by Esme Devlin
And it’ll start feeling like a home again. Grace will ensure that. We’ll fill it with little black haired babies who’ll run riot in the woods and we’ll bicker and fuck and she’ll love me anyway.
That’s all I think about while I hammer each nail in and listen to the muffled moans of the cunt that started it all. He who ruined my life, ruined Grace’s life, pushed my mother on to the path that led her to take her own life.
Revenge is such a dirty word. Retribution sounds better. Less personal. Like you’re doing it for some moral code reason and not due to a personal tie.
But I disagree. I have no moral code. I’m not a man who knows the difference between right and wrong, yes or no, boundaries. I just do what’s always been needed to protect myself. And now I’m going to do what’s needed to protect Grace.
They bring Scott through next and the second he catches sight of the closed coffin and the open one beside it he tries to turn and run.
There’s only one McCormack I chase after — and their name’s not Scott.
We do the same thing again, they sit while I nail. And then the four of us carry them outside in the dead of night into the woods, right back to that same spot where this all started ten years ago.
I help them dig, it’s the least I can do, really. But I don’t lower them into the ground or shovel the earth back over them. I’m a monster, not a killer, remember?
And that’s what I’ll tell Grace when she finds out.
Would that be a lie, since I was the one who stuck the nails in? Fuck knows. Who gives a fuck, anyway?
I’m doing it to keep her safe, and she’ll understand that.
Chapter 35
Grace
I wake up sore.
Every part of me, outside and inside, sore.
And right now I’m not complaining, because it’s overpowering the part of me that wants to hurt because my brother and his best friend wanted to leave me for dead.
I open my eyes and the bedside lamp is on, but I think Malachy is still sleeping. His arm is sprawled over my stomach and his breath is deep and peaceful.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen him asleep.
I eye him up from across the bed and I wonder what happens now. What happens next?
Do I just go back to my normal life? Do I wake up tomorrow and go to college? With Kate. Fuck, Kate. How do I even begin to explain this to her when I can’t even explain it to myself?
And what do I tell my mum? If Scott really did leave like he was supposed to, she’ll already be chewing on her nails and pacing around the piles of clutter like a pinball. How do I tell her that he made it all up, he wanted to leave me there and save himself?
That would just break her heart again.
She didn’t help matters with her meddling, but she doesn’t deserve that.
I roll over in bed to face him and reach out, feeling his hard shoulder and the muscles on the tops of his arms. He looks so fucking innocent when he sleeps.
His jet black lashes flutter open and he just looks at me for a few moments, not saying anything.
“You sore?”
I laugh under my breath. “Yes. You happy?”
“I’m happy. You happy?”
“Yes.”
As if that’s it, he pushes the covers off him and hops out of the bed, stretching and tilting his head to the side.
“You need to bring clothes over. Lucia’s gonna shit if I keep stealing hers for you.”
I sit up in bed, pulling the covers up over me. I’m not shy, but I don’t think I’ll ever be as body confident as this prick. “Maybe next time I stay over you could give me a bit of warning and I’ll pack an overnight bag,” I tell him dryly.
He turns around and starts laughing at me. “Just bring all your stuff over today. I’ll get the boys to help you if needed but from what I remember there wasn’t much.”
I stare him down and he shrugs and adds, “Not saying that’s a bad thing. Look around, I don’t have much either.”
“You have more than most folks.”
He shrugs. “I work hard.”
“What do you do?” I’ve been wanting to ask him that for a while now, ever since Lucia told me she didn’t have a clue.
He’s pulling a pair of cotton tracksuit bottoms on and looking like he’s not going to answer.
“Malachy?”
“Get dressed and I’ll show you.”
We’re going the same way we went that first night I came here, when I had to borrow the measuring tape. Down the twisty set of stairs into what I can only assume was the dungeons at some point.
Or the stores. Either works.
He stops outside the same door and hesitates, watching my reaction carefully. For a second I wonder if I even want to know. But then I get over myself. What could possibly be so bad?
The door unlocks and the smell of cut wood and chemicals hits my nose. He flicks the lights on and walks into the room, holding the door open for me and gesturing me inside. The door slams shut behind me.
“Are you for real?” I almost laugh at him. Almost, but not quite. It’s actually kind of cute, in a mildly fucked up way.
He takes the whole gothic misunderstood monster living in a castle way too fucking seriously.
“Coffins?”
He smirks. “Do you like them?”
I walk around the room, stopping to rub my fingers along the surface of one of the more finished looking ones. It’s smooth and so polished it feels like skin under my fingers.
“I mean, I guess.”
I keep going, on to the next one. They’re all different sizes, and all quite plain actually — although I wouldn’t tell him that.
“So this is what you want to do? Lucia told me you’ll have to give it up when you turn twenty-one and work for your father.”
He stands behind me and flicks his eyebrows. “Lucia shouldn’t open her mouth about things she doesn’t understand.”
“You don’t intend to work for him?”
“Do I look like a man who works for others?” He gives me his chin as if he’s daring me to say yes.
“No.”
“I intend to take over.”
I furrow my brows. What does that mean?
As if reading my thoughts he crosses the room and picks me up, sitting me down on top of a half-shut coffin.
“You don’t need to worry yourself over any of that shit. You just need to know that it’s happening. All of this,” he turns and looks around the room. “It’s just a mask. Guess you could say the same about this.” He nods down to his intricately darkened bare chest and arms.
“What do you mean?”
He leans in and kisses me on the forehead, stroking my hair down with both his hands.
“As I said, you don’t need to worry princess.”
“Don’t treat me like a doll, Malachy.” The warning in my tone is as clear as the look on my face.
He bites down on his lip. “You’re so fucking sexy when you’re angry.”
“Fuck yourself. You either let me in, or I’m out.”
He stands back and makes a sound that might be a laugh or a sigh — fuck knows. “You had your shot at running princess, we both know that’s no longer an option.”
I swallow while I choose my next words carefully. Maybe I can’t run? Who knows, I thought it was just part of his fetish and maybe a bit of dirty talk.
But if he’s telling the truth, then I need to play my cards right.
I slide down off the coffin, my legs split against his body and plant both feet on the floor. He’s so tall I can’t even see his face, so I push him backwards and he lets me have that step.
If he didn’t want to, I couldn’t have made him.
“You said you never brought girls back, is that true?” I begin circling around him slowly, looking up at him. He stands still as a statue but watches me, an amused look creeping on to his features.
“Correct.”
“I always wondered that. Why me? What ma
kes me so special? You don’t need to answer, by the way.”
He gives me a faint smile and then sets his eyes on the wall in front of him.
“You don’t want to know why?”
I stop directly in front of his feet. “I already know why.”
His head tilts to the side, and he gives me that look again, the one where I’m a dog and I’ve just impressed him with a trick. Except this time the look says he might, maybe, possibly like dogs.
“You like me because I didn’t let you manipulate me. The only times you have, have been the times I wanted you to. You threatened me, and I didn’t give two fucks. You brought me out of the box I’ve been in my whole life — don’t put me back in there. I’ll drive you even crazier than you are now.”
He looks down at me, regarding me for a long minute and even I start thinking maybe I’ve got this wrong. Maybe I’ve misread him?
He’s so fucking complicated that I think maybe I could know him my whole life and still misread the true meaning of what he does and says.
But then he puts his hands around my neck and pulls me in close to him. “I’m going to kill my dad.”
I wait for the shiver to run down my spine, and it doesn’t come. Maybe I’m hardened to it now?
Maybe I’m hardened to him and his ways?
“Why?”
He drops my neck and backs away like I’ve burnt him, but I quickly realize it’s not that — he’s just hyped as shit. “Why the fuck not — now that’s the question. You’ve not met him yet but when you do, you’ll think I’m nothing more than that alley cat you called me weeks ago.”
“What do you mean?”
“You think I’m cryptic? Fucked up? Away with the fairies? Deadly? Dangerous? My dad is worse.”
“In what way?
“In the way that he wrote the book on hiding in plain sight. I’m not supposed to know half of the shit he’s in to. He doesn’t know that I know.”
“Know what?”
Fucking hell. Spit it out.
“He runs race tracks and golf courses up and down the country, but that’s just a guise. A bit like my little morgue down here.”
“A guise for what?”
“Dealing. Drugs, guns, girls you name it, my dad is in on it.”
“Girls?”
He nods. “That was the one my mum couldn’t stomach. Not after what they said about me. Not after what they said about you. She lived with him all those years and she never knew a fucking thing. But then she started to suspect he was fucking Lucia. So she did some digging.”
“And she found out everything?”
He nods his head slowly.
“What happened to her?”
He sits down on the workbench opposite me, rubbing his chin and staring into space. I want to hug him. I want to take his pain for him.
Is it natural to think those thoughts about someone who’s just told you they’re a… I don’t even know what the fuck he is.
“She was beautiful. And she would have loved you. You remind me of her — but not in a fucked up way. She had long black hair, like yours. And she always wanted to believe the world was a better place than it was.”
He swallows and glances over to me when his voice breaks at the end. “She tried to fix me, too. When I had bad thoughts about you, your brother, Jamie. When I used to scribble in my notebooks about how good it would feel to slit your throat. I used to draw pictures of you hanging from a tree.”
He laughs then, like it’s a funny joke. “Stop it,” I shake my head.
He shrugs. “Sorry. Anyway, she refused to stop seeing the good inside me. She was the strongest woman to ever walk this earth. Her friends deserted her. She couldn’t go to the shops without people whispering and coughing rape at her. But she did it anyway. She taught me not to give a fuck about the world, why care about the world when you can own it? She got me into this shit.” He slams down hard on the wood twice. “Helped me focus my mind on other things.”
I sense he’s skirting around the issue of what happened to her, but I let him tell me his way. I think he needs to get it out.
“And then she followed him one night — to catch him in the act. She didn’t find him with Lucia, but she found him doing other shit, worse shit. She came home and started digging, something my mum had never done in her life. And when she found what she did, she realized that maybe I was fucked up. Just like my dad. Maybe the stories were true. Maybe I was just a master at lying, at manipulating — just like my dad turned out to be. Maybe the madness runs in the family. Maybe we were both as sick as each other”
“She…”
I was going to say the words but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. He nods his head anyway.
“Locked herself in the garage and left her engine running.”
“Malachy.” The word comes out as a whisper but he jumps up and puts a finger over my lips.
“Shhh,” he says. “I don’t need your pity. I need you to promise you’ll never do that to me. No matter what happens. No matter how bad things get. You won’t leave.”
I nod my head. I look into his eyes and I nod my head because what the fuck else am I supposed to do?
I can’t leave him. I couldn’t leave him now. Even if I wanted to.
“I’d already be dead if it wasn’t for you,” I tell him. “I wouldn’t throw that away.”
He nods as if he understands and kisses my forehead, reminding me why we started this whole conversation. “Just don’t leave me out, okay? No secrets.”
Chapter 36
Malachy
No secrets.
I swallow hard, trying to think of what the fuck I tell her.
No secrets.
No fucking secrets.
This is new unchartered territory for me. I’m not used to having people in here with me. And I’m not talking about the room — I’m talking about inside my mind. My heart. My fucking soul.
But she’s not running.
I just told her that I’m going to kill my own father. I told her I used to draw pictures of her little body swinging from a tree. And yet here she is, nodding her head and promising she’ll never leave me.
“Scott and Jamie.”
I feel her body tense under my arms.
We both pause for a minute while she tries to connect the dots and recover herself from the place they’re leading her.
“What did you do?”
Fuck do I tell her? Fuck.
“I couldn’t have let them walk away darlin, please believe me — they would have hurt you.”
“I don’t want your excuses. I just want you to tell me.”
“We stuck them in a coffin each, and buried them alive in the woods.”
She looks at me blankly, blinking a few times.
“That’s my brother.”
“He would have left you for dead.”
She pulls away and I want to grab her back to me. I want to pull her in close and promise that everything I’m doing from this day onwards is for her. Only her.
“He was nine.”
I shake my head at her but she cuts me off before I can argue.
“Maybe he deserves to die, I don’t fucking know. I don’t know anything. But this doesn’t feel right, Malachy.”
“What do you want me to do? I could go and dig them up right now, see if they’re still breathing, but I’d just be letting them loose so they could tear you down again.”
She stares at me so long I think there must be something on my face. “I want you to dig them up.”
“Fuck Grace, I wasn’t being serious!”
She’s making a mistake.
I’ll do it, but they’ll always be there, fucking haunting her.
And I’ve haunted her long enough.
She needs to grow up without demons lurking behind every tree.
I’ll send them away and they’ll just come back.
Peace is only temporary for those of us still living.
And it’ll be worse for her the
second time around.
“Do it,” she says.
I stand up, cracking my neck and leaving her stood there. “Whatever you want.”
We’re standing hand in hand at the edge of the woods and even I can see the change in her clear as day.
She’s not some scared simpering wee girl anymore. She’s a determined little woman that tells fear to go and fuck itself.
“They might already be dead — you do know that right?”
“If they’re dead, then we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
She doesn’t look at me when she says the words, she just stares straight ahead to the forest.
“Let’s go.” I swing the spade up and let it rest on my shoulder, feeling like an overgrown fucking dwarf and trying not to hum the tune in my head. That would be insensitive to the little princess’s feelings, I’m sure.
“How far in?”
We’ve been walking for about five minutes.
“Not much further. We did it in the same clearing where you fell.”
“How fucking poetic,” she says.
I chuckle. “I thought so too.”
Grace isn’t laughing.
We walk for a few more minutes and my thoughts are racing at a hundred miles an hour. Was this too far? I don’t fucking know.
All I know is I didn’t want them hurting her.
But the second we get to the clearing I stop dead in my tracks. I look from the ground to Grace and see that she’s already staring at me.
The grounds been dug up.
Someone’s already got them out.
“What the fuck is going on?”
I shake my head, looking around for any little thing that isn’t the way it was last night. No one comes in these woods.
They’re my fucking woods.
It must have been one of the four of us. We’re the only ones who knew. My mind won’t let me believe that, though. We’re closer than brothers, closer than blood.
We have a whole fucked up future ahead of us that was forged in a fucked up past.
None of them would betray me.
“I don’t know.”
