“This is a clusterfuck,” Eoghan rasped.
“I can’t believe they tried to target one of our kids,” Finn concurred, and I saw, deep in his eyes, how that infuriated him. With Jacob still so young, I got it.
How couldn’t I?
“We’ll show them,” I replied, my voice as soothing as it could be when I was furious too.
“That a promise?” Finn asked, his gaze on mine.
“It’s a fucking vow.”
* * *
DECLAN
Three weeks later
As I grabbedthe leg of the stool with my foot, I dragged it over the rough concrete floor. When the bitch flinched at the admittedly annoying noise, her head whipping from side to side as she tried to process what was happening, I carried on. Not stopping until the stool was directly in front of her.
She dangled.
There was no nicer way to phrase it.
Her arms were behind her back, cuffed with her own handcuffs, her feet were tied together, and her graying ponytail was hanging on a meat hook. Just high enough that she had to stand on her tiptoes. It was a delicate kind of torture, but the strain was wearing on her.
I was kind of hoping she’d make herself bald.
The fucker deserved it.
Before I took a seat, I reached up and quickly tore off the duct tape from her mouth. As she screamed, she swayed, and as she swayed, she screamed even more as her hair pulled at the roots.
“Who the fuck are you?” Caroline Dunbar hollered.
“I think you know who I am,” I rumbled, watching as she tensed. Her head tilted to the side like she was trying to process all the information I gave up with that one sentence. For three weeks, we’d held her, and that she was starting to crack up was only a bonus to what I had planned tonight.
“D-Declan O’Donnelly.”
“Give that girl a coconut,” Brennan called out.
“I’ll give her something,” I growled, leaning forward to shove her.
Her scream, her pain shouldn’t have been a delight to behold, but it was.
If this cunt had her way, my kid would be dead.
She’d put him in the crosshairs.
And though it was painful, though it fucking hurt, I was doing this for Seamus.
I was going to let her live for him.
Someone was going to die tonight, but it wouldn’t be her. Eoghan was out, seeing to that particular job, and here I was, allowed to let loose on the woman who’d nearly torn my family from me before I had a chance to start living for the first time in my fucking life.
But I had a choice.
I could think smart or I could think vengeance, and in the days ahead, I knew we had to think smart.
Jerry, a Five Pointer who’d been with us for forty-four years, had been turned.Fucking turned.The Italians had used their little battle as a cover-up to get to my boy, all because Jerry had told them where he was taking them to. Now George was dead, Liam would never be the same again, my son was screaming the fucking house down at night whenever he managed to get to sleep, and we had, only fuck knew, how many rats and snitches just waiting to sell us out.