more likely it was that they’d be left alone.