by V Vee
Shay knew that for a fact.
“Baby, you know I didn’t mean— “Andrew started, and I shook my head at him, my hands trembling slightly. I’d caught a glimpse of the name on the letter and knew that whatever excuse he would try to give me for why he’d talked to his little sister as if she were a recalcitrant child was not more important than what was written on that single, sheet of paper.
“Babe,” I began, taking his face in my hands. “I love you, but you fucked up, you know you did, that’s why you’re trying to apologize to me. Take your nuts in hand and go tell her. Besides, that shit is not important. Nia is safe. Now we need to figure out why she went to see Sig, The Viking, and how she wound up here from there.” I slapped him none too lightly, then pointed at Shay. “Don’t be like the dick-less wonder over there. I married The Mother Fucking Irishman. Act like it.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, and I knew I would be paying for my actions later. Much later. And possibly with a few smacks to my naked ass, as well as a hand wrapped around my throat.
I couldn’t wait.
When he nodded at me, acknowledging not only my words but also the fact that I was extremely aware of the punishment that awaited me, I moved my eyes back to the paper in my hand. Opening it completely I confirmed the sender and blew out a harsh breath.
Charlene.
Hello Little Sister,
Wow. If you’re in Shay’s Bar then maybe you’re starting to catch on that I have connections everywhere. And maybe you’re also starting to see that I have had a hand in your life since you were a little girl. How can you trust that your friends are really your friends? How do you know they weren’t in my employ and sent to kill you or destroy your life and that of those you love at the right moment? What about your man? Are you sure you’re the only Barham daughter that Andrew is sleeping with? Or has slept with? Word has it that your man has a little taste for that dark chocolate pussy? Maybe he got that way by tasting some, mixed with a little vanilla, a little earlier? Perhaps even years ago?
Shay was mine before he was ever yours. As a matter of fact he’d only found out about you because I sent him your way. Can you imagine how much we laughed at you whenever you told him you loved him? When you planned your wedding to a man who was already married? When you found that fake wedding license I’d had planted so your little crew could find it, I’d been watching you. Anticipating the day when I would be able to tell you that the blonde woman you saw him kissing wasn’t his wife…
It was me.
That’s right, Little Sister. I’ve been fucking up your life for a long time, and I would have continued to do so, but we agreed that it was time that you paid up. That you gave “unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”. Wasn’t that from your grandmother’s favorite scripture? Nice lady. It’s too bad about her dying and really weird isn’t it? I mean, she was healthy as an ox, then in one week she simply gets sicker and sicker, looking older and older, until finally she’s dead.
One would almost think she’d been poisoned.
I had your precious little Nia brought to Shay’s so you would show up. So I could gauge how many people you had with you. So I could check out my opponent before we engaged in battle. Because another battle is coming, Little Sister, and it won’t too long after that when you and I will finally bring this little simmering war to a head.
You on one side, and us on the other.
I wonder who will come out on top.
Go home, Kyra, and enjoy your husband and your children. You won’t have too much time with them before they’re gone, then you join them in death. Although, I was thinking of starting things a little early… maybe I’ll start with little Andrea, from what I understand, she won’t even hear me coming.
Charlene
Btw, tell Andrew I said hi.
I crumpled up the letter and glared at my husband. Had the man I loved, the father of my children, my goddamn husband, slept with my sister?
“Baby, I swear I don’t know a Charlene. I have never slept with a Charlene, nor have I ever even met a woman who looks like you,” Andrew declared.
I waved my hand at him. “She could have been wearing a disguise. I can not believe that this bitch had the fucking goddamn nerve to threaten my child.” I hit my chest with my free hand.
“My. Child.”
When Shay snickered, no doubt delighting in my misery, I turned to him and quirked an eyebrow.
“You still don’t get it do you? Charlene has been watching you since you were born. Always hidden away from the rest of your father’s family while you were embraced with open arms. It’s why she made sure you thought you were the other woman, so you could see how her mother felt, how Charlene felt, growing up with the specter of you and your mother hanging over their heads.”
I stared at Shay in amazement. His eyes had glazed over with an unholy, fanatical gleam. The kind that let you know the person you’re looking at was about to snap. And not with their fingers.
“Why are you still with her?” I asked him, putting my hand across Andrew’s chest and practically tripped Manus who had been prepared to follow his “Boss” into the melee which was sure to erupt if Andrew put his hand on anyone. “I mean, because of her you lost your goddamn dick, I wouldn’t keep… worshipping someone who put me in that position.”
“I didn’t lose my dick! I sacrificed it for Charlene.”
I simply shook my head at him and turned for the door. I grabbed Andrew to tug him after me.
“By the way, Charlene is a much better fuck than you,” Shay said. “Just ask Andrew.”
And that was it. Those were the words that sealed his fate.
I spun around just enough that my arm was raised in the right direction, the .32 Glock aimed directly at Shay’s head.
And I pulled the trigger.
The bullet sailed through the arms, headed straight for the target. Right between Shay’s eyes. Brain matter, bits of bone, blood and skin flew out from the gaping hole in the center of my ex’s head, splattering the table, chairs, and men standing right behind him, causing them to all bend over and vomit.
I nodded, spit on the floor, took my husband’s hand and headed out of the bar, more determined than ever to find Charlene, the woman who thought she was my sister.
The one who sought to take everything away from me.
The woman who’d sealed her fate to experience the worse torture and death I was humanly possible of giving her.
Yeah, everyone was afraid of my husband, The Irishman, until they met me.
The Boss of Baltimore.
Chapter Eight
Andrew- The Irishman
Every goddamn woman in my house was mad at me.
My sister.
My wife.
All of Kyra’s girlfriends who lived on the grounds of the estate or in one of the rooms in our home.
Fuck, even my baby girl, Andrea, as if sensing that every person who identified as female had decided to turn against me, had taken to turning away from me whenever I came around her, or crying and screaming bloody murder whenever I tried to pick her up.
It was a mother fucking conspiracy.
Who turns their child against her father?
I mean, who the fuck does that?
It was also exhausting.
So goddamn exhausting.
I rammed the end of my favorite blade into the gut of the man in front of me and held it inside of him, the fucking bastard’s blood spilling down over my fingers.
“Well?” I asked him, tilting my head to the side. “What do you think? I mean, am I wrong? Who does that?”
Jeffory, Jason, or Jacks, whatever his name was, simply shook his head, gurgling up blood.
“Don’t think he can answer, Boss,” Ludwig said as he popped a sour gummy worm in his mouth.
“Hmm, you think?” I mused, tilting my head the other way as I observed the dying—or dead—man in front of me, whose name was… dammit! I still couldn’t remember.
“I do. I mea
n, you know, when a man vomits up blood, it collects in his throat, so he chokes on it, then he stops breathing and his head drops forward? Pretty much mean the fucker is dead,” Shannon said with a shrug.
“Well, fuck.” I tossed down the blade in my hand and wiped the blood on the dead man’s shirt.
“Bring in the next one!” I yelled out, nodding to Ronan and Manus as they dragged in the next blubbering idiot.
All day we’d rounded up and collected the assholes from the bar. I wanted information on Charlene. I wanted information about why my baby sister had gone to Sigvaldi rather than coming to me, one of her brothers, Kyra, or you know… her husband. And while each man had started of posturing as if they were big and bad, each one, when brought into my “conference room” in the basement of an office building I owned under a subsidiary, had begun to cry, whimper, and beg for their lives.
I fucking hated men who cried and begged for their lives. Lift your chin, admit your wrongdoings, and take your mother fucking punishment.
Hell, my son AJ could take a pop on the hand better than the bitchasses I’d seen that day and he wasn’t even two years old yet.
I watched as the newest racist piece of shit was dragged into the room. I’d expected a bit of hate speech from the men we’d brought in, I mean, the bar we’d discovered them in the night before hadn’t exactly been welcoming to anyone who wasn’t white, straight, and male. But the shit coming out of the current asshole surprised even me.
I simply stood with my arms folded across my chest as he cursed my mother and father, my ancestors, my brothers, and myself. But the minute he opened his mouth to talk shit about my wife and sister, two women who weren’t even speaking to me at the moment, I lost it.
I walked forward on quick but solid feet up to him and added another bruise to the numerous ones he’d received from my men.
“You cocksucker!” He spat at me before spitting the blood that had collected in his mouth at my face.
I stared at him with a boiling, white-hot rage firing my veins as I lifted my hand to wipe the blood from my cheek. When Manus and Ronan stepped forward to no doubt kill the fucker, I lifted my hand to steady them. I offered the man a smile and began walking around him. I didn’t lift my hand to touch him. No. I wanted the fucker to suffer a bit of fearful anticipation and anxiety.
“Where is Charlene?” I asked.
“Kiss my ass,” he retorted with a bloody smile.
I grabbed the blade that was sheathed in Ludwig’s belt and rammed it into the smug bastard’s side. As he screamed out in pain, I continued my leisurely walk around him.
“Let’s try this again,” I said. “Where is Charlene?”
“Suck my balls,” he snarled.
“Hmm, balls. What a splendid idea.” I saw the disgust cross his face before realization settled in as to what I meant by my words. I simply nodded and held out my hand for a blade. I didn’t look to see who gave it to me but seeing the “S” on the grip I knew it had been my brother, Shannon.
“Thank you for your service, Shannon,” I teased with a wink.
“Don’t you dare say that! You respect our troops!” The man screamed at me. I blinked at him, that time in complete surprise and shifted forward, my intention to jab Shannon’s blade into the tiny sacks of flesh that he considered his balls, momentarily forgotten.
“I seem to have struck a nerve there,” I mused. “Did you serve?”
He lifted his chin and stared me directly in the eyes. His blond hair was matted with blood, his body thin but toned, a small beard on his face, one sprinkled with grey. There were an assortment of tattoos covering his body, and I saw one that seemed to be a memorial to someone… someone who had been in the military.
“Okay, so not you, but someone you loved. Father? Brother? Son?”
“Shows what you know,” he growled. “Reginald was my partner. My soulmate.”
I took a slight step back in shock. When I looked at the four other men in the room with me, I saw that they wore matching expressions of surprise on their faces.
“Wait a minute… you’re a fucking fairy?” Shannon asked, yelping in pain when Ronan smacked him on the back of the head. “Dammit, Ronan! What the fuck did you do that for?”
Ronan rolled his eyes. “Don’t be such a goddamn, close-minded bigot. Racists are gay too.”
I nodded in agreement. “Oh yeah, racists can be anything they put their minds to these days.”
“Postal carriers,” Ludwig said, sticking another gummy worm in his mouth. I wasn’t sure how he could eat those things, sour and sweet in one treat? Wasn’t life filled with enough contradictions without us making candy out of the strange paradox?
“Doctors,” Ronan supplied.
“Teachers,” Manus stated.
“Politicians,” I interjected with a smirk. We all chuckled. All of us except the man in front of me…
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Why the hell would I tell you?” The unnamed asshole sneered.
I shrugged. “Figured you would want the man who was about to castrate you to know what you were called when you were still a fucking man.” Then I shoved Shannon’s blade into… well, let’s just call him Laen from now on, shall we?
As Laen cried out and whimpered, I shook my head.
“I was so hoping you would be the one who wouldn’t cry and beg for his life, Laen. You were so obstinate. So bold and brave. I mean, if you hadn’t been a racist prick? I might have hung out with you,” I told him.
“Probably not,” Ludwig muttered.
I nodded in agreement. “You’re right. I probably wouldn’t have. You know why that is, Lud?”
Ludwig scowled at my use of his detested nickname. I mean, I wasn’t sure what he was so upset about. Lud still sounded pretty badass, whereas I had been called fucking “Andy” as a kid. He flicked me off, then shoved another gummy worm in his mouth.
“Association,” he finally answered my question.
I bobbed my head in acquiescence. “That’s right, Lud. Association. Laen, you do not have the right kind of friends. You say you had a partner. That you’re gay. And yet you’re hanging out with men who were racists and homophobic. Men who told me—just before I cut out their tongues, shoved them down their throats, and then killed them—that gays should all be slaughtered. And yet, you not only associate with them, you join with them in order to terrorize my wife, my sister, and my children.”
Thinking of the night before when we’d returned home and Kyra had rushed inside and raced to take the kids into her arms, tears filling her eyes, from where they had been watched by Carrick and Pria, the young Indian woman who had been born in Vadodara, but had moved with her parents to the States when she was only ten, who was our part-time babysitter, sent a fresh surge of rage exploding through every cell of my body. Allowing the anger to fuel me, I brought my fist into hard contact with “Laen’s” stomach.
“Now, Laen, we’ve moved back to my original question, plus one additional one. Where the fuck is Charlene? Also, why are the streets so quiet?”
I would never be sure what Laen saw in my eyes at that moment because as soon as he told me, I’d turned away from Laen and instructed the guys to kill him. Which they had, without question.
I mulled over Laen’s words as I left the building and headed toward the black town car I’d arrived in, Ronan right next to me. However, before we got too close, Ronan stopped me, as he always did, and pressed the key fob to unlock the door. I heard the telltale beep beep of the door locks disengaging and nodded. But just as I went to take a step, the car blew up in a large ball of fire. And so did the other cars that my Enforcers were supposed to be occupying. Debris flew up in the air, landing around us, ash floating down from the sky, and I looked up, before returning my gaze to the car before me. I narrowed my eyes and growled as I realized Laen hadn’t been lying about what he told me regarding Charlene and my father’s former right-hand man, Cashel McCullen.
“You and y
our wife are so stupid and narrow-minded. You honestly think some bastard daughter of some low-level washer is going to have the pull, the reputation, the flow of cash to pull off everything this girl has? You don’t realize that there are a lot of people, in a lot of high places who want to see you eliminated. Both of you. And it starts with the two people who have what seems like the most to gain from your death. Your father’s former second, Cashel, and your wife’s half-sister, Charlene. Don’t you think that’s a weird coincidence? The way their names are so similar? And that they both want to see you dead.”
Laen leaned forward as much as his ropes would let him.
“You don’t even realize how deep or how far up this whole scheme goes. You better hope you figure it out soon, Irishman, before you find yourself looking down at your wife’s dead body, with a gun pressed to the back of your head by the person you least expected. Someone who has been working with your greatest enemy, and someone with the biggest grudge against you.”
I didn’t believe in “ominous feelings” or psychics and prophecies. I believed a man made his own fucking luck. But in that moment? Listening to Laen describe how in the dark I was when it came to protecting my woman and my children? I felt the walls closing in on me, all the air being sucked out of the room, and my blood turning to an icy heat in my veins. I wanted to gasp for breath. I wanted to run home, gather everyone I loved close, and take off for a secluded island where no one could find us. But if Laen was right then the person behind all of this was someone who was so close to me I wouldn’t even suspect them.
But that couldn’t be true, because as I stood in the parking lot, staring at the flames and burning remains of four different vehicles, which had all been timed to detonate in order to kill me and those I trusted the most outside of my own wife and her crew, I came to a startling realization. I straightened my shoulders, turned and walked away, calling Carrick to come and pick all of us up in his SUV, my eyes narrowed. Laen was wrong. It couldn’t be coming from someone I trusted…
