“Declan, as much as I want to strangle the boy, the smart decision right now would be to talk to him,” Lorkan speaks, making my hands curl into fists instinctively.
“Don’t think I haven’t forgotten about you. Or that heinous vulture tattoo,” I hiss. He’s lucky my main priority is getting Zahra back. Or else he’d already be dead.
Lorkan straightens his back. “There is so much of your own history you don’t know. So much Cyrus has spun against you.” He reaches into his coat pocket and places an envelope filled with photos on my lap.
My throat closes as I see separate photos of my father, Naser, and Lorkan—all with their own vulture tattoos. “W-What is this?”
“Three men who had experienced enough loss in their lives, hoping to start a new one. Give their families, or what was left of their families, a better future. Naser and Cillian had been slowly plotting over the past decades how to remove our ties to any mafia business and switch to a more legal andless violent way of life. Which is why your father put me in charge of the finances once he passed. So I could ensure I continued his vision, once you were ready to hear it.” Lorkan’s shoulders sink, like he’s been carrying the weight of this secret for too long.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I barely manage to get out, still shocked by the news.
“You were still grieving. You had enough on your plate to handle.”
“And the vulture tattoo?” He still hadn’t provided an explanation for that.
“The vulture in Iranian culture is meant to represent hope. Cyrus and his sadistic mind chose to bastardize the vulture for him and his cronies,” Lorkan growls. “Another ‘fuck you’ to Cillian and Naser because he viewed the desire to leave the crime business as a slight. He feared the financial losses he would experience. Which is why he killed them.”
Jesus Christ. The more I learned, the more I felt like everything I knew was a lie.
Lorkan places a hand on my shoulder, “Aidan may be our only way of getting closer to her and Cyrus. Talk to him.”
Pinching the bridge of my nose between my fingers, I comply, turning to Demir. "Take me to him. But be sure to have a camera streaming in that room. If I lose it...someone needs to come in and stop me."
"As you wish." Demir gestures for me to follow him as we start our descent down the stairs to the main foyer. Demir had insisted on locking Aidan up in one of the guest rooms as opposed to the holding cells in the basement out of respect for my late father.
I rub my chest, feeling an aching pain, as I open the door and come face to face with my brother. Immediately, I feel an urge to free him from the chains locked around his wrists, butthen I remind myself that Zahra is likely much worse off wherever she is. And if she couldn't be comfortable, then he definitely doesn't deserve to be either.
The door shuts behind us and Aidan immediately starts talking. "Declan, I'm so sorry. I never meant for you to get hurt by all this."
"Never meant for me to get hurt in all this? What about Zahra? Or Lorkan? Or anyone else in our family. Do you realize how many lives you nearly ruined? How many people nearly died because of you. I swear if she's dead—" I can't even finish the sentence without my throat constricting.
"She's not. He won't kill her without using her to bargain for something. He’d view it as a waste of resources," Aidan states bluntly.
I blink and then my fist breaks his nose. To his credit, he just takes it. Aidan shakes his head, spitting blood onto the carpet. "I didn't mean it like that. I was just trying to explain how Cyrus thinks. We're going to need to get inside his head if we even have a chance of getting Zahra back and making it out of this alive."
He’s right. Still, it felt good to punch him in the face.
"How did you even end up getting caught up in all of this, Aidan? You never once showed interest in learning the business side of things, and suddenly you're doing Cyrus' bidding. What could he possibly have on you?"
"I made a deal with the devil. One I regret to this day, but at least he's kept good on his promise to spare you." Aidan swallows hard as I gesture for him to continue. "You remember Max's death?" Aidan asks me.
I can't recall the last time he said his best friend's name out loud. But I do remember the look in his eyes when he found Max's cold blue body on the floor of their apartment. Max had been struggling with misusing substances for about a year atthat point. Aidan had finally been able to get Max to agree to get help. I'd gone over to the apartment that morning to help Max pack and assist Aidan in taking him to the best hospital in the city. Except by the time we had both arrived, Max had overdosed. His pills had been laced with fentanyl and no one had been there to save him.
"I remember." I nod, thinking of how broken and lost Aidan had been after that.
"I lost a part of myself that day. One I don't think I'll ever get back. It wasn't just the loss that affected me, it was the feeling that I had done nothing to help him. That I waited too long to act. I've blacked out most of that day, but the one thing I can never let go is seeing the paramedics haul Max's body away, while Dad's voice played over and over in my head,'You never take anything seriously, Aidan, and one day you're going to regret all the time you've wasted.'"
For the first time since we flew to Turkey, I took a long hard look at my brother, or really the shell he had become over the past few years. My stomach turns seeing how lost he is. I wait for him to continue.
"I wallowed for a few days until a plan popped into my head. I may not have been able to save Max, but I could at least avenge him. I remembered Cyrus mentioning in passing that he still had intel on the various drug rings in the city. He tracked down Max's dealer for me, and I arranged a meet-up at our old apartment."
"Jesus Christ, Aidan." I shake my head.
"I know I was reckless as always, but meeting in my apartment allowed me to confirm he was Max's dealer. Though the idiot must not have realized he had given Max a bad batch. When I let the scum inside our apartment, he made a joke, asking where his best customer was, and I saw red. I punched him in the gut as hard as I could, wrestled him to the ground,and just kept hitting him over and over again. He was unrecognizable by the time I snapped out of my haze."
I have no room to judge him. I've committed equally gruesome murders in my life.
"When I finally came to and started to clean up the mess...I realized he had a familiar tattoo on his neck. A crown, with a centerpiece detailed the Greek mafia's family sigil."
