Chapter 17 #3
Hack wasn’t a demonstrative person. He’d grown up with loving parents who supported his identity as a transgender man, but he lost them in a car crash as a teenager.
He was sent to live with grandparents who weren’t supportive at all.
And that was putting it lightly. He ran away, never finished high school, and taught himself enough tech skills to survive—mostly by running schemes on college students at Brighton.
Mads met him through a girl he was dating and brought him into the O’Shea fold.
We were Hack’s family now, and he took that seriously.
A memory flashed through my mind. “Hey, I just remembered. You called me right before I got shot. Twice.”
Hack turned in his chair and glanced at Rhys, then looked up at me. “Yeah, about that…” He cleared his throat. “Someone took out the Bonnams.”
I blinked as a chill washed over me. “What?”
“Right before you were shot, we got word that Liam and his sons were ambushed in their house. All dead.”
My jaw dropped. “It can’t be a coincidence that someone assassinated them and tried to take me out on the same night.”
Hack shook his head. “No, it’s not.”
“Any leads?”
“Not yet. But I’m working on it. Police have the Bonnams investigation locked down. Even our people inside aren’t answering my calls.”
“Shit.” It was one problem after another. Someone was clearly trying to take over North Jersey, and they’d been damn close to succeeding. But I was too fucking stubborn to die, and I had to take care of my men.
I placed a hand on Hack’s shoulder. “When’d you last eat?”
Hack’s eyes skittered away from mine. I knew him well.
Rhys cleared his throat from behind us. “He hasn’t left this room since we got word you’d been shot.”
I sighed. “Hack. You need to eat.”
He spun his chair back toward his computer. “In a minute. I just—”
“No. Now.” I walked over to one of the many plugs he had scattered around and randomly chose one. “Or I’ll unplug your computer.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “That’s the cord for my fan.” He pointed at an old oscillating thing that needed a good dusting and squeaked with every rotation.
I dropped the cord and dusted my hands together. “Whatever. Let’s go. Up. Outta this tomb.”
He grumbled, but he let me frog-march him to the kitchen anyway.
After I made sure Hack had eaten, I filled a few plates for me and Devlin, then walked back to my apartment behind a silent Rhys. He stopped at his door and turned to face me. The look on his face told me it was time to give him some answers.
I jerked a chin at his door. “Let me in.”
He typed in the code and let me inside. I put the food down on a table near the door and set my hands on my hips.
His room had always been the neatest out of all the crew.
Bed made. Bathroom clean. Floor swept. There’d been a lot of chaos in Rhys’s life that he’d never had control over, so maintaining order in his own space was important to him.
I regularly worried that I took Rhys for granted. He was just… there. He had always been there. Sometimes I wondered that if it wasn’t for Jace, he would’ve left this life—and me—years ago.
He sat down at the end of his bed and looked at me expectantly.
“I already told Jace,” I began. “Devlin is mine. I’m not going to kill him. I’m keeping him.” I swallowed. “In my apartment. My bed.”
Rhys didn’t look surprised, he just continued to blink slowly. Silence stretched between us.
I shifted my weight. “Any thoughts you’d like to share?”
His eyebrows climbed. “You wanna hear them?”
“Oh fuck off. You know I do.”
He leaned back on the bed with his hands braced behind him. “I think this is going to cause a total shitstorm.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
He chewed the inside of his cheek and looked away for a moment. Then he squinted at me. “Devlin fucking Walsh? Really?”
I threw up my hands. “You think I wanted this?”
Rhys’s gaze dropped to the floor for a moment before he responded. “You’re sure?”
“I’m positive.”
“I’ll never like him.”
“I don’t always like him either,” I snorted. “He’s a huge fucking pain in the ass. But that doesn’t mean I’m giving him up. Ever.”
He sighed. “All right. We’ll deal with the fallout. Like we always do.”
We.
Devlin was my problem, my decision, but Rhys was always ready to go into battle with me. My chest felt tight, and I rubbed at it with my palm. “Rhys.” He met my gaze, and my throat clogged. “I don’t deserve you.”
He just rolled his eyes. “Shut up.”
“I can’t say something nice?”
He stood from the bed with a shrug. Rhys was only a few inches shorter than me. We could probably pass as brothers more easily than Jace and I could. “You act like you don’t ever do anything for me.”
“I’m not sure I have lately.”
“You being distracted for a while doesn’t cancel out thirty-four years of having my back, dumbass. I’m not keeping score. This is what we do.”
“This is what we do,” I echoed.
He pushed on my shoulder. “Go away. I’m tired of all this sappy shit, and you have a devil to feed.”
I grabbed the plates of food and headed for the door. “For what it’s worth,” I called over my shoulder, pausing with my hand on the doorknob. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Devlin sooner. I didn’t really know what was happening until it just… happened.”
“It’s okay,” he said with a knowing smile. “I saw it coming way before you did. I just needed you to admit it.”
“Wait until this shit happens to you. You’ll be just as deep in denial.”
Rhys didn’t answer, but his smile faded fast. “Probably.”