The cops had been head over heels with the notion of getting the notorious Aidan O'Donnelly behind bars on a domestic violence charge. It was Al Capone all over again, but Magdalena? She’d left it just close enough to make Aidan sweat.
What a woman.
See, that was what a wife and mother should do.
She gave shit back when it was reaped on her. She didn’t just fucking take it. Not like my mother. She didn’t stand there and watch as her piece of shit husband beat on her boy.
Though Aidan had definitely laid a few scars on his sons, me, and the rest of the Points, he was under no illusion that if Magdalena ever found that out, he would wake up screaming one night as she snipped off his balls.
With a dull pair of kitchen scissors.
Maybe rusty ones, too. Just to make sure he got tetanus while she was at it.
Magdalena was a multi-tasker like that.
We knew not to share any of those salient facts about the scars on Conor’s back, or Brennan’s weak wrist, with the small woman whose might was bigger than her brawn.
The only person Aidan O'Donnelly was scared of, ironically enough, was his wife. And I fucking loved him for that.
But the day when he couldn’t darken my door again would come as a relief.
The older he was, the more bat-shit he became.
Fucked up nonsense like this was getting to be a habit that none of us knew how to break without him taking it out on us.
I wasn’t scared of him. I respected him, even. But I knew, as did we all, that in those moments where Aidan was lost in whatever fucking headspace wet work drove him to, we might as well have been Cartel foot soldiers for all the attention Aidan paid us.
We could have been enemies.
Not trusted and beloved sons.
That was the danger.
Twelve years ago, I could have asked him what the fuck he was doing, and he’d have clipped me around the ear.
Now?
I wasn’t sure if I’d wake up after being pistol whipped.
That kind of erratic behavior was difficult to monitor, to be around, so we were all like chickens in a henhouse that was set on a minefield.
Clucking around blindly, just hoping someone else was stupid enough to stand on the trigger.
“I got here as soon as I could,” I stated, my voice as calm as I could make it.
“Not soon enough,” Aidan growled, but he wasn’t looking at me.
Jr. sighed. “You literally texted him five minutes ago, Da. Cut the man some slack. You know what traffic is like at this time of night.”
I shot Jr. a grateful look, but he didn’t take his focus off his cell.
Aidan grumbled, “I guess.”
“Who’s the stiff?” I asked, because I was under no illusion that although the guy was alive now, he wouldn’t be for long.
The bag over his head wasn’t to protect our identities, to stop him from revealing us to the cops. It was because he was a dead man, and Aidan was more comfortable keeping his victims out of sight, and out of mind, until he was ready to do the deed.
“Architect,” Eoghan rasped, and I tilted my head to stare at him.