Chapter 26
LIAM
Ipark outside the Corrigan family house.
I study the nice facade, the expensive stone and the dark black door.
Regan grew up in this place, and I wonder what it was like.
Terrible, if I had to guess. Not the best in the world.
Though probably a hell of a lot nicer than the orphanages, foster homes, and juvenile detention centers that were the backgrounds of my youth.
I knock, expecting a housekeeper. I’m not sure what I’m going to say yet, but I have to come up with something. A few moments later, the door opens, and it’s Regan’s mother peering out at me with a curious smile.
That surprises me and throws me off balance.
“Ah, hello Liam, how are you? What can I help you with?”
“Mrs. Corrigan, hello. I was hoping I might talk with your husband. Is he around?”
She hesitates. Her smile slips as she looks over her shoulder. “He’s in his office, but—“ Her hands smooth at the wooden frame. “It’s maybe not the best time.”
“Did something happen?”
“No, no, nothing like that. Only a disagreement, that’s all.”
My heart rate ticks up. “Was Regan here?”
“She was.” Her eyebrows raise. “You know what that was about.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Come inside.” She ushers me through the entryway and into a side sitting room.
Regan’s mother is a willowy woman, impossibly thin, and she fusses around like a squirrel rearranging her hoard of stashed nuts.
I watch her twitchy motions with curiosity, and can almost see Regan in them, except my wife is much more deliberate and composed.
“Is there something you want to talk to me about, Mrs. Corrigan?” I ask, standing near the couch but not sitting.
She looks at me in a near-panic. “Noreen. Please call me Noreen.”
“Alright, Noreen. What’s going on?”
“I think… maybe… Martin isn’t quite ready to speak with any guests. His argument with Regan was… not good.”
“What happened?” I fight to steady myself. I know this family holds secrets. I can’t imagine Regan’s father has been the best dad in the world. Most likely he’s been a real bastard. But I had assumed that was in the past.
“Whatever Regan told him, Martin got angry.”
“Did he touch her?”
“No, no, nothing like that. But they had a disagreement… I think some choice words were spoken…”
“What did he do to my wife?”
Noreen’s face pales. “He sent her away. Please, Liam, when you talk to him, I’m begging you, whatever you say, please get him to let her come back home. Luke’s missing, and now Martin forbade Regan from stepping foot in this house, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do anymore.”
Her shoulders slump. She seems very old and frail as she sits heavily in a chair, hugging herself, drawing inward. I do my best to remain calm, because getting angry won’t help this woman right now, but it’s not fucking easy.
“Noreen, I’m going to ask you something. I want you to answer honestly. Did your husband ever touch Regan? Did he threaten to hurt her?”
“Threats, mostly.” She looks at her hands.
“Martin’s under a lot of stress and pressure.
He needs things to be a certain way, but children aren’t like that.
Children are messy and silly. Martin couldn’t accept it though.
He was especially hard on Regan, since she was the oldest, and he flattened her.
He crushed her, the way he crushes everything around him, and I think he’ll do it again… I mean, he’ll try to…”
“Listen to me.” I sit across from her on the edge of a couch. “Regan’s my wife now. She’s under my protection, do you understand? Whatever your husband says, he can’t hurt her. He can’t touch her. He shouldn’t even speak to her in a disrespectful manner.”
“I don’t think he knows that yet.”
“He will.” I take her hands on a whim. They’re papery and cold. She squeezes back, eyes watery but not crying. “I don’t know what he put you through, but it’s coming to an end now. I promise.”
“You can’t keep that. Nobody really can. Please, it’s better if you don’t say it.”
“I don’t break my word, not for anything.” I release her and stand. “Stay here. You’ll know when it’s over. Where’s his office?”
She gives me directions. I leave the sitting room.
I haven’t felt this clear in a very long time.
I haven’t had this kind of purpose since back when I first met Finn and he dragged me from the string of shitty half-lives and hellish abusive psychopaths I was trapped with.
Back then life was simple: work for the Whelans, do whatever they needed, never fail them. I built my life around them.
Now I’ve got other responsibilities. I never asked for it, but I have to stop pretending like I don’t feel this way, like Regan hasn’t crawled into my world and radically upended it.
I was cold to her in the diner. I regret that now.
I should’ve given her the news about Luke more gently and given her time to come around to the truth.
Instead, I was a bastard, and I wish I could take it back.
I still don’t know how to do this the right way, but I have to learn for her. I have to be better.
I find her father in his office. His face is red and he’s glaring at a window, a glass of bourbon clenched in a meaty fist. He seems surprised to see me as I step into the room.
“The hell are you doing here?” he grunts, taking a drink. “Did your wife send you?”
“No, Martin, she didn’t.” I close the door behind me.
“Mr. Corrigan.” His eyes narrow. “I may be your father-in-law, but I prefer respect.”
“That’s not how things are anymore, Martin.”
His jaw tenses. “You sure Regan didn’t send you here?”
I walk toward him. “You fucked up. Do you know that?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Lankshear, but this is my house. You will show me respect.”
“No, I’m going to show you where you stand.” I saunter closer. “The Whelans trusted you. They put their faith in your operation. You run one of the most efficient and best-protected laundering schemes on the planet, and that gives you power. Money always does. But you still fucked up.”
“Careful,” he warns. “I’ve had enough disrespect for one day.”
“Your family put the Whelans in this situation. Your family’s utter dysfunction caused all this god damn trouble. You started this war with your incompetence.”
“What the hell is this about?!”
“You know about Luke. Don’t pretend otherwise. That’s what Regan was doing here, right?”
He sits back as if punched. Some of the anger drains from his face as he raises the glass to his lips. “She wasn’t lying?”
“Why the fuck would she? God, you’re so arrogant, so broken that you can’t even listen to your own daughter.”
“What did my son do? Tell me what he did.”
“Your son isn’t the problem right now.” I stand beside his desk, looming over him. Martin Corrigan, a powerful titan in the city, a wealthy and influential man, looks old and shriveled beneath me. “You are, and now it’s time to learn where you stand.”
I grab him by the throat. He gags in shock and tries to hit me with the glass. I flinch back and he misses, spilling bourbon on the rug. I catch his wrist and pull it hard, twisting him up as I tear him from his chair and throw him to the floor. He hits with a dull thud.
I pick up his keyboard, rip the wire from the back, and smash it over his head.
He moans in pain. Red dribbles from a cut over his eyebrow.
I hit him again with the shattered remains of the keyboard until the plastic is cracked and broken.
I toss the shards aside. He’s curled up, arms trying desperately to cover his face.
I peel them aside, kneel on his gut, and wrap my hand around his throat again.
It feels good, choking him. Martin Corrigan thrashes, but he’s not strong enough to get me off. I’ve done this before, kept my hands locked around a throat until the lights went out. I could do it again.
But I release him anyway.
He gasps for air, retching and coughing. From this perspective, he doesn’t seem so big. Really, he looks like nothing at all.
“The Whelans own you now,” I say it simply so he understands through the haze of his pain.
I’m guessing his head’s dizzy and blood’s getting in his eyes.
“That means I own you. When I tell you to bark, you’ll bark like a happy puppy.
When I tell you to roll over, you’ll show your fucking belly and kick your legs when I give you a scratch. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he says, breathing hard.
“You forgot who we are. You forgot what we do. But now you remember. We are the Whelans. I will hurt you, again and again, if you don’t learn how to obey.”
“I’ll do what they say. I swear it.”
“That’s a good boy, Martin.”
I kick him hard in the ribs. He wheezes, clutching at himself. That wasn’t strictly necessary, but it did feel good.
“And one more thing. You’ll stay away from Regan. If she comes here to visit with her mother, you’ll ignore her. You’ll pretend like your daughter doesn’t exist. You’ll only speak when spoken to. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he hisses through clenched teeth. “Please, I’ll leave her alone.”
“If she tells me there’s a problem, I’ll come back.”
“I understand.”
“No, I doubt you do. A man like you has to learn a lesson more than once. But you’ll learn, I promise.”
I kick him again, this time with less force, more to remind him that he’s on the ground and I’m standing.
He whimpers, bloodied and gasping for air, and he looks pathetic down there.
He looks like what he is: an old man flailing to hold on to his power and failing as it all slips from his fingers like dirt.
I walk to the doorway and pause. “Martin? One more thing.”
“Please. Anything.”
“Your wife, Noreen? You’ll leave her alone too. If I speak to her and it seems like you took some of your frustrations out on her—“ I hold his eyes until he cringes away. “We’ll be in touch.”
I leave him there. The old man’s no use to me at the moment.
I’ve tried all my life to solve problems. Always I’ve been able to come up with some solution, mostly through bribery and brute force. But this issue isn’t something I can pay off, it’s not something I can beat or kill, it’s not even something I can run away from.
I’m trapped here, and it’s time I accepted the truth.
I care about her.
More than I ever thought I would.
Seeing her mother like that, curled in and crushed, all because that pathetic asshole has been lording over them their entire lives, it drives me to fucking violence.
I’ll never let my Regan end up like her mother.
Which means I have to get past my own petty bullshit.
And there’s only one way to do it.