I think for half a second about lending him my hidden hoodie, but I lock it down a second later. Fuck Walsh. He can bleed all over the cab of the truck, for all I care.
“Come on.” I reach down, pulling him to his feet. “Let’s go.”
“Aye.” He wobbles on his feet, and his eyes are open, but he’s not here with me.
Again, I use his buzz to my advantage, all but throwing him into the passenger seat and slamming the door on his grabby hands and his suggestion we climb into the back of the truck where he can be getting in my hole. The filthy fucker is lucky I don’t hog-tie him and throw him in the back. I focus on getting us as far away as I can before the scene gets swarmed. It’s perhaps twenty minutes, maximum, but in that time, Walsh undergoes about ten different emotions and personalities. And I have to deal with them all.
But once he stops singing or talking gibberish, I start to use how off his head he is to my advantage. Seriously, who wouldn’t? It’s not like I can take anything he says to court, but I can at least get some answers. Knowing he’s still off his head means I can also move quickly into questioning him about more personal issues.
“Was that your contact, Walsh? Mr. Kelly? Was he your contact?”
He grunts a no, but his head nods yes. I give him a quick jab in the arm to snap his stupor, repeating the question.
“Aye. Arthur was born full of hate for the O’Connors. Never met a Kelly that wasn’t in to reclaim what they’re owed. Can’t say I blame ‘em. The O’Connors are a bunch of cunts who care for no one but themselves. Rob ya blind, they do. I ain’t working for the man, I’m working for them. My whole life. Being watchedlike I’m a fucking thief in the night, then having to hand all my hardworking coin over. His son, Ronin, is worse. And I hate Keegan more,” he rants, and his words, like his emotions, fly out of him like a flamethrower. Burning out just as fast as a real one would.
Interestingly, he’s temporarily forgotten my connection, but if push came to shove, I suspect he wouldn’t be able to remember terribly much after how much coke he had.
“Okay.” I add a placating pat on his knee.
Giving him a few moments so he can ride his emotions out, I wait until I hear him take a few hits of his vape, exhaling and dropping his head back against the headrest.
“What about Oscar Murphy? How’s he fit in with all this?”
It’s a risk, but I’m hoping the way I intentionally omitted reminding Walsh that Oscar’s my uncle has him thinking he’s just having a chat with a stranger on a night out.
“Ya mighty fucking played, Tally.” He laughs, more viciously than I would have thought him currently capable of.
I stay quiet and let him fill in the gaps. He comes out swinging, thoughtlessly. Or perhaps I really am underestimating his mental capacity at the moment, and he’s actually being his truest self and intentionally cruel.
He swings around and stares at me, nodding his head like he’s coaching himself into delivering the punchline with a burst of Alpha energy. “You’re pulling all the laughs, you know that, right? You’re a right source of entertainment for all of us too. Oscar’s dead. He’s been dead for years. No one wants telling you ‘cause it’s so fucking funny stringing you along. The best part? It was those fucking twats who’ve been telling us all to stay away from ya. I hope ya wedding’s as much as a joke as you is. Imagine marrying the very people who topped your own flesh and blood. Over something so small too.”
He throws back his head, laughing, leaving me with a pit of horror to drown in. Still chuckling away to himself, he reaches down to the center console and pulls out a plastic bag. Without saying anything further, he pulls out a thick blunt and keeps grinning at the side of my face while he tokes it down.
I open the window and focus on driving and picking up the pieces. I’m relieved to finally know something about Oscar. I had hoped there would have been a different ending, but that’s my mother’s optimism talking. Pragmatically, the conflicting reports and limited intel on Oscar probably meant he was dead, even before I decided to go searching for him. It’s frustrating and I want to scream. And then I want to punch Walsh in the face again because he didn’t have to be a cock about it.
The freezing night wind has me closing my window. The shivers racking my body are because of the newest shock. I know that. In the scheme of things, Walsh being a dick and Oscar being dead aren’t things that are going to break me. Oscar will hurt, like the death of anyone you know, until I work through the grief. Then I just need to work through the fallout of him never being the family I wanted him to be, which already leaves me feeling guilty.
Walsh seems to get bored of being a prick and his presence shifts again. His whole face changes with the next phase of his high. His smile changes as he turns back to simply being a slimy man off his tits on drugs again. He winks at me before fiddling with the radio, chasing memories, by the sounds of his rambling about some party he went to.
I shut him out, trying to figure out where to drive the piece of shit truck he hired. Though I keep an eye on him; his erratic behavior needs monitoring, and there’s already enough dead bodies to deal with.
Putting the truck in cruise, I make a call when I’m confident that Walsh is away on another planet, thanks to the chemicalsthumping through his veins. It was an obvious decision on my part, and the right one, to call my contact again to let them know the latest events in this fucking night. After a quick recount of how we came to find the dead Kelly, our conversations turn to discussion on how to deal with the authorities this time round. Arthur Kelly’s murder has to be called in. Hiding the crime like we did the child abductions earlier would blow my cover, and we collectively decide on someone in head office making an anonymous call to the local police.
Walsh turns the music up to a volume that has me concerned about my brain bleeding out. Of all the things he could have done, this is by far the easiest to deal with. Opening the window to rid my senses of his chemical caustic scent, and the lingering smell of iron, I drive with my head half out the truck, listening to him drone on, yelling over the thumping bass, about seeing this DJ live in Ibiza.
A big part of me wishes I was back in Genoa. A bigger part wishes I reconnected with Pack O’Connor before life got in the way. I distract myself by thinking of how good life would have been if we’d met in a different lifetime. The argument that they’re perfect but I can’t bond with them because of who I am is getting old.
It’s too much. On top of how exhausted I am, my anxiety twists its way in deeper, and I’m nearly sidelined by all the BS I’ve been burying for so long. And it doesn’t take a psychologist to understand why I have such a fear of abandonment. My father didn’t want anything to do with me, despite the endless promises he made to my mother before she fell pregnant. If that wasn’t bad enough, the message was reinforced when Liam’s mother, my aunt, became a single parent too. The last twist to my inner child—my Uncle Oscar dumped both his sisters and me for something, anything, better. And any chance I had of having a family just died a hundred deaths with both Oscar being dead,but also the O’Connors apparently being responsible for said death.
Blinking back tears, I have to shift gears, or I’ll start blubbering again. And God forbid, I actually entertain being that vulnerable with Pack O’Connor. From the get-go, I’ve sensed all the abandonment I’ve experienced to now has been in preparation for leaving them.
At least my time spent here can be done trying to make their dangerous world a little safer. I get it sounds ridiculous, me trying to protect these mafia men after what they’ve done. But they’ve stolen my heart. The least I can do before my time here is done is ensure no one hurts theirs—in other words, pumping them full of lead.
Chapter Forty-Five
TALLY
Unlocking the door to my home, it’s not a sense of relief of surviving the night that sweeps me off my feet but the lingering scents of pack. Pack O’Connor is deeply ingrained in my little house. More so, they are in my Omega deep.
