Cormac’s Father Is Assassinated and Mickey Seizes Power

The killing of Cormac MacKay’s father and Mickey MacFarland’s takeover mark a sudden transfer of power within the family and leave Cormac in immediate danger. The event is revealed through Moira’s shaken phone call: a quiet meeting planned over coffee becomes a murder, a coup, and a warning that reaches Cormac just as Mickey’s men find him.

Setting and Immediate Circumstances

Cormac’s father had arranged to meet Moira for coffee at the compound, the family’s casino on the fifteenth floor. The casino was one of the family’s many covers around town, alongside bars, laundries, and electronics stores, but it had become his favorite and the family’s base of operations. The ordinary purpose of the meeting gives the violence that follows its first sharp contrast: Moira had come expecting time with her father, not an attack.

Moira tells Cormac that Mickey came into the compound carrying a large gun. Cormac initially objects that Mickey had been missing, making his return itself a startling turn in the account. Moira explains that her father had made her hide in a closet because there was noise outside. From there she witnessed Mickey kill him. Her account is fragmented by grief; she struggles to continue, then hurries through the sequence as though speaking quickly might keep her from breaking down again.

The Killing and the Takeover

Moira’s account establishes both the manner of the killing and its political consequence. Mickey entered with a shotgun and shot Cormac’s father; Moira survived because she had been concealed in the closet at her father’s direction. The family’s meeting place, normally a center of operations, becomes the site where its leadership is violently displaced.

The death is not presented as an isolated attack. Moira tells Cormac that Mickey is now the family’s Don and has taken over the family. Her warning links the murder directly to a change in power: with Cormac’s father dead, Mickey’s return has become a seizure of control. The evidence establishes the outcome but does not describe a formal succession or the full mechanics of Mickey’s takeover.

The Warning Reaches Cormac

Cormac is away from the compound, speaking with Moira by phone while at a bar with Scarlet O’Bannon. When Moira urges him to leave wherever he is and come to her, she makes clear that she fears losing both her father and Cormac. Her warning is interrupted by another immediate threat: five of Mickey’s men enter the bar. Their tattoos, the knuckle dusters carried by some of them, and the outlines of guns beneath the clothing of others make them identifiable as armed mob men; Cormac concludes that they belong to Mickey.

The call changes Cormac’s priorities at once. He tells Moira to stay where she is, remain safe, and be smart, then hangs up so he can deal with the men entering the bar and get Scarlet out of danger. He reports the essentials to Scarlet in a deliberately cold, emotionless manner: his father is dead, the men helped kill him, his cousin has taken over the family, and they have come for him. His restraint is practical rather than evidence that the news has left him untouched; he sets aside his response because he believes emotion would interfere with what he must do next.

Scarlet’s Response and the Event’s Stakes

Scarlet is already watching the approaching men, her hands near her handbag. When Cormac explains the danger, she tells him to turn toward her, nod, and act as though he is listening, hoping they will not recognize him. He follows her suggestion. Her confidence rests on an earlier instance in which she helped evade people following them: she pretended to be drunk, went onstage to sing karaoke, and made their pursuers think Cormac was simply out with a partygoer. In this scene, that remembered improvisation becomes a practical model for concealment.

The event therefore moves from concealed violence to an exposed threat in a public place. Moira’s testimony confirms the death and the change in leadership; the arrival of five armed men shows that the danger has traveled beyond the compound and reached Cormac. For him, grief must be deferred in favor of immediate survival and Scarlet’s safety. For Moira, the call is both an account of what she witnessed and an attempt to prevent the family’s new power struggle from taking another person she loves.