“Sit the fuck down!” Sean yells, and I fall back into the seat as if the words had pushed me square in the chest. Sean turns back to Deklan. “You want her to be a part of this? Well, she is now. Do your fucking job.”
“She doesn’t need to see this.”
“Yeah, I think she does. This is her revenge too, isn’t it? If it weren’t for all this fuckery, she would be in college now, banging some frat boy, and not stuck with your ass.”
“I’m not stuck with—” I’m cut off before I realize I’m speaking.
“Shut up!” they both yell at once.
“Sean, you can’t be serious.” Neil sets his drink on the table beside the couch and stands up. “This is all ancient history, and you know you need me. There’s more going on that you don’t know about, and I’m the only one who can tell you.”
“Deklan, do it.”
My husband looks at me. I know he’s trying to convey some meaning with his gaze, but I can’t fathom w
hat it is. Leave anyway, despite Sean’s words? Close my eyes? Forgive him for what I’m about to see?
Deklan swallows and breaks his gaze with me.
“Boss, I—”
“Fuck it.” In a flash, Sean shoves Deklan as he reaches inside his jacket and grabs his gun from the holster. Sean turns, takes two steps forward, and points it at Neil’s head. “Bye.”
The sound is deafening.
I bite my lip hard enough to taste blood, but it’s the only way to stop myself from screaming. Brian grabs me and pulls me against him, but I can feel blood and bits of Neil’s head on my arm and shoulder.
“Don’t move,” I hear Brian whisper.
I can’t make my muscles respond anyway. I want to close my eyes, but I can’t. Teagan has her hand over her mouth, and her eyes are staring blankly at the mess next to me. Deklan seems frozen in place as Sean turns toward him.
“Deklan Kearney,” Sean says slowly as he stares at Deklan’s face, “my father might have thought of you as a son, but you need to remember what your last name is. You are hired by the Foleys, not one of them. You work for me, and when I tell you to do something, you fucking do it without hesitation. You got that?”
“Yeah, boss,” Dek says. “I got it.”
Sean smiles, pats Deklan’s shoulder, and sits back in his chair. He looks around the room, making eye contact with each of us as his eyes dance in his skull.
“As you can see,” he says to no one in particular, “being family doesn’t negate your wrongdoings.”
Chapter 33
“Shh, baby. It’ll be okay.”
I can’t stop crying. My nose is stuffed up, and I can’t breathe. Deklan holds me tightly in his lap as he sits on a toilet somewhere in the Foley mansion, but I’m only barely aware of my surroundings. I keep hearing the gun blast in my ear, and I keep feeling the wet spatter of blood on my arm even though I know Deklan’s washed it all off of me.
Neil’s body is probably still in Sean’s study, but I’m not crying for him. I’m not even crying because chunks of his brain ended up all over me. I’m crying because I keep seeing Kathy lying on the sidewalk outside a noisy, dark bar. I tighten my arms around Deklan’s neck, but I can’t get close enough to him to push the memories from my head.
“I never should have brought you here,” Deklan mumbles. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
He hands me another tissue, and I wipe my nose and eyes. I take several deep breaths and try to get my shit together again.
“I need to be here,” I say softly. “Deklan, I need it. I can’t be kept in the dark anymore. That’s why Kathy died—because I didn’t know what was going on.”
Deklan stares at me as he holds my face in his hands. He looks like he’s about to say something when there is a knock at the door.
It’s Teagan.
“Dek?” She opens the door a crack and looks back and forth between us.