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“Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you right now?” I say quietly, my biceps clenching at the thought.
He chuckles. “You could kill me right now. After all, I came here alone. My men are miles away, and I am on your territory, at your mercy.” He wipes his lips with the back of his hand and shrugs. “But you won’t. Why? Because you know I’m a part of something bigger. You won’t be killing me. You’ll simply be chopping the head off the snake. Another will grow back, bigger and stronger.” Leaning his elbows on his knees, he looks up at me. Almost angelic, if it wasn’t for his dark and dangerous glare. “Think of me as the tip of the iceberg. You have no idea how big it runs under the water.”
Drawing in a lungful of air through my nostrils, I turn to Lorcan. He knows the look—give me the word, and I’ll end his life. Give me something, anything, and I’ll cut off every fucking limb with the bluntest knife in my arsenal.
Lorcan tugs at his tie and shakes his head.
“I hear you have a candidate,” Belsky says, more confidence edging into his voice. “Paul Polansky.” He pops out the P’s for dramatic effect. “Nice guy, isn’t he? A real man of the people. A human rights lawyer who’s lived in a Queen’s walk-up his entire life. Dedicates the last Sunday of every month to helping out at a soup kitchen. And perfectly corruptible,” he muses, rubbing the shadow on his jaw. “Gets American citizens out of prisons throughout the Middle East, then takes back-hand bribes from their tourism boards in exchange for telling international media how cooperative their government has been. A perfect balance of good and bad.”
“I see you’ve done as much research as we have,” Lorcan growls, stepping out of the shadows. “I’m glad. Then you’ll also know how easy it’ll be to beat you with him on our side.”
But Belsky isn’t listening. He’s turned his attention to me, eyes sparkling. “I’ve done a lot of research on all of you actually. Especially you, Donnacha. I see you’ve taken a new wife.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I refuse to give this asshole the satisfaction of knowing it. “You’ll do well to keep my wife’s name out of your mouth, my man.”
“She’s very beautiful…” He taps his lip as if he’s pondering. As if he has more than one fucking brain cell to ponder with. “In fact, she looks familiar. Is there a reason I might recognize her? Perhaps she offers some sort of service that I might have hired her for—”
He doesn’t get to finish that sentence because I smash my hand into his throat, then get a good grip on it. At first, he tries to be a man by not whimpering or attempting to claw himself out of my grasp, but it doesn’t take him long to realize I’m not letting up. There’s a hand on my shoulder, and when I turn around, Cillian is by my side. We lock eyes, and he nods. I know exactly what he’s saying. You might not be my boss anymore, and this might not be my battle to fight, but I’ll always have your back.
Just when Belsky’s face is turning the color of a nasty bruise and his blood vessels burst across his face in veiny spiderwebs, Lorcan clears his throat.
“Enough.”
A beat passes. I give his vocal cords one last squeeze for good measure, then send him flying backward into the sofa.
Lorcan comes between us, placing a firm hand on my chest. “We won’t kill you, Belsky. Not today, at least. No, we’ll fight you fair and square in the political arena. We have nothing to hide, and if you don’t either, then the best man will win.”
Belsky rubs at his throat, and there’s a rattle in his chest every time he breathes. He eyes Lorcan with caution. I eye him in disbelief. Are you fucking kidding me? But Lorcan doesn’t even look up at me. Instead, he sticks his hand out and pulls him to his feet.
“Fair and square?” he repeats monotonously.
A few raspy seconds pass, but Belsky eventually nods.
Lorcan tilts his chin toward the shadows, and my men come pouring out of it like spiders hiding under the floorboards. “Our men will escort you out.” And they do, dragging him by his lapel before he can utter another strangled sound. “Cillian? Would you give us a moment, please?”
Wordlessly, Cillian leaves the room.
The second the door clicks shut, I explode.
“Fair and square?” I spit at my cousin, dragging a knuckle through my beard. “You gotta be shitting me, Lorc. We had him right there. I could feel his pulse weakening under my thumb, for fuck’s sake.” I stop pacing the carpet long enough to jab a finger in his direction. “Ten years ago, you’d have burned this fucker alive.”
Lorcan sinks into an armchair and tucks his hands under his chin. “Ten years ago, we were nothing but thugs. Now we’re a fully formed dynasty with more than just gun and drug shipments to worry about. We have businesses—legit ones—and investments up and down the East Coast. He’s announcing his candidacy to the public next week, and so is Polansky. And when they do, their faces will be everywhere. Give it a few months, and Polansky will shit all over this guy. And when he fades into the background, that’s when we’ll kill him. When the world isn’t watching, and nobody remembers his goddamn name.”
Venom pools under my tongue. I stuff my hands in my pockets and spit out some curse words.
“What’s gotten into you, Don?” The softness in Lorc’s tone sounds like a foreign language. It makes me whip my head around to face him. “You came in here at full speed, ready to take that motherfucker out. That isn’t you. It’s never been you. Since when do you start leading with your emotions instead of being chillingly cold?”
I turn away from him before he sees my expression.
He’s right. I’m coming undone like a cheap suit. “There’s only one other time I’ve seen you like this, and it was ten years ago when you came back from traveling.”
The knife in my chest twists. He’s never known what happened when I was out in the wild. Never asked, and I’ll never tell him.
“Your wife,” he murmurs, rising to his feet. “Look at what she’s doing to you. She’s boiling your blood.” He closes the gap between us and grips my jaw, resting his forehead against mine. “Remember,” he whispers, “family before everything else.”
My blood is about to boil over, so I shove him away and stride across the room. “Don’t ever question my loyalty to this family, Lorcan,” I snarl, slashing him with a death glare. “And don’t ever forget what I’ve sacrificed to keep this family safe.”
My sanity.
