MOTSHAN
I pulled into the garage on the back of the property, where the only man I trusted in this family was waiting for me. I hadn’t told him what happened, but he could tell from my tone of voice that it was serious.
“What happened?” Niamh asked when I stepped out of the car.
“Our timeline has been pushed up,” I answered as I opened the back door and watched as Dulca’s head flopped out of the door, his eyes vacant and staring up at both of us.
“Fuck,” Niamh swore. “I see the plan went a little awry?” His eyebrow raised as he glanced over at me.
“A little,” I sighed and leaned my back against the car. “I didn’t expect those idiots to react the way they did. The second they saw that I had Scarlet, they went feral. Sebastian, the brunet with the neck tattoos, wasn’t letting her go, even if it meant he died in the process.”
“And what do we do now?”
I pushed off the car, pacing around the garage and thinking through all of my options. There was no getting around the fact that Dulca had died. Too many people saw what happened—too many people whose position in the internal family war wasn’t obvious.
“There’s no getting around telling the family who did it. I’ll have to tell them the truth about that.”
Niamh nodded and continued to stand there and watch me pace, his arms crossed and bright blue eyes trained on me.
“We have to get ahead of it. We have to get our side together, making sure they’re ready to go to war now. And we need to feel out the rest of the family, decide who is on whose side here.”
“We have nearly half of them,” he said.
“Nearly half isn’t good enough. We need more if we are going to have the majority to change the way this fucking business is run. The old-timers aren’t going to let me change things. It’s going to get bloody, Niamh.”
I stopped in front of him, and he pulled me into his arms. My muscles tensed, knowing anyone would be able to walk in on us at any moment.
“Stop,” he said, running his fingers up and down my back, forcing my muscles to relax. “No one is going to walk in on us, and you needed a hug.”
I breathed him in, soaking up his woodsy aftershave and the fresh scent of his detergent. I sighed into his neck and wrapped my arms around him as well, letting him take some of my stress.
“I think you need to try the Scarlet route again,” he said into my hair as he kissed it. “Now that her father is gone, you don’t have to worry about keeping her in the dark. Tell her what your plan is, how you want to take down the people that hurt you both.”
“After what happened,” I said as I pulled away from him and looked him in his eyes, “I don’t know if I would be able to gain her trust. And I think we both know that gaining the trust of the men she keeps company with will be nearly impossible.”
I knew they all loved her; I could tell just by looking at them. Anyone with eyes could see that they loved her. Tristan watched her constantly, never letting her out of his sight. Sebastian almost got himself killed for her and could barely keep his hands off her at any given moment. Elliot was a different story, always lurking in the background of the other two, but his body gravitated towards her constantly. Where she went, he followed.
I wasn’t going to judge her the way the rest of her family had behind her back when they found out who she had jumped into bed with. She was allowed to love whoever she wanted, even if that meant loving more than one person at once. It wasn’t the life for me, but it didn’t mean it wouldn’t work out for her.
Before everything happened, she was happy. She seemed lighter somehow, and the way she talked about them…I could only hope to be able to talk about my own love like that one day. If I could get rid of the old ways in this family, maybe Niamh and I could be together in public. Two men at the head of this Ducla clan.
I laughed to myself at the vision in my head. I couldn’t think of a single family in organized crime that had ever let their people be openly gay. They were always hidden, shoved to the back and kept behind closed doors. Because how dare anyone choose their happiness over procreating to keep the “business” in the family.
“Where’d you go?” Niamh asked me, grabbing onto my face gently and pulling my attention back to him.
“I’m here,” I said, smiling before leaning in for a quick kiss. “First things first, let’s gather everyone up and let them know Dulca is dead. I want it to come from me and not from the meatheads that were there with us. I need to make sure it doesn’t look like I’m hiding anything.”
“Agreed.” Niamh nodded.
“And then we decide how to get back in touch with Scarlet.” I groaned and roughly ran my hands through my hair. “I should’ve been honest with her from the start. But I knew they were eavesdropping, and I wanted to tell her in private.”
“I don’t think any of this was ever going to be easy.”