"What are you two talking about?" Da growled. "Don’t keep me in the dark. Fucking hate that."
"It’s entangled, Da. It’s not that easy to explain."
"Start at the beginning," he said, calmer now, which told me he saw how genuine I was being. None of this was going to be easy to talk about.
"That year, when Doyle was in Rome, there was a priest. McKenna."
"I remember him. Odd." He scowled. "Shifty eyes. What about him?"
For a second, I couldn’t even get the words out, and then I didn’t have to because Finn, in a whisper, said, "He molested Conor."
The office was so silent that I felt like I could hear mine and Finn’s racing heartbeats as if they were a starting pistol. Da’s chair creaked as he rocked back.
"This isn’t some joke that you’re both going to regret when I break your fucking noses for daring to even say that out loud, is it?"
I shook my head. "I wish it were, Da. I wish it were."
Thirty-Two
Aidan Sr
My hands tightened around the edge of the desk as I processed the unthinkable.
He.
Molested.
Conor.
I felt each word like a punch to the head. In fact, I’d have preferred that. I’d prefer the pain, I’d take that a thousand times over—
My boy.
My goddamn boy.
Ruined.
Defiled.
Broken.
The roar escaped me without my even knowing it, and the desk, loaded down with papers and picture frames, went flying as a piece of furniture that weighed two hundred pounds was suddenly no longer in front of me.
It was tipped up on its side, both my boys having staggered back at the suddenness of my move as I turned it over with my bare hands.
With a scream, I twisted around, picked up the desk chair then hurled it against the wall behind me.
As it caught on the window, the glass shattered, but it wasn’t enough. I picked it up again and slammed it there, over and over, over and fucking over, each slam not enough. Never enough.
My poor, goddamn boy.
Abused.
Violated.
With the broken wreckage of the chair in my hands, I dropped it to the ground and with a keening wail that penetrated the haze in my head, I slammed everything on the dresser in front of me to the ground, the beloved photographs, the crucifix my grandmother had given me at my confirmation and which I’d framed, I threw it all to the floor like it was trash.
At that moment, it was.
Tearing out the drawers that were loaded down with documents, I slammed them there too—each one of them strewn on the floor like garbage. Then when they were bare, I hurled them across the room with a strength that was born of rage.
For the first time in my life, I understood why wrath was one of the seven deadly sins.
As I stood there, panting, my lungs burning, my heart pounding, my fists tightened into balls that made my nails prick my skin, my feet buried within papers that had made the Irish Mob into the powerhouse it was today, feeling wilder than a rabid wolf, I snarled, "Find him. He has to die."
"He’s dead, Aid—" Finn paused. Corrected, "Da. He has been a long time."
Jesus.
None of this was a lie if Finn couldn’t call me by my name. If he had to use a title that he’d never used before and in front of Junior. But I didn’t even care that my oldest had heard it.
If anything, Finn’s use of that had my knees wobbling, cascading out from under me as I pressed my back to the wall and stared blindly ahead.
If the fucker was dead, then there was no retribution.
How was I supposed to avenge Conor?
How was I supposed to fix this?
How was I supposed to make it right for him?
I’d spent their entire lives trying to make my boys bulletproof. I’d done shit no ordinary parent would ever condone, I’d forged them in hell to make them ready for heaven, making an enemy out of each of them to protect them from the fuckers out there.
They thought I was a monster?
That was nothing to the Fieris of this world.
I had standards. I didn’t touch kids. I didn’t sell sex slaves.
My boys were my heirs. The city was my bequest to them. They’d rule over it together. Just like I should have done with my brothers until they’d been torn from me.
Ripped away.
I never wanted that for my boys, so I made them strong. I made them tight-knit. I made them a unit. Sacrificing what I should have had with each of them. I’d done that to protect them, but on my watch, under my fucking eye, a man of God had touched Conor.
My boy.
My fucking boy.
My head slammed back into the wall.
Once.
Twice.
Four times.
Six.
"Da! Stop it!"
Junior was there, in my face, his hands on my shoulders as he grabbed me. Finn was there next, both of them hauling me away from the wall, but I fought them both. My two boys, for all that one was injured, were normally both stronger than me—not at that moment. I tossed them both aside and twisted around, my forehead slamming into the drywall.
Two times.
Five.
I didn’t even feel the pain.
Grief robbed me of it.
How did I fix this?
How could I fix the unfixable?
"Conor," I shouted, tears in my eyes, burning like acid, sinking through soft flesh like they were made from cotton candy. "My fucking boy." Judders of emotion rolled through me as I pulled back from the wall, then slammed one fist into it before letting the other rip.
"Da! Stop this. I ain’t finished explaining," Junior hollered, grabbing me by the shoulders again and trying to stop me, trying to keep me still.
But there was no keeping the monster still.
He was out.
He needed blood.
I twisted around so I could snarl, "Fuck your explanations." I snatched Junior by the collar, hauled him close, and snapped, "Did the fucker touch you?"
He shook his head, his hands coming to my arms, his fingers pinching the flesh of my biceps. "We think it was just Kid."
Mouth wobbling before I firmed it, I demanded, "Finn?" My boy had already been through that once, had the priest taken advantage of him too?
"No. He didn’t touch me." Our eyes clashed and held with the secret we shared. With knowledge I’d never divulge.
"What about Brennan and Declan?" I grated out.
"No. We made sure to ask."
"I trusted him with my soul, my eternal spirit," I ground out. "But he defiled one of my boys..." My voice turned hoarse. "Who killed him?"
"I did," Junior rasped. His mouth worked a little. "I saw red."
"What happened?" I tipped my head back so I could look at them, catching the glance they shared, but before they could think to hide anything else from me, I rumbled, "Tell me. Everything."
There was no peace to be had, but retribution had to be measured.
McKenna might be gone, but there’d be someone in his family who could pay for his sins.
And if all his kin were dead, then their graves could be defiled. Anything to unsettle their souls and rip them from the comfort of death.
When Finn whispered, "We caught him in the confessional," time seemed to fracture. Splintering. Shattering. "We dragged him out, Aidan grabbed a candlestick." He swallowed, like he was nervous. Like he hadn't done a thousand worse things than this in his time. Like he knew my sanity rested on his next few words. "He beat him to death."