He bolted upright, blurting, "Cain’s been addicted to Red for the past two months."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "So, he got hooked when my father was still alive?"
"Yeah, he did."
"Where’s he buying it from?"
Anthony cleared his throat. "I’m not sure. I just know that he always has plenty. It started out where he was using it only on the nights we went to the brothel, but then he started taking it more regularly."
Mind racing, I pondered that. "So, Anthony, what you mean to tell me is that though my da specifically told you that he wouldn’t accept any of his guards taking drugs, you knowingly covered up for Cain?"
"It wasn’t knowingly at first."
"Key words being ‘at first.’" I slowly nodded. "I’m starting to see that you fuckers weren’t as terrified of my father as I initially suspected if you thought you could hide that from him."
"He was sick at the end," Jonesy excused. "We all saw it—"
"So you took advantage of my sick old man?"
He turned impossibly paler. "N-No, I didn’t mean that."
Finn ground out, "I’d sit my ass down if I were you, Jonesy, before your widow finds herself joining the Old Wives’ Club."
Throat bobbing, Jonesy plunked his ass on his seat. When he swiped at his forehead, I realized he’d been sweating.
Over something else he was potentially lying about?
Filing that likelihood away, I asked Anthony, "Did you take Red?"
"Most of us did," he muttered. "Only on nights we went to Queens of Heart."
"Fuck you, Anthony," Jamie, Ma’s guard, snarled, leaping to his feet. "I never went with this bunch of perverts, Aidan, and I didn’t take any-fucking-thing."
I slipped off the safety. "That true, Anthony?"
"S-Sorry, yeah. It’s true. I forget about Jamie. He’s with your ma so much that it’s easy to forget he’s one of us."
"That’s because I ain’t one of you," Jamie spat. "Neither’s Fenris."
"Sean ain’t either," Declan inserted. "He was mine until I transferred him to Ma’s guards."
Nodding at him, I ordered Jamie, "Sit down."
After he begrudgingly complied, I studied Sean, Fenris, and Jamie, taking note of their expressions. They were relieved I believed them, but they were angry too. Angry at being lumped in with these treacherous fuckers.
"Those on my father’s security detail expecting reassignment will no longer be transferred to my or my brothers’ crews, but they will be demoted. Apart from Ma’s detail. You’re your own crew now."
"You’re demoting us over some two-bit whore?" Jonesy yelled.
"Thought she was just a baby," Eoghan rumbled, his disgust clear.
"She was a fucking hooker," Jonesy grated out. "It’s part of the job."
"Getting their asses killed? Thought it was just to lie on their backs and spread their thighs instead of processing the fact they’re fucking old creeps likeyouto pay their bills," Declan sniped.
The color had made a reappearance in Jonesy’s face, and I welcomed it with open arms.
"You took drugs when that was one of Da's few golden rules. You protected Cain over obeying those rules. Then you compounded that by lying.