Killian the ofarrell bro.., p.14
Killian: The O’Farrell brothers, page 14
I followed Conor inside, keeping my gun beside me, on full alert. The apartment was dark, and I already knew they weren’t here.
“Where the fuck would they go?”
“They dropped the van off,” Conor said. “It was downstairs. So they did come back at some point but Sloane definitely isn’t here.”
“They wouldn’t keep her here,” I said. “Lorcan’s guys already checked this place out before.”
Conor picked up a folder and flicked through it, pulling a piece of paper out and looking at it.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“It looks like a list of members that work for Ronan.”
“Really?” I replied, going over to look at it. For months we had been trying to get information on his operation and there’d been literally nothing to find.
“I’d say it was done by Sinead. Maybe she was trying to overtake them and had to create her own track record.”
“Sinead has always been someone who wanted the best of everything. Even when she was younger, nothing her parents ever gave her was enough. She was always stealing other people’s limelight.”
“So sabotage?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her.”
I noticed a name on the sheet that had my blood running cold. Snatching the piece of paper out of Conor’s hands, I looked down at the name.
“Amity.”
Conor’s eyes widened. “Shit. How the hell could she possibly be involved?”
“I don’t know, but this shit needs to be figured out and fast. I can’t leave Sloane with them any longer.”
“Teeghan is with her, you think I’m not doing everything I possibly can?”
He was right. I put my hand on his shoulder and gave him the piece of paper back. “Get everything you can see. We need to figure out where to go next.”
Conor nodded and grabbed the rest of the pieces of papers on the table and we headed back to the car.
“What?” Conor asked as I waited, impatiently, for him to get in the fucking car.
“Just hurry up.”
Conor finally slid in and I took off down the street and parked far enough away to watch. Conor was about to ask me why we’d stopped again when the explosion went off. The apartment exploded into fire, glass shattering all through the streets.
“What he fuck?”
“They need to know that we’re coming.”
Conor nodded. “Sure, but there could have been more information in there.”
“I doubt it.”
Conor went back to looking through the papers. “There’s another address here, but it’s in Meath.”
I started the car and headed toward Meath.
SLOANE
Teeghan was sitting in the chair next to my bed with a magazine in her hands. The beeping told me I was probably in need of some kind of surgery but as I looked around, I knew I was at the estate.
“Hey,” I said, but almost didn’t recognise my voice. It was gravelly, as if I hadn’t spoken in days. Teeghan put the magazine down and smiled as she sat forward and pressed a button on the side of the bed.
“Where am I?”
“The estate,” she said. “Did you know they have a hospital room here? Walter is a doctor. I had no clue until they brought you here. When Lorcan tried to take you to the actual hospital, you had a massive tantrum.”
I tried to pull myself up but she held me back. “No, you need to relax. You had a lot of bruises on your body. I don’t even know how the hell you didn’t have anything broken. Walter thinks you’ll take a few weeks to get better.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Four days,” she said. “You were asleep for a long time. I was getting worried.”
“Killian?”
Teeghan sighed and sat back in her chair. “No, both he and Conor are still looking for Sinead and Darren and Ronan. Their phones are off too but Lorcan explained that they had a bit of a falling out when I stowed myself away in the van with you.”
“Conor was probably going nuts.”
Teeghan sighed and rolled her eyes. “Ok, mum. Well, I’m glad you’re awake. Get some rest, I’ll come by a little later.”
I nodded and closed my eyes as she left the room again. Hopefully the next time I woke up, Killian would be here and I could tell him everything I’d been going over for the past few weeks. I needed him to know that I chose him.
It had been over a week since I had returned to town, and to the estate, but Killian hadn’t come back. I hoped like hell that he knew I was here and he wasn’t going on a suicide mission, taking his little brother with him. I moved down the stairs and toward the kitchen. I’d been eating but not nearly enough to sustain myself. Sleep had been a welcome stranger since I got back and it had been all I’d wanted to do.
“Sloane?”
I spun around to see Lorcan coming out of the office, a worried expression on his face.
“Hey Lorcan,” I replied. “I was just looking for some food.”
“Ah,” he said, coming over to me. “You’re feeling better?”
“Much,” I replied, as he led me into the kitchen. “I didn’t sleep much when I was…well, you know.”
“That’s understandable.”
He opened the fridge and pulled some things out, while turning on the stove.
“Lorcan, I can cook for myself.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “You’re a guest.”
He did something next that I hadn’t seen, well not at least for several years. He smiled. The weary lines from around his eyes crinkled and his eyes lit up. He seemed so much younger when he smiled but having Killian and Conor as brothers couldn’t have been easy on him.
“Have you heard from them?”
The smile was gone and the same old Lorcan was back.
“No,” he replied. “But you know Killian, he’s better at this than any of us. He’ll be fine.”
“You’re still worried, though?”
Lorcan sighed. “Of course, they are my brothers. I’m more concerned with the fact Killian doesn’t know you are safe.”
My stomach dropped. “You didn’t tell him?”
“I tried to,” he said as he dropped bacon into the pan. The sizzle snapped my attention to what was happening in the kitchen. “He turned his phone off.”
“Is there another way to get the news to him? Someone who can track him down?”
“There are a number of our men doing that as we speak,” Lorcan said. “The only problem is when Killian wants to do something that we don’t all agree on, he knows how to avoid being tracked.”
Lorcan went to work on the eggs next and popped bread into the toaster. I couldn’t seem to think about anything other than Killian, even though the smell of the breakfast was divine.
“Sloane,” Lorcan broke my spell and I looked over at him. “You need to let me worry about him and Conor. Your main job here is to relax and recover, yeah?”
I nodded and offered him a smile but it wasn’t genuine and I knew he could tell. He went back to cooking, and then plated it all up.
When it was in front of me, I couldn’t help but be impressed.
“This looks like a chef prepared it,” I said, picking up my fork. “Who knew you were so handy in the kitchen?”
“We all have hobbies,” he said, as he started to clean up. “Eat up.”
“Where’s Teeghan?”
“She’s gone to the docks,” he said.
“Why?”
Lorcan stilled before he dropped all the dirty pans in the sink. Slowly, he turned around and rested against the bench.
“You know, being with Conor, she is prone to dangers that we face, but also information about how we run things.”
I shrugged. “Well, yeah, I figured.”
“Conor is away, which means we are down men. Teeghan has been learning how to run the business while he is away.”
That was news to me.
“Oh.”
“Can I ask you a question?” he asked after a brief pause.
I nodded as I plowed into my eggs.
“You broke up with Killian because you never wanted this life,” he said. “You’re here…involved with him again. You do know his life hasn’t changed, in fact, he’s more in than he was back then.”
It was valid, something Teeghan had been asking me about too. Over the last couple of weeks, I had thought about it and why I couldn’t seem to walk away from him again.
“You know, Lorcan, when I broke up with Killian, I was eighteen. I still loved him but I was, well let’s just say I was a little green. I was sunshine and roses as Teeghan calls it. I didn’t like death or crime, but look at what I’ve gone through since then.”
Lorcan nodded. “You’d be okay with Killian doing what he does?”
“Yes,” I said, confidently. “Because, Lorcan, there are a lot of bad people out there. I had no idea how evil and cruel people could be until recently. I’m not a doe eyed eighteen year old anymore, and truth be told, I never expected to marry someone else. I broke up with him because-”
“You thought he would walk away from the business.”
I nodded. “I did.”
“You have to know it wasn’t that he didn’t want you,” Lorcan said. “Our father had a pull over us that none of us could deny.”
“I remember,” I told him. “He was fucking scary. Killian would never allow me to be anywhere near him.”
“He was an asshole and he treated women like his own personal maids, except for our mother. All of us decided never to bring women home to meet him after…”
“After what?”
Lorcan sighed. “He took advantage of a situation when we were younger.”
“Okay, Lorcan, I need a little more than that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, pushing up off the kitchen bench. “It’s in the past.”
I pushed my plate to the other side and he put it in the sink.
“What’s there to do in this big ass place?” I asked, looking around. Lorcan chuckled before he rinsed the plate and put it on the side of the sink to dry.
“Well, we have a couple of big TV’s, all the streaming services you could want, or you can go down to the bay. We have a boathouse you can chill in or you can go into the library, my mother kept a million books.”
“I didn’t know you guys had a houseboat.”
“They don’t. I do. I can take you out if you like, get some peace and quiet.”
“I think we both know that you have to stay here.”
His smile disappeared. “You’re right. Well, you have run of the house, Sloane. Holler if you need anything.”
He started to move away, out of the kitchen, when I grabbed his arm. He turned to face me, his face full of concern.
“He slept with your girlfriend, didn’t he?”
He smiled but I could tell it was forced. “You’re very perceptive.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“Like I said…it was a wake up call for us,” Lorcan said, putting his wall up again. “And it’s not like its an issue anymore.”
“Killian protected me from him, just like you would have protected her from him if you knew,” I told him. “Lorcan, you have the weight of the world on your shoulders, the eldest brother, the one who was meant to take over, but you don’t have to do this alone. It’s time for you to find someone to share the burden with.”
“Welcome to the family, Sloane.”
He kissed me on the forehead and went back into his office. I felt the pain in his voice and I desperately wanted to help him but this was something he had been holding on to for years, over a decade.
It just made me realize how much Killian did for me. He risked us, our happiness, all those years ago, to protect me. By the time Finneas had died, I was with Sean.
God.
Why didn’t he just tell me what was going on with him?
Tears threatened. In the past I had been clueless about, which had led to all of this. It was a funny way to discover we were meant to be…but I’ll take it.
KILLIAN
The house was only a stone’s throw from where we had found the photos of Sloane before. The lights were on in the living area, I could see Sinead walking around, and Darren sitting down in front of the TV. Sinead seemed to be on the phone, throwing her hands around erratically.
“What are we going to do with this list?” Conor asked me as I lit another cigarette. “You need to quit that shit.”
“Fuck off, it’s helping me.”
“No, it’s not. I thought you quit anyway.”
“Yeah well recent events have made me want to take it up again, so sue me.”
Conor shook his head as he flipped through the pages again.
“Cathal is down the street, watching us, why don’t you take it down to them and get them to take it Lorcan.”
Conor turned in his seat and looked down the street at the black car Lorcan’s men had been waiting for our next move in.
“How long have they been with us?” Conor asked.
“A few hours. I guess they’ve been looking for days so that’s a credit to us that we kept them guessing that long.”
“Ronan may have people in that house we haven’t seen,” Conor said. “We should get Cathal to help us.”
“The way she is flailing about, she’s trying to explain something. They’re on the out with Ronan.”
Conor put all the papers back into the folder and got out of the car. I watched as he kept to the shadows and headed down to Cathal. It wasn’t long before Cathal was driving off and Conor came back without the folder. I got out of the car, and prepped my gun. We both headed toward the house, and quickly moved around to the back. Conor worked the lock on the back door and we entered the house as quickly as possible.
Conor took the rooms to check if we were alone with them. Sinead was screaming into the phone while Darren flicked through the TV channels, bored. Conor headed in through the kitchen, bending down to take the shot. I nodded and he shot into Darren’s skull. He dropped the remote he’d had in his hand. Sinead finally shut up and turned around to see her husband laying lifeless in the recliner. She dropped the phone and tried to look for a weapon or even to find where we were but both Conor and I knew how to keep ourselves hidden in plain sight.
Sinead walked straight into the kitchen where we both were. I raised my gun and pointed it at her head. She stopped in her tracks, her eyes wide in fear.
“Ple-” she started but my finger squeezed the trigger before she could finish. The bullet entered right between her eyes. She fell to the floor, dead instantly.
I walked over to the phone she had dropped, hearing the screaming voice on the other end. Picking it up, I held it to my ear, a smile appearing on my face when I heard who was screaming.
Ronan.
“Sinead can’t come to the phone right now.”
Silence.
“I’m coming for you.”
Ronan hung up without another word and I threw the phone to the floor. I grabbed Sinead’s body and dragged her by her arm into the living area.
“What are you doing?” Conor asked, putting his gun away.
“Go and see if they left anything here,” I told him. Conor knew better than to argue with me. He moved away, as I bent down and dipped my fingers into her bullet wound. The blood pooling there was enough for me to do what I needed to do.
I started to swipe my bloodied fingers down the wall until I had spelled out the message I wanted Ronan to find.
“Tick, Tock”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
KILLIAN
Sloane was asleep in my childhood bed. I didn’t want to wake her up, judging from the injuries on her face, she needed to rest. I hated to see her like this.
It only made me angrier that they had dared to hurt her to get to me. Conor motioned for me down the hall to come with him. I closed the door quietly and headed down the stairs to the dining room. Lorcan was sitting at the head of the table.
“I tried telling you,” he offered before I could speak. I knew he would have, but he should have tried harder. Although, I didn’t regret what I’d done. Ronan needed to know I wasn’t the one he could mess with.
“What’s in front of you?” I asked, preferring not to get into a fight with him. I hadn’t slept for days, and I was tired. I didn’t want to talk about Sloane, not with what I was fighting with in my brain right now.
“These are the files you stole from Dublin. Cathal delivered them not long before you returned.”
“And?”
“It appears to be a list of properties, contacts and a list of members loyal to Ronan. This does appear to the honeypot.”
“Good.”
Lorcan leaned back in his chair, just like our father did, and yet he couldn’t be further from Finneas. He was the soft side of him, the one no one but our mum saw. I was the aggressive side of him that his enemy’s saw, and Conor was the reckless side that he showed when a family member was in danger.
All of us made up our father.
But our father would never had let it get this bad. Our own town was starting to see the cracks in our power over them and once that goes, we lose the empire our great grandfather started. Once we lose power, we’re all in greater danger than we already are now.
“We can’t just go in, guns blazing, leaving blood messages on walls with executed members laying underneath it.”
He knew?
Already?
“Ronan sends his regards and a few threats,” Lorcan replied. “You really need to pull your head in, Killian. Dipping your finger into an open wound to write a message…it's sick, you know that, right?”
“Is that all?” I asked.
“Guys,” Conor said, breaking the tension. “Can we focus on Ronan for a few more minutes? He’s fucking attacked Teeghan, and Sloane. No matter what we do, they will always be in danger until he’s taken out.”
“It’s not just him,” Lorcan said. “He has an operation behind him, one that will continue without him at the helm. We have to take them down, one by one.”
