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Shane pushes open the door and steps inside, beckoning me to follow him. I walk into the room and instinctively take a deep breath. As I do, the metallic smell of blood hits my nostrils and almost makes me retch. I stumble, but Shane’s strong hand grips my elbow, holding me up. The room is small and dark, with a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling illuminating the scene before me. There are three men inside, a large wooden table in the middle, and various tools hanging on the walls. It almost looks like a workshop. Except there’s a man strapped to the table, and another one on the floor, bleeding out. At least, he looks like he was a man once, but now his face is barely recognizable as human.
The third man is Conor. He stands shirtless and bloodied, holding a sharp scalpel in one hand as he snarls like a demon at the man on the table who screams and pleads for mercy.
Conor barely registers us walking into the room. he's entirely focused on the task in hand—or perhaps he’s lost to it. I can’t figure out which it is yet. I stand next to Shane who openly watches me rather than the scene unfolding before us, as though this is some sort of test.
Suddenly, the man on the floor, who I assumed was already dead, moves. His hand jerks out, and he grabs hold of Conor’s ankle. Conor spins around, raises his foot and brings his boot crashing down against the man’s temple, causing his eye to pop out of its socket. Instinctively, I flinch and my hand flies to my mouth to stifle the scream that threatens to come out. I turn to walk out of the room because I don’t need to see this. But Shane grabs hold of my arm and pulls me back, forcing me to stay and watch as Conor turns back to the groaning man on the table and starts to pummel his head and body with his fists. Blood spatters everywhere and I shrink back to avoid getting it on my clothes.
I notice the flicker of a smile cross Shane’s face as he looks at me before turning back to his brother. “I think he’s dead, Con,” he says and Conor turns to us as though he had no idea we were there.
His face is so full of rage that I barely recognize him as the man I’ve come to know. “What the fuck is she doing here?” he snarls as he wipes the blood from his face.
“Our little hacker wanted to see what we did here, and I thought it only fair to show her the kind of men we really are. And, well now she knows.”
Conor looks at me, his eyes narrowed. “You need to get out of here, Jessie. Now.”
I nod in agreement. Shane has well and truly proven his point. “I think I’ve seen enough.”
I turn to walk out while Shane stays behind. “Mikey, take the hacker back up to the apartment,” he shouts through the open doorway.
As soon as I’m out of the door, Shane closes it behind me until only the muffled sounds of his and Conor’s voices can be heard coming from the room. Mikey puts his hand on the small of my back, guiding me back through the basement toward the elevator. My insides are churning. The smell of blood stays in my nostrils and makes me want to throw up. I haven’t witnessed violence like that for a long time, but Shane Ryan is mistaken if he thinks I haven’t seen worse than that before today.
I don’t speak until Mikey and I are in the elevator. “Are they the guys from the club? The ones I pulled the footage on?”
He nods. “That’s what you’ve signed up for, Red.”
“What did they do?”
“It’s a long story. But, ultimately, they disobeyed him. Conor told them never to come back to New York, and they did.”
“I thought you and Liam were the muscle?”
“We are.” He grins at me. “But when someone really pisses us off, we send Shane in. And when we really want to fuck someone up, we send Conor.”
I blink at him. “Conor?”
He smiles at me. “He might lay down like a pussycat and let you rub his tummy, Red, but make no mistake, my big brother is a fucking animal. That’s why they took him and not one of us.”
“Who took him?”
Mikey winces as though he’s said something he shouldn’t. “Not my story to tell, Red,” he says, shaking his head. “He’ll tell you when he’s ready.”
I lie on Conor’s bed and stare at the ceiling, listening to the sound of my breathing and the soft ticking of the clock on his nightstand. Shane’s little excursion earlier did nothing to ease my insomnia. In fact, since I came back to the apartment thirty minutes ago, my stomach has been churning and my mind has been racing.
I sit up with a start as the bedroom door swings open. Conor walks into the room, covered in blood. He glares at me as he sees me sitting on the bed. “What are you doing here?” he snaps.
“Waiting for you,” I say softly.
He sucks in a deep breath and then he just stares at me. After what seems like an eternity, he speaks. “I need to take a shower. Stay here,” he says as he stalks toward the bathroom.
I listen to the sound of the water running as I lie back and wait for him to finish. It’s at least fifteen minutes later when he finally walks out of the bathroom with a white towel wrapped around his waist, sitting just below his perfectly chiseled abs. Walking over to the bed, he sits down beside me.
“He shouldn’t have brought you down there,” he snaps. “I never wanted you to see me like that.”
“Was that the animal you told me about? The one you keep locked away?”
His eyes lock on mine, so dark they look almost black, but he doesn’t answer and there’s a pain in them that I know runs deep. It’s the same kind of pain that sometimes stares back at me when I look in the mirror.
“You think I didn’t already know what type of man you are, Conor? You and your brothers practically run New York. I’m not naïve enough to believe that you get to be where you’re at without doing the kind of shit I just saw down there.”
