Echo is standing by the wall, tossing a heavy brass knuckle in his hand. Echo is younger than me, harder in some ways. Skin tanned and smooth even with all the bullets he’s taken for me and while working, his hair is cropped too close to his scalp but it makes him look even more rugged.
“Boss,” Echo grunts.
I strip off my suit jacket and hand it to Kieran, who is standing by the door. I roll up my sleeves, slowly and methodically.
“He’s been moving them out of the Cork harbor,” Echo says, his voice flat. “Fourteen kids in the last month. Using your seal on the manifests. He told the port authorities you were overseeing the ‘expansion.’”
I finally look at O’Malley. He’s sobbing now. A wet, pathetic sound.
“B-boss… please,” he blubbers. “I was in debt, m-my wife is sick. Boss! I didn’t have a choice!”
I walk over to the table where Echo has laid out his tools. I don’t go for the knives. I go for the heavy iron pipe.
“You had a choice, O’Malley,” I say. I’m not shouting. I’m almost whispering. “You could have come to me. You could have asked for help. Instead, you put my name on a crate full of children knowing fully well my one rule is to steer clear of children and women.”
I swing.
The crack of the pipe against his kneecap is loud in the small room. O’Malley screams—a high, piercing sound that bounces off the concrete. He tries to curl into a ball, but the straps hold him in place.
“That’s for the lie,” I say.
I swing again. The other knee. Another crack. He’s wailing now, his eyes rolling back in his head.
I’m not a man who enjoys pain for the sake of it. I’m a man who believes in branding. If people think they can use my name for this kind of filth, the Syndicate dies. And if the Syndicate dies, my daughter isn't safe.
I spend the next forty minutes breaking him. It’s not a quick process. I take my time with the small bones first—the fingers, one by one. I want him to feel every individual snap. I want him to understand the weight of the debt he owes.
By the time I’m done, O’Malley is a wobbling, shattered mess of meat and bone. His face is unrecognizable, a purple-black mask of swelling. He’s crying, but there’s no sound left, just a wet wheeze.
“Please,” he whispers, a bubble of bloody spit popping on his lip. “Just… kill me.”
I drop the pipe. It clatters on the floor. My shirt is ruined—speckled with red dots that look like a grotesque map. My knuckles are bruised, the skin broken.
“You don’t get to ask for favors,” I say.
I pull my piece from my holster. The weight of the Glock is familiar, comforting. I press the cold barrel against his forehead, right between his eyes. He closes them, a final, shaking sob racking his chest.
Bang.
The room goes silent.
I turn away, grabbing a rag from the table to wipe the worst of the blood off my hands.
“Clean this up,” I say to Echo. “I want the body in the harbor by dawn. And find the kids. Every single one of them, return them to their fucking families and find one for the ones who don’t have a family. If a hair on their heads is touched, I want the people responsible brought to me in Vegas.”
“Got it, boss,” Echo says. He looks at my shirt. “You might want to change before you go back upstairs. You look like a slasher flick.”
“I’ll handle it.”
I take the service elevator back up to the penthouse level. I’m exhausted, my adrenaline bottoming out, leaving me with a cold, hollow ache in my chest. I just want a shower and a drink.
I open the door to my suite, stripping off my ruined shirt as I walk through the foyer. I’m tossing it toward the laundry bin when I stop dead.
Maeve is sitting on the rug in the living room, surrounded by LEGOs.
Shit, shit, shit.
She shouldn't be here.
