77. CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Lachlan and I cut the mangled bodies from Hayden’s Crown Vic. We loaded them back into the trunk, their blood staining our clothes. Those motherfuckers needed to just disappear. No bodies meant no charges.
I wasn’t a lawyer back then, but I’d watched enough legal dramas to know the basics.
No one would question me. No one questioned the mob.
I texted Balor a photo of what was left of his bullies.
Balor: Gross. Delete that, you fucking moron. And send me you and Mountain Man’s phone IPs to wipe you both from Boston.
All that and not a thank you?
I dropped Lachlan off at his Viper and we got the fuck out of Boston.
The sun had risen over the East River when we reached New York. Lachlan waved me over in front of Divona.
“Leave that car here. I’m going to pick up a capo to drive it to the black site so I can torch it later,” Lachlan said, like it was no big deal and drove away.
Feeling so fucking victorious, I strut to my car, parked outside Da’s office when the courtyard door opened sharply. He stood there in the same clothes he’d had on the night before.
Oh shite.
“Get your fucking arse in here right now,” he shouted at me.
My heart pounded, but I did as he said. For all I knew, his outburst could have been about something else. The Civics test I’d failed. It would hopefully reinforce my reason for quitting school.
Da stepped aside and let me in.
“What—” I didn’t get any further words out of my mouth when he backhanded me across the face.
I fell backward. My eyes, watery from the sting, searched the office and saw it was empty. Which scared me. I’d have preferred a witness. Even one who would see me get bitch slapped.
Crouched on the carpet, I hissed, “What the fuck?”
“You went to Cambridge with Lachlan when you were told to go back to school,” Da sneered.
“I’m twenty-one. You don’t own me,” I growled.
“Have you not figured out what I do to my sons who disobey me?”
He couldn’t be serious about sending me to that torture camp in Dunbar Valley.
“You continue to overlook that I have what it takes to work with Lachlan.” I pushed to my feet. “I killed those fuckers who touched my brother. You should be thanking me. Not striking me.”
Why the fuck was no one thanking me?
“I do things for a reason, Eoghan. Not every person who crosses us ends up dead. That’s a choice a king must make,” he shouted.
“I’m not sorry. I did what I did for Balor. Not you.”
Da scoffed and sat at his desk. From the top drawer, he took out an envelope. “You’re not working with Lachlan.”
My throat tightened, and I considered saying perhaps the Bratva or the Cosa Nostra would have me. Then he would shoot me. He’d had eight kids, two who were twins that people couldn’t keep straight. No one would miss one O’Rourke brat.
“I’m glad you figured out your way around Cambridge and that you’re so worried about your little brother.”
“He’s eighteen and not so little.” I glanced at the envelope. “What is that?”
“Your acceptance to Harvard Law School.”
My spine turned rubbery. I didn’t want to go to law school. I was struggling enough at Columbia. “Wait. How? I don’t have good grades. I didn’t take the LSATs.”
“Lucky for you, I have a computer tech guy who says you did.” Da dropped the envelope on his desk.
“Balor?”
Da smiled. “He’s not that good. Yet. But he will be. I’ll make sure of it.”
Fuck! Da’s plan for all of us had been in motion long before that night. Perhaps before we’d been born.
“You will be the lawyer I need to keep my shit looking legal and your brother’s consigliere.”
“Da, please,” I begged.
“It’s done, Eoghan. Now you’re going to drive those dead bodies Upstate and bury them.”
“Da, it’s the middle of winter. It will take hours and—” I stopped talking when the office door opened from the hall and his underboss walked in.
“Cassian will go with you,” Da said.
If I’d not been my father’s son, I probably would have ended up in those graves, too.
“No coat, no gloves, one shovel,” Da spits out to Cassian. “You kill someone without permission, Eoghan O’Rourke, you bury the bodies. When you get back, go home to that nice apartment in Manhattan I pay for where you screw a different girl every Saturday night and pray you still have working fingers. It will take you a few months to pack when your hands stop hurting enough to touch anything ever again.”
I wasn’t sure what I loathed more. Those hours digging, or law school…
Silence stretches out and I open my eyes. I’m not in my Da’s office with a handprint across my face. I’m in Reno. With the most beautiful woman I’ve ever lied eyes on. A woman whose dad owned a baby blue Crown Vic of all the fucking cars in the world.
She’s a prosecutor. And I just confessed to a double murder, plus a host of other crimes including assault, kidnapping, transporting bodies across state lines, and illegal burials.
With the Reno chill on my skin, I stare at the car in Jillian’s mom’s garage. It reminds me of those brutal hours in the cold, burying two bodies, Cassian making me dig two holes until my hands were bloodied… It feels like a lifetime ago, but the ache in my hands never went away.
The glorious credit I get for exacting revenge for Balor in a brutal way has followed me to this day, minus the humiliating bitch slap and convict-like treatment I got in the aftermath.
My hands were so fucked up after that day, they took weeks to heal. It’s why I get manicures. I can’t bear dirt under my nails or wrecked cuticles.
Makes me sick.
Tears fill Jillian’s eyes. “Oh, Eoghan. I don’t know what to say, other than…” She kisses my bare chest. “Thank you.”
“Thank you?” I just vomit confessed my worst sins.
And she can refer them for prosecution to a Boston D.A.
“For sharing that with me.” She steers me back to the house and into the living room. Sitting me in front of the fire with a fur throw around my shivering body, she drops to her knees. “For trusting me.”
I close my hand around hers reaching for my belt. “I tell you I dragged two men to their deaths and you want to blow me?”
“You confessed bravely about the pain you were in. I still see it on your face. Now, I want to make you feel good.”
“I’m a murderer, Jillian,” I say, the only time feeling ashamed because she’s so damn pure and good.
“You did that for your brother.” She wriggles my hand away and nudges my pants down past my arse until my cock springs free. “Would you do the same for me?”
Watching her tongue swipe across the head of my dick, I mutter, “Kill two men?”
“Drag them to their deaths. It’s so visceral.” Her breath shudders.
“No, I’ll kill one hundred men for you. I won’t hesitate to end the life of anyone who lays a hand on you.” I tilt her head up and kiss her.
Breaking the kiss, she asks with a sly smirk, “You got laid a lot in college, huh?”
Scoffing, I say, “I honestly couldn’t pick out any woman I fucked in college from a line-up, sparkles.”
Maybe even beyond that. No face materializes in my brain. I found the last pussy I ever want to sink my dick into.
I push her messy hair away from her face, so I can fuck her mouth. “I only touch you from now on.”