Seamus sighs, as he gets to his feet he pulls her into his arms. The softness he has for her is definitely his weakness; if he shows this to anyone they’d use it against him. They’d hurt Makenna just to hurt him.
She pulls out of her father’s arms, “I’ll go find mother.” The way she spits out the word makes me wonder what the hell happened between her and her mom, she walks toward a different door and leaves, slamming it shut behind her.
“I should kill you for listening in on the conversation,” Seamus tells me as I walk into the room again, where he’s glaring at me. “Did you get what you wanted?”
I glare back at him. “Seamus,” I say, my tone serious. “What happened to her?”
He sighs, “Fuck knows.” He mutters, “Was attending to some fucking animal, and got a call from Finn. He’d just returned home to find Kenna on the floor beaten and bleeding out.” His voice breaks, he’s unable to talk. I leave him be for a moment, letting him get his composure back. My blood is boiling, my hands balled into fists. “Someone slit her throat, luckily we found her in time. Haven’t found out who did it yet. But when I do, I’m going to carve them like a fucking pumpkin.”
I nod, “I’ll be there when you do it.” Seamus looks at me in shock. Fuck, this woman is getting to me and I have no idea why. “She’s going to be my wife.”
He looks at me with respect, “Okay.”
“How old was she?”
He shakes his head again, his eyes dark and I can see the storm raging in them. “She was twelve.”
Fucking hell.
“When she was released from hospital, I sent her to stay with my brother,” he informs me. He wanted her safe, so he sent her away. I’d have done the same thing. It also explains why her accent is thicker than her brother’s, she sounds like her father.
“Your father is an arsehole, Dante.” I glare at him, he’s treading a fucking thin line right now. “It’s true, we both know it. The only reason I agreed to this fucking shit was because of you.”
I raise my brow in confusion.
“You think I haven’t looked into you, into your family?” He snarls at me, “I have, I know exactly who your father is. I know what he does to girls like my daughter. Do you honestly think I’d have let her marry you if you were just like him?”
I laugh, it’s bitter and cold. “You have no idea what I’m like. I’m worse than my father.”
He nods, “That maybe so, boyo, but you’re not a fucking arsehole to women like your father is.”
I tense at him calling me boyo. What the fuck am I, five?
“She’s my daughter. I want peace between us. But I will go to war with you if my daughter gets hurt.”
“She’s going to be my wife,” I repeat my earlier words.
He stares at me in disgust. “You’re forgetting something,” he snaps taking a step toward me, his voice low and bristling with anger. “I watched your mother wither away under the beatings she took from your father. I won’t sit back and let that happen to my daughter.”
I step up to him so we’re face to face. My body is tight with my unleashed anger. He’s lucky, I haven’t broken his jaw. No one speaks to me like Seamus has and gets away with it. “I am not my father. I will not lay a hand on my wife in anger.” I say through gritted teeth. “Let me make myself extremely clear, Makenna is going to be my wife, she’s mine.”
He takes a step back, a slow smile sneaking across his lips. “Okay then.” He turns and walks out of the room, leaving me wondering what the fuck is wrong with the man?
It doesn’t take me long to catch up to him and we walk into the dining room where everyone is sitting waiting for us. Makenna’s sitting beside Finn, an empty seat beside her and another empty seat at the top of the table. I walk over and sit beside Makenna, she’s glaring at her mom who’s looking down at her hands. My father has his sadistic grin on his face, loving the way things are tense.
Mrs Gallagher clicks her fingers and the maids come in carrying the food.
“That’s a nasty scar you have.” My father grins as he leers at Makenna.
I watch as she grips her knife, her eyes full of hate, she looks as though she’s dying to kill the bastard. Her mother gasps and covers her mouth with a shaky hand. I turn my gaze to my brother’s, they both have no expression on their faces, almost as if they haven’t noticed but I know they have. There will be questions later and I’ll get my fucking answers.
“Is Killian coming to the wedding?” Finn asks and I notice that Makenna sits up taller, the hand that was gripped around the knife loosens, she’s relaxed. Her mother on the other hand looks as though she’s about to faint.
Seamus grins, “He should be arriving in the next couple of days.”
“Killian?” I ask knowing damn well who they’re talking about, I turn to Makenna in time to see that she’s giving me a warm smile.
“He’s my brother,” Seamus says but the way the Gallagher brothers are glancing at one another, there’s a hell of a lot more than him being Seamus’ brother. I need Orion to look into this shit, one fucking thing I hate is being in a situation where I’m going in blind.
Makenna’s attention is on her cell phone. I glance down and see the message from someone called Kinsley. From all the intel I gathered, Kinsley is her best friend and has been since she was a child.
Kinsley: Party tonight?
I grit my teeth remembering what happened the last time she went out. I see her reply saying that she can’t, but will ring her later. Kinsley Anderson is the only daughter of Julian ‘Jaws’ Montry, the president of the Fury Vipers Motorcycle club. They’re fucking animals who party hard and kill harder. They’re ruthless, and have no loyalty to anyone but the Fury Vipers brothers. They’ll do whatever the hell they want and don’t care about the consequences. Much like the la Famiglia, they’re feared by most. Whereas, we keep a low profile and have businesses as fronts and are fucking gentleman in the presence of the public. Those animals couldn’t give a fuck. I know that when Makenna and I are married, I’ll be putting a stop to her going to that damn club house.
The dinner is quiet, Mrs Gallagher keeps glancing at Makenna as though she’s waiting for her to lose her damn mind. Something about this family doesn’t sit right. The hatred that my brothers and I have for my father isn’t publicized, we don’t want the fucking world knowing that when my father goes down, it could be, and probably will be at our hands. The Famiglia won’t allow me to become Capo dei Capi if I’ve killed the previous one. Hell, it’s against our oath to kill another made man, but fuck, I’ve broken that oath before and I’d happily do it again if the fucker needs to be put down. Traitors are different, as soon as they become rats, their made men status dies, and they’ll soon follow after we torture the fuck out of them to extract as much information as we can. Whereas, Makenna’s open hatred for her mom is something I can’t understand. I’ve witnessed the way she is with her father. They have a great relationship, she has a lot of love for him along with her brothers; her eyes soften whenever they talk to her. But it’s very different when her mom talks to her, the features on her face harden and she glares at her.