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Well, at least we were getting somewhere.
Four days into having the fucker hung up like a side of beef and the bastard was finally starting to talk about the shit I was interested in.
“What like?”
“Let me down? My shoulders are knackered, Bren, and my fucking arm, I'm pretty sure it's going to need surgery.” Callum begged.
My mouth turned up at the corners as Tink hooted and Forrest chuckled. Methodically, I tightened the Ace bandage around my weak wrist.
Wrapping it so that it would support me as I beat the fuck out of him. “That’s the point, Callum. Torture’s supposed to hurt. And I wouldn't worry about the surgery, my man. Where you're going, St. Peter's the best plastic surgeon around. He'll fix you right up."
He registered that truth then swallowed, before reasoning, “I’m gonna talk though, ain’t I? You can see that.”
“Why, because you think talking will spare you from dying sooner?”
“Maybe.” He shot me a pleading look.
“You know that if I’d told Da what you’d done, he wouldn’t have strung you up by your hands.”
“Knowing Aidan Sr., he’d have him hanging by his dick,” Forrest joked, his smile mean as Callum winced.
Rage filled me. On Conor's behalf. On my behalf. On Da's. I'd never liked Mark O'Reilly, thought he was a dumb piece of shit, but the bastard hadn't raised a traitor. This was going to kill him as well.
“You’re fucking family,” I snapped. “How the fuck could you eat at our table and fuck us over like this?”
“I didn’t have a choice,” he yelled. “I told you Priestley’s pregnant. What was I supposed to do?”
“Not betray your family,” Tink said stonily. “Lead by example. What kind of fucking kid are you going to raise when, at the first sign of trouble, you double deal the people who’d kill for you?”
"That's bullshit, anyway," Forrest muttered. "Priestley ain't exactly been carrying for a couple of years."
"True, although, we don’t know how long the bastard has been double dealing us, do we?” I almost hoped that it was a recent thing. It wouldn’t make it better, but it would feel less like we’d had a sniveling rat sneaking out onto our table to rummage through our leftovers for material to nark on.
Callum’s head bowed, which pulled the muscles in his shoulders and chest into sharp relief. His right arm was bent at an odd angle, which was one of the principle reasons he kept passing out whenever he put too much of a burden on it. We had him strung up so that he could lever his weight on his tiptoes.
As for the rest of him, he was bruised and bloodied, battered all over from the various beatings me and Forrest had put him through.
I stared at the cuts, the seeping wounds and shook my head, unable to countenance that I’d done this toCallum.
His betrayal slashed at my insides, but it didn’t take away from my feeling like I was betraying him. I’d hurt him, hurt a man I thought of as family—the correlation wasn’t easy. My brain knew the truth but my heart couldn’t accept it.
“He’s not wrong, though. What kind of kid would you raise if even basic loyalty is beyond you?” I rasped, cracking my knuckles and clicking my wrist by twisting it slightly.
For the first time, I got why Camille dug her nails into her palms. With the split skin on my knuckles, cracking them added to the discomfort, throw in my messed-up wrist, the pain made me feel a burn that eased the cacophony going down in my ears.
“I’m sorry, Bren. Truly, I’m sorry,” he whispered, staring down at the ground, not up at me.
“He’s not Bren to you, anymore,” Forrest spat.
I swallowed down that particular truth because he wasn’t wrong.
But I was stuck between a rock and a hard place on so many fronts here.
If I told Da, the pain I felt at Callum’s treachery would be nothing in comparison to what he experienced.
If I didn’t tell him, just buried Callum, then there’d be a manhunt for the prick who didn’t deserve for anyone to give a fuck about him.
“You can’t kill me without your da’s permission,” Callum whispered, finally peering over at me, like he was reading my thoughts.
