I didn’t answer him, and it didn’t seem he wanted an answer because the man I called Dad walked away from my mother’s body that he left lying in the middle of the road like a piece of discarded trash. After a few more minutes of silence, I crawled out of my hiding spot towards my mom, tears streaming down my face. There was so much blood.
“Mom.” I cried over her as my tears fell onto her body and her sticky warm blood soaked into my clothes. “What do I do, Mom?” I asked her, still and silent form as I cried. Fear, anger and so many other emotions I didn’t know how to process swamped me as I kneeled beside my mother’s lifeless body.
I jumped and turned when I heard one final gunshot come from the house where the monster lived. I knew exactly what the coward had done. Part of me hated him for it because my mother would never see the justice she deserved, and another part of me was relieved because it was over. The monster was finally where he belonged—in Hell.
Chapter 1
Killian
Twenty-Nine Years Later
“You are a worthless piece of shit, Grady.” The man in front of me was nothing more than a mid-level crook trying to play in the big leagues. He was in way over his head, and the noose around his neck was about to close tight if the handcuffs didn’t get him first.
“I’ll get you the money, Killian,” he stammered his words. Grady’s forehead broke out into a sweat and his eyes seemed to move around the room sporadically. The bastard was high as a fucking kite.
“In order to get me the money, you dumbass, sell your product instead of snorting it.” Fucking junkie. I hated drugs because they showed weakness, and I learned long ago that weakness wouldn’t survive in this world.
“I’m going to get your money. I promise.”
I looked at my right-hand man, Donovan, who was standing behind Grady’s chair, he rolled his eyes and shook his head, letting me know he didn’t think Grady would ever get clean and couldn’t possibly come up with the money. “Do you remember the terms of our arrangement, Grady?” I asked calmly, pulling a cigar from the front pocket of my suit, acting like it did not irritate me and would consider whatever it was this sleazeball had to say.
He swallowed hard. “You lent me the money to start the club and launder the money from my product sales through.”
“What did I tell you was going to happen if I didn’t get my cut, Grady?” I questioned around the cigar as I flicked the lighter and lit the end. The smell of burning tobacco quickly permeated the surrounding air.
“You said you would take the club back.” He hedged, but left off a very important term of the agreement.
“And—” I prompted him, drawing in another pull from the cigar and blowing it out slowly toward him.
When he didn’t answer me, I looked up at Donovan and notched my chin, giving him the signal. Donovan clapped his big, beefy hand down onto Grady’s shoulder and started applying pressure. Grady winced from the pain of Donovan’s grip.
“And you said you would take everything from me.”
I nodded, and Donovan let go. “Are you really prepared to lose everything, Grady?”
“I’ll get you the money,” he muttered again.
