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“No, wait a second,” Diggs began. “You’re gonna hear me out, man.”
The room fell silent as they waited for my response to his demand.
Demands weren’t allowed from people in the twins’ positions, especially at the table. But this was my team, and I’d been trying to lead the entire family in a different direction for years . . . starting with this generation.
So instead of throwing around a title I didn’t want—instead of staining the wood floor and adding to the blood from years past—I sat back and pushed out a heavy sigh.
“Listening.”
“Nightshade killed Joseph. Right?” Diggs’s gaze darted between Johnny and me as he waited for a response.
Johnny’s head dipped in acknowledgment, but I answered, “He came in as we jumped out the window.”
“And you heard one more shot after you jumped out,” he recalled from our stories. “That shot could’ve been aimed at Nightshade. It didn’t have to be for Lily. And you know it didn’t take more than a few seconds for him to figure out who Joseph was once he was dead—just like you know they’d expected you to be watching and waiting for them to hand over his body. It isn’t hard to think they’d expect you to follow them to the funeral the way you two did, to see who actually died. It could’ve been one big setup to pin us with their deaths so we wouldn’t try to retaliate for Joseph.”
I slanted my eyes at him. “That’s reaching. And whether or not Lily O’Sullivan died that night, I didn’t need to check Aric’s pulse to know that he did. There’s no way he survived that.”
Johnny nodded.
“Joseph got what was coming to him for it.”
“What the fuck, man, come on,” Diggs grumbled. “Four years ago he was at this damn table.”
“Dare’s right,” Johnny muttered.
“A lot of people would still be alive if he hadn’t come with us that night. Have you forgotten he wasn’t even supposed to be there? And he not only fucked everything up, he killed one—maybe two—O’Sullivans, and they retaliated for it. They took everything from me because he couldn’t keep his hands to himself, or follow the goddamn rules.” My voice dropped to a dangerous level when I repeated, “He got what was coming to him.”
You could’ve heard a pin drop once I finished talking, and I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take the silence or the sympathetic looks at the reminder of what else happened nearly four years ago.
As much as I was afraid of what I would do if left alone—I knew I would chance it rather than staying in that room.
I stood but didn’t turn to leave. “If she’s ali—” The word choked me, picturing her alive and well. Living in the world when mine was gone. “If it’s true,” I began again, working my jaw, “then we aren’t taking it at the word of a pathetic excuse of a man who knew he was about to die and would’ve said anything not to.” I looked to Einstein. “Search for proof. Can’t find it? Then find someone who can give it to me. Until then, we go on like nothing’s changed.”
When I turned to go, Johnny mumbled under his breath, “What’s the point? I say we go in there now and kill as many Holloways as we can. It’s not like they don’t all need to go to ground.”
I leveled him with a glare when I faced him again, but forced a low laugh.
Because this was Johnny—and I knew him just as well as he knew me.
Johnny was old school.
Illegal games and ways to make ends meet, and taking out the enemy with a bullet to their head.
And if I took him seriously, or even seemed to, there’d be no containing him.
Johnny unleashed would be complete devastation, but he was the closest thing I’d ever had to a brother. I would do whatever it took to keep him alive—even if that meant saving him from his own rage and darkness.
“Why?” I asked him with a teasing hint to my tone. “So the rest of them will come to our homes and do the same? Don’t forget this isn’t a kill or be killed world we live in, Johnny. It’s a kill and be killed world. And I’m fucking tired of burying my family.”
He waited until I was at the door to speak again. When he did, anticipation laced his words—because he knew he had me. “You gonna worry about a little retaliation if Lily O’Sullivan is alive?”
I paused with my hand on the doorknob, sure that the metal would give beneath my grasp as I embraced every dark thought when it came to that girl.
Every dark want.
Every dark need.
“If she’s alive, I’m going there in the dead of night, and I’m ripping Kieran’s world out from under his feet the way mine was from me. And then I’m declaring war on every person connected to Holloway until there’s nothing left of them.”
