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“No,” Shane says with a shake of his head. “You don’t need to do anything. We’ll be in touch.”
“Okay,” Hayden replies with a frown and I give him a reassuring smile. “I’ll wait for you to call me then?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I’ll walk you downstairs,” Shane says.
Hayden stands awkwardly for a second until I break the tension and give him a hug. He seems reluctant to hug me back at first and I have no doubt he has four pairs of eyes burning into his skin. But then he wraps his arms around me. “It was great to meet you, Jessie,” he whispers.
Chapter 21
Shane
When I walk back into the kitchen after getting one of our men to drive Hayden home, the atmosphere is tense. Liam leans against the kitchen island while Mikey and Conor sit at the table and Jessie hovers by the window.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Liam doesn’t want me to have the DNA test done,” Jessie snaps.
I frown at him. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t trust that guy, that’s why.”
“Why not? He was perfectly nice,” Jessie says with a shake of her head.
I walk toward my younger brother and lean beside him. “Whether you trust him or not, the only way to know if he is Jessie’s half-brother is if they do the DNA test. Nobody is asking you to trust him just yet.”
“I don’t see why we can’t just pay him to back off,” Liam snarls.
“Shane just tried that and it didn’t work. He’s not interested in money…” Jessie says.
“Of course he is,” Liam interrupts her. “Why are you so quick to believe everything this guy says?”
“Why are you so quick to doubt him? He could be my family, Liam.”
That seems to flick some kind of switch in my usually placid, at least around her, youngest brother. “We are your fucking family, Jessie!”
“I know that, but he might be my family too, and if he is…”
“And if he is, he’s likely to be a lying psychopath like the rest of them were.”
Fuck kid!
The change in Jessie’s face is instant. I rub a hand over my jaw as I wait for her to tear him a new one.
“My family were not lying psychopaths,” she shouts, her body trembling with suppressed rage.
“Really?” Liam takes a step toward her, his fists balled at his sides and his breathing getting faster and harder. “Your mom didn’t steal you from your real father and lie to you from the minute you were born? And your dad wasn’t an evil, murderous prick?”
“My parents did what they did to protect me,” she shrieks. “And are you forgetting about my little brothers?” She’s crying now and tears run down her cheeks. I watch her unravel and know I can’t stop it because she needs to say her piece. “They were children. Innocent children. They never hurt anybody in their whole damn lives until they were slaughtered right in front of me. Do you know what it’s like to listen to your little brothers screaming for help as a madman slits their throats? And you talk about my father being an evil psychopath!”
Liam shrinks back from her words, as though she’s sliced him wide open with a knife, and I suppose she has, not that he didn’t have it coming.
I have never seen Jessie so angry or Liam so unreasonably stubborn and I don’t know how to fix it. I also know that I can’t - they have to fix this themselves.
We all watch as Jessie storms out of the room like a tiny tornado, full of anger and tears and frustration.
“What the fuck was that?” I ask Liam.
