“Reed!” I yell, clattering the chains against the metal table. “Reed, you coward! Can’t face your victims like the spinless man you are. You have to drug them!” My words scream into the void, and I thrash against the table. I inhale deep breaths through my nose, trying to calm my frantic heartbeat.
I listen, and there in the quiet is a voice. Male. I tilt my head.
“—meet me somewhere, Grayson. Yeah, I have something to show you.” Reed’s voice grows louder as he gets closer.
I yell. “No! Don’t come here!”
But when he walks into my view, he holds up his phone with the call ended. “He didn’t hear you.”
I squirm. “What are you doing, Reed? Let me go!”
He tsks. “No can do. I have a job to do. Unfortunately, the city doesn’t appreciate the conventional ways to put crime familiesaway anymore.” He glares in my direction. “You know, jail,” he says sarcastically.
The blood rushes to my ears. “So, you kill them? Does Grayson know?”Please don’t let Grayson know.
“No. He doesn’t.”
I let out of a sigh.
“But he will, and he’ll support me. Even he said it’s gone too far. You all walk around thinking you’re untouchable, butIproved you all wrong. I was able to get to every single one of you.”
“We’re humans, not robots,” I spit. But as I say this, he’s got a point. He got to each of them. Except he stalked them until he was able to knock them out with drugs.
“When I first caught wind that Rob Morris was working for the Cosa Nostra, I couldn’t believe it. Wanted to kill his wife. She’s the one who brought him into this world, but it didn’t solve enough of the problem. I thought killing some members would bring more, but how come it’s only the Irish that decided their men were worth fighting for?” He snickers, turning toward a speaker set on his makeshift workbench and turns it on. “Did you know it’s almost Christmas Eve?”
Scoffing, I turn away from him. “You didn’t exactly provide a calendar.”
He chuckles. “I see why Grayson’s drawn to you, like the poison you are. But like any poison, you must be sucked from the vein of this city.”
“So, why not go after the leaders?”
He shuffles to the other end of the bench and riffles through a tray of glass vials. Several syringes shift, rolling into the tray. “To be fair, the Yakuza surrounds their people like hawks. You could learn a thing or two from them. Though, from what I hear, your father was the same way.”
He was, but Reed doesn’t deserve the confirmation. “Your job is to serve the people of Boston. Not murder them.”
He sighs, almost annoyed. “I am.”
He lifts a syringe and takes the cap off with his teeth. Then, he brings the needle point to a vial he’s tipped upside down. Squinting, I try to make out what’s on the label, but my vision isn’t that good. I can guess the combination isn’t a good one. He drugs them. Then kills them.
Shit. That’s what’s next for me.
I’m not afraid to die. I’m more afraid of the mess I’ll leave behind if I do. For my dad and Summer, for my men justnowlearning to trust me. It’s always lived there, in the back of my mind—the thought of dying. The older I got, the more I realized what my dad actually did in the underground basement of O’Brien’s. Who we were. Death slowly took up residence in my thoughts. Each birthday celebration, another new year—all milestones that I’d made it. War, assassinations, kidnappings, alliances—they all pose the risk of death.
Serial killer law enforcement-style wasn’t on my bingo card for the month.
My gaze jerks around the room while I contort my wrist trying to wiggle it out of the chains. Nothing hangs close enough, if there was the chance of reaching far enough. I keep one eye on Reed as he draws down the syringe.
Does this knock me out? Or will I be awake and paralyzed when he tries to separate my head?
Oh hell. I scramble faster, working the rattling chains. It’s loud and obvious, but Reed seems unbothered, which only increases my determination to get out. If I can, I can take him. My dad made sure of that.
The cuffs scrape my bones as I twist, forcing my arms into angles they were never meant to bend. My shoulders scream, but I swallow the pain and pull again.
“Reed?” Grayson’s voice echoes from somewhere above, faint.
He pauses and grins. Setting down his bottle and needle, he pulls on a coat, shifts his badge over his belt, and pats his gun twice with his palm. “It’ll be over soon,” he says. Then, he jogs off, leaving me staring after him.
CHAPTER 18
