“What do you want me to say, Priestley?”
She let out a sob. “I just want to know where he is.”
“I don’t know where he is,” I told her, and it wasn’t a lie.
Her gaze latched onto mine, as if she recognized I was taking her seriously. She staggered toward the sofa and sat down heavily.
“Why isn’t anyone looking for him?”
I tilted my head to the side. “Why do you think, Priestley?”
“I don’t know!” she shrieked.
Tension hit me when Niall started crying.
“Calm down!” I barked. “You’re scaring him.”
“Tell me! Finn, God, I have to know. I’ve tried the others, but they don’t…” Her grip on Niall turned fierce. Enough for me to wince. “They don’t have kids yet, Finn. They don’t know what it is to be a father.”
“Declan does.”
She sniffed. “Not really. He’s barely been a father for five minutes. You, you know what it is to raise a son. You know what it would mean to miss out on your baby’s early years. Declan doesn’t have that experience, but you know what my man will never get back.”
I scowled at her. “Declan missed out on those early years—”
“Finn! You’re not listening to me. Please, please, I’m begging you. Tell me something. Anything. I’m going out of my mind here.”
Her words hit me in the heart, an organ that was quickly becoming a liability, but what could I say?
A woman in her position could easily turn nasty, and if she went to the cops, her son would be an orphan before he was a year old. Aidan Sr. would see to that.
Scratching my stubbled chin, I rasped, “Some truths are too hard to handle, Priestley.”
“W-What are you saying?”
“You said it yourself. He was in Conor’s crew.”
Her mouth trembled. “Was?”
I didn’t comment. “Why do you think we’d forget a man like that?”
She stared at me for so long, and so silently, that I wasn’t sure if she’d ever let the dots connect. Then, Priestley whispered, “No.”
I arched a brow.
“No, I won’t believe it.”
“That’s down to you.”
“He isn’t a Sparrow!”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “You sure about that?”
“He’s my husband. Of course I know,” she spat.
“And yet, I know Callum was the reason my wife lost three babies, has to take daily antibiotics, and spent our honeymoon in a hospital ward.”
Her eyes rounded, and in a hurry, she gathered all her things together, rasping, “I won’t believe it.”
“And like I said before, that’s down to you.”
But she didn’t hear my words. She scrambled out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Once she left, I sighed, clambered to my feet and made it to my bed. That was when I let the hangover pull me under.
Priestley was tomorrow’s problem.
Finn: We may have a situation.
Brennan: I have a hangover. That’s my only situation right now.
Finn: Me too. I drank more than Conor weighs.
Brennan: Lol. Think you’d be dead if you had.
Brennan: Okay, what’s the problem?
Finn: Priestley came around this morning.
Brennan: Callum O’Reilly’s Priestley?
Finn: Yeah. Did you know she had her kid prematurely?
Brennan: I didn’t.
Brennan: Stress?
Finn: Yeah.
Brennan: What did she want?
Finn: Guess.
Brennan: Smart ass. What did you tell her?
Finn: That he was a Sparrow.
Brennan: Fuck. How did that go down?
Finn: Not well.
Brennan: I can imagine. Think she’ll be a problem?
Finn: Refer to the start of this conversation.
Brennan: Wow, someone’s in a mood.
Finn: Bet your fucking ass I am. That wasn’t my idea of fun.
Brennan: No, I’ll bet. Think she’s a threat?
Finn: Perhaps. How’s she coping financially?
Brennan: There’s no difference. I’ve made sure that she gets Callum’s take.
Finn: From the state of her, you wouldn’t know.
Brennan: Want me to monitor her?
Finn: Think it’s for the best.
Brennan: Understood.
Fifty-One
Brennan
“Mark O’Reilly came to see me again,” Da rumbled as he took a deep sip of whiskey.
Conor tensed up. “What did he want?”
“Wanted to know if I thought Callum was a Sparrow.”
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I said that I hadn’t sanctioned his death. But if a Five Pointer had decided to take out a Sparrow, then they’d done us a service.”
He sank back the last finger of whiskey then poured himself another. It sloshed over the sides, pooling on the desk.
“Think you need to slow down, Da,” Declan said cautiously, frowning at the sight of the mess he’d made.
“I know my limits,” Da snarled.
“I don’t think you do,” I retorted, backing Dec up.
I narrowed my eyes on him, well aware that his volatile nature had been off the charts for the past six months.
Whatever sanity he had left was starting to fade away like the gray in his hair. White was slowly winning that particular war, and the batshit in Aidan Sr. was becoming more and more prevalent with every passing day.
“Calm down, Da,” Junior sniped. “What did Mark say to that?”
“What could he say if his son was one of those bastards?” His hand clenched around the tumbler before he raised his other hand to cup it too. The move caught my eye as he demanded, “How’s Finn?”
Declan’s voice was free of inflection as he said, “He’s fine.”
“I can’t believe Aoife pussywhipped him into breaking our family apart.”
My brow furrowed but it was Junior who bit off, “Finn ain’t a pussy, Da. Ma killed his mother-in-law. You think Aoife finding that out wasn’t going to change things? Did you expect her to come around for Sunday dinner and make no mention of that?”
“How the hell did she find out, that’s what I want to know.” He glowered down at his tumbler and rasped, “I miss him. Your ma misses him. I even miss Aoife even though she broke everything up.”
Uncomfortably, I shifted in my seat. I didn’t say anything because I understood. Our lives had changed, and not necessarily for the better.
I backed Aoife one-hundred percent and totally understood why she refused to come here and why Finn had put a blockade between her and the folks. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt or that there weren’t Aoife, Finn, and Jake-shaped holes around the dinner table.
Our new tradition of Saturday night was one thing, but it didn’t make up for Sundays.
“You talk with Finn,” Junior retorted.
“About business. He doesn’t want to talk about anything else. I’m his fucking da,” he snapped. “How could he do this to us?”
“I think you need to stop drinking,” I told him, watching liquor slosh around the rim of his glass.