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“What will we do?” someone asked.
Olcan looked to see that it was Tom, their accountant, which should in no way give anyone the idea that he was harmless. Tom was an expert in managing the finances of their family in a way that made them look much more legitimate than they were, but he wouldn’t hesitate to rip out a man’s throat with his bare hands if need be, and that was if he was fighting in human form. The damage he was capable of amassing as a bear was considerably more harrowing.
“Right now, just be vigilant. Don’t make my mistake. Be wary of any strangers that cross your path. Vet them thoroughly. I mean, I checked into this girl, but not enough. They’ve added layers to separate themselves from the people they are sending and I have no idea if there are others out there. So, if you have new girlfriends, lovers . . . hell, don’t let the plumber come over without being careful. The Maguires will try to take us down from the top, but if they fail that, they’ll resort to picking off whoever they can and not stop until we’re eliminated.”
“Fuck me,” Tom muttered.
“Look, I’m not hanging anyone out to dry. We’re a clan and we stick together. I’m going to need help from the usual suspects to help me track how this girl made her way into my circle and see if we can find anyone else following the same pattern so we can weed them out before they become a problem. If nothing else has come from my own stupidity, it’s that at least we now have a heads up to what is coming. Otherwise, we could have lost people without realizing why until it was too late. That’s how things fell with my family before we escaped.”
“It sounds like we’re up against Satan himself,” another said.
“It’s an apt comparison. The Maguires are ruthless and will stop at nothing to assume control over our operation here now that they’ve set sights on it. We can kill those they send and they’ll just send more, but they can’t get the numbers here that we have, not quickly anyway. What they can do is continue to send people to parade as friends until such a time as they make themselves known. So, that’s our main concern. Weed out anyone you don’t need in your life and make sure you can trust those that remain.”
Olcan ended the meeting, sending everyone away but his brothers and a few of his top men, giving each of them instructions on how he wanted to proceed. They left with their orders, leaving him alone with Niall and Ronan again.
“You know they won’t stop until they get what they want,” Niall told him.
“Aye.”
“We’re embarking on a hundred-year war here,” Ronan added.
“That we are, but we have no choice.”
“We have a choice. We can take this back to them, go to Ireland and finish what they started,” Ronan replied.
“We could, eventually, but not right now. They have numbers that we just don’t have. We’ve got to be smarter than them, drive them back, make them reconsider if it’s worth it to fight us on another continent.”
“I’m going to do some oppo into their operations there. I still have contacts for some of the auld fella’s spies in Dublin. We need to prepare to switch to offense rather than staying on defense for who knows how long,” Niall said.
“They aren’t our first rival. They won’t be our last,” Ronan replied.
“Aye, but Niall is right. The quicker we can take this bull by the horns, the better. We’ve had rivals, but they were humans and no match for us. We’re at a disadvantage here. We’ve got some strong bears in our ranks, but we’ve not been training like they do in the old country. We need to step that up, immediately. Ronan, you take point on that?”
“Aye. I’ll set up new drills.”
Olcan nodded and waved them off but remained in the large empty room alone. He closed his eyes and tried to push out the longing he felt. It served no purpose anymore.CHAPTER FIFTEENNiamh
NIAMH STEPPED OFF THE bus and walked through the doors of the New York bus terminal, where she would catch a connecting bus further south. There was a two-hour layover there, which would give her a little time to stretch her legs and grab some snacks for the next leg of the trip. She made her way up the nearby escalator into the main portion of the port authority building, feeling like it had only been a few days ago since she arrived in this same place.
She exited the front doors and made her way to one of the local shops that sold everything for ninety-nine cents, throwing some snacks and other sundries into her bag. Next, she went to a shop down the street from it and purchased a prepaid phone. She could set it up with a number local to Pensacola and be able to start looking at possibilities for work and some sort of accommodations while she was traveling.
