Children of Vice (Children of Vice #1)(82)

“LET US VOTE!” Cillian had to yell, which made them calm down.

“Yea, let’s vote!” a few of them repeated.

“All for ending the meets?” he asked and no one raised their hands.

“All for continuing?”

Seeing their choice, I leaned over Ivy and whispered, “When you allow the majority to have a voice, the ones who are the angriest speak the loudest and when put between doing the right thing and being self-serving they will always choose themselves, which makes everyone else do the same.”

Everyone was ruthless. They just didn’t realize it.

“Fine, who’s first?” Cillian stepped back, and Elroy stepped up.

“Me!” Ivy rose, while I sat.

Elroy snickered. “You? Really, and while you’ve both been huddled in your little safe house, like cowards, who managed to harm you?”

Ivy lifted her finger to point to her right. “Her. Rory Donoghue, and now I’m seeking justice.”

The people around her shifted, allowing everyone to see her. There was not a sound…with the exception of me as I sucked the last of the juice and the crickets.

“I knew it!” Rory hollered, dressed in tight jeans and a blue Red Sox jersey. “I knew you’d still be pissed about Pierce! You weren’t even here!”

Pierce smugly shook his head. “Ivy—”

“Shut up. No one is speaking to or about you.” She put her hand up and then turned back to Cillian. “Seven years ago, Rory Donoghue, then Rory O’Davoren, hit and paralyzed a young dancer in Chicago. Instead of owning up to her crime, she framed me for it.”

“I did not.” Rory crossed her eyes, glaring.

“Do you have proof?” Cillian asked her. “Or are we all just supposed to take your word for it?”

“Babe.”

Reaching it my jeans, I pulled out the remote and pressed the power switch. All of their heads snapped up at the sudden light, which projected the car accident video onto the leaves of the tree. They watched, just as Ivy watched, as Rory framed her.

“Satisfied?” Ivy asked when I stopped it as Rory got into the passenger seat. It was then they all turned to Rory.

“It was an accident,” she said to them. “Ivy, it was an accident.”

“What is justice for you, Ivy?” Cillian asked her.

Ivy lifted her purse and flipped it over, dumping everything onto the picnic table. She picked the black baton, squeezing the handle for it to expand.

“IVY!” Rory yelled at her.

However, Ivy ignored her. “Three broken ribs, four broken fingers, busted jaw and eye socket, strangled and groped, which at the time I felt relieved it didn’t go further…that was my first year at Ricker Hill.”

This is hers.

This is hers.

This is her justice. I had to remind myself because the rage that was pouring into my soul was almost too much for me to bear.

Cillian walked up to her. “You want her to feel all of that? She’s your sister.”

“Stepsister,” Ivy corrected him, her face hard, eyes unflinching. “And no, I want her to feel seven years’ worth of that.”

“You’ll kill her—”

“THEN SHE DIES!” Ivy screamed at Pierce as he stepped up.

“Cillian! She doesn’t have proof that she was hurt that badly!” Elroy yelled from behind him. “I hear that they give you three square meals and you’ll get TVs and what not. I’m sure it ain’t as bad—”

“Babe!” Ivy yelled to me, and I pushed the button once more. Photos of her appeared on the screen, all of which I had to force myself to look at. The bruises that covered her face, those on her sides, they were all time stamped, but then you didn’t even need them to see her progressively get older…hopeless.

Cillian tore his eyes away to glare at her. “Aye, and the man who loved you from childhood never came to save you.”

“After she began to date a certain pig I pushed her out of my mind and never looked at her until recently—”

“IT DOESN’T MATTER!” Ivy screamed, shaking now. “He does not matter right now! I matter. I didn’t know him then. I thought like everyone else he was worse than the devil. He owed me nothing. But you did.”

“Ivy—”

“Do not call my name!” She pointed the baton at Pierce then faced her cousins again. “Cillian, where were all of you when it was me? WHERE WERE YOU? I wasn’t a Callahan then. I was an O’Davoren! I was part of the neighborhood then. I stood by you then! I was your cousin! Your blood and you did not protect me. So I protected myself. Now I ask for justice and you stand in my way again? Have the rules changed? When Jimmy stole Mrs. Renshaw’s wedding rings he had both his hands broken. Justice isn’t equality, it is punishment. We voted for that, didn’t we? Or was that you just showboating? Are you going to let your personal vendetta against my husband ignore the vote? If so, tell me now and I’ll get justice another way. And it won’t just be her but all of you.”

She turned to the crowed and the rage that radiated from her left no one else air to speak. She walked around the circle, stopping at a woman with curly red-brown hair that was tied up into a ponytail.

“Hi, Rachel.” Ivy leaned toward her.