Twenty-Eight
Seamus
I’d never beento Coney Island before, and after today, I knew I’d never go again.
Ever.
Again.
The place was tainted. Absolutely wrecked. And not just for my memory banks.
At first, I hadn’t known what was happening.
We’d been walking on the boardwalk while Mom and I were eating ice cream that melted down our hands. It had been like any other day out. I’d been with her to the beach so many times, eaten ice cream with her so many times, but it was cool to be here.
New York City was my place.
My home.
I wasn’t sure why I felt that way, not when I’d visited all over and had spent most of my life in Europe. But it was. Maybe because Declan was here, and the family. They were all insane, but it was a good kind of insane, you know?
They were killers. The lot of them.
But I knew they had honor.
I’d seen dishonorable things in my time. Had seen things I wished I could unsee, and today was one such event.
Just another to add to the tally.
The boardwalk was stained with blood, and bodies strewn here and there. It was like something from Grand Theft Auto—a nightmare.
People, innocent people, were on the ground, crawling toward safety, but where did you find safety on a boardwalk where there was nothing between the ocean and you but the sand?
There was no coverage, that was what made it a thousand times worse, and Mom and I had been lucky. I’d wanted to go into the Aquarium, so we’d been heading through the entrance just when we’d heard shooting.
On either side of the walkway, there was a kind of grassy knoll, and Liam had shoved us down there while George covered us. Mom had hit her head, and though I kept pressing my ear to her mouth, just to hear her breathing, I knew she was okay. She’d just fallen wrong.
I was almost glad she wasn’t going through this. Almost glad because I needed her, and she was unconscious.
A flurry of bullets had me clenching my fists to the point of pain because they were close. Closer than before.
I could hear a mixture of accents—Bronx competed with Russian—and I knew this was a turf war.
A turf war in a seaside resort.
What the hell was happening?
I wanted to cling to Mom, wanted to hug her to me, but I knew I could hurt her even more. I needed to stay still, needed not to move her.
It was hard.
So hard.
I wanted to move her out of the way, tuck her into safety—
A dozen screams rang out around me, and I jerked in surprise when a body tumbled over the sidewalk and into the underpass where we were.
When I saw it was George, my eyes widened because…