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He shook his head, his hands coming to my arms, his fingers pinching the flesh of my biceps. "We think it was just Kid."
Mouth wobbling before I firmed it, I demanded, "Finn?" My boy had already been through that once, had the priest taken advantage of him too?
"No. He didn’t touch me." Our eyes clashed and held with the secret we shared. With knowledge I’d never divulge.
"What about Brennan and Declan?" I grated out.
"No. We made sure to ask."
"I trusted him with my soul, my eternal spirit," I ground out. "But he defiled one of my boys..." My voice turned hoarse. "Who killed him?"
"I did," Junior rasped. His mouth worked a little. "I saw red."
"What happened?" I tipped my head back so I could look at them, catching the glance they shared, but before they could think to hide anything else from me, I rumbled, "Tell me. Everything."
There was no peace to be had, but retribution had to be measured.
McKenna might be gone, but there’d be someone in his family who could pay for his sins.
And if all his kin were dead, then their graves could be defiled. Anything to unsettle their souls and rip them from the comfort of death.
When Finn whispered, "We caught him in the confessional," time seemed to fracture. Splintering. Shattering. "We dragged him out, Aidan grabbed a candlestick." He swallowed, like he was nervous. Like he hadn't done a thousand worse things than this in his time. Like he knew my sanity rested on his next few words. "He beat him to death."
Pride wasn’t something I often felt, because it was the lesser of the seven deadly sins in my opinion and seeing as I had a hold of most of the worst ones, I figured pride was something I could do without.
At that moment, pride began to swell inside me.
Like father, like son.
Nostrils flared, jaw clenched, I sought out my son’s eyes, and I rasped, "Did you do me proud?"
"It was nothing to be proud of."
Some semblance of peace settled inside me. Junior wasn’t as bad as me, and I hoped he never would be either, but when he saw red, it was the same shade that always plagued me.
That meant the bastard had suffered.
As much as a teenaged Junior was able to make a man like that suffer. Which, now I thought about it, wasn't much. Wasn’t enough.
My eyes grew wet, and unashamed of the emotion flooding me, I let the tears gather.
"How did you make him pay?" I needed to know, more than I needed Lena to take her next breath.
"He was a bloody pulp by the time Uncle Paddy got there and helped us clean it up."
I tensed. "Padraig knew?"
"He did."
Had this been his first kill?
I remembered sending him to the optometrist because the boy couldn't shoot in a straight fucking line, then there'd been that phase where he and Paddy had gone to the boxing club every couple of days—both him and Finn now that I thought about it.
This must be the reason why.Paddy had taken them away to help them.
My poor boys.
Thishad made them men.
