28. Molly
Molly
A ir hissed between my teeth as Fallon dabbed at the wound on my head.
“Sorry! Sorry,” she muttered, dumping the used gauze into the trash and grabbing up another sterile bundle.
We were in the compound’s kitchen, Orla seated beside me, while Mila poked through the fridge like she already felt at home.
I wondered how the woman didn’t wilt at Orin’s intense glare, which was aimed at the back of her head.
He was standing guard over his woman, but not intruding on her work.
“It’s okay,” I told Fallon.
“Once I’m done with your head, I can take care of your hands.”
I stared down at my palms, mentally counting the splinters that were deeply embedded into the first few layers of skin. There must’ve been at least thirty in each palm, and each flex of my fingers made them ache. While we were escaping, I hadn’t noticed the pain, but they throbbed now.
“Was Keir injured too?” Fallon asked.
“Ah, yeah. Broken hand, I think, plus his knuckles are pretty bad.”
Fallon stepped back to look at me. “What the hell happened to you guys? The only thing I know is you were here one minute, then gone for almost three days. It looks like you’d both been in a war and come back with survivors.”
I gave my friend a tired smile. “That sounds pretty accurate.”
“Do you think we’ll be able to go home soon?” Orla asked from beside me. “To see Mam and hear what she has to say?”
“We can call her, but I don’t think it’d be safe for us to leave anytime soon.”
My sister’s face fell, and her shoulders slumped. “What about school? I only have two more exams to go before I graduate.”
“We’ll figure out a way, Orla. I promise. For now, we’re staying here.”
“It won’t be so bad, Orla,” Mila announced, finally shutting the fridge doors and dumping everything needed to make pancakes onto the counter. “We can hang out. It’ll keep your mind off things.”
“Are you staying, then?” Fallon asked Mila. “It’d be nice to have more women around to tame the savages.” She flicked a playful glance at Orin, who narrowed his eyes.
“I’d rather be here than there,” Mila replied absently, rifling through the cupboards in search of a bowl.
“Won’t your father miss you?” Orla asked.
It took Mila a few beats to answer. “My father won’t, no. He was the one who sold me.”
Something tugged at me to ask her more questions, but then Keir appeared. He stood at my back, his warmth surrounding me, but my smile wavered when I realized it was because he wanted to be close to Fallon.
“Once you’re done here, Jynx, Finnan wants to see you.” His lips brushed against the shell of my ear, making me shiver.
“Am I in trouble?”
“Not exactly, but he needs to hear your side of the story.”
I turned to face him, feeling the need to see his reaction when I asked, “Will you come with me?”
“Of course.”
Thirty minutes later, and with Orla’s help, Fallon had removed the splinters from my palms and slathered them in an antibacterial cream before bandaging them up, leaving my fingers free.
I felt like a mummy as I followed Keir into Finnan’s office on the second floor.
The Clan Boss studied me before gesturing to one of the seats in front of his desk. Keir took the other.
“What has Keir told you?”
“Nothing,” I replied. “Only that you wanted to see me.”
“He told me you were involved in the demise of Owen O’Mahony. Is that true?”
My gaze shot to Keir before it returned to Finnan. “Yes.”
“You cut off his dick.”
Lifting my chin, I gazed right at him. “That’s right.”
“You going to tell me why?”
Drawing in a deep breath, I replied, “Because he was obsessed with me.”
Smirking, Finnan said to Keir, “Does this mean she’ll cut your dick off too?”
“Fuck you,” he muttered, and I braced for Finnan’s wrath. He didn’t seem like a leader who would take that kind of insubordination.
“Why was Owen obsessed with you?”
I looked over at Keir, who murmured, “Finnan might be a fickle bastard, but you can trust him.”
Nibbling on my bottom lip, I considered my options. If Finnan knew the truth, he might be able to understand both mine and Owen’s motivations better.
“If you expect me to protect both you and your sister, I need to know everything.” Finnan’s words pushed me past my indecision. I needed him at this moment.
“Almost ten years ago, I killed my stepfather in my sister’s room.” From under my lashes, I glanced in Finnan’s direction. His expression remained the same, but a spark of interest flashed in his green eyes.
“I killed him because he’d been abusing me for nearly seven years. I had gotten too old for him, so he’d started on my sister, Orla.”
“His own daughter?” Finnan asked, disgust in his voice.
“I woke up one night hearing her cries, and I knew what he was doing. I confronted him and beat him to death. Afterwards, I ran, and left my mam and sister behind. I went to Dundalk, where I met Grady. We started a relationship, and I trusted him with my secret. When he started abusing me, I ran again, this time moving to Galway. My new life was good until four years later, when my past caught up with me, and Grady told me to deliver the bullet or my sister would get hurt.”
“I know all this. Where does Owen come in?”
Sucking in a bracing breath, I told them the rest. “The Garda didn’t have any leads and no suspects.
My sister and mother lied to them, and it gave me the chance to escape.
But Owen became obsessed with the crime.
He had the bat I used to kill my stepfather removed from evidence and kept it in a shrine.
First, he tracked me down, then used Grady’s connection to me to bring me back to Dublin. He said I was his soul mate.”
I felt both men staring at me as I scratched at my bound hands. “The declaration of war didn’t come from the Fiach Clan. It came from Owen O’Mahony himself. He was attempting to create his own clan, to move away from his father’s control.”
“A new clan?” Finnan asked, sitting forward.
I finally looked up, staring into Keir’s eyes.
He didn’t know all this. Didn’t know the level of obsession Owen had had with me.
“That’s why he took Orla. To secure my compliance in his little coup.
He sent me a message when we returned to the Sionnach Clan house, luring me to Naul Village where he was holed up. ”
“That’s why nobody had seen you,” Keir said to himself.
I nodded. “Yes. I slipped out while you were busy making phone calls and Mila was asleep. I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave if you were there.”
“He could’ve killed you.”
“No, he wouldn’t have killed me,” I told Keir. “He needed me alive.”
“So, you went to get your sister, then what happened?” Finnan interjected, clearly annoyed about being left out of the conversation.
“I traded myself for Orla’s safety, then sent her back to Ballsbridge in the Rover. But I slipped my phone into the car so Keir would find her before she reached there. I wasn’t sure if Gael had been compromised too, or whether his son had gone rogue.”
“All right, so it’s now just you and Owen. What happened?”
“He took me upstairs…” I paused when I saw Keir physically recoil at the words. “You don’t have to hear this,” I whispered to him.
“Yes, I do,” he replied. “I want to know this shit, so it’s better you only have to say it once.”
After taking a shaky breath, I continued. “He took me upstairs, where he showed me two bedrooms. One was a replica of my own bedroom growing up, and the second was Orla’s bedroom the night I killed Brian.”
“Your stepfather,” Finnan clarified.
I nodded. “My stepfather. Owen had the bat propped up against the wall of my childhood bedroom. The same bat I’d used that night.
He told me he wanted to fuck me in that room, but he wanted to know every single detail of what had happened that night too.
It was getting him excited, but I refused him what he really wanted. ”
Silence fell heavily on the room, but my attention was on Keir. I had no idea how he was taking this news—how he was processing it—or what he would do after.
“He was going to kill me,” Keir said softly, his eyes unfocused. He turned to me. “On our way out the door, you stopped him. You told him you’d give him what he wanted if he let me walk out of there unharmed.”
“Yes.”
“What did he want?”
Shrugging, I said only one word. “Submission.”
“He wanted you to fuck him?”
“Yes, but more than that, he wanted me to rule by his side. He wanted us to have children who he hoped would be as depraved as he was. Who had the same lust for murder and blood.” Even as I said the words, my stomach pitched.
He had it all wrong, but hearing someone say aloud what I had believed for a very long time chipped away at my soul.
“And you cut off his dick,” Finnan summarized elegantly.
“He was going to kill Keir in front of me. I distracted him by getting on my knees and jerking him off. Owen thought he’d won and began gloating to Keir. I used the distraction to pull out the knife he hadn’t bothered to search for and cut off his dick. Then we ran.”
“I returned with the RPG to destroy the farmhouse,” Keir added, as Finnan nodded like he already knew that part.
“And you’re sure Owen was acting alone, apart from the Caddie? He didn’t have any affiliations with any other clan?”
I thought hard as both men looked at me. “He mentioned no one else.”
Finnan slumped back into his chair, his gaze fixed on my face. “You’ve proven your loyalty to the clan. Keir wants you to remain under our protection. I’d be willing to grant that if you agree to becoming our clan’s medic.”
I looked over at Keir, then back at the Clan Boss. “What about Fallon?”
“We’ll keep you both,” Finnan replied.
“She’s nothing to me,” Keir said at the same time.
My gaze bounced between the men, both clearly talking about something different. I would deal with Keir’s admission later. To Finnan, I replied, “I accept under one condition.”
His jaw tensed. “You’re not really in the position to be making demands.”
“I know, but I eliminated an enemy and brought you a bargaining chip in Mila.”
He huffed out a laugh. “Name it.”
“Orla and I stay together. We were separated for too long because of my actions. We can stay together now because of them.”
Finnan seemed to think about it for a moment before leaning forward in his chair and extending his hand. “Deal.”