SWNOVELS Vicious Hearts: Chapter 12
“Cillian.”
Dominic Farrell is a big man—nearly as big as Kratos, and that’s saying a lot. Bearded and broad-shouldered, with the cauliflower ears of a man who came up through the ranks cracking skulls and spilling blood. I’ve known him since his uncle Kerry was in charge of the Kildare vassal family. Now, it’s Dominic who sits at the head of the Farrell table.
I nod at him in the darkness of the brownstone’s manicured back garden, slipping a cigarette between my lips and lighting it with a flick of fire.
“What can I do for you, Dom?”
“Look, I hate to disturb you while you’re having dinner with the family—”
“It’s fine. Speak.”
His brow troubles. “Seen the news?”
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
He clears his throat, glancing unhappily at Castle as he pulls out his phone. “This hit the press about an hour ago. It’s all over the fucking internet already.”
He brings up his phone, open to a news website, and plays the sound file embedded on the page.
Instantly, my mood darkens. Considerably.
Well, shit.
“Look, I’ll get you Seamus O’Conor. A deal is a deal. But what’s the Bureau prepared to do for me?”
Fuck. Major fucking fuckity-fuck-fuck.
It’s a recording of Declan making his deal with the FBI. And it just gets worse from there.
Mercifully, whoever leaked this audio has had the good grace to edit out my half-brother’s name, any mention of the Kildare family name, and Agent Shane Dorsey’s name. Given that Dorsey, the guy who brokered the O’Conor deal, is no longer a mere Agent but is now Regional New York City Director of Operations, not to mention my highly-ranked “friend” within the Bureau, that’s a nice break for both of us.
But that’s where the proverbial luck of the Irish runs the fuck out.
Because while the recording doesn’t explicitly say the man talking is Declan, it’s abundantly clear to anyone who ever met him that it is.
This is bad.
This is really fucking bad.
When the recording runs its course, a grim-faced Dominic puts the phone away, plunging the three of us into darkness except for the glow of my cigarette. Slowly, I exhale, my eyes piercing Dom’s.
“I can assume you’re here because this isn’t exactly going over well with the vassal families.”
He makes a face. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Cill. But no. Not at all.”
“How bad are we talking?”
His jaw grinds. “Look, you know the Farrells are loyal. We’re not going anywhere.”
“I appreciate that.”
I mean, it’s partly Dominic doing me a favor, because he is fucking loyal. But it’s also just smart business. This recording and the whole issue with my brother’s FBI deal might be making things shaky. But Dominic is smart enough to know that he’s far better off sticking with me and having the might of the Kildare family at his back.
Not just because I make him lots of money. But also because it’s not at all lost on me that I scare the fuck out of him.
“The Foleys aren’t going anywhere, either.”
Well, no shit. The Foley family is currently run by the young Tiernan Foley, after backstabbing and infighting led to the premature death of his father. The fact that I didn’t burn the entire Foley operation to the ground after that has pretty much cemented Tiernan’s loyalty for life.
“Who else?”
Dom clears his throat. “The McCormicks, the Kearneys, and the O’Riordans are all solid. The problem, the spark leading the call for a goddamn revolution, is Liam McCarthy.”
Shit.
Castle, echoing my thoughts, swears under his breath. “Yeah, I don’t imagine any of this news is sitting very well with him.”
That’s putting it obscenely lightly.
Seamus O’Conor’s allegiance was always to whomever paid him. And years ago, before the McCarthys were officially under the Kildare banner and thus had our protection, a rival of theirs hired O’Conor.
Liam was seventeen and away at college when Seamus murdered his father, Michael.
His mother and little brother were crucified bled out by that fucking maniac.
As a result, Liam became the head of the family before he was even old enough to buy cigarettes. And now he’s just gotten proof that our organization made a fucking rat’s deal with the goddamn FBI to turn O’Conor in, rather than skin him alive for his atrocities?
The shit isn’t about to hit the fan. It’s about to arm itself with a thermonuclear device, cover its ears, and push the goddamn red button.
Dominic exhales quietly in the darkness. “Look, Cillian, whatever you need done, just say the word. I mean, all love to Liam McCarthy. But this is potentially full-on mutiny or insurrection if he doesn’t slow the fuck down and shut his mouth. If it’s gonna be war…” he nods grimly. “Well, you know whose side we’re on.”
I do. The problem is, I also understand that even with his support, there’s no winner if it comes to war within the Kildare empire. The bloodshed from something like that would accomplish less than nothing and could quite possibly set in motion the slow, spiraling death of our entire organization.
Much as the monster in me salivates at the idea of blood spilling in the streets…it’s not an option this time.
“There won’t be a war, Dom.”
He shakes his head. “Well, I don’t see how we deal with this, then.”
Castle nods. “He’s not wrong, Cill. I’m also not sure how you’d heal two warring factions like this.”
No shit. Neither do I.
I exhale slowly, turning to let my gaze sweep over the brownstone. My eyes stab through the wall of windows of the conservatory upstairs, where everyone is still finishing dinner. Where Hades and Calliope are cracking jokes with Eilish. Where Kratos is laughing heartily and doing some ridiculous little dance while Neve and Ares cheer him on.
Where Neve has just slipped into Ares’ lap, turning to look deeply into his eyes with all the love and power and unbreakable connection that, I’ve been told, soulmates have for each other.
My brow furrows as I watch them gaze at each other. As Ares gently tucks a lock of her red hair back from her face before leaning in to kiss her softly and yet possessively. As she winds her fingers into his dark hair, smiling through the kiss.
They make it look so easy and so natural to be so carefree and happy like this.
And then suddenly, as I stand there in the shadows, watching two former bitter enemies who were once ready to spill each other’s blood in the streets look at each other with the purest and fiercest forever-love…
It suddenly clicks.
“Marriage.”
The word falls from my lips in the dark silence, startling the two men I’m standing with. Castle arches a concerned “what the fuck are you suggesting” brow. Dom frowns.
“Cillian—”
“Marriage,” I growl again. “A marriage to bury the sins of the past would put an end to the schism in the ranks.”
Dominic glances warily at Castle before turning back to me.
“You gonna dig up Seamus’ fucking corpse and tie the knot with him?”
I ignore the sarcasm.
“Would that do it?”
“Cillian—”
“Would. That. Do. It,” I hiss. “Would a marriage between O’Conor and Kildare bury the fucking hatchet?”
Castle’s eyes narrow, staring at me in shock. Dom looks at me like I’m more insane than usual before he clears his throat.
“I mean, necrophilia aside, if an O’Conor married into the Kildare family…” he shrugs. “It might actually work. But if we’re talking hypotheticals like that, I mean, shit, Cillian. Let’s just get a fucking time machine and go back to stop your brother from—”
“We don’t need a time machine. Or Seamus’ corpse.”
I take one last drag of my smoke, drop it, and stomp it into the ground.
I’ve got the key to stopping this uprising tied up in my goddamn basement.
The second Dominic leaves, Castle whirls on me in the darkness of the backyard.
“You cannot be fucking serious.”
Even though Castle frequently crosses a line with me that most people wouldn’t dare, the look on his face and the fury in his tone is well past any confrontation we’ve ever had before in the ten years I’ve known him.
I don’t really blame him, given that he understands exactly where I’m going with what I just said to Dom.
“Cillian,” he hisses through violently clenched teeth. “Are you out of your goddamn fucking mind?”
Most of the time, yes.
“She’s an O’Conor, Castle.”
“Yeah, that would be the reason for the look on my fucking face right now, Cill,” he snaps. “You’ve got Seamus’ goddamn kid locked—”
“She’s not a kid.”
“She’s his kid! That fucking sociopath had children, and you’ve got one of them locked in your fucking house. And now your grand plan is to fucking marry her?”
“That is exactly what my grand fucking plan is, yes,” I hiss thinly. “Because that’s how the old ways work.”
I yank a new cigarette out of my case and light it brusquely, inhaling as the smoke curls around my face.
“You have to tell her.”
Her, as in Neve.
As in my niece, who Una’s father kidnapped and tortured, twice. Who almost lost her husband to that maniac.
“I’ll handle it.”
“Cillian—”
I spin around with a snarl, grabbing Castle’s collar as my eyes go livid.
“I said I’ll fucking handle it.”
He glares at me. I glare right back. But I do let go of his shirt.
“Believe me,” I hiss. “I understand exactly how shitty a conversation that’s going to be.”
“Yeah, well,” he mutters. “It’s not going to be half as shitty as the one where you tell Ares.”
No shit.
Telling the God of War that I’m about to marry the daughter of the man that he watched almost kill his wife?
Yeah, this should be barrels of fun.