We pulled up outside a tidy, well-looked-after semidetached house on a quiet street. Immediately I knew Liam had been here before. Not once along the way had he checked the address or asked for directions.
“I’ll knock on the door. He’ll answer it. I’ll kick the shit out of him,” I told them.
“How do you know he’ll answer it?” Tommy asked.
“Because the guy’s a fucking control freak,” Kieran answered for me. “I’d be very fucking surprised if he lets his missus take a piss without asking for permission.” A car was in the drive, and the lights were on but the rain beat down too heavy for me to see much of anything inside the house. None of the guys pushed me or said anything to me when I just sat there watching that house that was so normal-looking and average on the outside. But knowing what had happened inside was the reason Em relived the rape in her dreams over and over, knowing that it was the reason she flinched whenever new people moved too quickly around her, only loosened the rein I had over my temper.
I pictured everything I’d overheard from her nightmare about the rape, and I remembered, with aching heartbreaking clarity, how I felt when he took her and how tiny, beaten, and broken she looked unconscious and bloodied in that hospital bed.
What the fuck was I still doing sitting in this truck? This ended now. I climbed out and slammed the door before any of the guys had chance to move.
Running across the street, I pounded on the front door, and when Frank opened it with a cocky smirk, I pulled my shoulder back and punched him square in the face. Like the spineless sack of shit that he was, he collapsed to the floor unconscious. I’d knocked him out with one punch, and it felt fucking amazing. He’d collapsed in the doorway but I was nowhere near done. Hell, this wasn’t even the end of round one.
I could have picked him up easily but I didn’t want to touch him any more than was necessary to cause him some serious pain. So I grabbed him by the back of the collar and pulled him through the corridor. When I reached the living room, I dropped him, letting his head hit the carpeted floor with an audible thud. As I turned to head back to the front door, it closed gently and in walked Kieran. Sitting himself down on the sofa, he waited for my cue.
“Tommy and Liam?” I asked him.
“Keeping watch,” he murmured. Frank started to come around, and I willed it so I could knock him out again. I wanted to keep doing it until his head was so fucked up he didn’t even know his own name. When he came to, the fucker had the audacity to look up at me and laugh.
“This is priceless,” he joked. “After this, you’ll be looking at a stretch behind bars, and as far as Emily is concerned, I’ll make you feel like a distant memory.”
“You don’t get to fucking say her name. Not to me. Not ever,” I warned him, giving him a swift kick to the ribs, which made him wheeze and cough. “What’s wrong, old man?” I barked at him. “Not so much fun when you’re on the other end of the boot, is it?”
“Fuck you,” he wheezed, dragging himself up onto the seat. I let him but only because it put his face at fist height.
“Fuck me?” I shouted at him. “One punch and a kick to the gut is my way of slow dancing up to the arse kicking I’m about to deliver. When I’m fucking finished with you, your own mother won’t even recognize your fuck-ugly face.” The fucker smiled at me, and without hesitation, I punched him in the face again. Blood streamed from his nose and a cut at the corner of his eye, and he spat more blood onto the floor, not caring that it was his own fucking carpet he was messing up.
“What made you think you had the right to go anywhere near her?” I asked, punching him again.
“You don’t touch her, you don’t even think about her, or I will fucking end you!”
“Do you know what she sees in you? Absolutely nothing. I gave her a lesson she didn’t like, and she ran straight into the arms of the first boy she came across. You knew, from the minute you saw her, she was out of your league, and you’ve done nothing but try and drag her down to your level ever since.”
I hit him in the ribs, winding him enough to shut him up. I hit him for being right. I never was good enough for Sunshine, and maybe I was on borrowed time, but he was wrong about her not seeing anything in me. Her love for me was imprinted in every single cell of my body. I’d give anything to keep her safe and happy. I’d leave this life knowing what it feels like to belong to another person. To belong to her.
“What is this sick, fucking obsession you have with her?” Kieran asked, finally breaking his silence.
“You know nothing about my family,” he snarled.
“Well, she certainly ain’t your fucking daughter, so what is she to you?” Kieran shouted. He was losing his shit as much as I was. Em was my girl but she was near enough his sister.
“She’s mine!” Frank screamed. “She’s been mine since she was nine years old. I waited all this time, and now she’s coming back where she belongs.”
“What did you just say?” I asked him.
“Don’t look at me like that! I never fucking touched her. Marrying her whiney, miserable bitch of a mother was the only way to keep Emily close, make sure she was safe.”
“But you beat her black and fucking blue. You raped her!” I yelled at him.
“I kept her good and pure. Without my lessons, she would have run wild. Everything I did, I did for her. And I didn’t rape her. She wanted it! She wanted it so bad. Every day she did things to show me how much she wanted me to touch her. Always trying to tempt me, and I held out. I resisted her until she was almost eighteen. After that, she’d be an adult. I could have gotten rid of her mother, and it would have just been the two of us. Everything would have been fine. It was fine until you got your grubby little paws on her.”
“You’re a filthy fucking pedophile!” Kier shouted at him.
“I never touched her when she was a kid!” he defended himself.
“The fact that you even looked at a nine-year-old that way, that you made plans to involve yourself in her life, whether you touched her or not that makes you a pedophile,” Kieran threw back at him.
But Frank just smiled, and I knew then why Em had been so scared. Frank would just keep going and going until he had Em again. This fixation would never end. Leaving him there, I went into a couple rooms before I found the kitchen. After rummaging through a few drawers, I found what I was looking for. The kitchen knife in my hand was probably clumsier and less sophisticated than the one he’d used on Em, but I bet the pain would still feel the same. I imagined Em as a little girl standing in this kitchen, never feeling safe. Always afraid. I’d tear this fucking world apart to take that pain away from her but I couldn’t, and it was all this sick fuck’s fault.
He laughed as I walked back into the room with it in my hand. “You haven’t got the balls to stab me,” he taunted.
“You just keep talking,” I told him.
“And even if you did, I’d die a happy man knowing that you won’t get her anyway. You’re too fuckin’ stupid to get away with murder. Emily is mine. You’re going to rot in prison with your own kind, and she’ll be with me and under me long before you even get to trial. By the time you get out I might even have a kid in her belly—” He didn’t get to finish that sentence before I had the knife to his throat.
“Con, no!” Kieran called out. “We’ll take her and go back to Ireland or to train in America. Anywhere away from here and him.”
If I’d carried on punching Frank, I’d probably have killed him by now. My mistake was in getting the knife. It wasn’t comfortable in my hand. I was weapon enough. I’d never needed anything else.
“No. Fucking. Balls,” he taunted me when I paused.
“O’Connell, don’t. Please, baby, that’s enough. Come home now.” I swear to God I could hear Em’s voice as loud and as clear as if she was right here with me. For a second, just one second, I caught the faint smell of vanilla. It was enough to make me think of what she’d say if she was here now. I wanted to end his life so fucking badly. Not because I wanted the stain of his passing on my soul, but to give Em peace. Maybe the first peace she’d had since she was nine years old.
But I’d be taking away her future. Our future. Our home, our children, all those plans we made together would all be gone the minute I slit his throat. I didn’t want that for her or me. Our future was more important than her past.
If she was here right now, she’d hold my face, look at me with those beautiful eyes, and tell me she didn’t want this. I’d fought so hard to get here, to win her heart when all the odds were stacked against us. I wasn’t blowing it now. She needed a better man, so I’d be a better man.
“We ain’t going to Ireland or to America. We’re staying in Canning Town, and I suggest you keep your arse this side of the bridge and a long way from London. I’m assuming though, that at some point, you’ll decide that stupidity overrules reason, and you’ll come looking for her again. When that happens, we’ll be waiting, and Em won’t be alone. You won’t be reporting our little ‘visit’ to the police because if you do, we’ll be reporting your altercation at the university. I’m sure the university campus will have footage of you on camera. We’ll get a restraining order against you and then document you breaking it time and time again until the courts start taking this a little more seriously. How long before this shit bleeds into your job and you lose that? Then what? Your house, your car? How long you wanna keep playing this game for?”
“You have no fucking clue who you’re dealing with! A few quid to the right police contact and that security footage goes the same way as the rape kit.”
“How could you possibly have anything to do with the rape kit?” Kieran asked.
“The kid who arrested me was a newbie. They’re all gung-ho, but know hardly anything about evidence collection or procedure. All I needed to do was have a word with a few good friends at the station, grease a few palms, and one of them calls him and asks him to be messenger for the rape kit. Stupid kid thinks he’s helping out, and as soon as he touches that box, the case is dead.”
“Sooner or later, those contacts will run dry,” I warned him.
“You have no idea how far my reach goes. By the time I retire from that piece of shit job, Emily and I will be set for life.”
“You weaselly little fucker. What scam have you and your dirty copper friends got going then?” Kieran asked him.
“It doesn’t matter, Kier,” I told him standing up. “This guy’s done. Whoever he’s working with ain’t got no fucking loyalty if they can be bought. They’ll sell out sooner or later, and when that day comes, Frank, you’re history,” I told him.
“You have no idea what loyalty is. Your own family sold you out for peanuts.” The smug smirk on his fuck-ugly, bloodied face made me want to smack the piece of shit again but I held back, letting him say his piece. My family was solid. There’s not a single one of my brothers who could be bought. I didn’t have to ask him what he was talking about before Kieran muttered “Sylvia” to himself.
“So the penny drops,” Frank said sarcastically. “Took me all of five minutes to realize how useful she could be. I walked into the arena the night I came for Emily and offered her fifty quid to separate dipshit over here from her. Fifty quid and she was all alone. So don’t preach to me. There isn’t a drop of blood in that filthy, inked-up body of yours that’s faithful. All the more reason she belongs with me. Twelve years I’ve been waiting for her. That’s devotion.”
I waited for the stab of pain that came with Ma’s betrayal but there was none. There wasn’t even fucking surprise. “Sylvia ain’t family,” I told him.
“I give this knife to Kieran and ask him to gut you, tell him this is what our family needs—he’d do it. Just like I would for him. There’s no blood or money between any of us. There’s just loyalty. That’s what makes us family. And our family is a fucking army. You ain’t getting to a single one of us without the whole fucker army following. You think about that next time you decide to pay us a visit.”
I handed the knife to Kieran. “Find something to clean the prints off this and stick it in the second drawer down in the kitchen. Best wipe the prints off the drawer handles too.”
“Your prints are all over this place,” he told me.
“I can explain away all the prints except the knife and the drawer.” Kieran nodded and went off to do as I asked.
“This isn’t over,” Frank told me with a sneer.
“The fuck it ain’t,” I told him. “You come after Em or any other member of my family, and I’ll be waiting.” Just for good measure, I threw him a right jab to the face and knocked the fucker back out.
“We done here?” Kier asked me.
“We’re done,” I answered. As we walked to the front door, Em’s mum hovered in the doorway of one of the rooms, sporting a killer black eye.
“Did you kill him?” she asked me quietly, her head bent low. I waited until she looked me in the eyes.
“No, I didn’t. But let me tell you this. You’ve fucked me and my wife over for the last time. You betrayed her, and there ain’t nothing worse than being betrayed by someone you love. You tore a hole in her heart that can’t ever be fixed. Now you need to leave her alone so I can try.” She nodded her head solemnly.
There was nothing more to say. Kieran walked through the front door, and I followed, closing it behind me. The rain hammered down harder than I’d ever seen it. In seconds, we were soaked, but I stood there taking a moment to let it cleanse me of Frank’s stench. As the rain washed away the shit of my past, I felt redemption.
“Not that I want to interrupt, because I can see you’re having a moment there, but can we go home, please? ’Cause I’m freezing my feckin’ arse off out here, and by my reckoning, you’ve got a fair amount of making up to do with your woman,” Kieran informed me.
“Fine,” I said with a sigh. “Don’t get your knickers in a knot. God forbid you’d have to ride home in wet underwear.” He rolled his eyes and jogged over to the truck.
“Kier, thanks for having my back,” I said to him, and he gave me his usual happy smile.
“Anytime, fuck nuts. Now come on. I really am freezing my bollocks off.”
We climbed into the truck and brought Liam and Tommy up to speed about what went down as we put Wales in the rearview mirror. I didn’t look back once. The past was behind me, and all I cared about now was the future.