Page 105 of Guilty as Sin

But Liam says nothing, he just looks pointedly at the shake he made until I gulp half of it down.

“Happy?” I ask him.

“No. We need to plan for Seven’s retaliation. We know he’s licking his wounds for now, but we need to be ready.”

“What’s your plan?”

“We need more men,” he says flatly.

We lost eight men that night. Good men. Men who answered the last-minute call. Add in the fact that I’ve assigned a rotation of constant guards to Cora, and our available ranks are thinning.

We need more men, but Seven does too. He lost forty-nine well-trained men that night.

“If Seven’s also recruiting,” I reason, “then there’s a higher risk of traitors among the new men.”

“There’s a high risk of traitors among our current men.”

I almost drop my glass. All I can do is stare at my brother as he explains.

“Seven’s known too much about our previous plans. Our shipments, our contacts, our locations. It’s all high-level information that Connor never had access to.”

“I cleared Connor,” I remind him. It cost me my fucking marriage, but I cleared the kid.

“It’s someone close,” Liam says, glossing over the wreckage of my life. “The question is who.”

“It’s more than that,” I say. “We need to know exactly what they’ve been leaking, when they first crossed us, and how they’ve been getting the intel to Seven.”

I gulp down the rest of my shake for something to do as I tally the shitty possibilities in my head. Too many. Liam waits for me to set my glass on the counter.

“We have a theory on how.”

“We?” I ask, because it doesn’t sound like he’s talking about him and Da.

“Seven’s bugged the city’s confessionals. I need a list of the men who attend church in any form.”

“The confessionals?” I’m begrudgingly impressed. It’s diabolical.

“Mam’s already ordered the replacements for every booth in the city and burbs. Brand-new mahogany O’Sullivan donations. Bill should be on your desk soon.”

“So it was Mam who figured it out?” I ask.

“It was Cora.”

My heart stops beating. Cora, my genius Cora. Not mine, I have to remind myself. Not anymore. I have so many questions for Liam, but they clog in my throat. All I can do is make a helpless choking noise. My brother takes pity on me.

“She reached out to Mam.” He takes a deep breath in through his nose. “Apparently, after we took Connor to golf, he went to confession. I’ve got the priest under surveillance, but Cora suggested we treat all booths like they’re Seven’s.”

“She…” My pulse stutters back to life. “She told us about a vulnerability. She wanted to protect us.”

“She wanted to clear her brother’s name.” His tone is so dismissive that I want to grab him by the shirt and shout in his face. He doesn’t get it.

“And when the fuck were you going to tell me?” I demand. Liam and Mam kept this from me.

“I’m telling you now, aren’t I?”

As if that’s the end of our conversation, he takes my empty glass from the counter and puts it in the sink. But he didn’t come here to play nanny.

“I need you on recruitment,” he says.