I groaned in protest at the alarm on the nightstand. "Derrick, turn it off," I grumbled into the pillow.

He chuckled but hit the snooze button. He was already dressed and ready for work. It was like that every morning. He would wake up at least an hour before his alarm was set, forget it was set, get ready for work, and then listen to me gripe about his damn alarm.

"Do ya have to work today?" I whined, sitting up on the bed, dressed in one of his long button-up shirts. I rubbed at my eyes and yawned as he laughed.

"Yes, I do. But, how about we go out tonight? After work, I'll call you and we can decide what to do from there."

I grinned and nodded. "Okay."

He leaned down and kissed me quickly, but didn't pull too far away.

I smiled, our faces still mere inches apart. "My fiancé the workin' man."

He laughed and kissed me again. As usual, the first thing that popped into my head when he kissed me was not Derrick Duffy, but Murphy MacManus. And, as usual, the first thing I felt was a guilty mixture of heartache and desire.

"Ill see you later then," he said, picking his coat up and tossing it on.

I nodded, pointing at him with a gun-like finger gesture. "Ya bet yer ass."

He exited the apartment and left for work.

I sighed when I was alone, anxious for whatever it was that I could feel in my gut was coming. Nervous for my wedding in only a single month. Happy that I was getting married. Depressed that Murphy and Connor MacManus were still in Ireland. At least as far as I knew.

I decided, now, a month from the wedding, I should probably decide the flowers and other wedding whatnot.

"Whatever you want. You decide," Derrick had told me when we started to discuss the details of the wedding.

My relationship with Detective Duffy was pleasant, comfortable, normal. He was sweet and funny (even though it was mainly when he wasn't trying to be that he was) and I could tell he loved me a lot. But my relationship with Murphy had been electric, dangerous, out of the blue, constantly in a state of movement, always running from one thing or another.

There was excitement and passion and soul-deep love. With Derrick, we had all those things, but on a lesser degree. There wasn't much in the way of excitement except for the quickly coming wedding. There was passion, but not the beautiful, heartbreakingly ever-present passion Murphy and I had shared. And love? There was most definitely love. But, even with that stupid, stubborn Irishman in another country from me, I loved him more than anyone.

But I was moving on. I had built a life with Detective Derrick Duffy and had even come to love him. We had started dating a few weeks after I was released from intensive care eight years ago. He had asked me to move in with him three years later.

And then, almost a year ago, he asked me to marry him. And I had been ecstatic and accepted. He had made sure everything was perfect. The lighting, the atmosphere, the people around us. Smecker had been there as well… But he was gone now.

I sighed and stood from the bed, traversing the wooden floor to the closet. In the bottom were two large boxes. One was a box of my old stuff. Memories, I guess you could say. Old photographs, letters, tickets, and other things of the sort. In the other was all of the wedding decisions I had yet to make.

I had been going for the box of marital details, but upon seeing the old box that used to sit in the corner of my room in the apartment I used to live in across the hall from the MacManus brothers… I had to at least peek inside again. I hefted the box up and onto the bed.

Near the top was more recent stuff. Me with South Boston's finest detectives. There were some of the four of us when we went camping last spring. There were a couple of the night Tommy proposed to me, Greenly's eyes closed and mouth opened in every one. I chuckled at them and tossed them onto the bed beside the box.

Farther inside, I found an old key ring with both an old copy of the door to my old loft and one to the MacManus boys'. I sighed and dropped them, jingling, onto the photos.

Below that, was the letter.

"Dear Kira,

I'm sorry I had to do this. Trust me, I didn't want to. Especially not with you asleep. But things are getting too hot in Boston for me and Connor.

I know you hate him and I thought I did for a while, too, but the man that shot you is my father. Noah MacManus.

By the time you're reading this, if you ever get the chance to, I will already have left the united states for Ireland with Conn and Da. We killed Yakavetta. He killed Rocco. I'm sorry, I know I'm pretty much leaving you with no one.

But I love you. Forever.

Murphy MacManus."

Even now, reading it hurt. My eyes stung and my stomach clenched up. But I had learned to handle it over the years. The thing that always broke me was his signature, the goofy, scrawling handwriting of a kindergartner. Murphy never had been very good with writing utensils.

I sighed, eyeing the old tearstains on the worn out, crumpled up, taped-together old piece of paper.

Under the note were clippings of various newspapers, all telling of the Saints of South Boston. They had never known that there were more than two. At least not until they learned about Rocco. They had never known there was a girl as a part of the saints.

I dropped the news clippings aside, exposing some old photos. David Della Rocco had been one of my best friends along with the MacManus twins. He had died the night I was wounded bad enough to be placed in intensive care for almost a month.

Another picture, I remembered taking (which was odd because it was taken in a bar). And any time I was in that particular bar, I tend to not remember things like taking pictures or pulling harmless pranks on Rocco. But this one was memorable.

It was the night Connor had thrown a surprise birthday party for me at McGinty's, the old Irish pub we went to close to every night. We were old friends of the bartender and owner, Doc. I had gotten another bar attendant to take the picture.

In it you could clearly see the polished wood bar, the stools knocked everywhere. Doc didn't much mind rowdiness in his bar.

I had on a big pink frilly birthday hat that Connor and Murphy had picked out. The print on it had been 16, but Connor had cleverly scratched it out with a black marker and wrote in 27. On either side of me was a MacManus brother, Connor smiling in that way of his that made the bottom of his eyes crinkle. Murphy, quietly grinning with his arm around my shoulders. Rocco was standing behind me, a hand on my shoulder and a cheesy smile plastered on his face for the camera. Doc, beside Connor, was in the middle of stuttering out something. Probably a retort to Connor's joke about his mismatched proverbs.

I decided I had some errands to run. First, like I did at least once every month, I visited Rocco's memorial in a hall of pictures and names. I bent my head and prayed, for the boys to be alright wherever they were, for Rocco to be at peace, and for Doc to get over whatever odd stomachache it was that he had.

After that, I went by McGinty's. I came here every night just before Derrick got off work to check on Doc and relive the golden years.

"Hey, Doc," I greeted the old man, hanging my scarf on the coat rack by the door.

The old bar had changed very little over the years. Most of the scuffs and torn up furniture had been either repaired or replaced, the lights were brighter now, illuminating the bar so it wasn't as dingy as it had been. I had liked the dinginess, but it was easier to see, so I still liked it. There wasn't much of the familiar old chaos in the bar anymore. No more bar stools overturned, drunken men passed out in the corner from the night before, or tables with splintering edges from where a fight had broken out. It was lacking two of its most rowdy patrons.

I wasn't as much of a drinker as I had been, but every now and then I indulged. I'm Irish I couldn't stay away from Guinness for too long at one time. But the fact that I'm Irish means that my definition of "every now and then" is probably a little warped when its alcohol we're talking about.

Doc stuttered out a greeting and waved me over.

I sat down at the bar, the seat I had sat in every day since I started coming here 13 years ago. "Thirteen years, Doc," I muttered, looking around at the old place. It had come to be like home. "Do ya think the boys miss it here? In the bar? Do ya think they miss us?" I glanced back at him.

He set down the glass he had been cleaning and laid his frail old hand on my arm. "D-Don't ya worry now, K-K-Kira. The Lord t-told me they'd be comin'. Th-th-they're on their way right now I bet ya."

I smiled up at the old man, putting my hand over his, saddened both because this poor old man obviously whole-heartedly believed it, and because I desperately wanted to. "Well, Doc, I'll be back tomorrow night, alright? I've got lots to do with the wedding plannin' and everything. Ya take care," I said, leaning across the bar to peck him on the cheek.

I was on my way to a bakery to sample cakes, when I passed an appliance store with dozens of different kinds of television sets in the window. Every single one of them was tuned to Channel 25 live news. I paused momentarily, just checking the story.

"There is no new information on the victim found slain this morning inside the Church of the Holy Saints."

My eyes widened as I took in the sight of the church I attended every Sunday and Wednesday. The same church the boys had gone to.

"As you can see, the crowd here has increased substantially as we have confirmed that the body was ritualized with pennies in the eyes. Many remember this as the grisly calling card of the prolific vigilante known as the saints," I gasped. That couldn't be the boys. They would never, ever kill a priest. "who went on a murder spree here in Boston - A rampage that ended eight years ago when the Saints brazenly walked into open court and executed Mafia don Papa Joe Yakavetta before a courtroom of terrified witnesses and then simply disappeared without a trace."

Clips of the passionate display of law-laying the boys and their father had given eight years ago in a courtroom played. I forced myself to look away when I saw Murphy's face. I had seen the clips before, though I had been knocked out when it actually took place.

"As police have yet to confirm the Saints' possible involvement, the ominous question hangs heavy in the air. Are they back?"

I raced as fast as I could back to the apartment I shared with Derrick, the entire time, Doc's statement about the boys coming back echoing around in my head.