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“Sadie, babe, I need another drink.” Colm was so fucking drunk he couldn’t move. Couldn’t walk the ten feet across the room to get his own drink. “Please.”
“Please? Is that what my sons say to those priests you leave them with?”
His eyes slammed shut, and his head thrashed from left to right, the only proof that his actions bothered him. Haunted him. “You don’t understand.”
“I do understand, asshole. You did it to me, too. You make us, your family, pay with our bodies for your incompetence. You’re a failure, and we have to pay the price.”
“Sadie, girl. Stop. I need a drink.”
Colm was my second act of revenge, which I took nightly when he was too drunk to move, too drunk to fuck, and too drunk to hit me.
But he wasn’t my last. The third time I took my revenge, I was a scared little teenage whore with my first John. He liked it rough and anal, and I didn’t. From that moment on, my fiercest protector was the blade Cillian had given me as a wedding present. That little ivory-handled bodyguard had come in quite handy over the years.
Every kill after that John was easier. The more I learned about my victims, his deeds, and the misdeeds he tried to hide, the easier it was to hunt them down, to find them where they were weak and vulnerable. Just like they preferred their victims. They couldn’t hide anything from me, not any of them. As much as it killed me to be patient, Uncle Seamus’ words had always stuck with me. I took my time to hunt down the men who touched my sons, who used them for their sick pleasure.
One by one, and over a long period, I exacted my revenge on each and every one of them. It was a full year after Colm’s death before every man who’d touched Jasper, Virgil or Calvin, was dead and buried.
Only there was no satisfaction. No relief. My thirst for revenge grew. For the church. For the priests who preyed on children. For Ronan Rhymer and his fucked up son, Brendan.
Colm started me on this path, only I didn’t realize it at the time. He’d preyed on me the same way Owen had, the same way the priests preyed on his gambling addiction to feed their desire for young boys. He preyed on me and groomed me to accept his behavior as normal. After the sheltered life I led, I was easy pickings for him.
I didn’t know back then how it would all affect me, how it would change me into someone different, darker and colder than I’d ever imagined. Meeting Colm changed me from the scared Catholic girl I was raised to be into the Irish powerhouse I would become.
Most days, I didn’t know whether to thank him or continue to curse the day I set eyes on his handsome face.
Chapter Eleven
Sadie
“We could have hired a seamstress to come to the house, Kat.” I loved to shop as much as the next woman, but wedding shopping was a different beast altogether. And the pretentious shop girls at wedding boutiques made me want to wring their fucking necks.
Kat let out a sigh and looked at me through the mirror. She’d taken a stab at having the old wedding dress altered to see how it would look on her. Kat had pulled strings to have the most prestigious wedding gown designer in Vegas fit us into her schedule to give the dress a modern twist. From the look on Kat’s face, the jury was still out.
“I know, Ma, but sometimes I just want to get out of the Manor. You know, go out in the world? Fresh air is nice, and we have other wedding business that requires an in-person visit.” She laughed at the expression I wore and cocked a brow at me. “Think you can handle the plebs for a few hours?”
I laughed, but the sound was bitter even to my own ears, and I knew the reason.
“My mother used to say that word. Plebs. She was such a fucking snob about anybody and everybody who was different. Not enough money, not the right status, the right religion, not right for me to be friends with. Or even consider a person worthy of my time. I hate that one little word.” I hated that it could still remind me of her.
Kat was mostly oblivious to my bitterness, or maybe I always sounded bitter, and she didn’t recognize the difference. She laughed and shook her head. “Is there a right religion?”
“Only Catholic will do for little Sadie Rose Malone.” I said the words in the high-pitched trill that belonged to my mother, a woman Kat had never met. And as long as I lived, I’d make sure she never would.
Kat turned to me slowly, stiffly, still trapped in my grandmother’s dress full of pins. An apt metaphor for marriage, in my experience. “This is the most you’ve ever said about your parents. Are they dead?”
