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Nine
Eoghan
The meal,surprisingly, had been quite amusing, and Inessa appeared to have enjoyed herself.
Da had been on his best behavior, well, relatively speaking. For him, he’d been good as gold. A few times, he and Aidan had knocked heads, and I knew why too.
Da was getting frustrated with him.
We all knew what was going down with Aidan, but it wouldn’t mean shit until he accepted what was happening too.
That was Addiction 101, right?
Until addicts admitted they had a problem, there was no doing shit for them. Even if it hurt not to get involved—and Da? He didn’t do well with delicate situations. Whatever anyone could say about the man, he loved his kids with a ferocity that few could ever understand.
For all he was a psychotic nutcase, this was the other side of that coin. A psychotic love.
Trouble was, it wasn’t like Aidan was a regular junkie. We all knew to avoid drugs. That had been rammed into us by Da—I could still remember the drug den he’d taken me to when I was teenager. I’d far preferred the fucking strip joint. Watching women sell themselves, offering me, a kid, BJs for cash? Yeah, it had stained my fucking eyes. Drugs? Fool’s game.
Still, Aidan wasn’t like that kind of junkie. He was in physical pain, and a man like my bro? A strong fucker who’d been raised with violence and knew what it was to piss blood several times a month because of a beating? Our tolerances were whacked.
Even now, a half hour after the meal was over and we were sitting outside on the patio, stacked around a patio table, bottles of beer in front of us as we shot the shit, his agony was clear.
He also looked wrung out. His eyes bloodshot, his face drawn and weary.
He wasn’t sleeping. That much was also obvious.
But even as I kept an eye on him, I focused on what Conor was saying. “Doesn’t seem like she has any affiliations.”
Aidan dug his fingers into his eyes. “So, what was the whole thing for? Shits and giggles?”
Conor shrugged. “No way of knowing her motivation, but I’m relieved she’s not tied to law enforcement. I thought we were fucked for a while there.”
“Thanks for sharing that with me,” I grumbled wryly, keying into the fact he was discussing the hacker who’d sneaked her way into the camera system on my elevator.
Conor grimaced. “We all know we have a tendency of storing stuff at your place.”
“Corpses. Not stuff.”
“You’re the only one who doesn’t get freaked out by it.”
My lips turned down at the sides. “While we’re on the subject. No more storing bodies at my place. Inessa is as understanding as any woman could be, but I draw the line at that. Anyway, Conor has the walk-in fridge—”
“Are we seriously arguing about this now?” Brennan groused, taking a deep pull of his beer.
Of all the brothers, he was the quietest, but like they always said, you had to watch out for the quiet ones.
My lips twisted at the thought of the things my bro got down to in his spare time, shit he didn’t know I was aware of. But I had stuff on all my brothers. Not for blackmail purposes, well, not the devious kind. More of the leverage variety. Yeah, I knew that was splitting hairs, but you never knew when you might need a bit of push.
Ten years ago, for example, Aidan had somehow managed to get his hands on Yankees’ tickets for their winning World Series game in ‘09.
I might have used some of my hoard on him—like how I’d seen him kissing Larry Duke when he was seventeen.
Aidan was as straight as they came, but in a Catholic household? Experimentation wasn’t exactly permitted.
Fuck, I thought Da would prefer for Aidan to have his brain spliced than for him to be gay.
Looking back, I actually felt bad for pulling that card on him. While I’d been made, I’d still been a fucking teenager and hadn’t really thought most things through. I’d just wanted those fucking tickets more than I wanted Janet O’Leary to suck my dick—which was saying something.
