Chapter 17
AOIFE
“Reed,” I mumble as I wake. The stench hits me first as I roll over, instantly stopped by chains wrapped around my wrists.
Rot, rust, and a sharp tang of stagnant water are thick enough to taste.
I test my tongue in my mouth then attempt to manipulate my hands to rub the grittiness out of my eyes, but I can’t reach them.
I groan, shaking my hands in the corroded chain, and it clinks against the metal table I’m strapped to.
Tilting my head, I observe my surroundings through my pounding headache.
Pipes fork and branch above me. Beads of copper-colored water drip from them.
It’s cold, freezing even, and the hiss of the pipes and the condensation—hot water?
Strings of bare bulbs hang from a wire, and they buzz, casting a sick yellow over the damp concrete floor.
I imagine this lair is underground in the city somewhere, but the quiet begs the question: Are we farther out?
I swallow, then tip my chin to my chest to get a good look at my chained wrists. It’s ad hoc at best, the chains wrapped around and locked together with a cheap padlock from the store. One on each wrist and—I glance at my feet. Each ankle is also looped several times and locked away.
I suck in a breath and cough, fighting the last of the aerosol I was sprayed in the face with.
A chemical of some sort, chloroform spray, or a custom sedative since it acted so quickly.
Whatever it was, my lungs struggle to catch a full breath.
Between that and the thick mildew, rotten decay, and the odd, faint smell of bleach, I’m suffocating.
I cough again.
Scraps of newspaper clippings, Polaroids curled at the edges, and maps run through with red slashes cover the wall. It’s claustrophobic in here. Small enough for four people to stand around the table I’m on. In the corner there’s—
Oh hell.
A makeshift table, put together with plywood on old, cracked cinderblocks, is littered with tools: syringes, more chains, and a long serrated knife.
This is where he waits. This is where he took them, Finn and Ronan. Where he’s committed to the whatever horror he plans on the men he’s drugged. I shiver, the blood pulsing through my veins thumping in hot waves that’s almost soothing.
“Reed!” I yell, clattering the chains against the metal table. “Reed, you coward! Can’t face your victims like the spinless man you are. You have to drug them!” My words scream into the void, and I thrash against the table. I inhale deep breaths through my nose, trying to calm my frantic heartbeat.
I listen, and there in the quiet is a voice. Male. I tilt my head.
“—meet me somewhere, Grayson. Yeah, I have something to show you.” Reed’s voice grows louder as he gets closer.
I yell. “No! Don’t come here!”
But when he walks into my view, he holds up his phone with the call ended. “He didn’t hear you.”
I squirm. “What are you doing, Reed? Let me go!”
He tsks. “No can do. I have a job to do. Unfortunately, the city doesn’t appreciate the conventional ways to put crime families away anymore.” He glares in my direction. “You know, jail,” he says sarcastically.
The blood rushes to my ears. “So, you kill them? Does Grayson know?” Please don’t let Grayson know.
“No. He doesn’t.”
I let out of a sigh.
“But he will, and he’ll support me. Even he said it’s gone too far. You all walk around thinking you’re untouchable, but I proved you all wrong. I was able to get to every single one of you.”
“We’re humans, not robots,” I spit. But as I say this, he’s got a point. He got to each of them. Except he stalked them until he was able to knock them out with drugs.
“When I first caught wind that Rob Morris was working for the Cosa Nostra, I couldn’t believe it.
Wanted to kill his wife. She’s the one who brought him into this world, but it didn’t solve enough of the problem.
I thought killing some members would bring more, but how come it’s only the Irish that decided their men were worth fighting for?
” He snickers, turning toward a speaker set on his makeshift workbench and turns it on.
“Did you know it’s almost Christmas Eve? ”
Scoffing, I turn away from him. “You didn’t exactly provide a calendar.”
He chuckles. “I see why Grayson’s drawn to you, like the poison you are. But like any poison, you must be sucked from the vein of this city.”
“So, why not go after the leaders?”
He shuffles to the other end of the bench and riffles through a tray of glass vials. Several syringes shift, rolling into the tray. “To be fair, the Yakuza surrounds their people like hawks. You could learn a thing or two from them. Though, from what I hear, your father was the same way.”
He was, but Reed doesn’t deserve the confirmation. “Your job is to serve the people of Boston. Not murder them.”
He sighs, almost annoyed. “I am.”
He lifts a syringe and takes the cap off with his teeth. Then, he brings the needle point to a vial he’s tipped upside down. Squinting, I try to make out what’s on the label, but my vision isn’t that good. I can guess the combination isn’t a good one. He drugs them. Then kills them.
Shit. That’s what’s next for me.
I’m not afraid to die. I’m more afraid of the mess I’ll leave behind if I do.
For my dad and Summer, for my men just now learning to trust me.
It’s always lived there, in the back of my mind—the thought of dying.
The older I got, the more I realized what my dad actually did in the underground basement of O’Brien’s.
Who we were. Death slowly took up residence in my thoughts.
Each birthday celebration, another new year—all milestones that I’d made it.
War, assassinations, kidnappings, alliances—they all pose the risk of death.
Serial killer law enforcement-style wasn’t on my bingo card for the month.
My gaze jerks around the room while I contort my wrist trying to wiggle it out of the chains. Nothing hangs close enough, if there was the chance of reaching far enough. I keep one eye on Reed as he draws down the syringe.
Does this knock me out? Or will I be awake and paralyzed when he tries to separate my head?
Oh hell. I scramble faster, working the rattling chains. It’s loud and obvious, but Reed seems unbothered, which only increases my determination to get out. If I can, I can take him. My dad made sure of that.
The cuffs scrape my bones as I twist, forcing my arms into angles they were never meant to bend. My shoulders scream, but I swallow the pain and pull again.
“Reed?” Grayson’s voice echoes from somewhere above, faint.
He pauses and grins. Setting down his bottle and needle, he pulls on a coat, shifts his badge over his belt, and pats his gun twice with his palm. “It’ll be over soon,” he says. Then, he jogs off, leaving me staring after him.