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God help me.
I really needed to run some kind of tracing service on my potential clients.
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, I know I wasn’t supposed to, but I used to play in the big house. When you weren’t looking, I’d go inside and mess around with some of the sand and stuff. The builders never seemed to mind.”
I tensed up, and though I was annoyed because I’d worked on Donovan Lancaster’s chandelier back when the property was still a construction site, what was the point in getting mad about old news when my kid was evidently going through something here?
“I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d be mad.”
“Yeah, I would have been. What’s going on, Shay? What else are you trying to tell me?”
He pulled back to look at me, and his eyes were bright with tears. “I saw something I shouldn’t have.”
The horror in his voice had me squeezing him. “What was it?”
“The man on the TV, him and this other guy, they were sitting down in one of the rooms that was finished.” He bit his bottom lip. “There was another man, he was like a guard, and he had a gun pointed at this woman.” He clenched his eyes shut. “The man, the guard, I mean, he shot the lady. But before that, they hurt her. Badly.”
I stiffened. “What?”
“I know you won’t believe me, but I swear it’s true.”
I shook him a little. “Seamus, you saw somebody get killed?” Andtortured?
“I did,” he whispered miserably, and I knew he was on the brink of bawling. Jesus, I couldn’t blame him. I felt like bawling too.
“Did they see you?”
“N-No.”
Relief filled me. “Okay, so that’s good. It’s all good.” I squeezed him. “You should have told me sooner—”
“I told Caro, Mom.” He gulped. “I trusted her. I-I thought she was your friend. I thought she was safe. That night, I had a bad dream again, and she came in and asked me if I wanted to talk about it. I was stupid, because I did. I never said a word to anyone, not even the shrink, but seeing that guy on the TV just messed with me.
“H-He was so mean. He just smiled and barked stuff at the guard, and whenever the woman cried out, he’d grin, like he was enjoying it.”
Everyone knew Benito Fieri was a sadist.
Hewouldhave enjoyed it.
“It was like I was watching it all over again. It was stuck on repeat in my head, so I told her.”
My jaw clenched as reality hit.
Caroline hadn’t just lied to me for years, pretending to be my friend… she was also aFamigliainformant. That was why, when I got back from Manhattan, the hitman had sneaked into our house… They weren’t after us because we were tied to Declan. But because of what Seamus had seen.
And whoever the woman was, it was bad. Bad enough to need to kill a small kid.
The murder charge wouldn’t matter. No,she,their victim, was the reason for the hit.
Before nausea could strike, Seamus’s shaky voice continued, “Today, at the boardwalk, I heard one of the guys who killed George—” Wait! George was dead? “I-I heard him ask for the Westie boy.”
They’d known we were there?
Oh, sweet fuck. That meant either Jerry or Liam worked for theFamigliatoo? Only they and George had known where we were going today. And if George was dead, then…
A shaken breath escaped me as I tried to process a million things all at once. I hadn’t woken up with a headache, just stiff and sore everywhere else, but I sure as hell had one now. Unable to compute what he was saying, a little dumbly, I asked, “Did you tell your father?”
He tucked his face into my throat again. “I did.”
Though he wasn’t as creative as me, I knew how his brain worked, and I knew what he’d seen had been torturing him for a long time, so I did what I always did—I tried to soothe him in the only way I knew how. “Describe the lady to me.”
When he did, it was like I’d cut open a festering wound that gushed its poison all over me. As I rubbed his back, as he talked, relief hit me, and I realized I was thankful. So fucking thankful that Declan was at my side, and that the harsh realities of his life were tangling with mine.
Because the threat against Seamus would be taken out immediately.
Caroline Dunbar, did she but know it, had just signed her death warrant, and call me a cold bitch, but I’d be the first to dance on her grave when Declan protected our boy and shoved a bullet in that pig’s skull.
And when Benito Fieri, who dared to think he could take out my son who’d witnessed his sins, went for a swim with concrete boots, I’d piss onhisgrave after and I’d laugh as I did it.
