The Devil’s Keepsake by Somme Sketcher
Poppy
“It’s you. From the funeral,” I gasp.
I feel like I’m staring at a ghost. A window into a memory that makes my skin crawl.
His dark eyes trace the outline of my face, before they drag over my head.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, as I turn to follow his gaze.
A camera. Nestled between the leaves of the bushes. A few feet along, there’s another. I try to regain my composure, forcing a nonchalant veil over my face.
“Shall we walk?” I manage.
My plan to absorb every inch of the outside world that I’m allowed access to has gone straight out of the window. Elaborate flower patches bursting with colors pass by in a blur. I barely even register the sprawling manor that forms the heart of the estate. Big buildings. Colorful flowers. Cillian, the boy from the funeral.
Only one of those things do I need an immediate answer for.
He walks a few feet behind me at all times. Every gardener, maid, or landscaper I pass offers me a polite smile, before looking over my head and breaking into a grin at the sight of him.
Their reactions dash all possibility that he’s just like me. Held here against his will.
Is he a Quinn?
Nothing about this makes sense. The questions bubble up in my stomach, and when they threaten to overflow, I spin around to face him. “What are you doing here?” I hiss, not caring about the cameras or the henchmen watching us.
His face doesn’t move an inch. “Perhaps you’d be interested in the rose garden, Miss Murphy? It’s a personal project of mine that I’m truly quite fond of.”
I’m numb as I follow him down a cobbled path. It snakes away from the looming manor, shaded by a cluster of willow trees. At the bottom, there’s a wrought iron gate that lets out a heavy groan when he pushes it open.
I’m taken aback by the unexpected beauty of it, if only for a moment. From dusky pinks to sun-kissed yellows, roses of all forms burst from bushes and grass verges, snaking up the cobbled walls and stretching around a white veranda. A narrow stone path leads to the middle, where a water fountain and benches offer unwanted relief from all of the beauty.
Cillian stops to rub a velvety petal on a nearby white rose. “Marcus Murphy’s daughter. He finally came for you too.” My mouth opens but nothing comes out. “Relax. No cameras or microphones in here.”
His pale face is a cocktail of sharp lines and darkness. His gray eyes are framed with black circles, and the way his lips contort upwards tells me he hasn’t smiled properly in years.
“What are you doing here?” I eventually ask.
“The same thing you’re doing here. A debt owed.”
The weight of his words pushes me down onto the bench, and I fight the nausea rising in my stomach. I remember every line of Cillian’s sharp face, even after all these years. The boy with the Doc Martens and the attitude. I remember how he shoved past me to sit right at the front row. He was fearless.
If he hasn’t escaped by now, then what chance do I have?
“Cheer up, Murphy,” he says, tugging out the clippers from his tool belt. “It ain’t that bad.”
“What do you do here?”
“What everyone else does in the Quinn estate,” he frowns, leaning closer to inspect the nearest rose bush. With an expert snip, he clips away the dead leaves surrounding the petals. “Anything and everything Lorcan wants.”
“And he wants you to tend to his roses?” I ask, tone dripping with skepticism.
Cillian smirks. “I’m one of his henchmen, Murphy. He clicks his fingers and I pull the trigger. This,” he gestures to the rosebush he’s tending to, “is a hobby he allows me to indulge in.”
I watch him as he plucks a tool from his belt and clips another leaf, discarding it in the soil below the bush. He can’t be older than me, yet I feel like he’s aged a million years since I saw him at the funeral.
Suddenly, I remember the coldness of the church floor against my heels as I dug my feet in, desperate to find out his and his father’s fate. “What did your father do?”
His jaw hardens. “Oisin was working with the Italians. The ones that made the bomb that killed his family.” His voice is laced with venom. I can’t tell who he hates more, his father, who he calls by his first name, or Lorcan.
“Why haven’t you escaped?” I ask, feeling the tears prickling in my eyes. I don’t think I want to know the answer.
“I have a plan.”
Hope hitches in my throat and I rise to my feet. “A plan to escape?”
His eyes narrow at me for a second. Then, he crosses the garden path and turns his attention to a pink rose bush. “I’ve already said too much.”
“No,” I breathe, grabbing his arm. “Tell me, please. When? How?”
He stares at my hand around his wrist. I know it’s clammy and desperate but I don’t fucking care. Help me, I want to scream. Help me get the fuck out of here.
“I have to go. The other henchmen will notice my absence soon.”
When he strides back down the narrow path, I’m at his heels like a lapdog. I can feel the window of opportunity slipping away from me. Before we reach the iron gate, I grab onto the hem of his T-shirt.
He turns, pinning me with a challenging stare. “You should go back to your cage, little girl,” he says sourly, before nodding in the direction of Orna.
“No,” I stammer. There are a million questions I still need answers to. I can’t bear the thought of being back in that goddamn cage with them swirling around my head, unanswered.
“What did he do?” I blurt out. “To your father? What was his punishment?”
Without moving a muscle in his hardened face, he says, “don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “I want to know.”
“You’re too innocent.”
The snort that escapes my lips is borderline manic. Is he insane? “I haven’t been innocent since the day of the funeral.”
He turns to me, gray eyes boring into my soul. Then, he stoops down to the nearest rose bed, clipping a single red rose from the root. As the thick silence swirls between us, he removes each thorn with expert ease.
Eventually, he speaks.
“Buried him alive. In that coffin.”
My knees buckle underneath me. Cillian watches my reaction, emotionless.
“That’s horrific, I’m—”
“Sorry. I know.”
He clips off one last thorn from the rose and he passes it to me with the tenderness you’d handle the Queen’s crown jewels with. I take it, running my fingers over the blood-red velvet petals. “Thank you,” I mumble, trying my hardest to keep the tears at bay.
“We need to get going,” he says, striding towards the gate and tugging it open.
“Do you miss him?”
He turns, piercing me with a stone-cold stare.
“No,” he says with so much bitterness that I know it’s the truth. “My father was a traitor. He deserved everything he got,” he spits.
I physically recoil at the harshness of his words. It makes Cillian smile. “I don’t know what you’re so surprised about, Murphy. Your father wasn’t so innocent either.”
Before I can ask what the hell he means by that, he pushes me through the gate and we’re back in the main grounds, being watched by every housekeeper and henchmen in sight.