Connor didn't bother to properly park his Harley when he arrived back at the brownstone. He barely noticed the dark sky above him, and he couldn't entirely remember the drive from Jersey to Brooklyn with all that much clarity, either.
He had never been so numb before.
Never so ... dead.
Killian leaned against the front stoop, waiting as he had been told to do. Connor only vaguely remembered calling the Lieutenant, and he wasn't even sure if he explained what was happening, only that he demanded the guy get to the house and stay there.
Connor stalked down the walkway and up the front stairs, hearing Killian question him, yet never quite making out exactly what he was saying enough to respond. Or maybe, Connor just couldn't make the words he needed to say form properly in his mouth.
This was what going crazy felt like.
He'd fecked up.
Badly.
He'd left Evelyn exposed.
Like a fool.
This was his fault.
All his.
"Connor!"
He pushed open the brownstone's front door, unsurprised to find it unlocked. There was no damage to the door, so he suspected that had simply been Sean's point of exit, not entry. Killian followed close behind him, still asking too many goddamn questions, as Connor headed for the back of the house.
There he found the broken doorjamb and busted lock.
There, he found the entry.
For a long while, Connor stared at the door, his frustration climbing and his rage boiling.
"Shite," Killian mumbled behind him. "She's not going to be here if we look, is she?"
Connor didn't feel like answering that, so he didn't. Turning fast on his heel, he headed back down the hallway, and then up the stairs. Evelyn had said she would be in the studio, working on something, though she hadn't said what. Nothing looked out of place in the hallways, or the stairwell. Not a single piece of art had been knocked over, his bookcases and shelving units were fine, and even the decorative tables were untouched.
His studio, though?
Connor stood in the midst of a feckin' hurricane.
Outside the room, it looked calm and fine.
Inside the room, someone had fought for every goddamn inch.
Easels had been upset, paints and charcoals were spilled and broken on the floors, and the canvases had been overturned, or ripped through. Smudged handprints in sky blue paint streaked across the floorboards, too wee to be a man's, and likely a perfect match to Evelyn's. Footprints showcased the dance between two people, one moving one way, another mimicking the steps only a few feet away.
"I don't know where he went," Connor said more to himself than his friend behind him. "I don't where he might take her."
Connor figured, at this point, he didn't need to explain who he was talking about, because Killian probably already knew. He hated to admit his weakness—and his feck up—but he didn't have to, really. A single look at the state of his studio was enough to tell the story of his mistake.
"I don't know where he would take her," Connor repeated.
That was what scared him the most.
That he didn't know his father enough; that he didn't know Sean's state of affairs beyond his house in Jersey, and his business dealings elsewhere. He didn't know the first place to begin, but time was ticking down.
He needed to figure it out, and soon.
"Why take her?" Killian asked. "Why her?"
Connor pulled the packet of information he had stolen from his father's house, and handed it over without a word. He waited Killian out, hoping he wouldn't need to explain further once the man got a good look at the contents.
Killian whistled low. "This is some crazy cac, mate."
"Understatement."
"What about vacation homes or a place out of state?"
Connor shook his head. "None that I know of."
"He changed his M.O. over the years," Killian noted.
"Not sure that matters, boyo."
"It could, Connor."
He didn't think so. "His end goal remained the same—he killed them. He killed them in a very specific way that has not changed from the first girl to the last."
"But he went from killing them upon conclusion of hunting them, to keeping them for sometimes years before he acted on that final scene. Something changed, whatever it was, and that means she probably won't be any different."
Connor ignored the soreness in his throat as he spoke through his rage. "That doesn't help me, Killian."
"It gives you time."
"An illusion of it, not a promise."
But Killian did have a good point.
Evelyn was not like the other victims in Sean's folders. She had spent years under men who beat her, who took away her life sources as punishments, and only gave them back as rewards for appropriate behavior. She was a manipulator in those games, learning to enjoy pain, teaching herself to control situations to get what she needed or wanted to sustain her life.
It had never been about them.
She always took care of her.
"This might not be any different," Connor said, voicing his inner thoughts.
Killian glanced. "What are you going on about?"
"Who knows my father best, or damn near?"
"Uh ..."
He didn't really have to think about it like Killian did, because he already knew the answer. Most of Sean's men, including Lieutenants like Killian, assumed the man's son was his closest companion. Conner knew different. The only person Sean trusted throughout his life, though he would never call him a friend, was the same fool who had been there since day one.
"Lachlan," Connor said, "always his right-hand."
"You think he knows where Sean went to?"
"Maybe not. But he's been around Sean since I can remember, and before that, Declan and his father. He knows something. And it might not be what I need, but it could get me there."
"So, we need to find him, right?"
Connor nodded, already turning around and heading to his bedroom. He was a feckin' mess, bloody and dirty, and needed a change of clothes. He didn't mind the blood, but he figured a clean outfit might be to his benefit when he went on a rampage. He was already crazy enough without adding to it with his attire.
"We're going to find him."
Killian cleared his throat, but didn't follow Connor, instead calling out from the hallway, "You know, a lot of those men are loyal to who they've always known. And if it ain't Sean, it'll be Lachlan."
"Your point?"
"It might not be as easy as you think to just ... talk to him."
Connor laughed darkly, pulling on a clean shirt before strolling back into the hallway. "Who the feck said anything about talking? Get me a gun—one with a lot of bullets to spare."
He'd save the knives for another day.
• • •
Connor glanced up at The Morning Glory's sign, and sent up a silent apology to the pub for what he was about to do to the place.
"You're sure you want me to stay outside?" Killian asked.
Connor loaded the clip into the semi-automatic rifle, and balanced the gun on his shoulder. "Make sure no one sneaks out behind my back. I want all the foolish feckers inside until I'm done."
Killian nodded once. "All right."
"And cops. Watch for those things."
"Nobody is calling the cops around here, Connor."
Fair enough.
Connor headed down the steps that led into the pub's front entrance without another word to his friend, and entered the business with the gun still sitting on his shoulder. He didn't intend to use it unless he had to, but he fully expected that he would have to.
The Irish were stubborn like that.
As he expected, at least three active Lieutenants in the O'Neil organization had huddled themselves into a corner, pretty common for a weekday, when they weren't particularly busy. Not to mention, the boss wasn't around to be barking at their arses about being lazy pieces of shite. A couple of older men—mobsters from a previous era—played checkers and drank their whiskey in the corner.
No one seemed to notice Connor's entrance.
Well, except for the pub's owner.
The man's gaze met Connor's, and his shoulders deflated a bit at the sight of the gun. This probably wasn't the first time someone had come into the place, ready to shoot it up if needed, but it couldn't be a pleasant sight.
Connor ticked his head to the side, his silent order for the owner to scram. The man did, sliding out from the bar and heading toward the back of the pub where he could exit without being noticed.
He waited a few extra seconds, just to be safe and make sure the owner was out of the pub. After all, he liked the man, and he had fond memories of the place from when he was younger. He'd like to be invited back again someday, so respect was due.
Then, when Connor was sure the business was clear, he flipped the rifle off his shoulder, aimed at the back of the bar, and let off a good twenty rounds into bottles of spirits, glasses, and whatever else happened to be on those old shelves.
Glass shattered.
Liquor poured.
Connor faced the men he needed to speak to, resting the gun back to his shoulder like he hadn't done a thing.
He had everybody's attention now.
"Anybody know where Sean is?" Connor asked.
One of the three men stood, glaring like a fool at Connor. "Aye, you feckin' shite—what are ye doing, acting like a right cunt in here?"
Connor knew the Lieutenant's name that sassed him, but he didn't care to use it at the moment, because the man hadn't answered his question. "Sit down, and listen this time."
The man didn't sit.
The hard way it was.
Connor pulled the Eagle he'd kept holstered at his back from its hiding place, aimed, and fired off one round, watching as the bullet plowed through the man's forehead. Actually, it kind of blew his head apart, making quite a fancy design on the wall behind him before his body fell over the table, useless once again.
The rifle was grand for a lot of noise.
The Eagle was grand for making a point.
"Here's the thing," Connor said, "I need some information. And there isn't one of you feckin' cunts that are leaving this joint until I get it. If that means you need to make some calls to get me somewhere, then we'll do that. We're already one down, there's only two of you idiots left. Somebody better get me information."
The remaining two men gaped, their gazes darting between Connor, and their dead comrade.
"W-what are ye looking for, Connor?" the shorter of the two asked.
"My father, or Lachlan. I'll take either. Don't waste my time."
• • •
"We need a safe place," Connor mused. "A quiet place, where we won't be interrupted."
Killian nodded from the passenger seat of the truck. "There's that whorehouse your father abandoned after it got raided a couple years back. He never approved anyone to fill the rooms again, but it's still there, locked up tight."
Connor considered it. "The one with all the red doors inside?"
"Customers knew which rooms the girls were in by the doors."
"Shite part of town, mostly no cops, and—"
"He can scream for days," Killian interrupted with a chuckle. "No one is going to hear him."
Oh, that was perfect.
Connor did a U-turn in the middle of the road, flipping off some fool that honked his horn, and headed in the direction he needed to go. It took another forty minutes before he had parked his truck around the side of the rundown, dilapidated building that had housed dopesick working girls for years. He'd only visited the place once or twice for something Sean had needed, but he wasn't about to forget the bright red doors inside.
"Grab him," Connor ordered, "and I'll get the chains."
Killian pushed out of the truck. "Why the chains?"
"The place is old. Thought it might look nice with a decoration hanging from the ceiling or something."
Connor could tell just by the look on Killian's face that he had no clue what his friend was talking about, and he didn't intend to explain. Killian would figure it out soon enough. He grabbed the chains from the back of the truck, and two of his favorite knives he'd stored back there when he had needed his hands free for the guns.
Killian dragged a gagged and bound Lachlan from the backseat of the truck, letting the man fall to the ground without easing the plunge. A gruff ompf sounded from under the black hood they had shoved over the Irish mobster's head, which was sort of good news.
He was still alive, anyway.
And awake.
That made things easier.
"Pissed himself, he did," Killian grumbled.
"Careful not to get it on yourself," Connor warned as he headed toward the locked side door of the whorehouse. "You'll be walking your dumb arse home."
"I'm helping you, in case you forgot!"
"Not by smelling like piss, you shod."
Killian muttered something under his breath, but Connor's attention was already stolen by something else. He focused his work on getting the lock undone on the door, and once it was, he wasted no time heading inside to look for the perfect spot to do his business.
Ten minutes later, Connor had found a room with a red door and sturdy enough rafter to hold the weight of a man while he screamed and twisted in pain. Killian helped to string a still-gagged and blindfolded Lachlan up to the rafter by his wrists, and then he stepped back to let Connor handle the rest.
He gave his friend fifteen minutes—at the most—before he would need to leave the room.
This wouldn't be a pretty sight.
Connor tugged the hood from Lachlan's sweaty head, and let it drop to the ground. The man was still gagged, but at the sight of Connor, he sneered and tried to spit at him, his body moving forward a few inches. He couldn't go much further than that, considering just the tips of his toes were touching the dirty, damp floor.
"So, we're going to do this thing," Connor said, pulling both of his knives out of his back pockets. "And this thing we're going to do can be easy for you, or very difficult, depending on how it all goes, all right?"
Lachlan glared, but attempted to say nothing behind his gag.
"This knife," Connor said, holding up the bigger of the two, "will cut through your joints with ease. I can get it in there, pop a wee bit of the cartilage and tendons, and your joint will just fall apart."
His victim swallowed hard, his gaze darting to the blade.
"Now this one," Connor said, holding up the slimmer blade with a razor-sharp edge, "will slice your skin like it's cutting fat from a raw steak. They'll both hurt, but one will make it quicker, while the other will skin you alive before you can even get the chance to bleed out."
Connor smiled, stepping back just a bit. "You see, I happen to be exceptionally talented with these knives, and I know each and every spot on your body that will kill you with the right cut. I will miss each and every one of those spots, Lachlan," he taunted, wanting the man knowing, yet terrified of his skills. "I will slice your skin until it looks like raw meat, until it's hanging off your very feckin' bones, and then, I'll start cutting out your muscles, because it doesn't bother me. And you know me, don't you? Watched me since I was a wee lad, under Sean's feet. You know me—I can do this, and I will."
For the first time since they had pulled the hood from Lachlan's head, Connor saw a real glimmer of panic in the man's eyes. Not necessarily fear, but panic.
"Do you want me to pull out the gag?" Connor asked.
Lachlan nodded once.
Connor pulled the gag out.
The screaming began almost instantly. It was a natural reaction, an attempt to save his life, though it would be entirely useless. Connor rubbed at his temple, the high-pitch noise making his head ache like a drummer was back there beating on his skull. He waited the man's yelling out, and once it died down, he looked at him again.
"Grand, are you?"
Lachlan spit at him, barely missing him. "Just like your father, Connor."
"Don't be offensive. I'm a wee bit different. I don't hunt women."
"Yet."
"Never," Connor responded in kind, shrugging. "I don't have that urge—I just like to cut, remember?"
Lachlan's gaze darted down to the knives in Connor's hands again. "I don't know what you want from me, lad. Your father hasn't called me in two days, and the last time he did, he was in a right fit over your stupid arse. I couldn't understand a feckin' thing coming out of his mouth."
That might be true.
That didn't mean Lachlan couldn't help in other ways.
"Tell me what you know about Evelyn," Connor said quietly.
Lachlan stiffened in his chains. "I don't have nothing to tell, lad."
Wrong answer.
Connor stepped forward, taking the thinner of the two knives and putting it to work. Quickly, he shed the man of his dress shirt and pants, cutting them from his body. Then, he drew a pathway from the tip of Lachlan's sternum down to his naval, the cut moving so quickly it only began to bleed just as Connor withdrew the blade.
The blood splattered to the floor in time with Lachlan's screams.
"It's an interesting sight, isn't it?" Connor asked, nodding at the pooling blood. "Amazes me how much blood a body can hold. You're about fifty pounds overweight, so I'd say you have a bit more than someone my size. Care to test my theory out?"
Lachlan sputtered, the chains rattling as his body contorted away from the knife when Connor held it out again. "She's just a wee whore, lad. She isn't important."
"Wrong. She's important to me."
"Then you're foolish," Lachlan spat. "Like your father was—consumed by the look of a lass, chasing after that perfect thing."
Connor shook his head. "Not at all the same, but keep going."
"She came from a whore, one he'd killed. Her name isn't Evelyn, it's Katie. Her face was all over the feckin' place for a good year after he stole her from her crib. She was high profile because her mother was one of his victims, and he'd never done that before. Took something—a baby, I mean."
"Killian?" Connor asked.
A throat cleared behind him. "Yeah, mate?"
"Go grab the information in the truck. The newspapers, mostly. Bring them in to me."
"All right."
The door clicked shut behind him.
Connor was alone with Lachlan, at least for a short while. "Why didn't he keep her, then? Let her be raised by one of his girls, like I was for all those years."
"He already had you in the feckin' house," Lachlan mumbled, his head bobbing down as he tried to look at his bleeding injury. "Your mother didn't last the first six months after she birthed you—lucky you even came into the world, lad, she never even looked pregnant until the last couple months. He thought you might be like him, and he was right."
"To an extent. You're off topic." Connor tapped the edge of his knife under Lachlan's jaw, creating a two-inch slice as he withdrew the blade. Hot blood slid down the edge, and over his fingers, but he had the man's attention again. "Her—tell me about her. I don't give a feck about me."
He was here.
He was alive.
Evelyn was another story.
"He already had you," Lachlan repeated, "and it was enough, so he passed her on to Declan the night he took her. He knew the man's wife wouldn't say no—she was feckin' dying, couldn't have her own kids, and it would make her happy. Declan wasn't stupid, he'd been watching the news enough to know where the wee lass came from, but what was he going to do? He just wanted Sean to feck off somewhere and stay there."
"Where would he go?" Connor asked. "Sean, I mean. Where would he take her, now? Somewhere in the states? Back to Ireland maybe?"
Lachlan let out a shaky breath. "I don't know. You're not going to like that answer, but it's the truth. I just don't know. They ran his father and brother out of Ireland decades ago, when he killed the daughter of a farmer over there—his father didn't last a year in the states before his heart gave out. Declan was always trying to keep Sean under wraps, control him as much as he could. He doesn't have somewhere to go, lad. Not any place he plans to stay for any period of time, anyway."
The door opened behind Connor, and he turned to find Killian had come back in with a stack of clippings in his hand.
"There's info here on the baby named Katie," Killian said, never looking up from his papers. "It's what he says, mate."
Connor turned back on Lachlan. "If it was the end for him, and he knew it, where would Sean go?"
Lachlan shrugged. "Lad, you're more like him than me. Your eyes are just as dead as his—you're just as feckin' cold in your heart, you've got no soul. Where would you go?" Then, he added quieter, "Sean had a lawyer, and he'd been running to him a lot these last three weeks. He might know something."
"A name?"
Lachlan rattled it off.
Connor felt like it was time to end the conversation with that.
"Killian?"
"Yeah, Connor?"
"Leave if you need to, but you're not to interrupt me for the next hour."
"Pardon?" Killian asked.
"I said what I said."
Connor took his time, and he didn't make it easy on Lachlan. The man was already a loose end that needed to be whacked, so it didn't matter, when it came right down to it all. He didn't have more information for Connor to pull from him, or he'd have already rolled over like the pig he was while he squealed it all out.
So, yeah, he took his time.
Cutting, slicing, and carving.
Each line down the dying man's body felt like heaven to Connor. It was the sweetest relief, because his frustrations fell like the blood pooling on the floor. He barely said a word the whole time, removing strips of flesh a piece at a time, until nothing but raw body was left hanging from the chains.
Killian left without a word, ten minutes in.
It might have been the blood. It might have been Connor's lack of emotion. It might have been the screams.
It didn't matter.
It was only after Lachlan had taken his final breath, a painful, shuddering sound, that Connor finally dropped his knives and stood back, deciding he was done.
The man had been right.
He was more like his father than anyone.
In that moment, if Connor saw his end coming for him, he knew exactly where he would go.
Back to the beginning.
To that moment he met Evelyn in the woods when they were children. To the day she didn't known how horrible life could be, or the monsters that surrounded her. To a time when she had been bright and innocent, and only wanted a friend.
He'd go back to the beginning.
Connor suspected Sean would, too.
Except, his father's beginning was not the same. It had happened in a different place, in a different time.
Connor sincerelyhoped Evelyn was able to stay alive long enough for him to figure out whereexactly Sean's beginning had started.lang=EN-US sty�":�84O