“He didn’t. For once,” Declan intoned grimly. “He hasn’t mentioned any measures he wants put in place to draw out any Sparrow informants who didn’t come forward. At least, not to me. Maybe he’s told you seeing as you’re in the golden circle.”
His scorn had me huffing. “I ain’t in the golden circle, whatever the fuck that means.”
Da had Conor spying on every Five Pointer and he hadn’t informed me of that.
Some goddamn golden circle.
The day Aidan, Brennan, and Declan discovered what Kid was up to, I’d watch the beating with a bag of popcorn.
“If you say so,” he grumbled. “Come with me.”
There was a central office made out of fiberglass walls whose windows looked out onto every side of the warehouse, and that was where Dec worked. But as he beckoned me out of there, I followed him to the far end where there was another enclosure. This one was made of the same fiberglass, but it had no windows.
Along the way, we passed crates, the contents of which I had no desire to know.
I wasn’t sure what I expected to find in the secondary shelter, but I knew it wasn’t merchandise because that was stored out in the open.
Thoughts of Aoife whispered away when Dec opened the door, and I braced myself. Not because I was scared of what I was about to see, but because the stench that came from there was worse than Jake’s diapers.
My nostrils flared at the smell, but as I approached the enclosure, I knew it wasn’t going to be a pretty sight because it only intensified with proximity.
“Who the fuck’s that?” I rumbled as I passed Dec who leaned against the door, his arms folded, legs crossed as he took in the sight of what appeared to be a man.
Except, this man had…
I sucked in a breath. “Are they maggots?” It was a rhetorical question.
Declan shrugged. “He’s a traitor.”
“Who the fuck is he?” I snapped.
“The fucker who’s been an albatross around my neck since I was a teenager.”
“And? Who’s that?” I demanded when he just smirked at the bastard hanging on a cattle hook.
“Cillian Donahue.”
I frowned because that was not a Russian name. “Who?”
Declan huffed. “This is why I wanted Eoghan. He’d know who the bastard is.”
The stirrings of a headache started to form at my temples, exacerbated not only out of irritation with Dec but from the fucking stench in here.
“What did you want Eoghan to do? Give your fist a bump in congratulations?”
“This is a historic moment.”
It was?
I grimaced. “I’ll take your word for it.” Then, a glimmer of recognition filtered into being in my memory banks. “Donahue… Deirdre’s brother?” Deirdre was his ex-fiancée. She’d been murdered a long time ago.
“Yes,” Declan said with a grin that was wild and wicked and too like his father’s—shit, our father’s. “That cunt’s brother.”
The vitriol in his voice had me rasping, “What’s he done to the family, Declan?”
“Been blackmailing me all my adult life.”
“Wait, I thought Cillian was dead?”
“He went into WITSEC. That’s how I found him. Well, to be fair, Caro Dunbar and Conor found him for me. Caro and Cillian have been skinning me alive for decades.”
Donahue groaned at that, and when Declan cackled like he was a fucking lunatic, I muttered, “I think the fumes are going to your head.”
“That’s the sweet smell of victory, Finn.”
“There’s nothing sweet about this.” I frowned at the living corpse. “Why did you ask if I spoke Russian?”
“Wanted you to fuck off. Didn’t work. Figured this would get you to back away. Unless… is it true what they used to say about you?”
My perusal of the many open sores on this bastard’s body that were riddled with insects was ruptured by his question.
“What did they say about me?”
“That no one walked away once you got involved in making someone talk.”
My mouth twisted. “It’s not exactly something I advertise, but yes. They used to say that. Aidan Sr. would send me in to handle the men he didn’t want dead.”
“So they literally couldn’t walk away?” Declan grinned. “I like the sound of that.”
“There’s nothing to like.” I frowned at him. “Dec, are you okay?”
“No, Finn, I’m not.” He jabbed a finger at Donahue. “But this makes me happy.”
I moved over to him, grabbed his arm and hauled him out of the back room. “What’s going on with you?”
He dragged his arm from mine. “Nothing’s wrong with me. I’m well within my rights to do this without telling Da. Cillian turned evidence against us—not just to a cop, but to Caro fucking Dunbar.
“Not only is he a rat, he helped the Sparrows. That means I can do whatever the fuck I want to him and Da will sign off on it.”
Slowly, I shook my head. There was torture, and then there was letting a man feel himself being eaten alive by insects.
“How long’s he been like this?”
“I got him here a few days after Christmas. Talk about a gift that keeps on giving.”
My mind veered back to St. Stephen’s Day, when I’d seen him talking on the phone in the yard at his parents’ place. Had that phone call been about this fucker?
Two weeks of this kind of torture, however, went beyond business.
This was personal.
“Declan, what did he do to you?”
My brother blinked at me. “He stole fourteen years of my son’s life from me.”
And that resonated.
It hit home like nothing else could.
From one father to another, I got it. I understood his rage, felt it myself on his behalf.
I didn’t ask for the details, didn’t need any. Declan wouldn’t go through with this level of sadism if he didn’t believe what he was saying was true.
Cillian Donahue might be a traitor to our family, but somehow, he’d been pivotal in keeping Aela and Declan apart, and that had robbed my brother of the early years of his son’s childhood.
There was only one appropriate response to that:
“Do you have a power washer?”
Declan tipped his head to the side. “I can get one.”
“I learned this trick from Junior,” I informed him as I shrugged out of my coat and jacket then rolled up my sleeves.
Declan hollered, “Hutchins, where the fuck are you?”
“Here, Dec.”
I cast a look at one of Dec’s crew and said, “I need a power washer.”
“Gimme two minutes, Finn.”
By the time I was in my shirtsleeves, Hutchins had hauled in a power washer and had hooked it up to a faucet that I assumed was used when cleaning up this room.
“You want any bleach in it?” Hutchins asked as I tossed him my coat and sports jacket.
“Nah, good thinking though.”
He nodded then faded away, leaving me with the power washer gun in my hand.
“It stings like a motherfucker and it might get rid of some of the goddamn stench in here,” I grumbled. “I ain’t about to teach you my tricks when he’s covered in his own piss and shit too.”