“They have tattoos as well,” Camille pointed out.
She wasn’t wrong.
Brow furrowed as I tried to make out what the tattoo said, I heard laughter coming from the hall before Conor hurried in.
“You have to see this,” he boomed as he ran over to the window.
Not wasting a second, we joined him. I was well aware that one of the last times we’d been huddled around a fucking window in this house, we’d been waiting for a goddamn battalion of Sparrows trying to smoke us out.
On this occasion, however, there was no truck full of soldiers.
There was Finn’s Range Rover.
I didn’t even have it in me to be smug over the fact that I was right about Sunday dinner being sacred in this house, not when said Range Rover was making donuts in the front yard.
“What the fuck is he doing?”
Conor hooted. “I don’t give a shit. Oh, my God! I’m jealous as hell. Why didn’t he let me jump in the back?”
Camille’s unease was clear. “Are they stoned?”
“Not with Jake in the car,” I disregarded immediately.
Conor pointed out, “Maybe he’s not with them.”
“Who else would they leave him with? Aela’s in the kitchen with Ma,” I argued.
“True,” he muttered before he started cackling when the Range Rover surged forward, mowing through Ma’s prized flowerbeds.
“What the actual fuck?” I rasped, watching as Finn pulled a J-turn and rammed into what, in the spring, would house Ma’s favorite daffodils.
Dirt kicked up everywhere, spraying into the tracks the heavy vehicle had left behind.
Because it was Finn, and everyone knew that silver Range Rover was his, guards had run out to watch the show, but no one was laughing—everyone was just gaping.
Including the folks who’d finally figured out that something was happening, and who, without me even knowing it, had rushed outside onto the front driveway. Ma included.
A few minutes later, another couple of flowerbeds destroyed, the car pulled up outside the house, but Finn didn’t jump out of the driver’s side.
Aoife did.
Even more goddamn bewildered, I blinked at the sight of the carnage before us, a sight that had only just been rectified when Da had brought in a bunch of landscape gardeners to fix the mess from the holidays, and turned to study Ma.
“She’s going to shit a brick.”
“Nah,” Conor denied, folding his arms against his chest as he too watched our mother.
The second Ma’s eyes crashed into Aoife’s, I saw the change in her.
Her shoulders hunched, and instead of hurling curses at her, instead of getting in her face like our mouthy mother was more than capable of doing, she twisted on her heel and retreated into the house.
I blinked again.
Then I shoved Conor’s arm. “What the fuck is going on, Kid?”
He smirked. “Sucks not to be in the loop, doesn’t it?”
“When are you not in the loop? You’re always in the goddamn loop. Declan and I are the ones who are cut out of shit when you, Aidan, and Finn get together in your fucking fancy-assed high-rise offices. We’re the brawn in the goddamn docks and the Hole, and you’re the brains—”
“Not my story to tell.” Sniffing, Conor brushed off his sleeve. “You should have told me about Callum sooner,” he sniped.
“I’m not getting into this with you now,” I growled.
“Your dad looks like he’s going to have a stroke,” Camille interrupted uneasily.
Distracted, I shot Da a look and saw she wasn’t half wrong. But Aoife, showing more guts than any of Aidan O’Donnelly Sr.’s kids combined, strode past the man whom most of New York was terrified of, who had a face redder than a beet, with Jake now in her arms—his smiling face telling me he’d enjoyed the ride in the Range Rover—and moved into the house.
“I’ll find out what’s going on,” Camille assured me, darting onto tiptoe to press a kiss to my cheek before she scampered away, on the hunt for information.
As Conor made to follow her, I grabbed his arm and demanded, “What was that about?”
“Ma had it coming.”
“What the fuck?” I shook my head just in case I’d gotten a shit ton of water in my ears during my shower earlier. I’d been between Camille’s thighs for some of that, so it’d explain a lot.
“You heard me. I know you’re a momma’s boy, Bren, but she ain’t perfect.”
“Never said she was.”
If anything, I knew more than anyone else that she wasn’t. He was right that we were close, but I’d seen how she’d let us down over and over again, but that was what parents did.
They fucked up.
They made mistakes.
But Ma had always bounced back. Like a fucking boomerang, you couldn’t get rid of her.
Same thing with Da.
“What did she do?” I demanded.
“Finn’s story to tell, not mine.”
Before I could clip him around the ear, I saw the glint of a vehicle in the distance. That wasn’t extraordinary, but on a Sunday, with all the family here now, it was unusual.
“We expecting guests?”
Conor peered out of the window and muttered, “Huh. No. I don’t think so.”
Both of us watched as the guards scrambled to get back to their stations to deal with the guest, but a few minutes later, the gates opened and Da, who was hurling curses at Finn like a hungover witch the day after Halloween, paused to pick up his phone.
When his beet-colored face blanched, and he staggered back, leaning on Finn who darted forward to support him, Conor and I shared a look before we ran outside.
We weren’t the only ones who’d seen the show. Declan was on his way, and Aidan, thanks to his knee, was hobbling outside too.
“What’s going on, Senior?” Finn ground out, shaking his arm as if that would give us answers.
“I-It can’t be,” Da rattled off, but his gaze was pinned to the car that was driving nearer.
“Who is it, Da?” Aidan demanded.
He licked his lips. “Jackie says…” He paused. Broke off. Tried again. “Jackie says it’s your uncle Padraig.”
Conor snorted. “He’s dead.”
“Well, it ain’t a fucking hearse that’s driving toward us,” Declan groused. “How can Uncle Paddy still be alive, Da? Jackie must be wrong.”
A wall of O’Donnellys turned to face the chaos that was about to blast our way. Because the guards wouldn’t have let just anyone inside the gates, and definitely not Jackie who’d been with Da since the beginning.
Whatever was going on here, however, we were all in the goddamn dark but we were united together.
No matter what.
That was how the O’Donnellys fought their battles.
Thirty-Seven
Finn
The second he got out of the car, I knew it was him.
Uncle Paddy.
The guy who’d been like a second father to me, and to Junior too. Who’d been our confessor, our confidante, and the guy who’d helped bury the bodies we’d left behind because we were too young to deal with corpses and crime scenes ourselves.