Page 94 of Arranged Devotion
“Careful,” he warns. “I’ve had enough disrespect for one day.”
“Your family put the Whelans in this situation. Your family’s utter dysfunction caused all this god damn trouble. You started this war with your incompetence.”
“What the hell is this about?!”
“You know about Luke. Don’t pretend otherwise. That’s what Regan was doing here, right?”
He sits back as if punched. Some of the anger drains from his face as he raises the glass to his lips. “She wasn’t lying?”
“Why the fuck would she? God, you’re so arrogant, so broken that you can’t even listen to your own daughter.”
“What did my son do? Tell me what he did.”
“Your son isn’t the problem right now.” I stand beside his desk, looming over him. Martin Corrigan, a powerful titan in the city, a wealthy and influential man, looks old and shriveled beneath me. “You are, and now it’s time to learn where you stand.”
I grab him by the throat. He gags in shock and tries to hit me with the glass. I flinch back and he misses, spilling bourbon on the rug. I catch his wrist and pull it hard, twisting him up as I tear him from his chair and throw him to the floor. He hits with a dull thud.
I pick up his keyboard, rip the wire from the back, and smash it over his head.
He moans in pain. Red dribbles from a cut over his eyebrow. I hit him again with the shattered remains of the keyboard until the plastic is cracked and broken. I toss the shards aside. He’s curled up, arms trying desperately to cover his face. I peel them aside, kneel on his gut, and wrap my hand around his throat again.
It feels good, choking him. Martin Corrigan thrashes, but he’s not strong enough to get me off. I’ve done this before, kept my hands locked around a throat until the lights went out. I could do it again.
But I release him anyway.
He gasps for air, retching and coughing. From this perspective, he doesn’t seem so big. Really, he looks like nothing at all.
“The Whelans own you now,” I say it simply so he understands through the haze of his pain. I’m guessing his head’s dizzy andblood’s getting in his eyes. “That means I own you. When I tell you to bark, you’ll bark like a happy puppy. When I tell you to roll over, you’ll show your fucking belly and kick your legs when I give you a scratch. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he says, breathing hard.
“You forgot who we are. You forgot what we do. But now you remember. We are the Whelans. I will hurt you, again and again, if you don’t learn how to obey.”
“I’ll do what they say. I swear it.”
“That’s a good boy, Martin.”
I kick him hard in the ribs. He wheezes, clutching at himself. That wasn’t strictly necessary, but it did feel good.
“And one more thing. You’ll stay away from Regan. If she comes here to visit with her mother, you’ll ignore her. You’ll pretend like your daughter doesn’t exist. You’ll only speak when spoken to. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he hisses through clenched teeth. “Please, I’ll leave her alone.”
“If she tells me there’s a problem, I’ll come back.”
“I understand.”
“No, I doubt you do. A man like you has to learn a lesson more than once. But you’ll learn, I promise.”
I kick him again, this time with less force, more to remind him that he’s on the ground and I’m standing. He whimpers, bloodied and gasping for air, and he looks pathetic down there. He looks like what he is: an old man flailing to hold on to his power and failing as it all slips from his fingers like dirt.
I walk to the doorway and pause. “Martin? One more thing.”
“Please. Anything.”
“Your wife, Noreen? You’ll leave her alone too. If I speak to her and it seems like you took some of your frustrations out on her—“ I hold his eyes until he cringes away. “We’ll be in touch.”
I leave him there. The old man’s no use to me at the moment.
