“Don’t forget you have dinner with your fiancée tonight,” Pa said and I could feel his eyes pinning themselves to me as I fell still there, my jacket halfway onto one arm and my jaw ticking with fury because I absolutely had forgotten that.
“It’s been a long day,” I said in a low rumble, tossing his words back at him and seeing my brothers all bob up and down in their seats like a row of ducks hearing the rustle of a bread bag. “I’m sure she would understand if I rearranged.”
“I’m sure she would,” Pa replied, his tone unyielding. “But an O’Brien never breaks his word. And I made it clear that you would be in attendance. Her father owns a hotel downtown and he has gotten the staff in despite the pandemic so that they can be open exclusively for the two of you. You will be there Niall.”
The threat in those last words were all too clear for everyone in the room and Connor practically preened, his bald head shining in the light from the chandelier above him.
I considered my options, taking a great deal of pleasure in the one that involved patricide, fratricide, sororicide, nepoticide – there were a hell of a lot of fancy names involved when you started killing your family members that was for sure – but once again, one look around the room made it clear that the fuckers had all come armed to this tea party.
“Fine,” I barked with all the petulance of a three-year-old who had been told what for. “But one of these days, you cowardly bastards should try threatening me with fists instead of gunfire. I like my odds against the entire family if no one is cheating with a gun in hand. Hell, I’d even let you all have knives and I’d still put money on an unarmed me.”
My brothers glowered at me while Pa chuckled in a way that said he not only agreed but liked the fact a whole hell of a lot.
“Your opinion of yourself is too high, little Niall,” Dermot sneered, his jealousy making his pug face all scrunch up.
I finished pulling my jacket on and stepped towards him as I adjusted the deep blue fabric of it.
“Is that so?” I asked, nice and slow, prowling closer. “Would you like to put your money where your mouth is there, Dermot? We could play a little game of cat and mouse if you like? I’ll be the cat who comes creeping into your home while you’re sleeping, and I’ll even let you run all about the place while I hunt ya. Fair warning though – this cat always finishes his meal once he’s done playing with his food.”
Dermot swallowed thickly, trying to scoff and sneer at that suggestion, but I could see the fear in his eyes. I could see it and taste it and I was licking my lips in hunger for a whole lot more of it.
“Don’t forget,” I breathed, placing my hands on the arms of his chair and leaning right down so that we were nose to nose. Dermot pressed his pistol to my chest in a clear threat, but we all knew he wouldn’t pull the trigger without Pa’s permission, whipped little bitch that he was. “I know where you live,” I purred.
The tension snapped like an elastic band as our father barked a laugh behind us and I straightened, finding my other brothers and my sister also openly aiming their guns at me. Pathetic little arseholes.
I took a cigarette from my pocket and sparked it up, placing it between my lips as I opened my arms wide and laughed like a heathen, waiting for one of them to grow the balls to do it.
“Come on then,” I urged. “I’ve been waiting a long time for death to stop edging me and let me have my release, so give it to me, lads. But don’t be gentle. I want it to be rough and dirty, just like the way I’ve lived. If I’m not choking on my own blood for a good fifteen minutes, then I’ll be sorely disappointed.”
Pa gave them a good thirty seconds, watching, waiting, judging. No doubt he saw their hatred, hesitation, fear and envy plain enough but when he circled the room to stand before me, it was harder to tell what he was looking at.
I grinned at him, still awaiting my death while I dragged a lungful of smoke down between my teeth and held it there, relishing the nicotine almost as much as I hated it.
“Life’s been rough on you, my boy,” Liam O’Brien said softly, almost sounding like an honest to shit daddy who gave a fuck as he stepped closer to me and fool that I was, something twisted in my chest at those words. “Ava…” he sighed and for all his faults I could see there was real regret there. He’d liked her. Been amused by her, no doubt too, with her innocence and the way she’d always turned a blind eye to so much of the dark in me and the rest of our family. But I knew he’d liked her at least as much as a man such as him could. “It’s a terrible pity what became of her. But you did her justice in the end.” He reached out to place a hand against my cheek and my siblings all shifted in their seats, no doubt so jealous over this small display of affection that they were close to combustion. “You made the men who hurt her pay. That’s what counts.”
“Didn’t bring her back,” I grunted, smoke spilling from my lips as I plucked the cigarette from them and held it loose between my fingers, somehow unable to move from that spot while my father cupped my cheek and looked at me with the closest thing to love I think I’d ever seen in him.
“No,” he agreed. “But the Holy Father will have her in a better place now. Away from this. Away from us. Away from you. You know that’s the best thing for her, don’t ya, lad?”
I hadn’t been prepared for that blow so when it struck me dead in the centre of my chest, it was a miracle I didn’t buckle. Pain and the ache of my own endless failure speared through me until my throat locked up and the screaming inside my own skull reached a pitch high enough to damage all the most vital pieces of me.
Fuck.
I knew it was my fault that Ava had been gifted a brutal end. I knew that I never should have gone anywhere near her in the first place. That I shouldn’t have dragged her into this place of sin and violence with me or fooled myself into believing that she’d be safe just so long as she kept herself on the side lines of it all. But no one else had ever dared say that to me before.
The bluntness of my father’s weapon was what shook me most, the way he wielded it so casually after luring me close with a promise of the love he’d always denied me.
“And now, you’re being gifted a woman better suited at last. One who you don’t have to try and protect from this world of ours. One who you don’t have to lie to and corrupt and tarnish the way you did that sweet girl all those years ago.”
My fingers ached for a weapon, something that I could use against the power of his words and the cold, hard look in his eyes which he used to hold me captive in that spot as his thumb scored a path up and down my cheek in this mocking pretence of affection.
“You’re the only one of my offspring yet to produce their own children,” he added. “And let’s not forget that if you’re to rule after I’m gone, you’ll be needing your own successor.”
Liam smiled then, slapping my cheek and stepping back like he couldn’t feel the rot and poison he’d just slipped into me, and he couldn’t hear the screams of the woman I’d married all those years ago bouncing offa the walls all around us.