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I clung to the statement like the saving grace it was.
McKenna was dead. I couldn’t kill him again.
The Archbishop still breathed and he was one of those secret society sons of bitches. That put a nice, big fat target on his forehead. At least, it did as far as I was concerned.
Junior nodded slowly. "He is."
"How do you know?"
"It’s been a busy couple of days," my eldest said with a grunt.
"Start at the beginning," I snapped. "Just tell me what you know."
"You heard of Valentini?"
"That Sicilian who slices up one side of a fucker’s face?"
"That’s him. He’s making a power grab for the head of theFamiglia. Says that peace with the Irish will help him cement his position if we grant it."
"Why would I grant any Italian bastard peace?" I rasped, confused. My mind already felt fractured, but the out-of-the-blue topic jarred it even more.
"Because it’s good business?" Finn questioned softly. "It’s doing no one any favors for us all to be at war, and with the Russians having new leadership as well, it’d be a good time to broker a deal between the top factions. A mini-Summit, as it were, but with anything other than the Sparrows as the subject on the table like last time."
"That," Junior agreed, "as well as the fact that Valentini’s the one who told me Monsignor Masters is a Sparrow?"
"He did?" I whispered, my brow furrowed, blood dripping through the wrinkles.
"He did," Junior confirmed. "He wants to speak with you, see if you can come to some sort of arrangement together." He hesitated. "The Archbishop is in the white van... Valentini said it’s his Christmas gift to you." Tension riddled me like cancer through a bone but before I could say a word, Junior carried on, "He said that the Archbishop has sheltered several pedophiles within the church."
Wrath howled inside me again.
Conor didn’t want me to know about this. If he did, he’d have come to me and shared the truth years ago, and that was my failing. My flaw as a father. Junior had done my job for me, getting rid of the predator who dared prey on my son, so that option wasn’t open to me either.
The Archbishop was the only remaining pawn on the chessboard. He was the only piece I had left to play and play him I would.So fucking brutally the Devil wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between him and one of his demons when I was done with him.
Nostrils flaring wide, I growled, "Sheltered seven sick fucks, did he?"
"Apparently," Junior muttered, eying me warily.
That was when purpose flooded me. A sense of direction that helped me clamber to my knees. I ignored the blood, ignored the mess of my office, instead, I demanded, "It’s time to open my Christmas gift, boys."
And time to make one sick bastard pay.
Ho, ho, fucking ho.
