A tall man with salt-and-pepper hair answers the door in a black sweatshirt and black gym shorts. “Can I help you?”
“You Seamus Flannery?” Wolf asks.
The man in question folds his arms across his chest, the action taking up more space in his doorway. “Who’s asking?”
There’s a moment of hesitation, and I send a quick prayer that I’m making the right decision. “Alaina Gallagher.”
All the color drains from his face and he drops his arms. “Aidan’s girl?”
I nod, my body tensing as my fight or flight instinct kicks in.
“Well, I’ll be damned. Please come in, come in.”
We follow Seamus inside his home and into the first room off the entryway. It’s decorated with a midcentury modern twist on a cottage—all cherry-colored woods and off-white trim. A large red and tan rug covers the floor, and two pastel blue couches face one other with a glass oval coffee table between them.
“We have some questions for you, Seamus,” I tell him as I look around. “You are Seamus, right?”
“Of course, yes, I’m sorry. You can never be too careful, right? I’m Seamus Flannery, and your dad was a dear friend of mine. We were actually second cousins by marriage. Oh, look at me, diving right in before I even offered you refreshments. Please, sit down, and I’ll be right back.” He gestures to the couches as he spins around and jogs to the kitchen.
I take a seat in the middle of the couch with Sully and Wolf on either side of me and Rush behind us.
Seamus returns a moment later with a tray of assorted cookies and a bottle of whiskey and five glasses. “I’m sorry. I’m all out of tea.”
I wave his apology off. “It’s fine. We’re fine. Thank you, though.”
Seamus pours himself a generous portion and throws half of it back before he even sits down. He sinks into the couch across from me, holding my gaze. “What do you want to know?”
We’d agreed that I would do most of the talking at first, and one of them would only step in if necessary. But now that we’re here and talking to him, I’m at a loss for words. I don’t even know where to begin.
“What do you know about Gallagher Industries?” Rush asks, saving me from floundering for another minute.
Seamus tosses back the rest of his glass before leaning forward and refilling it. “That’s a hard one.”
“Specifically, your involvement in Lana Gallagher’s plot to hide Alaina from the rest of the Gallaghers.” Wolf goes right to the point, his body language deceptively casual. Since we already know the gist of it, this is a question designed to make sure he is who he says he is.
Seamus looks at me. “Your ma came to me years after Aidan stepped down from Gallagher Industries and begged me to scrub you from anything traceable. The only exceptions were a few banks—one I helped your da set up for you when you were born, by the way.” A proud smile spreads across his face. “And even though those accounts are in your name, I have it buried enough that it’s not easily tracked.”
“So, you helped her. Then what?” I ask, turning all the information over in my mind.
“Then nothing. Then I never heard from her or your da again.”
I clear my throat. “He died. My dad, I mean. I just officially found out recently, but he died ten years ago.”
“Hell, I’m sorry, kid. I assumed as much when your ma came to me all those years ago, but I kept hoping he’d turn up one day, ya know?”
I nod and look over his shoulder at the framed artwork on his wall.
“Does the name Christopher Lein mean anything to you?” I ask, staring at the black and white photo of a circus tent.
Seamus blows out a breath. “This path you’re walking down, it’ll only lead to more bad. Sometimes things should remain in your past.”
I focus on him and narrow my eyes. “The bad is coming to me whether or not I walk this path. I can’t properly arm myself if I don’t have the right information. And I think you might have what I’m looking for.”
A muscle in his jaw tenses and I feel rather than see all three of my guys tense in response. I know that they’re all a hair’s breadth away from pulling out their guns.
“So are you going to help me?”
“Aye, kid, I’ll help you. But first, I need another drink. You sure you don’t want one?” he asks as he pours himself another drink.
“We’re good, thank you.”
“Alright, I’ll tell you everything I know. For Aidan.” He holds his glass in the air as a toast before he takes a healthy sip.
As luck would have it, Seamus knew a lot. A whole lot. The silence is loud as we all process the information he just dumped on us.
“So . . . the most likely scenario is one of my extended family members is trying to kidnap me? Because he or she assumed control of the board at Gallagher Industries? Right? That’s what we’re all thinking?” I squint as I try to work all the logistics and loopholes out in my mind. Where’s the dry erase board when you need one?
“Aye. That’s what I’m thinking. Do you know who the extended Gallaghers are, Seamus?” Rush asks with his hands braced on the back of the couch behind me.
“No, I’m afraid I don’t. They remain elusive around these parts.”
I sit up straight as something occurs to me. “What about a guy named Liam? Six-two, dark hair, and favors wearing red contacts. Does that ring any bells? He was last seen in New York City not too long ago.”
Seamus scrunches his face for a moment. “I do seem to recall a kid who wore red contacts a lot, joined some sort of gang and terrorized folks for fun. Mason was his name, Liam Mason. Red eyes are hard to forget, ya know?”
“Liam Mason, age twenty-five, lives on Melbourne Ave in Dublin,” Sully says with his head bent over his phone. He wiggles it in my direction. “I searched for him online.”
I smirk at him and push off the couch, Wolf and Sully standing too. “Thank you, Seamus, for your help today and all those years ago. I’m grateful.”
He rises off his couch, a little less steady on his feet. “It was my pleasure. Best of luck to you, kid.”
We’re almost out the door when Rush turns around and says, “One more thing. How did you scrub her so securely? Even my custom programs which find everyone didn’t find her original files.”
Seamus flashes Rush a toothy grin. “Not everyone, I guess, eh? A magician never reveals his secrets.” He ends his sentence on a laugh, and I take that as our cue to get out of here.
I watch the cottage house get smaller as we drive down the gravel driveway toward the street. My mind spins with what to do next.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Wolf
Rush parks the car down the street from Liam Mason’s flat. It took us three hours to get here, plus an additional thirty minutes when we stopped for food.
The evening stars have just come out, and we’ve been parked in the same spot for the last twenty minutes. Arcade Fire plays quietly from the speakers and Red hums along.
The flat in question is dark, but that doesn’t mean anything. So we wait until we’re sure that someone’s home—preferably him.
“From everything I can find, he lives alone in a flat, doesn’t have a steady job on record, and is well-known as muscle for hire,” Rush murmurs. The glow from his laptop lights up his face as he types some shit in that looks like legit gibberish from here.
“So what does that mean?” Red asks.
“We wait until he comes home,” I say, settling in my seat.
I let my mind wander as I scan the street, looking for the red-eyed punk. This street isn’t busy, making it much easier to keep an eye on people coming and going.
Ten minutes later, a small, two-door, piece of shit car barrels down the narrow street and parks in front of his flat with a screech of tires. A guy unfolds himself from the driver’s seat, slams the door, and stalks toward the front door. I sit up straight and watch his movements like a hawk. “Head’s up.”
“It’s hard to tell
from here, but that looks like it could be him,” Alaina murmurs next to me.
He pulls a key from his pocket and shoves it in the lock in the front door. It swings open and the guy in question walks inside without a backward glance.
“That’s gotta be him, unless it’s an unregistered roommate.” My gut tells me this is our guy, but I’m kind of surprised that he didn’t even look around when he walked inside. Anyone could’ve been in there—fuck, we could’ve been inside.
“For a criminal, the guy sure doesn’t have any self-preservation,” Sully muses.
I grin at my brother. “I was just thinking the same thing. So”—I rub my hands together—“how are we gonna do this with Red here?”
All three of us look at our girl. We’re no strangers to extracting information from anyone, but we’re usually doing it at the carriage house on Summer Knoll, and we’ve never had a non-member of the Brotherhood witness these . . . conversations before.
“What do you mean? What do you usually do?” Red blinks those big whiskey-brown eyes of hers at me, and I fight the urge to take her mouth. There’s just something about that girl that brings out my inner caveman.
That, and I can’t get the image of her spread out underneath me out of my mind. In fact, it’s been sitting center stage in all my thoughts since it happened.
I shake my head to refocus. “Sometimes a conversation is all we need. And other times, we have to get a little creative.” I pin her with a look. She’s been around enough lately to read between the lines.
“Like what—beat him up or something?” She tilts her head to the side and her brow wrinkles in this adorable way.
And I’m just going to gloss over the fact that I just thought something was adorable while talking about the possibility of torture.
“Or something,” Rush says with a smirk.
Red nods a few times. “Alright. Let’s go then.”
She opens her car door and has a foot on the ground before any of us register what she’s doing. The three of us scramble to stow our shit, turn the car off, and get out of the car while she’s halfway across the street. I leave my brothers behind us as I jog to catch up to her.
“Whoa, Red. We can’t just march up to his door. He’ll recognize you, remember? We want the upper hand here.”
Her steps slow and she looks over at me. It’s enough for Sully and Rush to catch up to us. “You’re right.”
“I don’t see any security cameras, so Sully and I’ll just go to the door. You guys stay to the side and out of sight, yeah?” Rush says as he heads toward the front door of the dark-brown flat.
I grab Red’s hand and lead her to the overgrown bushes along the side of the house, far enough away that he won’t see us, but close enough that we’ll be able to step in when the time’s right.
Rush knocks on the door and the same guy opens it with a beer in his hand.
Red leans forward, her hand clutching my forearm. “That’s him.”
Rage surges in my veins, so swift and deadly that it steals my focus for a moment. I’d checked that anger and fear from when Red was taken from us and from when she was coerced into that walking death trap called a warehouse. I shoved it down deep and let it simmer until I could do something about it.
The time has come.
Rush wraps his hand around Liam’s throat and pushes him into the house, quickly followed by Sully. I tug on Red’s hand and jog up the two steps to the porch and walk into the house. Red shuts the door behind us, and I take a moment to peer out of the window to make sure no one saw that little exchange before locking the door.
Once I’m satisfied that we’re in the clear, I follow the sounds of my brothers’ voices.
“Stay by me, yeah?”
“Alright. But I wanna look him in the eye right before you mete out his punishment. I know that’s what you’re going to do, Wolf. You don’t have to sugarcoat things with me, you know.”
I fight the smile tipping up the corner of my mouth. “Sure thing, baby girl.”
We find them in the small kitchen with Liam sitting in a metal chair in the middle of the yellow linoleum floor. His lip is already split and bleeding.
“This is him? This the guy that you saw?” Sully asks Red with a fistful of Liam’s hair, holding his face up.
Red eyes spit rage and retribution at us, but I’m having none of that shit. This is our retribution for what this motherfucker did.
Red nods, her mouth a harsh slash against her beautiful face. “That’s him. You killed my mother.” Her voice is even, calm even, so what she does next shocks me more than it should.
She steps forward, winds her hand up high and plunges a knife into Liam’s thigh. His scream is loud in the quietness of the kitchen, with only Red’s heavy breathing.
She brings her hand up again, but I grab her trembling wrist and gently guide it down to her side. “We need answers, baby. If he passes out from blood loss, we may never get them.”
It’s true, we do need our answers, but a bigger part of me wants to see her fucking destroy this asshole who dared to lay his hands on her—indirectly or not. Blood rushes to my cock, my body’s way of letting me know that I wouldn’t mind seeing her slam that knife into his leg for other reasons too.
She nods and licks her lips, her hair sliding forward over her shoulder. “Okay. Who do you work for?”
Liam groans and spits a wad of bloody saliva on the floor. “Are you fucking kidding me? I’m not going to say shit to you.”
“Okay.” Red shrugs and jerks her hand from my grasp, winds it back, and punches him in the face.
“Damn, baby girl.” I adjust my hardening cock in my pants and shrug when she looks at me with a raised brow. “Don’t stop on my account. I’m just over here enjoying the show.”
She flashes me a mischievous smile while she shakes out her hand. Her knuckles are red, but they don’t look too bad. Sully must’ve been teaching her something for her right hook to land so well.
“Fuck you. I don’t even get why he wants you anyway.” Liam sneers.
“Who wants me?” Red takes a step closer, and I tense. If Liam breaks free of his bindings, she’s within his reach now. It makes me fucking jittery.
Liam snaps his mouth shut with a clink, and Rush’s patience snaps. He pulls out his gun and points it at Liam’s head. “Who fucking hired you, Liam Mason of Debra and Harold Mason, born May twenty-second in St. Mary’s hospital?”
The color drains from his face, and finally, the first real traces of fear enter his eyes.
“Good. We have your attention now. I’ll ask you one more time. Who hired you?” Sully asks as Rush pushes the barrel of the gun against his forehead.
“Fine! Fine. I’ll tell you. He didn’t even pay me enough to deal with this bullshit.” He sighs and looks up. “He paid me a hundred k to pick up Alaina McElroy slash Gallagher. He handed me an unlimited pass for his personal jet, a list of possible places she’d be, a recent photo. But when everything went down at the warehouse, I hopped on the jet and came home. I told him I needed more money since she was such a fucking handful.”
“And Lana McElroy?” Rush presses.
“The hot ma? She made me when I was following Alaina and her cousins one day. That bitch had a set of balls walkin’ right up to me like that. Said she could get her daughter to cooperate and go with me willingly if I split the money with her. Said to arrive at the Blue Lotus Diner at one, and Alaina would be there alone.”
Red gasps and Liam sneers at her. “That’s right. Your ma gave you up, sweet cheeks. How does that feel?”
Red steps forward, fists clenched and anger rolling off her in waves. “I could kill you, you know. Right now, I could put a bullet in your gut just like you did to my mom, and there’s nothing you can do about it. How does that feel, mm?”
Fuck me. I don’t know what it says about my psyche or whatever, but when Red talks all murderous like that, I wanna bend that tight ass over the nearest surface and fucking worship her and
her dark thoughts.
“Ah, but you won’t. You need me. Ain’t that right?” Liam taunts.
“Until it’s no longer necessary—until you’re no longer necessary.” The ice in Red’s voice sends a chill skating down my spine, and I’m not even on the receiving end of that threat.
The tendons in Liam’s neck strain and he clenches his jaw. I don’t like the way he’s staring at Red with murder in his eyes, so I step forward and partially block her view. “Tell us what happened after you took the wrong girl.”
Liam’s nostrils flare as he stares at me. “I did everything right. I went to the right diner at the right time. A redheaded girl was sitting in the booth alone, and she looked like Alaina, so we grabbed her.”
“We?”
“The boss paid a few of his local guys to help. They bailed once we realized the mistake. So, I had to go back to the diner, and that’s when I saw you—and your mom.”
Red nods, and all the pieces are starting to come together. The only question now is: Who’s pulling the strings?
“So, ready to tell us who hired you, or are you ready to die for that secret?” Rush asks, placing his finger over the trigger.
“Aeron. Aeron Briggsby hired me,” Liam grits out between clenched teeth.
Chapter Thirty
Alaina
Wolf laces his fingers through mine as we follow Rush and Sully to the red door of Three Dogs. "Stay close to one of us at all times," he murmurs.
"I know, Wolf. Trust me." I look at him out of the corner of my eye as we approach the man outside the door.
"It's everyone else I don't trust." Wolf punctuates his statement with a squeeze of my hand.
I lean into him and tip my head against his shoulder for a moment as we stop behind Rush.
"We're here for Quinn Kelly.”
The guy at the door is as tall as he is wide. With a shaved head and biceps bigger than my head, he looks like he bench presses school buses for fun. He brings his wrist up to his mouth and says something too low for me to hear. After a moment, he nods at us and opens the door.
Sully: An Irish Mafia Romance (The Brotherhood Book 3) Page 20
