Chapter 8 | Preston
EIGHT | PRESTON
Iskillfully twirl the knife, the handle slipping and weaving through my fingers like smooth water I’m gracefully controlling.
I’ve done it enough times since my father gifted it to me at eighteen that it doesn’t take an ounce of my concentration.
It looks intimidating as hell before it leads to one of two things: sheathing it back against my hip, where it always stays, along with my Glock, or it finds itself lodged into someone’s chest cavity.
Or that sensitive part of muscle behind their kneecaps that attaches to the back of their thighs.
Or that delicate tendon in the back of their ankles that connects their foot to their calf.
There are too many fun ways to torture someone that fill my chest with a repulsively sweet satisfaction. It may be a twisted fascination, but my personal favorite is when I can feel the vibration of my blade grazing bone through my palm.
Depends on what kind of mood I’m in.
But I favor the latter before I remove their organs and dispose of them like they're nothing but useless trash that has plagued this earth.
It’s a Megalley thing.
A way of life drilled into my DNA before I even understood death. Our mark on the world was imprinted on me long before I learned how to ride a bike.
Sympathy doesn’t run in our bloodline when it comes to someone fucking with our operations.
My eyes are locked on dull green ones that falter enough to shred any last remaining speck of trust I had in this man who has only ever defied me.
Rowan knows I’ll be the boss one day when my father, Arden, is torn from the only life he has ever known.
Yet it doesn’t stop the challenge that flickers in his lifeless eyes whenever he reports to me.
Which is most of the damn time, since I monitor the routes for our contraband and illegal weapons shipments.
The fucking nerve of this man has snapped my sanity, and now he has found himself at my mercy.
Too bad for him, I don’t have much of a fucking heart to let his beat another moment.
He’s made a fool out of me one too many times, and in return, I’m making a mess out of him.
There’s a red splatter across the floor resembling a Pollock painting, tossed across a gray canvas, beneath the metal chair that keeps him restrained.
Powerless.
Defenseless.
When a month ticks by and he doesn’t return home, I’ll send word to his wife that he died at sea during one of our usual lobster runs.
Navigating rough waters and unrelenting storms is a way of life for fishermen on the Atlantic Coast. Not that she’d probably mind.
This bastard runs through wives like they’re tissues.
Nothing more than bodies to own and dip his dick into.
Not sure what happens to them once he decides to move on, but I’ve got a pretty good guess if he’s as drunk and ill-tempered as he is in the field working for the Megalley Syndicate. If he’s like this here, I can only wonder what he’s like at home when bottles of liquor are more easily accessible.
The blade I’m still twirling flashes in the overhead fluorescent lights, shimmering silver and red from the sheen of blood.
I stop spinning the knife and grip the handle, lowering to his level to rip the duct tape off his mouth, taking with it salt and pepper strands of hair from his full beard.
He flashes his teeth, his enraged growl thundering through the room.
His once bright crimson bodily fluids seeping through his grimy jeans and t-shirt are a deep scarlet now from the break I’m taking, hoping his current pain will push the truth off his tongue.
Instead, his lip lifts in a sneer, revealing those yellow and decaying teeth that have resulted from years of smoking and alcoholism.
A lifestyle choice that has the acrid smell of smoke seeping through his pores.
It combines with the pungent scent of his sweat, overriding the musty odor of the concrete room we use for interrogation.
And torturing if we aren’t getting the information we seek.
It wouldn’t astonish me if his insides are ash.
I wonder what his lungs look like.
My blade vibrates in my hands, curious to find out.
His Irish accent is potent. “It’s not my fucking problem that you’ve got your head up your ass and aren’t receiving full shipments. This never happened when Arden was fully in charge.”
I’m not sure why my father decided to bring this fucker along when he decided to move us permanently to the estate in Lachlan Harbor instead of bouncing around from one estate overseas to the one here like we usually did.
I was fourteen when we began spending most of our time in the States after expanding our borders further.
We still go home to Ireland a few times a year to visit my grandparents and check in, but not as often as we used to.
Our operations are large enough and well-maintained that we have personnel stationed there to run everything while we’re here.
Ireland is easy.
The States, on the other hand, are full of big, flesh-eating fish that we swam alongside in the dark for a long time when the Megalley Syndicate first started way back before my father was born.
Now we are among them.
Rowan’s condescending laugh has me clenching my jaw hard enough to shatter my teeth. “Boss’s biggest mistake has been splitting his empire with a fucking child—”
Similar to the crack of lightning zapping a tree on a mountaintop, my knife glides through the side of his beer belly like a warm stick of butter. A spitting roar cracks through the room, his body thrashing around in the chair that his arms and legs are bound to.
It’s fucking music to my ears.
A lullaby that I will soon silence.
This is why Lachlan Park was built.
A facade to hide our real business.
The narcotics and weapons we smuggle in and out.
The money laundering.
Our various clubs and estates around the East Coast.
A front my family created and rules, while the rest of the universe is oblivious.
While themed music from the rides and the cheers and joyful screams of guests drift down from above, they mask the vile noises that originate from underneath.
Masking the kinds of shouts and cries that a human can make before their lungs deflate for a final time and they become nothing but flesh and bones.
Sometimes I scare even myself, knowing the things that I’m capable of.
We are magicians, carefully conducting our tricks behind closed doors, so what takes place on the outside is the reputation we earn.
Lachlan Harbor and Lachlan Park are what we are known by to ordinary people.
If only they knew what a few rollercoasters, lobster boats, and vibrant shops on a scenic stretch could hide.
Rowan’s breath is ragged as he sucks in air through gritted teeth.
Fresh and dried blood paints my hands and gray suit jacket as I crouch down, getting eye level with the man.
My tone is dangerous. Deadly. “I viewed the navigation route. I’m going to ask again, and I highly suggest you tell me what I want to hear if you want me to let you keep your pathetic life another day.
Why did you make an unplanned stop in New York? ”
His rotted mouth opens, giving me a whiff of his vile breath. “It was for a quick fuck! A man has needs that need to be fulfilled.”
Fulfilled by his wife.
I arch a brow. “You disregarded my orders for pussy? What would your wife say about that?”
“Tight, young pussy. You can only use a toy so many times before it breaks, and you have to buy another one.”
Acid bubbles in my stomach.
“And when you were off fucking, who was guarding the boat? My product? Was it Cathal?”
His posture stiffens.
Interesting.
His focus rapidly shifts from my eyes to the wall, where a window offers a view of the room from one of the hundreds of maze-like hallways, winding underground through the park.
I’ve memorized every single one—where they go, what rooms they navigate to, doors that lead to the secret exits that nobody knows exist besides members.
It’s only him and me.
There’s nobody here to save him, because like the men we have patrolling these hallways, they listen to me.
“Help!” That one word spewed from his mouth causes my brows to furrow in surprise. “Help me!”
Who is he calling for?
I turn my head, prepared for him to be at that level of excruciating pain where he’s hallucinating and reaching full-blown hysterics. But what I find blasts me in the chest to knock the air from my lungs.
A young woman stands on the other side, as solid as a statue in one of our uniforms. Even through the tint and the glare from the fluorescent lights in the room, her features paint a memory in my mind.
A memory of a crisp, sunny morning when I discovered a stranger relaxing at the end of our private dock like they had a death wish.
I was prepared to drag their ass off until long, wavy locks of hair that appeared like liquid gold stopped me on the spot. Then, she turned—a gorgeous woman brighter than the sun that licked my skin despite the lies that spewed from her mouth like wildfire.
Now, her eyes are blown so wide that they could burst from any more pressure and splatter the glass. Those puffy blush lips I stared at for far too long the other day, part in shock.
Well, shit.
This hasn’t happened since we increased security ten years ago after another worker had found their way down here. Another time in my life I’d rather forget entirely, but can’t when it secured my place in hell as if I wasn’t already going there to begin with.
And it's a major problem she’s here, considering my knife is lodged in the side of Rowan’s stomach, and I look like a psychopathic murderer with his blood coating my hands.
Which I am.
Time stands still as we stare at each other. One heartbeat passes. Then two.
And by the third, before I can get a full breath and comprehend what’s happening, she takes off into a dead sprint.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!