Well it is for me anyway.
Even though it’s hot and humid out, there’s a slight breath of wind in the air, and when it trails along my skin my mind sails along with it to calming places. I thinking of happy times in my life. My youth. Baking cookies with my grandmother. The day I got my acceptance letter to CSU. I smile to myself. It’s at that moment that I know for sure that my road to recovery is like climbing out of a deep ravine. I’m only about one hundred feet away from its wide opening, ready climb out. It’s like being reborn, living life for the first time.
A burst of excitement pumps through me and I push my legs harder, picking up speed, dodging deep cracks in the sidewalk.
For the first time ever I have this feeling.
A deep, throbbing feeling in my gut.
A feeling where I know everything will be all right.
That I will be all right.
Chapter Nineteen
~Connie~
The people Connor Doyle looked to as suspects when the feds started snooping and a rat was involved were the members of his own organization. The members of the Braithreachas Don Saol. He and Aidan hid in a vacant apartment across the street from the four-plex where Sean Reilly lived. They’d investigated everyone else and the boy-o was the last person on Connie’s list.
It’s not like he ever wanted to suspect Sean. The boy was like a son to him. And on top of that, his own personal cash cow. Betting off Sean’s fights had made Connie even richer than he already was, and he loved the aspect of earning more money from the kid in the future. And he would have hated to have to cut the boy-o’s bright future short.
“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Ai
dan turned from the cracked blinds, a set of black binoculars in his hand. “I highly doubt that Sean is the rat were looking for.”
“Keep watching,” Connie commanded sternly. There was a large part of him that doubted the boy-o was the rat too, but a man could never be too sure. After all it was Brutus, Julius Ceasar’s best friend who turned on him. Stabbed his best friend in the God damned back.
Aidan shifted back toward the window, and placed the binoculars against his eyes. “He’s exiting the building.”
“And?” Connie waited a second. He knew his wingman would elaborate momentarily.
“He’s in his sweat suit. Most likely jogging to the gym.”
Connie drummed his fingers against the wall. He threw his head back and let out a gust of air. Yes, Aidan was probably right. He was probably jogging to the gym. The kid had a title fight in about a week and Connie imagined his trainer was putting him through rounds and rounds of extensive workouts. “We’ll wait until he’s out of sight then we’ll follow him.” Connie had a feeling that his right hand man could also be wrong though. The kid could be on to them. He was a lot smarter than he seemed and he could be posing like he was going to training, but really going to a secretive meet and greet with the feds.
Connie had seen it happen once before with the boy-o’s father. Patrick Reilly was a good man. A desperate man who joined Connie’s organization shortly after he moved his family here from Ireland. And he was Connie’s best mate. They’d grown up together. Tore down the streets of Kerry, causing havoc and getting into mishchief. But something had happen to Patrick Reilly as he grew up, got married to the lovely Siobhan, and had his children.
He’d gotten soft.
Became the weaker man.
His family meant more to him than anything and as much as Connor respected him for that, he hated him for it as well. He used to know the Patrick Reilly who was fearless. The Patrick Reilly who’d take a bullet to the chest before he’d rat out one of his fellow members of the brotherhood. He thought of the last conversation he’d ever had with him.
“What we’re doing is wrong, Connie!” Patrick shouted. “I’ve got a wife. I’ve got kids. I don’t want them mixed up in this kind of shit.”
“But you knew that before you joined up, mate,” Connie replied levelly. “You were well aware of what you were getting yourself into.”
“I wasn’t,” he insisted. “You never told me you were mixed up in cocaine, Connie. You never told me that this was the kind of organization you were running. I’m sorry, but my son deserves to have a father he can look up to. Not a father who is a ringleader in organized crime and selling drugs.”
It was that moment that Connie heard a light tapping noise. It was almost scratchy, like it was coming from a microphone. He stilled as realization sank in, but he didn’t panic. Connie Doyle never panicked. Although it saddened him a tiny bit to do what he was about to do, he knew he had to. Better Patrick than him. So Connie pushed aside the better half of himself that was screaming for him not to react to his best friend wearing a wire, and brought forth the lethal, cold blooded, murdering side of him.
And just when Patrick panicked, and turned to run out the door, Connie whipped out his magnum 44 and put a hole right through Patrick’s skull.
Aidan set the binoculars down on an end table next to Connie. Connie nodded and followed Aidan out of the apartment. The whole way down the stairs he kept thinking of Sean, and prayed that he didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps because Connie didn’t feel like shooting anyone today.
Chapter Twenty
~Sean~