“The guns, Kelly.” He nodded to the one dangling in my hand. “That’s not alone. But I didn’t kill her. Not yet. Might want to hurry, though, the bleeding is steady on the outside, but I’m not sure what’s happening on the inside.” He winked at me. “She can take a hit with a bat, Jessica Rabbit can,” he said, mocking my accent.
“What do you want?” I said through clenched teeth.
“You,” he said. “On your knees. In front of me. Begging for forgiveness. No gun to your head forcing the words. I want an apology from the soul, since you have no fucking heart.”
I threw the gun in my hand to the side of him, and he kicked it so far that I couldn’t get to it even if I tried. I did the same with the entire holster. He did the same thing.
Love was the only force that could ever bring me to my knees. My wife had called it the day at her brother’s house.
I fell to my knees not in front of him, but in front of my wife. She was all I could see. All I could hear. All I could breathe. I could smell her in the rain, and when he stood over me, holding her, her blood dripped down my face like tears.
“You didn’t see this coming, you arrogant bastard of the devil. The marauder of Hell’s Kitchen—you don’t steal things, you steal hearts. You steal them from men. You steal them from families. Your old man was the devil himself. Everything he touched, he ruined. Like the drugs you fight against.” Raff put his gun to my forehead. “Let me tell you a story, a story of how Ronan Kelly ruined a good man’s life. My old man owed a debt, and your old man forced him off the street with this band of thugs and brought him to Ginger’s.”
Ginger’s was a bar my old man fronted the money for. He used it sometimes to deal with men who owed money, or worse. It wasn’t a neutral place like Sullivan’s. If those walls could talk, the FBI would’ve brought them in for interrogation years ago.
“Over money, Kelly,” Raff said, pressing the gun harder against my head. His hand was steady at first, but the more he talked, the more he relived, and it started to shake. “Money. Your old man put a gun to my old man’s head, just like this, and forced him to call home. I answered the phone. My old man was crying, begging, and he told me to put my ma on the line.”
Raff sniffed. “He owed the great Ronan Kelly a debt, and if we didn’t bring enough, we were all dead. Now you’re going to beg for something worth more than your life. This woman’s life. Your life is not good enough to beg for. Hers? Worth every word from your mouth.
“Kind of like what you did to Scott Stone. You stole her from him knowing he’d never get over her because he lost her to you. The devil’s spawn. The thing he spent his entire life fighting against. And his career? His other love? The end of life as he knew it when he lost it. Now you’re where many men have been at your word, at your fucking hand, and you’re going to lose, Kelly. You’re going to lose. Because I’ve watched. This bitch is worth everything to you. More than your old man’s memory. More than your last breath. So what do you have to say?”
I lifted my hands. “Here I am,” I said, tasting blood in my mouth. Either hers or mine.
“Here I am.” He looked up at the sky and laughed. “Is that all you have to say for your fucking self? Where’s the begging? The pleading? The crying?” He turned and slammed my wife’s head against my old man’s stone at the same time thunder seemed to crack the sky in two, and more rain started to fall. “You’ll cry—”
My heart screamed out her name, but a roar left my throat when heat surged up inside of me, and I slammed my body into his. We collided so hard that he dropped my wife, trying to protect his body from mine, and as soon as we went down, we started fighting.
He had me on my back in no time, hitting me in all of the spots he knew were weak, missing one vital spot.
My neck.
I could survive the rest.
But not my neck.
I didn’t give a fuck about my life. I had to get my wife help. We were in a cemetery. The land of the dead. She wasn’t going to be one of them. If she was, we’d go together. I’d break open the vein in my neck before anyone lowered her in the ground before my eyes.
He kept landing punches on my back, on my sides, and then he hit me right over the spot in my neck. The wind left my lungs in a fucking wheeze, and rain poured into my mouth as I tried to breathe.
Raff rolled off of me, crawling to get to the gun he’d lost when I’d slammed my body into his. He stood no less than a second later, going for Keely again, and with every ounce of air I could steal, I screamed out his name.
“Raff!”
He stopped and turned to me.
“Fuck you,” I said. “And fuck your old man. He was a pussy.” I whipped out the gun from behind my back, shooting him once in the head and once in his heart.
He fell to the ground as I climbed to my knees and crawled to my wife, who was lifeless on the ground, the rain pouring on her face, trying to wash the blood. It was too much, coming too fast. Using my old man’s stone, I propped myself up, pulling her with me, roaring with pain when I did. I set her against my chest, holding her tight against me, not sure what the fuck to do. Besides her face, I wasn’t sure what he’d done to her. I wasn’t there to protect her. Or those children. Or Maureen.
Our family.
My head swam in and out again, but even in the darkness, all I could see was red.
Blood.
Our blood ran and mixed in the rain.
I turned my head up to the sky and cried out. I cried out so loud that my lungs trembled. “Please,” I begged. “Please.” Lightning lit up the darkness, showing me her face, and I begged once again in Irish Gaelic. “Le do thoil!”
