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Thirty-Seven
Aidan
Ma’s screamswould haunt me until the day I died. Her rage at being dragged out of the cathedral, like she wanted to burn alongside it, would never leave me.
And Da’s resolve that he should burn too was something else that was going to stick around for a long time to come.
You thought you knew someone, and then when you learned you knew fuck all about them, it turned everything on its head.
My entire world was forged on the fact that I was an O’Donnelly.
This city would be mine once Da died.
I was more heir than son. More a leader in the making than his kid. But here, now, I came face to face with the harsh truth.
Da was an unconscious sack of shit as I dragged him down the aisle, the shiny marble tiles helping me slide him along its impressive length. I figured it was fitting considering he’d tried to haul my ass up it enough times with goddamn arranged weddings, but as the temperatures surged in here, my panic increased because not only was it getting harder to breathe, I knew we had to get out of here soon before the cops and fire department showed up.
My leg ached like a fucker as I hauled him along the tiles, and when Finn came back, relief hit me as he grabbed Da’s other leg and took over, letting me hobble along faster now I wasn’t encumbered with Da’s deadweight. He didn’t ask questions, didn’t waste time, just took over.
As always, we were in tune. The Oxy had broken that. Maybe Aoife had too. Finn’s priorities had changed. Only having Savannah made me see that a change of priorities wasn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes, it was what kept you getting up in the morning when you had no other reason to do anything but stay in bed. Both Conor and Finn had told me that—I’d just never listened.
I was choking by the time we clambered out of the cathedral, and Finn doubled over with a coughing fit as we were blasted with the cold night air. I felt it on my lungs as well, but I felt more panic than anything else. In the distance, I could hear them—sirens. Our fucking death knell.
Da’s crew grabbed him and I saw Anthony was carrying Ma. I figured Finn had slapped her or something because she was dangling in his arms.
Any other time, I’d have beaten the living fuck out of him, but from her screams, I knew she was hysterical. A mirror image of Da.
"Come on," I rasped, beginning to choke on the cold air too as oxygen flooded smoke-filled lungs. "We have to get out of here."
I grabbed his arm and, together, we started staggering down the alley, much the way we came.
At our back, one of Da’s crew was messing with the jammer, jamming the frequencies or whatever miracle Conor had wrought within that control panel, and I hobbled with Finn toward the town car so we could get the fuck out of here.
Consequences weren’t something we often dealt with, but this was a New York goddamn landmark. It’d be treated as an act of terrorism. Plus, everyone knew Da took his Catholicism to the extreme. They’d expect him to be up in arms over its destruction.
By the time we fell into the town car, Ma and Da were slumped over in the back seat. Finn shoved them aside so he could fit too, while I jumped into the passenger side, coughing all the while.
Anthony, who was behind the wheel, drove off with squealing tires, and even though he’d been complicit in the cathedral’s destruction, muttered, "What the fuck was he thinking?"
I didn’t imagine Da’s crew often questioned him, but in this instance, I didn’t have it in me to argue.
Anthony wasn’t wrong.
This was a fucking disaster in the making.
Finn coughed, and the hacking sound had me twisting around to make sure he was okay. The veins protruded on his forehead as he choked, seemingly unable to catch his breath. I opened the windows, letting fresh air in so he could flush out his lungs and mine too.
As the chill hit me, though, and I began coughing, a sense of clarity came with it.
An arson attack against the cathedral would look like a slight against the city.
An attack against the cathedralandSt. Patrick’s, our local church, would look like it was against Catholicism, and because of the churches in question, more that it was against the O’Donnellys and the Irish Mob.
Allaying suspicion wasn’t something we usually had to do, but fuck, we had people in our pocket, enough to make the Sparrows look innocent of corruption, however this was too big to shield.
We needed a fall guy, and before I could figure out who exactly, we needed a solution in the meantime.
As we drove through Hell’s Kitchen, I directed Anthony, "You got anymore gasoline left?"
