Chapter Fourteen
Declan
As the sheriff in such a small town, a big part of my job was paperwork, which had kept me chained to my desk since I got back after lunch with the mayor.
I shouldn’t complain.
In a town this size, we didn’t have much crime. An occasional bout of graffiti in the summer, when the teenage boys got bored after school let out for three months. A few domestic cases here and there, when couples drank too much at the bar, pushing each other’s buttons.
Rarely did we have any actual emergencies. The biggest one lately was weeks ago, when little Charlie Reynolds was kidnapped, and her kidnapper was killed by Charlie’s uncle.
So, when I heard shouting in my station, I immediately jumped up to see what was going on. My hand on my gun with the strap flipped off, I carefully made my way out of the office.
What I found made my blood boil.
“Jackie, move your hand and your ass before I fucking move it for you.”
My deputy, Jackie Stilton, was standing in the hallway. Her left hand was on my brother’s chest, and her right was hovering over her gun.
“What the fuck is going on out here?”
I snapped the strap back over my gun, knowing my brother wasn’t a threat, and walked to where the two were facing off.
“Sheriff, Mr. O’Rourke walked in, stomped by the desk clerk, yelling and demanding to see you. When I told him he needed to take a seat, he became belligerent.”
“Dec, get this bitch out of my face,” King snapped.
I looked at my brother. He was angry. I could see that. His nostrils flared, and his pupils were blown. If I had to guess, he’d had a few drinks before coming here today. He had been pissed at me since Thanksgiving. Jackie could no doubt hold her own, but hell if I would let him talk to any woman like that.
“Thank you, Jackie. I’ve got this,” I said, my hand on her shoulder, moving her behind me.
Stepping up to my brother, I grabbed the lapels of his cut and yanked him forward.
“You can be pissed at me all you fucking want, but you ever talk to a woman the way you just did, and I will knock the shit out of you. I don’t care who you think you are. Apologize to Jackie before I throw you in a fucking cell and then get your ass in my fucking office.” I shoved him away from me, turning my back on him, and stormed to my office.
Calling over my shoulder, “Now!”
As I walked away, I heard him start his apology.
Punk ass kid.
Dropping into my chair, I waited for King.
A moment later, he walked in and threw a folder on my desk.
“You’re a goddamned hypocrite,” he sneered.
“Close the door and sit your ass down.”
Opening the folder, I stared at the contents. Flipping the pages in the report, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
“You had Nav investigate me? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Me? What the fuck is wrong with me?”
Ignoring my previous command, King paced around my office while I read everything Nav found.
“We have another fucking brother that no one bothered to mention to me, and that brother is the head of the fucking Irish Mob. And you ask what is wrong with me?”
“Close the fucking door,” I growled.
I didn’t need the entire station hearing this conversation.
King pushed the door closed and slammed himself down into the chair in front of my desk and glared at me.
“Why?”
“Why what?” I asked, reading through the papers.
“Why was this kept from me? Why didn’t he move to Arkansas? He was only seventeen. He wasn’t an adult yet.”
“He stayed with his father,” I answered absentmindedly, still looking for the piece of information that would tear everything my parents worked for into shreds.
“Dec, what the fuck is going on?”
Hearing the sound of defeat in his voice, I looked up, and that was when I saw it.
The hurt.
The pain.
The president of the Silver Shadows, a former 1% motorcycle club, was gone. Sitting in front of me was the ten-year-old boy, who had his world shattered when I had to tell him his parents were gone. That the mother and father who loved him and protected him were never coming back home.
“King. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t mean shit. I want the truth.”
Closing the folder, I sat back in my chair. With a heavy breath, I told my brother a series of half-truths that I prayed he believed. Maybe with this information, he would stop digging.
“Mom had a son before she met Dad. He was four when Mom and Dad got married. Braesal O’Malley is five years older than me, and he is our half-brother. When Dad got the job offer in Arkansas, I was twelve and Sal was seventeen. His father was the head of the Irish in Boston. His grandfather was Casper O’Malley. The former head of the IRA.”
“Jesus Christ,” King whispered. Leaning forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees, my brother dropped his head into his hands.
“Seven months after we moved, you were born.”
“Nav couldn’t find any medical records for my birth. Aside from my birth certificate. No medical records of Mom ever being pregnant.”
I knew the question he was asking. The answer was one my mother had drilled into me over and over for ten solid years until she was gone.
“You were born at home with a midwife. It was the eighties, there was no internet, and no digital records. I’m sure the birth records are in a box somewhere in the basement of someone’s home.”
“Did she stay in touch with him? Sal? How were you able to keep everything hidden from me?”
This was where it got tough. Where I might have to lie outright to my baby brother. This was the only thing I had ever lied to him about, and it was to keep him safe. I could only pray that if he ever found out, he would understand.
More importantly, that he would forgive me.
“Mom tried to stay in touch for a while. But after we moved, Sal’s father Eamon started grooming him to one day take over. And he did. Sal killed his father when he was thirty and took over the Irish Mob.”
“I was thirteen then, and Mom and Dad were already gone. So that wasn’t why I was never told. What aren’t you telling me?”
I ran my hand over my face, buying some time to come up with a plausible explanation.
“Sal stopped communication with Mom a few years after we left. You were only a few years old, so she never told you about him. Then they passed away, and I hadn’t heard from him in years. It just seemed best to let sleeping dogs lie.”
“Best to let sleeping dogs fucking lie?” King stood from his chair, placing both hands on my desk, and leaned toward me. “You fucking lied alright! I have another fucking brother! You didn’t think I had a right to know?”
Standing from my chair to remind him who he was talking to, I leaned over and shouted, “Considering who that fucking brother is, no! I didn’t want him anywhere near you.”
“Well, guess what? This club is caught up with him in multiple fucking ways. And you knew about it! The shit you gave Blade about putting your daughter in danger. You put her in danger!”
“Boy, you better sit your ass down and remember who you’re talking to. I haven’t talked to or heard from Sal in thirty-eight fucking years. He was not a threat to you or my daughter until Blade made him one.”
“He was a fucking kid. He had no control over it.”
“He should have fucking told you!” I growled.
“He did,” King shouted.
I went still. I must have misheard him. My brother did not just tell me that he knew about this like it was gossip from a church ladies’ luncheon.
“You knew?”
“Yes, I knew. Steele knows too,” King revealed, sitting back in his chair, deflated. “He told us everything when he joined the Silver Shadows.”
“And you didn’t think to mention it to me? That one of the Silver Shadows was tied to the fucking Mob?
Anger flickered in King’s eyes. “Like you didn’t think to mention to me that my brother was the head of that same fucking Mob?”
Touché.
This was different though. My secret was to keep him safe. His was about club bullshit.
Rubbing my hand on the back of my neck, I looked at the ceiling. I needed to tread carefully here.
“I want to meet him.”
Snapping my eyes back on King, I could feel the panic rising.
“Why?”
“Because he’s my brother.”
“No,” I stated icily.
“You do realize I don’t need your permission. I am almost forty fucking years old.”
“King—”
“No, Declan. I want to meet him.” He stood up and walked to the door of my office. Pausing with his hand on the knob, he turned and said, “It’s happening. Get on board. I want you there when I meet him.”
“What about Maureen?” I asked, hoping it would deter him, but I knew when King set his mind on something, nothing stopped him from making it happen.
Except when it came to Grace.
“I’ll talk to Maureen. I’ll give her all the information and let her decide what to do. That’s the right way to deal with an adult. Not hiding shit from them.”
He walked out before I could tell him it was for his own safety. Not that I would have said those words. That would have led to more questions.
Questions I couldn’t, no, wouldn’t answer.
Sitting at my desk, I opened the file once more and scoured it word by word. I needed to make sure Nav hadn’t found the information surrounding King’s birth.
I spent well over an hour reading through those files, five times in total, before I was satisfied that our secret was still safely hidden away.
Now, I just needed a way to ensure it stayed hidden.
Tucking the files away in a locked drawer in my desk, I looked up when Jackie entered my office.
“Everything ok, boss?”
“Just some family shit.” Shit that had the potential to blow up my whole fucking life.
Jackie stepped into my office, closing the door behind her. She sat in the chair King had vacated and said nothing.
“Is there something you need?”
Jackie kept her gaze on mine and said, “You both got pretty loud. I wasn’t trying to overhear, but your voice carries, and so does his.”
I knew what she hadn’t said. She’d heard us talking about the Irish Mob and our relation to it.
“And?”
“Well... there have been some murmurs around town. Some people think maybe the Silver Shadows aren’t quite as clean as they want everyone to believe.”
“What is your point, Jackie?”
I knew what her point was. There were a few town folks who believed I wasn’t as clean as everyone thought too. They weren’t entirely wrong, but nothing I had done for my brother and his men could ever be proven.
“If folks in town find out your older brother is in the Irish Mob and, well, your younger brother wears a 1% patch—”
“They aren’t a 1% club, Jackie.”
“I understand, sir, but they still wear the patch. I’m just saying, it might make re-election difficult.”
She wasn’t wrong. All it would take was one person getting into the ear of influential citizens and I could lose my job.
I needed to have a talk with Allie.
“Thank you for your concern, Jackie. But as I told King, I haven’t spoken to our brother in thirty-eight years. If people choose to believe I’m dirty because I can’t control who my family is, instead of looking at my track record of over twenty-five years as a cop and the last five as sheriff of this town. Then there isn’t much I can do to change their minds.”
Jackie nodded and stood from her seat. Much like King did an hour ago, Jackie stopped at the door with her hand on the knob.
“I just want to say, I don’t listen to murmurs. I have enjoyed working for you, Sheriff. And will continue to show you the respect you deserve, regardless of rumors spread in a small town.”
“Thank you, Jackie.”
She closed the door behind her and left me to mull over what she said. I couldn’t help but wonder how many people in town thought I was a dirty cop?
This was Maureen’s fault.
If she had never shown up here, none of this shit would have come up. It was time for her and me to have a little chat.