Cage handed Ghost the brand. Steel stepped back. Though he had orchestrated the deal, it was Ghost who would uphold it. Before the brand had time to cool down, Ghost pressed it directly to Seamus Gavigan’s upper arm.
The sickening stench of burning flesh permeated the room as Seamus let out a yell of fury to mask the pain.
It was over in seconds, though the smell remained.
Seamus sagged a little in his chair as Ghost stepped away. At Steel’s nod, Starbucks’ knife sliced through the ropes that had bound Seamus to the chair.
When Cage stepped towards the large fireplace in the adjoining room, Seamus called out, “Wait!” again. Cage paused, and Seamus looked between Steel and Ghost. “Them too,” he said, nodding his chin towards his brothers who were not sentenced to die.
A protest quickly rose up amongst Fergal, Declan, and Tadhg, but Seamus quickly stood, the plastic crinkling under his feet as he did. His right hand went for his left arm before he caught himself, likely realizing that touching the brand would only make it hurt worse. Instead, he balled his fists at his side. “I amnotour father,” he told his brothers. “From this moment forward, we will worktogetherta ensure that this fuckery never happens again. No offense,” he added to Steel. “I demand yer loyalty too, and this is yer test. Take the brand so none of us forget and let this be done with. A clean slate, a purging to rid ourselves of our father.”
Steel’s eyebrows weren’t the only ones raised. Cage’s jaw was nearly on the floor. Poison looked a little too excited at being able to light the poker again.
As Seamus shifted to face his youngest brother, Steel caught sight of the red, ugly flesh of the man’s new brand.
Melanie Daphne Duncan
Steel’s guts twisted. The last time he’d seen her name like that, it had been on her tombstone.
“Do what you have to do,” Steel said, not really caring to whom. “Just get me a fucking name.”
Steel turned his back and left the room. He heard footsteps following him out the front door but didn’t stop to see who it was.
“You had Lucky build you a brand with Melanie’s name?”
Steel stared forward at the open lawn. It was well past sunset, and the rural area was pitch black. He couldn’t even see the trees that created an imperfect horseshoe around the property.
He didn’t look at Papaw as he answered, “I needed something of hers, and I already used the bullets on Shaw.”
The snort that came out of Papaw said that he didn’t believe that line of logic for a moment. A masculine shout came from inside. What Steel had meant to be only a statement was turning into a branding party. The Gavigan brothers were either going to love or hate their oldest brother after this. So long as they kept up their end of the bargain and didn’t come after the VDMC or the NCMC for what was about to happen, Steel didn’t care what happened to the brothers.
“Have you given a thought to tomorrow?”
Steel’s cigar was down to a small stub, but the smell brought some semblance of calm to his current chaos. When Melanie was little, she used to crawl onto Steel’s lap and breathe in the smell of tobacco on his uniform.“You smell like the woods, Daddy!”
“None,” Steel confessed.
“Ollie got his cast off a few days ago.”
Steel nodded. Jenna had told him. They’d been sending each other voice messages through text rather than calling of late. Lilly had also told Steel that texting was difficult for Jenna some days. Voice to text or voice messages were the easiest form of communication outside of a phone call now. Steel didn’t mind. In fact, he had discovered he loved the voice messages because he could listen to her voice over and over again without needing to bother her with a phone call.
Shit, he needed to get his phone back. He’d tossed it onto Kelly’s lap to make a point and then never collected it.
“You know what I think?” Papaw asked. Then he continued without pausing to see if Steel actuallydidwant to know. “I think the idea of a clean slate is a good idea. I think that’s what you and Jenna need?—”
Steel spun around and had Papaw pressed up against one of the Roman columns on the front porch before the man could finish his thought. “Jenna and I donotneed a reset. We might be apart right now, but that does not make her any less a part of me. I amhersand she ismine. There will be no ‘resetting’ that.”
The man was delusional if he thought Steel would ever let Jenna go. Not even death would keep them apart.
Papaw did not fight Steel’s hold on him. “I’m not saying ‘reset’ as in ‘divorce’. I’m saying, the two of you need something new, something beyond Mount Grove and the club. Face it, Steel, Ghost can never be fully President so long as he is still in your shadow. There are a lot of memories for you in Mount Grove.Goodmemories, but there’s also a lot of bad. I think you and Jenna need to think about being elsewhere, figuring out who the two of you are after suffering such a tragedy.”
Steel stepped back, lowering his arm from Papaw’s chest. “You mean run away?”
“No, not run. Talk to her. Figure out what the two of you want to do.” He shrugged. “Or do nothing and ignore me. The choice is yours. All I’m saying is that a clean slate isn’t the worst suggestion in the world.”
The third and final masculine cry rang out behind them. Seamus hadn’t been kidding when he’d demanded his brothers also be branded.
Tomorrow was not Steel’s concern. Right now was. Theonlything that mattered was ending this. He wanted Kelly and Eoin Gavigan to suffer, he wanted the shooter to learn theconsequences of his actions, and if there was a driver, he wanted him to learn the error of not stopping his cohort from doing something so heinous.
