Brutal Kiss

“How do you know?”

He hops down and lands on the leaves. I peer over the side as he grins up at me, arms crossed over his chest.

“She’s always there. I told you, I’ve been working this mystery for a long ass time. Now you’d better go inside before your dad sends another one of your brothers to find you and they catch me sinking my cock deep between your pretty legs. God, Daley, you are so fucking beautiful and smart. It drives me insane.” He laughs as he walks off, heading toward the house.

I sit there dizzy, but I’m smiling like an idiot.

“I guess we’re going to a clan party,” I whisper to myself.

Chapter 16

Rian

The party is packed with people milling around an old wooden structure that was once a barn but is now just a shamble of four rotting walls and a big open doorway on the edge of the wildlife preserve. The barn itself is a historic relic from the 1700s, but it's owned by the Halloran family these days and sits in the middle of the woods unused and abandoned by time and age. It’s crumbling, probably a safety hazard, definitely littered with rusty tetanus-inducing exposed nails, and some dumb, drunk asshole is doing a keg stand right in the middle of it while three other dumb, drunk assholes cheer him on.

This isn’t my scene. While I’m a member of the Halloran clan, I’ve never been part of its world, not this one anyway. There are two sides to the clan—the business and the family. I’m an outcast, an outsider, an edge case. They let me into the business; they accept my help and order me on hits, but they don’t invite me to their parties. They don’t act like I’m a part of the family. Everyone still sees me as the guy that got Megan killed, and there’s a lot of resentment built up in these people over the years.

Which isn’t remotely fair. There are plenty of murderers and thieves and worse in this bunch, and yet I’m the asshole still.

But Daley, she fits right in. As soon as she gets out of my truck and starts toward the gathering of at least fifty people, several cousins call out to her, and she’s whisked away, smiling and laughing, with only a single glance back over her shoulder and an apologetic smile toward me.

I watch from a distance as she’s passed around like a novelty. Everyone thinks it’s hilarious that Fergal Halloran’s only daughter is finally back, with her fancy degrees and her fancier law firm job. Someone shoves a beer into her hand while three female cousins swamp her, begging for details about college boys and all that shit.

My eyes sweep the crowd. A fire pit is set up fifty feet from the barn in a giant ring of stones. Old barrels, benches, and chairs are scattered around it, and most of the seats are taken by laughing people, drinking, smoking, having fun. Most of the people here are young, in their twenties and under, though I spot a few of the older cousins, and even a couple of uncles scattered throughout. These parties are an open secret, but only clan folk would ever dare show up.

This is a common enough occurrence when the temperature’s nice and people aren’t freezing their asses off outdoors, but in all the years I’ve been a part of this mob, I’ve barely set foot in this place.

There was a time when the idea of coming here was both appealing and repulsive at the same time. The rumors about the debauchery always made me wonder what it would be like to attend a gathering, but the idea of hanging around with thugs and dickheads and drug-addled addicts and worse didn’t seem all that appealing. I heard some high school guys tried to sneak in once and nearly got killed for it. I never bothered.

But standing here now, on the edge of the firelight away from the crowd, I’m not impressed. I think my high school self would’ve seen all the drinking and laughter and thought this was the best thing ever, but I can see the cracks in the facade. The girls getting passed around like trophies. The wasted guys arguing with each other. It’s just a big party with alcohol and drugs and an old barn that’s going to topple down at any moment and lots of selfish egos all swirling around and causing trouble.

“They’re going to kill me,” Daley says, appearing at my elbow after about ten minutes of circulating. She dumps her beer on the ground and crumples the red plastic cup. “Seriously, everyone wants to talk my ear off.”

“You’re exciting. It’s not every day a new person shows up to one of these things, much less an actual Halloran.”