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“I don’t need one.”
I frowned, but he didn’t say anything more.
He’s not very friendly, is he?
Even if he didn’t want to be friends, maybe he could at least help me out. Giving him the same big grin that usually worked on my father, I asked, “Would you pick me an apple from the tree? My da doesn’t want me to climb it.”
The boy reached with his free hand, and he picked the biggest, reddest one. He held it out to me, and I paused, my eyes drifting back and forth from his stone face to the fruit I’d been forbidden to eat.
As I carefully took the apple from his grip, he asked, “What’s your name?”
“Willa. What’s yours?”
The boy flicked his cigarette to the ground, and then crushed it with his bare foot while he continued to watch me.
“Lucifer.”
Without wiping the apple on my shirt, I took a bite.
Lucifer
13 Years Later
A tooth skidded across the concrete floor.
I wiped my bloodied knuckles with a rag. The last punch had slipped. The next one wouldn’t.
I rammed my fist into the bridge of Dimitri Molotov’s nose. The chair he was bound to rocked backward before settling on four legs again.
The Maritime Industrial Park warehouse in Southie served as more than the Flynn Syndicate’s armory and cargo storage. It was also an excellent location to make our enemies spill their guts—figuratively and literally. These walls had witnessed atrocities that braver men who’d fought legitimate wars hadn’t had to endure.
Our adversaries were infinite. For the Flynns to remain the most formidable and most feared crime family east of New York, we needed to sustain our savage tactics.
The Russian spat a wad of congealed blood as fresh vital liquid poured from his nostrils. He glared at me from under swollen eyelids that had turned a deep shade of purple. “It was the fucking Albanians!”
I drew my Glock 22 from its back holster and undid the safety. Leaning forward, I pressed the muzzle into the soft flesh of the inside of his knee.
Molotov spewed Russian fury.
At this angle, I’d rip the entire joint to shreds with one perfectly placed bullet.
“I am the son of the fucking Pakhan!” he choked out. “You Irish bastard!”
Given my disposition and line of work, facts were the currency I dealt in. His first statement was truth. His second—a fucking lie.
Indeed, he was the son of Kostya Molotov, the head of Boston’s Bratva.
But I was the son of an Irish Mob boss—the Ceann na Conairte—Lachlan Flynn and his departed wife, Nessa. My parents were wed in a traditional Catholic ceremony at Boston’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1990. Two fucking years before I was born.
I was many despicable things, but an Irish bastard was not one of them.
An image of the Virgin Mary statue covered in my mother’s blood swam in my vision.
I pulled the trigger once for the erroneous name-calling. Then I shot out the Russian’s other kneecap for making me recall my mother’s untimely death.
His body went limp from shock.
That was a fucking fact.
