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“Who’d do an insane thing like that?” I rasped. “And I need a name, kid.”
The heavy and the sniveler shared a wary look, and surprisingly, it was the heavy who whispered, “Guy called Callum O’Reilly. He’s a drinking buddy of Justin’s.”
Reaching up, I rubbed my chin as I contemplated that particular news, trying not to show that this pair of bastards had just speared me in the belly with a verbal knife.
Da wasnotgoing to be pleased.
Neither was Mark O’Reilly—one of Da’s best friends.
Bowing my head to hide my expression, I felt the betrayal whip through me. I’d only just seen Callum at Conor’s last night. Which had me second guessing if I’d missed the word ‘nark’ carved into his forehead.
I’d known him since I was a fucking kid... I had to give the Sparrows some credit, though. They’d done their jobs. They’d done it too goddamn well.
Callum wasn’t just on one of Da’s son’s crews, he was like family to us.
Conor had gone to school with the bastard, they’d spent holidays at our home, and Ma and Callum’s ma were friends. From way back.
Any traitor hurt. That was the nature of the Five Points. We weren’t an army, even if we were set up like one. We had ties that bound us together, making the fuckfest of what we had to do on a daily basis that much more bearable because we had each other’s backs.
Even the new recruits that we’d been integrating into the ranks were personally known to my Da. Most of us brothers too. Only people who had a link to the Motherland were welcome among us, because being Irish bound us together, but the family was what made us strive for more.
When a runner died, a penny-ante no one who’d only worked for us for three weeks, no one important in the grand scheme of things—Da paid for their funeral, and every O’Donnelly had to turn up.
This was going to devastate the family in more ways than one.
Thinking about earlier, about him being so fucking psyched about Priestley... Jesus.
None of this was going to be pleasant. None.
The ramifications of what I’d just learned were enough to have me turning my back on the thieves. I was more generous than Da, not as ‘Old Testament’ in my nature, and because they didn’t want a cattle prod up their asses, I got the feeling they weren’t going to lie to me about this shit. That made me want to grant them leniency. If they’d been told by a fucking Five Pointer, a high-ranking cunt at that, that those stores weren’t under our protection, why wouldn’t they believe it? Why wouldn’t they take that as Gospel? But their survival depended on my next steps, steps which, unfortunately for them, might require their eternal silence.
This was a conundrum I hadn’t wanted the day after my fucking wedding and the morning of the initial meet between my family and my wife.
I’d have liked a distraction, something to take the heat off my getting married without telling any of the clan, but this was disastrous. So goddamn disastrous that, for a couple of minutes, I just stood there, staring at nothing, trying to figure out what to do, to say, and even worse,howto do it and say it.
Because I needed out of this fucking place, I stormed off. Tink had yet to make a reappearance, but I caught up with him heading out of his office on my way out.
He grabbed my arm when I didn’t stop, demanding, “What’s going on?”
I shook my head. “You don’t want to fucking know,” I rumbled.
“Bullshit. Course I do. Tell me.”
I’d have trusted Tink and Forrest and Bagpipes with my life... but if Callum could be gotten to, then so could any fucker. Even the men who were like brothers to me, who I treated like they were kin.
“Don’t kill them yet,” I rumbled. “Just leave them there. I’ll have further instructions before the day’s out.”
Tink frowned but nodded. “Sure thing, Bren.”
Because I didn’t know if he deserved my distrust, and because it was more than likely he hadn’t betrayed the Pointers, I clapped him on the shoulder and asked, “Did you pick a coin yet?”
He shook his head. “Nah. Not yet.”
If money was how the Sparrows got to our men, I’d take that as a sign of innocence. A sign that the man was trustworthy, but the NWS played dirty. They didn’t use money, the regular means of placing pressure on people. Nah, they played hardcore and used a man’s freedom against him.
I wasn’t even certain if I could blame the cunts who’d turned on us for that. When you were faced with life in prison for a crime you truly hadn’t committed, why wouldn’t you do anything in your power to avoid that fate?
“Well, make your choice. Did you tell the others to pick one as well?”
