49. Brady
Brady
Damage control following the attack goes as smoothly as it can. Thanks to the cops, coroners, and media outlets on our payroll, we’re able to spin the story into a tragic accident, complete with pictures of the rocket launcher damage.
Gas leak. Faulty wiring. Kaboom.
Since I’m the one in charge of our buildings’ quality, I’m the one to take responsibility for the “shoddy construction.” I fucking hate paying for an error that isn’t mine. But I know my duty, and I do it without complaint.
It’s nothing compared to what my older brother endures.
Liam and his men never made it to Seven’s brownstone that night.
Given how late he had to send out the call, Liam was only able to fill two SUVs with ready fighters.
He drove the first car. As soon as he crossed onto Seven’s block, spikes came out of the road.
Our second car was debilitated, then obliterated.
Two remote-controlled SUVs slammed into either side of our second car, crushing the men within.
We’d underestimated Seven’s defenses. He killed eight of our men before they’d made it into his yard.
Who knew what other surprises he had in store?
Liam made the difficult call to abandon the attack, and I do not envy the choice he had to make.
No O’Sullivan wants to retreat. But because he did, we lost eight men instead of sixteen.
And we didn’t lose Liam.
The brutal car crash made no headlines. Not with the “explosion” at our high-rise occurring the same night.
Normally Mam coordinates the funerals. This time, Liam’s taking on all eight by himself. The wakes and services and burials. The widow visits. The fatherless children provided for.
Me having to play the dumbass building manager is nothing in comparison.
I bet Cora finds it funny. She must be keeping up with the news, if only to make sure that she and Connor aren’t implicated. I imagine her smirking as she reads about me, taking savage delight in what she knows I find humiliating.
She deserves to enjoy my shame after what I did to her.
It’s no use trying not to think about my wife. Her ghost is with me at the breakfast table, in the shower, sitting beside me in the town car, lying in my arms as I fall asleep.
She was so talented in her role at my side, an asset to the O’Sullivan arsenal. But she’s happier where she is now. The men I’ve assigned to guard her report that she’s doing just fine without me. She’s back to her life as an ophthalmologist, which I convince myself is a good thing.
It’s what she wanted all along.
I go to work alone, and I hate it. Working in my office is nearly impossible. Whenever I’m in my chair, all I can think about is her bent over my knee, begging me to spank her until I leave my handprints on her perfect ass. Mine.
But she’s not mine anymore.
One night, when I return to my penthouse that’s soulless without her, I realize there’s no real reason for me to leave it again. I stop going into the office and visiting the sites in person. I’m a good manager, which means I’m a good delegator. Things run smoothly even when I’m remote.
It’s easier to get my work done from home anyway.
I don’t have to shower. I don’t have to put on a suit.
I don’t have to waste time getting to and from the office.
It’s just as well, because my time management has gone to shit.
Tasks that used to take me half an hour now take me all morning.
I can’t fucking focus. I compensate by forgoing sleep and mainlining energy drinks to get all my work done.
Liam “swings by my place” one afternoon. It’s a fucking wellness check.
I’ve kept up with everything, thanks to me working through the nights. The hotels, the stocks, the real estate. Everything. And my older brother still invites himself over.
From the rebuilt security office downstairs, the guard on duty calls me to let me know Liam’s on his way up. It’s protocol now with our heightened security. No one past the lobby without my permission. Liam gets a pass, but I still have to know about it.
“You look like shit,” he says when he finds me in my office. I don’t look up from my computer.
“Did you need something?”
“We need to talk about Seven.”
That gets me to look up. I push up from my desk. If we’re going to talk about Seven, then I need to be able to fucking pace.
“Jesus,” my brother says. “Have you eaten anything today?”
“What about Seven?”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“What about Seven?”
“When’s the last time you took a shower?”
“What about Seven?” I snarl, but Liam just turns away.
I storm after him into the kitchen, where he’s poking his head into my refrigerator.
“Go take a shower,” he tells me. “I’ll fix you something to eat.”
“What the shit? What about—”
“We’re not going to talk about Seven until after you take a fucking shower. And put on some clean clothes.”
I take a fucking shower. I put on some clean clothes. Just sweats and a T-shirt though, because fuck Liam for telling me what to do. But the fact that they’re clean and I’m clean does make me feel a little more like myself.
“Better?” he asks when I return to the kitchen. I don’t give him the satisfaction of an answer, and he slides a protein shake toward me.
“What about Seven?” I demand.
But Liam says nothing, he just looks pointedly at the shake he made until I gulp half of it down.
“Happy?” I ask him.
“No. We need to plan for Seven’s retaliation. We know he’s licking his wounds for now, but we need to be ready.”
“What’s your plan?”
“We need more men,” he says flatly.
We lost eight men that night. Good men. Men who answered the last-minute call. Add in the fact that I’ve assigned a rotation of constant guards to Cora, and our available ranks are thinning.
We need more men, but Seven does too. He lost forty-nine well-trained men that night.
“If Seven’s also recruiting,” I reason, “then there’s a higher risk of traitors among the new men.”
“There’s a high risk of traitors among our current men.”
I almost drop my glass. All I can do is stare at my brother as he explains.
“Seven’s known too much about our previous plans. Our shipments, our contacts, our locations. It’s all high-level information that Connor never had access to.”
“I cleared Connor,” I remind him. It cost me my fucking marriage, but I cleared the kid.
“It’s someone close,” Liam says, glossing over the wreckage of my life. “The question is who.”
“It’s more than that,” I say. “We need to know exactly what they’ve been leaking, when they first crossed us, and how they’ve been getting the intel to Seven.”
I gulp down the rest of my shake for something to do as I tally the shitty possibilities in my head. Too many. Liam waits for me to set my glass on the counter.
“We have a theory on how.”
“We?” I ask, because it doesn’t sound like he’s talking about him and Da.
“Seven’s bugged the city’s confessionals. I need a list of the men who attend church in any form.”
“The confessionals?” I’m begrudgingly impressed. It’s diabolical.
“Mam’s already ordered the replacements for every booth in the city and burbs. Brand-new mahogany O’Sullivan donations. Bill should be on your desk soon.”
“So it was Mam who figured it out?” I ask.
“It was Cora.”
My heart stops beating. Cora, my genius Cora. Not mine, I have to remind myself. Not anymore. I have so many questions for Liam, but they clog in my throat. All I can do is make a helpless choking noise. My brother takes pity on me.
“She reached out to Mam.” He takes a deep breath in through his nose. “Apparently, after we took Connor to golf, he went to confession. I’ve got the priest under surveillance, but Cora suggested we treat all booths like they’re Seven’s.”
“She…” My pulse stutters back to life. “She told us about a vulnerability. She wanted to protect us.”
“She wanted to clear her brother’s name.” His tone is so dismissive that I want to grab him by the shirt and shout in his face. He doesn’t get it.
“And when the fuck were you going to tell me?” I demand. Liam and Mam kept this from me.
“I’m telling you now, aren’t I?”
As if that’s the end of our conversation, he takes my empty glass from the counter and puts it in the sink. But he didn’t come here to play nanny.
“I need you on recruitment,” he says.
“What? Cora—”
“Recruitment,” he repeats sternly. He’s done talking about my wife. “We need more men.”
I clamp my jaw shut and nod. I’m a good manager, which means I’m a good recruiter.
“Good.” Liam says it like he didn’t just upend my world with news about my wife. Cora, reaching out. Protecting us. Caring. He strides over and claps me on the shoulder. “Get your fucking shit together.”
When my brother leaves, I go about getting my fucking shit together. She cares. I’m in a daze as I drink another protein shake. I trim my stubble beard. I put on real clothes. She still cares.
It’s early evening when the guard calls me again from downstairs.
“Sorry, sir,” he says quickly. “She walked right past me, I didn’t want to restrain her, she’s on her way up.”
“Cora?” I breathe. Every muscle in my body trembles.
“Yes, sir. She—”
The phone falls from my hand and clatters to the floor. A second later, the elevator dings softly, and I stumble over my feet in my rush toward it.
My heart drums in my throat as the doors slide open.
She’s here. She still cares.
She’s come home to reconcile.