Rowan had turned to me, the thread pulled taut between his split lip and the needle clutched in Fionn’s fingers. His eyes were soft, so soft that I realized that maybe it was the first time I’d ever seen him relaxed. “You can let go, Lachlan,” he’d said as his gaze flicked down to my hand.
It was only a moment later when Leander strode in and changed everything, even the things that had already been irrevocably changed. That belt was still wrapped around my fist. And when Leander looked down at me, he grinned.
“ … and then Rowan said, ‘I swear it was almost an accident,’ and I thought, yeah, these kids are all right,” Leander says with a low chuckle. I blink away the memory, realizing I missed part of what he was saying …
… and all of what he was doing.
“What in the feckin’ hell are you making?”
Leander takes a slice of meat lover’s pizza and stuffs it into the blender where a first slice is already folded, grease and condensation smeared across the glass. “Smoothies.”
I look from the pizza box to the blender and back again. “What?”
“Smoothies. You know, drinkable food.”
“A … pizza smoothie …?”
Leander simply grins as he pours half a can of beer into the blender.
“Why?”
“Robbie doesn’t really have teeth anymore. How else is he going to have a last meal?” Leander shifts his attention to Robbie, who cries in his chair. “Didn’t anyone tell you that candy will rot your teeth out, dickhead? Speaking of which …”
Leander slides the teeth off the counter and onto his waiting palm before he plops them into the blender and turns it on. The beer froths. The melted cheese sticks to the glass. It takes a few stops and starts, but eventually he gets the mixture whipped into a thick, bubbly brown paste.
“Feckin’ Christ Jesus. That is truly horrific.”
Leander shrugs. “Still just pizza and beer, but with extra calcium.”
“Didn’t he have a gold cap on one of them?”
Leander sloshes the mixture around and peers into the jug, but there’s not much to see in the brown sludge. “Yeah, he did. So, it’s got fancy calcium. Anyway, I’m sure it tastes pretty much the same.”
“Doubtful. You should try it. Test your theory and let me know.”
“Fuck no,” he says on the heels of a barked laugh as he pours the mixture into a pint glass. “I have a thing about teeth.”
I groan and Leander cackles again, clearly delighted with himself. He runs a hand through his silver hair and then rummages in drawers behind the bar until he pulls out the funnel with a sound of triumph. “Christ Jesus, man. I’m leaving.”
I turn on my heel but don’t make it even a step away before his words stop me dead.
“You know, kid, I could make you stay.”
I stare at the door for a long, unblinking moment before I pivot to face Leander. He’s still smiling as he walks past me with the funnel in one hand and the full glass in the other. But there’s always a threat beneath his bleached smile and the creases that fan from the corners of his eyes. There’s a predatory edge to Leander that cuts through that mask like a razor.
Leander jerks his head toward Robbie in a bid for me to follow, and I do. “Good thing I’m all benevolent and shit. I wouldn’t want you to miss your little brother’s special night. And I definitely wouldn’t want him spitting in my meal the next time I pop in for a visit. Word is that while he might have scaled back on his Boston Butcher theatrics around town, he’s still a bit unhinged. I understand he was recently up to no good in Texas with that girlfriend of his. That’s where they went, right? Texas? And … oh, where was it before that …? I remember now. California. Calabasas, specifically. And West Virginia—”
“What do you want from me?” I snap.
Leander grins. “Just hold him steady.”
With a flash of a lightless glare, I step behind Robbie and press my palms to either side of his head. He trembles in my grip.
“Open wide, fucker.” Leander pushes the end of the funnel past Robbie’s gag. Robbie tries to thrash free of my grip, but there’s no escape. “Last meal down the pipe. Did you know the Nelsons’ kid had to be tube-fed after he OD’d on your fentanyl candy? This is kinda the same thing,” he says as he pours the first thick dollops of pizza smoothie into the funnel.
“Not really the same at all,” I grumble over the sound of Robbie’s gurgling cough.
“Close enough.” Leander pours more mixture in, but it only ends up dribbling from the corners of Robbie’s mouth. A frustrated sigh leaves my psychotic boss’s lips. “He’s not swallowing it.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
“It’s just pizza and beer, Robbie.”
“And teeth.”
“Just imagine it’s protein powder. Come on, man. Down the hatch,” Leander says as he tries again. Robbie whimpers and whines, but still doesn’t swallow. A petulant sigh leaves my boss’s lips as his shoulders fall. “Pinch his nose.”
“Hard pass.”
“That wasn’t a question, kid.”
“Leander—”
“Do it, Lachlan, and then I’ll let you head off to your party.”
Our eyes lock for a moment that feels endless.
I could snap Leander’s neck. With one punch to his throat, I could crush his trachea. I could shove the heel of my palm into the base of his nose with a satisfying crunch. Or I could take the easy way out and shoot him. Leave him to bleed across the floor like so many others before him who have found themselves in his basement on a Friday night.
But revenge for my betrayal would be swift and merciless. His equally batshit brothers would hunt me to the ends of the earth, just like I would do for mine. And their vengeance wouldn’t start or end with me.
My fingers curl around Robbie’s nose and pinch it tight.
“The Nelsons wanted him to suffer like they have suffered. This is not torture, Lachlan. It’s not murder. This is justice,” Leander says, his eyes not straying from mine as he fills the funnel.
This time, Robbie has no choice but to swallow. Not all of the liquid makes it down his throat, of course. But Leander doesn’t stop, not until the pint glass is empty. And even then, he keeps his unwavering stare on me.
When he’s satisfied, Leander gives a single nod.
I release Robbie from my grip, whip my gun from its holster, and shoot Robbie in the head.
The pressure and pain behind my eyes subsides now that Robbie’s gurgles and sobs and pleas no longer drone on around us. It’s just the music, and now the steady drip, drip, drip of blood that falls to the floor.
I slide my gun back into its holster. There can be no threat when I let my next words loose between us. “I want to retire.”
A slow, predatory grin creeps across Leander’s face. “You don’t say,” he says, turning his back to me. “I’m totally shocked.”
“Leander, I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me and the boys. Covering our asses back in Sligo. Bringing us here, setting us up. You know how much I appreciate it. I’ve put in the years to pay it back, you know I have. But this …” I say, trailing off as I cast a glance down to the slumped body next to me. “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
Leander lets out a deep sigh as he sets the glass and funnel next to the sink and turns to face me. “I’m going to be straight with you, kid. I always am.”
I nod when he raises a single brow.
“When you pissed off Damian Covaci last year, that didn’t just kill our contract with him. It had ripple effects on other contracts as well when gossip spread in certain circles. And you know what, kid? That pissed me off.”
Blush crawls into my cheeks. “So I acted like a feckin’ eejit one time. This seems extreme.”
“You put a Covaci in a fucking trunk, Lachlan.”
Shit. I really did.
Leander leans against the counter and folds his arms across his chest. He might be closing in on sixty, but he’s still built like a brute, and his thick biceps strain against the confines of his black sweater. “We talked about this. Like it or not, we’re in the customer service business. You should know what that means, you do it every single day at your studio. If some client comes into Kane Atelier to buy leather saddlebags for their motorcycle or some shit and they piss you off, are you gonna lock them in the fucking closet? Chrissakes, I hope not. Because that would be terrible customer service.”
“So, what, I’ve gotta keep doing this indefinitely?”
Leander shrugs. “Unless you magically find a way to fix the damage you caused, yeah. I guess so.”
A suspended moment lingers between us. Leander might feign disappointment in me, but sometimes I wonder if this mistake of mine worked out to his benefit, even if the jobs tapered off like he claims. As though he can see these thoughts turning over in my mind, Leander pivots away before I can read too much into his expression.
“Go on, get out of here,” he says as he cracks open a fresh beer. “Say hi to the boys for me.”
I wait for him to meet my eyes, but he doesn’t.
Without another word, I stride away. The steel door slams shut behind me with a reverberant thud.
I leave Leander behind.
But I know I’ll never really get away.
GUILLOTINE
Lachlan
I buzz the intercom for my brother Rowan’s apartment for the second time and take a step back from the panel to stare up at the brick building toward the third floor. My grip is tight around the bottle of Athrú Keshcorran whiskey as I tamp down the urge to hurtle it at the window. With a curse, I surge forward to jam my finger down on the little black button when a voice crackles over the speaker.
“If you’re selling farts in a jar, I don’t want them.”
My eyes narrow. Fionn. I love our younger brother dearly, but he’s a right little shit.
“You and I both know you order them on the internet in bulk. Let me up, ya gobshite,” I say, pulling the neck of the bottle free of the brown paper bag as I hold it toward the camera above the door. “Unless you don’t want any of this.”
The door buzzes and I step inside.
When I arrive at the third-floor landing, Fionn is there with a devious grin, leaning against the threshold of the open door as he picks at a bag of trail mix. I can hear music, bits of conversation, and laughter trickling out of the apartment.