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Thirty-Two
Aidan Sr
My hands tightenedaround the edge of the desk as I processed the unthinkable.
He.
Molested.
Conor.
I felt each word like a punch to the head. In fact, I’d have preferred that. I’d prefer the pain, I’d take that a thousand times over—
My boy.
My goddamn boy.
Ruined.
Defiled.
Broken.
The roar escaped me without my even knowing it, and the desk, loaded down with papers and picture frames, went flying as a piece of furniture that weighed two hundred pounds was suddenly no longer in front of me.
It was tipped up on its side, both my boys having staggered back at the suddenness of my move as I turned it over with my bare hands.
With a scream, I twisted around, picked up the desk chair then hurled it against the wall behind me.
As it caught on the window, the glass shattered, but it wasn’t enough. I picked it up again and slammed it there, over and over, over and fucking over, each slam not enough. Never enough.
My poor, goddamn boy.
Abused.
Violated.
With the broken wreckage of the chair in my hands, I dropped it to the ground and with a keening wail that penetrated the haze in my head, I slammed everything on the dresser in front of me to the ground, the beloved photographs, the crucifix my grandmother had given me at my confirmation and which I’d framed, I threw it all to the floor like it was trash.
At that moment, it was.
Tearing out the drawers that were loaded down with documents, I slammed them there too—each one of them strewn on the floor like garbage. Then when they were bare, I hurled them across the room with a strength that was born of rage.
For the first time in my life, I understood why wrath was one of the seven deadly sins.
As I stood there, panting, my lungs burning, my heart pounding, my fists tightened into balls that made my nails prick my skin, my feet buried within papers that had made the Irish Mob into the powerhouse it was today, feeling wilder than a rabid wolf, I snarled, "Find him. He has to die."
"He’s dead, Aid—" Finn paused. Corrected, "Da. He has been a long time."
Jesus.
None of this was a lie if Finn couldn’t call me by my name. If he had to use a title that he’d never used before and in front of Junior. But I didn’t even care that my oldest had heard it.
If anything, Finn’s use of that had my knees wobbling, cascading out from under me as I pressed my back to the wall and stared blindly ahead.
If the fucker was dead, then there was no retribution.
How was I supposed to avenge Conor?
