🐎 The Horsewoman Who Hid the Bullet Meant for the Mafia Boss

Chapter 09 - The Tape of Dead Men

No one at Ashgrove owned a cassette player anymore.

Of course they didn’t.

The house possessed crystal chandeliers, armored cars, a climate-controlled wine cellar, and a panic room hidden behind a library shelf, but nothing ordinary enough to play the voice of a dead man.

Bridey finally found one in her own room, wrapped in a towel beside old hymn books and a radio with a bent antenna.

“My nephew bought it for me in 1998,” she said. “I told him CDs were a passing fancy.”

Rowan might have smiled if her hands had not been shaking.

They played the tape in Declan’s study because it had thick walls and only one door.

Declan set the cassette into the player himself.

For several seconds there was only static.

Then Liam Sheehan’s voice filled the room.

Rowan gripped the chair back.

She had forgotten certain textures of him. The roughness at the edge of his words. The way his vowels held Galway though he had lived half his life in America. The quiet amusement that remained even when fear tried to smother it.

“If this is playing,” Liam said, “then I failed to explain myself while breathing.”

Bridey closed her eyes.

Declan stood by the window, his face turned partly away.

“I have records,” Liam continued. “Not enough for police. Police can be bought. Not enough for newspapers. Editors can be threatened. Enough for the right person, if that person still has a soul to offend.”

The tape clicked, shifted.

“Padraig Kavanagh arranged Seamus O’Rourke’s death. Finbar knew after. Aileen knew before she died. The money ran through Ashgrove sales, claiming bloodstock transfers that never happened. Horses as laundries. Horses as graves.”

Declan’s hand curled into a fist.

Rowan watched the knuckles whiten.

“The boy, Declan, is O’Rourke blood. That makes him dangerous to Padraig if he ever learns it. Not because of sentiment. Because Aileen signed documents transferring her shares in Ashgrove to her son under the original family trust. Finbar hid them. Padraig wanted them destroyed.”

The machine hissed.

“If Declan controls Ashgrove outright, Padraig loses the safest corridor he has.”

Rowan whispered, “The shipping records.”

Declan looked at her.

“Ashgrove horses travel internationally,” she said. “Blood samples, semen shipments, sales papers. No one questions horse boxes if the paperwork looks rich enough.”

Bridey nodded once.

The tape continued.

“I gave copies to Cormac’s father, to Bridey, and to Aileen’s solicitor. If I die, it will not be drink or shame. It will be because someone decided the truth had more value buried.”

A pause.

Then Liam’s voice changed.

Softened.

“Rowan, if somehow this finds you—”

She made a sound before she could swallow it.

Declan turned fully now.

“My brave girl,” Liam said, and there was a smile in his voice so real that Rowan had to sit down. “I hope you grew up stubborn. I hope your mother forgave me for leaving trouble behind. I hope you never came near this cursed house. But if you did, because you love a horse or because truth pulled you by the sleeve, remember this: do not let them make grief your master. It is a poor rider and a worse god.”

The tape clicked again.

Static.

Silence.

No one moved.

Then the study door opened.

Finn stood there, white-faced.

“Sir.”

Declan looked up.

“What is it?”

The boy held out a phone.

On the screen was live footage from the stable camera.