Chapter 3 #2
I’d been twenty then, and I’d loved him immediately.
He’d been sweet, obedient, and so excited to have a dad that he’d been in full denial that Patrick had been a fucking monster.
I’d tried to shield Jace from the worst of Patrick, which hadn’t been very hard.
Overall, Patrick had shown no interest in Jace.
No matter what Jace had done, he could never get Patrick’s full attention, and it had twisted something inside of him into a feral little brat.
I’d indulged him, Rhys and I both had, because we loved him.
And now we had a knife-wielding, twenty-three-year-old maniac to deal with.
I tapped the tip of the knife on Jace’s cheek. “Stay away from the shed. There’s a plan, and you stabbing our captive isn’t part of it.”
His amber eyes shifted toward the shed, but then his attention got caught on Rhys’s bloody hand again. His expression immediately fell, and his hand lifted as if to touch Rhys, but then he dropped it back to his side in a fist. “I-Is it deep?”
If Jace had stabbed me, he wouldn’t have apologized or given a shit about whether I needed stitches. Not that he didn’t love me, but he probably would have said I’d deserved it.
But with Rhys…
Rhys was different. A big brother who wasn’t an actual brother, half or otherwise.
His father had been my father’s best friend, but he’d died in a shootout when Rhys and I were fifteen.
We’d been raised together since birth, and when Jace had come along, he’d slotted in easily as a little brother to us both.
Rhys flexed his injured hand, eyes steady on Jace. It looked like the bleeding had already stopped. “No.”
“I just—”
“Don’t do it again,” Rhys said in that deep, big-brother voice he only used on Jace.
“Yeah, okay.” Jace hung his head.
I narrowed my eyes in irritation. Everyone in this crew listened to me the first time. My word was law, even to most of the old-timers who still preferred Patrick. But Jace was defiant. He was usually defiant toward Rhys too, but lately I’d noticed Jace listening to me less and to him more.
“You need to understand how important this is,” I said, lowering my tone in case there were any curious ears around. “Devlin Walsh is the key to me gaining full control of the crew and taking down the Bonnams.”
The Bonnams were a neighboring crew who would love nothing more than to wipe out me and all my men. They’d been testing the boundaries of our territory lately.
“You do something to that man under my watch,” I continued, “and I could find myself with a knife in my back. Is that what you want?”
Jace’s eyes immediately met mine, sincerity shining through them, along with a hint of fear. “No, Cian. Not at all.”
“Then fix your fucking attitude. I need my brother working with me, not against me.”
His cheeks reddened as he dropped his gaze to the dirt. “I’m sorry.”
I had a headache. It was blooming right between my eyes.
“Don’t you have stock to put away?” The younger members of the crew worked at O'Shea’s across the street, our bar and attached motel.
The business was an easy front for laundering money, and while my father had been a fucking bastard, he’d been smart to start it.
Jace moved his lips, and I could have sworn he was mimicking me before he lifted his head. “Yeah. I’ll go.”
“You do that.”
He shot another guilty look at Rhys’s injured hand before slinking back toward Frank.
“Want me to call Bev?” I gestured to Rhys’s hand. “You might need stitches.”
Dr. Bev Wallace was an ageless surgeon who had worked for my father for as long as I could remember.
She’d fixed up countless crew members over the years, everything from bullet holes to stab wounds to broken arms. We paid her well, but she also owed an emotional debt to my father for killing the man who’d murdered her daughter.
Sometimes, I wondered if she regretted taking on that debt—especially after she’d patched me up one too many times as a kid.
But she’d remained loyal, even after Patrick had passed.
Rhys shook his head, then scratched at his dark hair. “It’s fine.”
“Jace is—”
“I know.” He pressed his lips into a thin line, and I didn’t bother saying anything else. Rhys knew Jace as well as I did. He flicked his brown eyes toward the shed. “I’ll get Hack and Mads to rotate guard shifts at the shed. Jace isn’t the only one out for that devil’s blood.”
I ground my molars. Rhys wasn’t wrong. And fuck, now my headache was an ice pick stabbing me behind the eyes. “Thanks.”
Rhys watched me closely. “Take a break. We got it covered.”
Rhys and I walked back into Frank together, and he immediately peeled off to talk to Hack, who sat on a raggedy couch with his tablet.
This section of the building was one open concept room.
A full industrial kitchen ran along the back wall, while the front of the room held a lounge area with a few couches, a TV, and a pool table.
We also had a stocked bar, currently occupied by Rank O’Leary, whose beady eyes tracked me across the floor.
Rank had been loyal to my father, and he’d made it clear I was not up to snuff as the next leader of the O'Shea’s. He had a few supporters who felt the same way, mostly other old-timers who couldn’t let go of Patrick’s death and still blamed me.
They thought I should have been the one to travel to Detroit and risk my neck. But Patrick had been a control freak, and even though he’d trained me to take over the crew since I was six, he hadn’t been willing to let go of the reins. If he had told me to go to Detroit that day, I would have gone.
And then I would have been the one on the receiving end of Devlin Walsh’s bullet.
All I wanted right now was to make it up the stairs and into my apartment, but Rank moved surprisingly fast for an old man. He had two friends with him, Grave and Plank. They were both a little dumb, but they’d been bouncers at O'Shea’s since the beginning.
“Don’t see any blood on you,” Rank snapped, his dark gaze taking me in from head to toe.
He was smaller than me and had always tried to puff himself up like some pissed-off cat.
Like size meant anything. Like he had any fucking clue what real power looked like, or how to lead a crew.
He’d been growing bolder lately, and his challenges to my authority were starting to cross the line.
“Looks like you went too soft on the devil.”
I looked down my nose at him. “I didn’t ask for your opinion. You do your job, and I’ll do mine.” Then I turned and gave him my back, dismissing him. One thing I’d learned about men like Rank was that entertaining dialogue was a sign of weakness. He needed to be put in his place.
I heard him sputtering behind me as I ascended the stairs, probably still searching for a comeback, but I had already reached the top before I heard him mutter something unintelligible.
His words didn’t matter. He had nothing to do with Devlin Walsh.
Plenty of men felt they were owed their pound of flesh when they hadn’t earned shit.
Patrick was my father. This was my crew.
Which meant Devlin Walsh was mine and mine alone.
The oldest section of Frank had originally been a bed and breakfast in the early 1900s.
Since then, two additions had been made, one on either side.
One had been built by the second owners.
It was the section I’d just been in, where they’d added the kitchen and a second floor.
The first floor had been a restaurant and bar for years, and the second had added more rooms for guests.
After my father bought the place, he added a section on the opposite side of the original building, and that’s where I was headed now.
It held a two-story garage that took up the bottom levels, with enough space for several cars, our yard care equipment, and a modest home gym.
The third floor housed the apartment I’d lived in with my father until I turned eighteen, when I’d moved into a bedroom of my own in Frank, only returning to claim the apartment after he had died.