"And let's face it, Ma might not have given birth to you, but she thinks of you as her own.”
Fuck, I wished that were the truth.
"When I first met Aoife, do you know I blackmailed her into sleeping with me?"
Eoghan's eyes rounded.
"Yeah. I'm a piece of shit. I know it.”
“Well, you’re certainly fucking something.” He tugged on his collar. “I mean, she’s apparently forgiven you.”
God, that was the least of my sins.
So fucking many.
Was it any wonder I couldn’t sleep at night?
“Do you ever get scared you’ll lose her?”
I shot him a glance, well aware he wasn’t just talking about me, but himself too. "You're the one who told me I need to sleep. What do you think keeps me up at night? The job?" I scoffed. "My soul is dirty enough that the shit I do for the Points doesn't give me insomnia anymore."
“We all have our secrets.”
"What are yours? Her dad?"
"Inessa is way too smart not to have figured out that I was behind his kneecaps being blown out," he said dryly, rubbing his chin. “Glad that fucker’s dead though, and his soul ain't on my conscience. How long has it been since you’ve confessed?”
That had me blinking at him. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Curious.”
“About?”
“Whether or not it works. I have to say, ever since the church burned down, shit’s been different.” He tapped his temple. “I used to think it was bullshit, but Da hasn’t been making us go to another parish, so I’ve been taking advantage of the change of pace.
“I kill as easily as I blink,” he said, raising his hand and flicking his index finger against his thumb as if he were pulling the trigger on his sniper rifle. “That has a dramatic effect on how I view the world.”
Studying him, I had to admit nothing about this conversation was going how I’d imagined. “I don’t doubt that it does.”
Seemed to me that the discussion on the table was our immortal souls. The Holy fucking Trinity. When all I’d expected was to watch the rerun of the Knicks’ game when he came over.
He tipped his head to the side. “Tell you a secret for one of yours?”
My brow puckered at that. “We’ve already shared secrets, haven’t we?”
His smirk made an appearance, one that made me smile because he was such a cocky piece of shit who went through life like he was fucking James Bond that, at some point, you stopped thinking of him as a man—he was a soldier.
A killing machine.
A military-trained assassin who had more kills on his hands than even his da could compete with.
Long distance or not.
“I don’t consider those a secret. Not when every woman who enters the family home figures out you're an O'Donnelly faster than we can eat Ma’s Sunday roast.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“One glance at Ma’s wall of fame and Inessa was getting antsy. I’ve heard them talking—”
“You’ve heard them talking? How?” He answered with a smile, and the unholy gleam in his eyes had me shaking my head at him. “What the hell have you done now?”
“Inessa’s phone’s bugged.”
I scowled at him. “Are you shitting me?”
“Why are you so shocked?” he questioned. “That’s not even my secret. It’s Conor’s.”
“This fucking family,” I growled. “Is Aoife bugged?”
“What do you think?” was his droll retort.
Yeah, Aoife was bugged.
And this was Senior’s next phase in weeding out Sparrows from the Points.
Rage filled me as I grabbed my phone and sent Conor a message:
Me: What the fuck do you think you’re doing bugging my woman?
Kid: Now, now, Finn. Be rational.
Me: Did you just tell me to calm down?
Kid: I didn’t. I told you to be rational. There’s a big difference.
Me: Tell that to my fucking temper.
I shot Aoife and Inessa a look, then did something I rarely did: called Conor and spoke with him in Korean.
“The hell kind of game are you playing?”
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” I repeated, snarling the words at him, well aware that Aoife was watching me, Eoghan and Inessa too. “How fucking dare you?” My temper burst into a thousand shards when a realization came to me. “Are all our phones bugged?”
“Of course,” Conor replied, sounding confused.
“Of course?” I felt like my brain was about to burst out of my skull.
Of fucking course?
And he was the one who sounded confused?
“Are you just going to keep repeating my replies? That’s going to get boring. Why are we talking in Korean anyway?”
“Because my wife is sitting right in front of me.”
“Gotcha. No names.” He hummed. “Not sure why this is coming as much of a shock to you. Let’s face it, you need your phones bugged with a paranoid guy like Da around.”
I frowned. “Is this a new thing?”
“Yep. A belated Christmas gift,” was his cheerful retort. “Trust me, I don’t want to listen to your boring conversations any more than you want me to hear them.”
An ache blossomed into being in my temples. “If that’s supposed to be reassuring, it isn’t.”
I could hear the shrug in his voice. “I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s a precaution.”
“What kind of precaution?”
“I’m not sure. Da just asked me to hook your phones up when I upgraded the security software. I figure it’s a failsafe. A way of checking the people around you too.”
“Not because he doesn’t trust us or our wives?” I demanded.
“Nah. Prevention is better than the cure.”
I thought about what he’d said. “When I asked if all our phones were bugged, you said of course.”
“I did.”
“Do you mean just the family circle, or…?”
“Or the whole Five Points?” he prompted.
“Yeah,” I said on a rough exhalation, though I figured I had my answer from his tone alone.
“Yup.” He clicked his tongue in exasperation. “And let me tell you, we’re boring as fuck. You’d think with a bunch of criminals, our runners would at least have something fucking interesting to talk about but nope.”
“Can he do this?” I demanded.
“This is Senior, Finn, of course he can do this. He can do whatever the fuck he wants.”
I knew my brother too well though, so I muttered, “He couldn’t do it without you. That means you agree with it.”
“In part.”
“Kid, this ain't like you.”
“One of my goddamn crew wasn’t a Sparrow before, Finn,” he rasped. “One of the people I treated like he was blood hadn’t triggered a drive-by that almost killed my sister.
“Bet your fucking ass I think we need to be on the hunt for these assholes. I’m working with Lodestar to target their bank accounts, but it’s slow going. I want these sons of bitches eradicated.”