Ryan Reign (New York Ruthless #4)(50)

“You think he always knew?” Mikey eventually breaks the silence.

“If he did, then he’s not the man I thought he was,” Liam replies with a sigh.

“How could he not tell us?” Mikey slams his hands down on the wheel of the car.

“I don’t know. I think of all the conversations we had about how much Patrick hated us and he never once told us why.”

“You think it’s even true?” Mikey asks.

“I don’t know. Shane said it was, didn’t he?”

“But if it is, then…” Mikey doesn’t finish his sentence.

“I know,” Liam looks down at me with tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Jessie.”

“Don’t even!” I say as I look away and snuggle against his chest. “Let’s talk about all of this when we all get back to the house. There is no use in speculating and driving yourselves crazy until then.” For now, I just want to sit in this car next to Liam’s warm body and cherish this feeling of being safe and loved before we deal with the fact that the man who has made my life a living hell could be the father of two of the men I love more than anything in this world.

“Hmm,” Liam agrees and Mikey turns up the radio and we listen to it for the rest of the way home.





Chapter 35





Conor





I wipe a bead of sweat from my forehead before it rolls into my eyes making them sting even more. It’s only early morning but already the July sun is beating down on us, and chopping up a dead body with an axe isn’t as easy as it sounds.

“Fuck!” Shane hisses as a splatter of congealed flesh and blood hits his t-shirt.

I grin at him. “I told you to take that off.” I look down at my bare chest which is covered in blood too.

“All right, Rambo. Let’s just get this over with so we can get cleaned up and back to the house.”

“There are showers at this new club we got, yeah?”

“Yep,” he nod as he wipes his brow and stands straight, wielding an axe in his hand like the grim reaper wields his scythe.

With a final blow, I chop through the last part of Paul’s leg, detaching his foot, and he lies before us in over half a dozen pieces. Now all we have to do is feed them to Farmer Murphy’s feral pigs. Jack Murphy has been offering this service for as long as I can remember. There is nothing his pigs won’t eat. He charges a small fortune for the privilege, however, out of respect for our dearly departed father, who was his best customer over the years, he has given us this one for free. He asks no questions and has no idea it’s our uncle his swine are about to feast on.

As soon as we got Paul’s body out of his house, Shane torched the place. Nothing but bad memories there. Then we called Jack Murphy in the middle of the night and drove straight here. We have both been focused on getting the job done as quickly as possible and have barely spoken other than to discuss the task at hand. Both of us are avoiding any mention of the two huge issues that are waiting for us when we get back to the house. The fact that Jessie snuck out of the goddamn house and could have gotten herself killed, and our uncle claiming to be Liam and Mikey’s father. But as we get closer to the finish line, the air becomes thicker with the tension of all the things we’re not saying.

“It’s a pity he wasn’t alive while we were doing this,” Shane snarls as he tosses our uncle’s arm into the pig pen.

“Sure is. Cunt!” I snarl as I toss his foot in after. Smelling the fresh meat, the pigs squeal up a frenzy and we throw in the remainder of Paul’s body parts, saving the head for the last. Shane picks it up by his hair, and then kicks it into the pen like a football.



After showering in The Peacock Club and changing into fresh clothes, we are on our way back to the house. Back to Jessie and our brothers. Shane is driving, anything to keep his mind occupied, but I can’t bear the tension any longer.

“So. when did you find out about the twins?”

“About a week before Alexei took Liam.”

I understand why it was hard to tell the twins, especially if he didn’t even know if it was true, but it hurts that he didn’t trust me. We have never kept any secrets from each other, at least that’s what I’d always thought. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“How could I, Con? I hated knowing. Why the fuck would I want to put you in that position, too?”

“You should have told us all,” I say with a sigh.

“You think?” he snaps.

I turn and look out of the window.

“I know I should,” he says. “I wish I had, Con. But I had no fucking idea things were going to pan out like this. If I had…”

“Yeah, well nobody could have predicted this.”

“I should have,” he sighs deeply.

“What? How?” I frown at him.

“It all makes perfect sense now. We knew Paul was a hired gun.”

“Yeah, but there are hundreds of them all over the world. The Wolf wasn’t just any hired gun.”

“We didn’t hear from him for years and then he resurfaces just as Jessie came into our lives?”

“Yeah, because his cunt of a brother was dying? At least that’s what he said, and maybe it was because of that? You couldn’t have known this was going to happen, Shane.”