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They both turned, as if they had forgotten I was there. They very well could have on their stroll through memory lane.
Gliding over to me, Evelyn kissed my cheek. “What we’re trying to say is, Liam is going to get a little more possessive of you with your child on the way. He doesn’t mean to be, and he probably has no idea why he’s acting this way.”
“Can’t I just sedate him for the remaining six months?” If not, I might not make it.
Sedric snickered. “And deal with all of that rage at once? You’re safer taking it in doses.”
“If that fails, marijuana cookies work wonders,” she grinned, causing Sedric’s face to drop.
“You drugged me?” he yelled.
Standing quickly, Evelyn strode towards the door. “Come, love, we don’t want to be late. I’m sure Mel would love some quiet time.”
“Evelyn.” He stalked forward, but she was gone, running as quickly as she could, laughing all the way. He winked at me before running after her.
“This is one fucked up family,” I alleged, rubbing my stomach. I tried to imagine its future with us, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t see how this would work…especially if I killed its father.
“You’re not allowed to be crazy, you hear me?” I murmured down to it before standing. However, I froze, staring wide-eyed at my stomach.
“Mel?” Declan and Coraline called, stepping in also dressed to impress. What kind of festival was this?
“Are you okay?” Coraline exclaimed, rushing beside me.
“No. Yes. I’m fine, the baby just moved… I think it heard me.” No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop the large smile from blossoming.
It felt weird, but a good kind of weird.
“Can I feel—”
“No,” I snapped, harsher than I meant to. “Liam’s already in a prissy mood, he should feel it next. Declan, is the Internet working again?”
“Yeah, so are the phones. The wiring in this house is shit, but it should be more stable now.”
“Well then, when you’re done dancing in the streets, check up on our friend Roy.”
LIAM
I could easily slit his throat from here, I thought as I stared daggers into the back of his skull.
He touched her. He was with her at one point before me, and it made my blood boil. The way he stared at her on that cliff, and the very fact he had touched her waist was enough to make me want to rip his head from his neck.
“This is it.” Fedel parked and Jinx stepped out, opening the door for me with no emotion displayed on his face. He stood shoulder to shoulder to me.
“I’m inclined to kill you,” I told him, rolling up my selves.
“Yes, sir.”
“Give me a reason not to.”
“I was so drunk I don’t remember a thing,” he stated. “And I’m a damn good pilot.”
Monte stepped outside the sorry excuse for a house, holding the door for me to enter. “So you say, but this isn’t over.”
Walking forward, I couldn’t help but notice that the Briars had downscaled quite drastically. It had taken us a week to find them because we had thought a family as uptight and aristocratic as the Briars could not bear to spend time in the countryside. And yet, here they were, in a tiny one bedroom, rat infested cabin with a hole in the roof and floor. It was as if they were hiding from Hitler. Gone were the opulent foyers and gilded frames. Now they had nothing but the clothes on their backs and I needed to know why.
They sat quietly in the living room, facing the door as I walked into the kitchen. Sighing, I grabbed the last beer in the fridge and took a seat before the very stupid family who had tried to run from me.
“Natasha is dead, Mr. Briar,” I told him, popping the top of my beer with the edge of his table.
The aging man frowned and simply nodded. “Did you come all this way to tell me that, Liam? A letter would have sufficed.”
Before I could speak, Fedel’s pistol connected with his jaw, unleashing a small river of blood and a tooth from his lips. I felt his pain. Mel’s punch hurt like a bitch and it would look worse in the morning.
“It’s Mr. Callahan to you,” Fedel sneered, pulling his head back up.
Whoever said good help was hard to find obviously wasn’t looking in the right places.
“Let me rephrase my question: why is your daughter dead?” Not that the bitch wasn’t playing with her luck anyway.
“You killed her.” Mr. Briar spit out another tooth and blood at my shoes.
“Sorry, wrong answer.” I nodded at Fedel, who took his cue to bash Brair’s face in with his fist.
“Let’s try this again. Why is your daughter dead?”
“I don’t know! If you didn’t kill her, I don’t know! Just leave us be,” he begged. Grown men shouldn’t beg. Not even for death.
“Fedel.”
Fedel drew his gun and fired into the man’s stomach. I sat back and sipped my drink impassively; he didn’t know anything, and as my wife would say, he was wasting words. His wife and second daughter all stood by the stairs watching in horror as he fell back in to the chair.
“DORAN!”
“DAD!”
They screamed. I’m not sure why though. “He will bleed out and die right here if I don’t get answers, ladies.”
“You MONSTER!” his wife yelled.
“If I got a dollar for every time someone called me a monster, I could end world hunger.”
“Just leave us alone! Whatever you want, take it, just leave us the hell alone!” She sobbed, falling to her knees near her husband’s body. His blood soaked her jeans and jacket, while her daughter seemed too shocked to even move, let alone speak. She just sat there, staring at the pool of blood as it crept closer to her.
Rising, I pulled her to her feet by her hair before turning to her mother and father; she was shaking against Jinx’s knife so badly, it was cutting into her neck.
“I want answers!” I declared stoically in her face as her daughter struggled against me. “I swear to you, you will not only have to bury your husband, but your remaining children as well, so find your fucking voice!”
I released her daughter, and she fell to the ground, sobbing as she went. Stepping over her, I glared into the withered old eyes of Natasha’s mother as tears ran down her cheeks.
“He…he said… he said he would kill us all,” she uttered to me.
Putting Jinx’s knife away, I wiped her tears. “He won’t hurt you like I will if I don’t find out what I need to know.”
“It’s all your father’s fault!” She declared wide-eyed. “He was supposed to marry me. Shamus made a deal with Ivan. Everyone made a deal with Ivan DeRosa because that’s what you were supposed to do!”
She began to shake, dropping her head as she wrapped her arms around herself. Fuck, I was losing her.
“Go on,” I spoke, grabbing her shoulders and forcing her to meet my gaze. She looked right through me. “What do you mean, that’s what you were supposed to do?”
“To keep order. The drug business is a big one. No one man can control it all. There has to be a balance; you can only be so powerful. There is only so much crime the world will ignore before they call for justice. Ivan is the scale. He has the power and allows you to have pieces of that within reason. Shamus was too powerful, too cocky, and the feds caught him. But Ivan made it go away, he can make anything go away, all Shamus had to do was get Sedric to marry me.” She whispered to herself as she rocked back and forth.
