AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Followed by a hushed whisper.
Everything inside me stilled. Freezing solid.
Another whisper. A choked gasp.
Aidan's hand tightened about the candlestick, and I reached back, grabbing the nearest thing to me and, hefting it, we stalked forward.
Both of us knew to be quiet without even looking at one another, and we whispered down the aisle like ghosts.
"Confessional," I murmured on a breath, veering toward the booth, him at my back.
I reached for the door to the priest's section, and I was glad—glad because it meant I could spare Aidan this. No brother should have to see what I was witnessing, and I'd already been through much worse.
The priest had his hands on Conor's head—
No.
Just, no.
Hatred bloomed inside me.
I didn't just see the priest and Conor, I saw me and my father. I saw the shit that fuckers on the streets had done to other homeless kids who were just trying to fill their stomachs. Things that I might have had to endure if Aidan hadn't figured out I'd run from home and that I needed somewhere to live.
The second the door opened, the priest jumped, and though it took me a second to process everything, it took him longer. By the time his hands had stopped holding Conor down, mine were working.
I reached forward and slammed the altar ornament into the priest's head, only then realizing it was a plate. A fucking plate.
Christ.
With him dazed after my hit, more from my brute force than the shape of my weapon, I grabbed Conor's shoulder and pulled him away. His face was tear sore, pink, his eyes drenched. Terror and hope and hatred and wrath blurred into one in his gaze, and while I thought he'd be down for it, I growled, "You don't want to see this, Conor."
He snarled, wiping his hands over his wet cheeks, as I dragged him away. "I do!" Bloodthirsty little shit.
Ignoring him now I’d shoved him out of the way, I reached into the confessional and went to grab the priest by the throat, but he was on his knees now, sobbing, his hands in the prayer pose as he pleaded with God for forgiveness.
He hadn't tried to run so that meant he knew what was about to go down.
"You'll need more than God to forgive you," I rasped. "When Aidan Sr. finds out—"
"No!" Conor wailed. "Da can never find out!" He snatched the plate from me and made to hurl it at the priest, but Aidan was there, the heavy gold candlestick held high as he commanded grimly, "Conor, move back."
"Leave this to your da," I urged. "He'll make the bastard pay."
But Aidan wasn't here anymore.
The kid who found it hard to shoot targets even though he had twenty-ten vision had left the building.
The kid who played Super Mario and howled whenever Freddie Krueger got busy with it was no more.
In that moment, I saw Aidan Jr. ascend to his place as his father's heir, and all for the love of his baby brother.
The candlestick swung high before he brought it down, lodging it in McKenna's shoulder as blood sprayed, bone shattered. The gold ornament stuck fast, making the priest howl as Aidan dragged him out of the booth by it, with him flailing around like a dead fish. The way it was wedged into his shoulder would have made another person gag, but we weren't just 'any' people—we were Five Pointers.
Aidan and me might be fifteen, Conor might only be seven, but violence was in our veins.
Seeing that Jr. wasn't about to stop, I shoved Conor over to a pew and said, "Stay."
"You're not the boss of me, Finn," he growled, but for all his ferocity now his big brother was here to protect him, I couldn't stop overlaying what I'd seen mere minutes before.
