"You sure?" I questioned.
"Paddy isn't reliable," Aidan argued shakily, wiping his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand and smearing blood everywhere. His voice was definitely home to a quiver, but he seemed to take strength in the change in Conor too. "He’s my godfather as well, Conor, but you know what he’s like. Grandda used to say he’s got less use to the Firm than a chocolate teapot, and you know Da agrees."
His younger brother dipped his chin, and for the first time since the priest had perished, stared right at me. "Uncle Paddy will know what to do," he declared, sounding more confident than a seven-year-old should. Never mind one who'd just been raped.
I knew he wanted me to convince Aidan, but shit, there was no convincing him. Like his da, he did what he wanted, when he wanted.
"He's good at avoiding Da's wrath," Aidan admitted begrudgingly.
"Uncle Paddy’s smarter than he lets people think," Conor retorted, his tone firming.
"We should just tell Da," Aidan argued.
But Conor's confidence crumbled. Like a house of cards going up in smoke, the vulnerable kid of before made an abrupt reappearance. "No!"
"He won't judge you," Aidan said softly, his shoulders slumping when Conor started to cry again. "He'll be glad we—"
"No! Please, Aidan. Please! I don't want him to know." His tears morphed into sobs, his small frame shaking and trembling as he stood there, arms wrapped around his stomach, pleading with us.
Aidan and I shared a look, and the change in Conor, so abrupt and sharp, made me want to do as he urged. It did the same with Aidan too. I just hoped Conor's faith in Paddy O'Donnelly wasn't wasted. Because if he didn't help, we were fucked. Maybe not as badly as McKenna, but still screwed.
The second Aidan Sr. learned we'd killed a priest, without being told what that fucker was doing to his son, was a day we’d have to endure an eternity of being fucked with hot pokers too.
While I knew my place was in hell, dying at fifteen wasn’t on my bucket list.
Especially when this wasn’t something I could confess to, not in this church, anyway...
Two
Aidan
Present Day - July
"I haven’t done anything, Mr. O’Donnelly! I swear!" Wintersen screamed at me.
Ignoring him as well as that gnawing ache in my belly for another tablet, I asked, "You looked where you shouldn’t have looked. You touched what you shouldn’t have touched. And you dared desire something that will never, ever belong to scum like you."
I picked up the bottle of caustic soda, and approached the bench I had him tied to. His head was duct-taped in place, his hands and that barrel-like stomach were secured as well.
"I’m the last face you’ll ever see, Wintersen. But don’t worry, you won’t be blind for long."
I upended the bottle over his face, making sure the full flood went into his eyes, which I'd taped open.
His screams were a sweet serenade.
"This is what you get," I shouted, louder than his cries as the chemicals corroded soft tissue and turned it into mulch, "when you even think about touching something that belongs to an O’Donnelly."
Three
Lodestar
Present Day - November
"You know what a super recognizer is?"
I cast the leader of the Satan’s Sinners’ MC, West Orange Chapter, a dismissive look. "Of course, I do, Rex. They're very rare—" My words waned as I figured out where he was going with this.
A super recognizer was someone who had the ability to always remember a face down to every last detail.
Scotland Yard had a team of them monitoring CCTV footage, and they’d been proven to be more accurate than computers at scanning a face, registering it, and then finding it amid a crowd.
"You're one?" I shot a look at the ex-sex slave who’d been rescued by the MC. She was sitting opposite me at the kitchen table I’d staked out as my work surface.
Amara dipped her chin, her gaze on the table.
A part of me wondered if that was a sign of her nerves, or proof she was lying, but maybe it was neither. Maybe it was a force of habit, and not just submissiveness or anxiety or bullshit.
We'd shared a similar life path, unfortunately for us, but that was about as much as we had in common. It didn’t make me trust her. Quite the opposite, in fact.
"She says that some of the people who owned her were New World Sparrows."
Eagerness filled me as I leaned forward. Suddenly, Amara had become very interesting. "You telling the truth?" If she wasn’t, then I’d have to rip her a new one for trying to mess with me.
I didn’t have the luxury of time that I could waste.
She nodded, but remained quiet, allowing a brother in the MC to defend her.
I batted his words away and chose to focus on her.
"So, what gives? What do you want, Amara? You tell me, as well, not these guys. You got a mouth on you, don't you?"
Her gaze darted to mine, and her eyes were loaded with a wildness I didn't necessarily understand but could empathize with.
"Every man who ever raped me, who owned me, who tortured and abused me, I can describe them in great detail," she whispered. "They haunt my every waking moment. I know they were important men. I know they were Sparrows. I know I can help."
"I figured you could put them through a facial recognition program, Lodestar. We’d be able to put the faces to names, and we’d finally be able to start taking those Sparrow sons of bitches down."
I didn't bother looking at Rex, just kept my eyes trained on her. "And what's in it for you, Amara?"
I didn’t trust selflessness.
Everyone was selfish.
To be human was to be selfish.
Her smile, when it came, was soft. So soft that it made me think she was going to say something completely different than what she actually uttered:
"I get to kill them."
Now that was logic I understood—she was finally talking my language.
And I had just the way of getting those faces that were haunting Amara out there.
Savannah Daniels.
I just had to make miracles happen and get her to stop ghosting me.
Four
Aidan
Present Day - November
"Dipshit."
Finn’s voice rumbled over me, but I didn’t look up from the sofa, from the blanket fort my forty-two-year old ass had made this morning. Instead, I remained in my little cocoon, trying to avoid the aches and pains and the general misery that was detoxing.
People said junkies were weak, that addicts were no-hopers. If they knew what it took to come down from Oxy, never mind heroin, then they’d understand that this was a level of agony few could endure.
Few would endure.
And to those people, in the future, I’d tell them to go fuck themselves.
Da included.