Omens (The Triad 3)

“I need your help, Scarlet,” he said as he leaned forward, resting his elbows back on the table. “I need you and your boys and whatever resources you have to back me up.”

I figured that was coming. It didn’t surprise me that he would need more manpower than the amount he was able to scrounge up within the family. But I wasn’t too sure the guys would be ready to throw their faith behind a guy that had killed so many of our people and almost gotten Seb and Finn killed.

“They’re going to need some incentive,” I admitted. “They aren’t going to do this out of the kindness of their hearts. Especially not after what happened to Seb and Finn.”

“I have incentive,” he said, his eyes giving me a wary glance before pulling them away from me and down to his half-eaten sandwich on his plate.

Fuck, I thought to myself. I’m not going to like this.

“I know who tried to kill you.”

His voice was so low that I wasn’t sure that I heard him correctly. Because there was no way that my childhood best friend, my brother, would keep something like that from me. He surely would not hold that information from me as a way to incentivize us to work with him.

“Say again?” I asked, fighting the content of my stomach as they tried to make their way back up. If I heard him correctly, and he had managed to find out who my father had hired to take me out, I would be able to find him—to kill him. Slowly. Painfully. Artistically if I so fucking pleased.

“I know who your father hired to have you killed,” he said again, this time meeting my eyes, and I noticed he cringed as he got the words out.

“You know who tried to kill me—tried to rape me—and you’ve been keeping that a fucking secret?” I could feel my blood pressure rise. I knew my face was red with anger, and my eyes were blazing. I wanted to reach across the table and strangle him until he gave me the answer. But we were in public, I had no backup, and Niamh was probably lurking somewhere in the shadows, anticipating that I wouldn’t like this little piece of information.

“Yes. And I will give you his name if you and your boys help me.”