Page 21 of Carnal Wagers

“You don’t know the half of it.”

I pulled the trigger a third time at his shoulder. Click. A fourth time at his arm. A fifth at his leg. Bang, the shot rang out. He screamed bloody murder and squeezed his fingers over the rush of blood out of the new hole in his thigh. Smiles threw me a cloth. I wiped down the gun and tossed it in the kid’s lap, who keened in pain.

“Pirobo malparido, gonorrea triple hijueputa, you shot me.”

“Let that be a lesson to you. Respect is earned, not given. Your uncle should’ve taught you that.”

I got up to my feet and dusted off my legs. The shadow man still hadn’t moved an inch except to light a cigarette that flared in the dim lighting.

“If you don’t want him dead, tie off his leg. Or let him bleed out. Not my problem.”

The man huffed a laugh. “See you in three months.”

I would rather not, but such was life.

Without a word, we filed out the door and back to the car. I settled against the backrest as each took their seats, the car wobbling with the movement, and stared out the bulletproof window at everything and nothing at all. Liam gabbled up a storm, rattling away in his corner like an old boiler.

With three and a half more years of these drop-offs, we’d finally be free of my father’s debt. It nearly put my father, my brothers, our men, and me in our graves back then. We’d almost lost everything to Angus O’Leary’s coping mechanism: our lives, our businesses, our fucking integrity, and our hard-earned respect. For six and a half years, I’d been rebuilding it all by dipping our toes into a bit of everything until we’d become the jack-of-all-trades in the Greater Boston area. Clubs, bars, pharmaceuticals, transportation services, forgeries, utility services, car and parts, etc. Think of a business sector, and the O’Learys owned a piece of the pie, all over the table.

Diversifying had been amusing, a way of adding new flavor to a sterile environment. Now that had become mundane too. There wasn’t much novelty to look forward to. It was always the same tasks, the same products, just more of it.

“Oi, you listening to me?” Liam snapped his fingers in front of my face, and I swatted them away. “Finally. There you are. Thought you needed a new set of batteries.”

I grunted with a roll of my eyes.

“You want to tell me what the bloody hell that was? A gun to your head, Killy. That’s not acting the maggot. Tell me you knew where the bullet was when you pulled that trigger?”

I glared at him deadpan.

He tugged on his scraggly hair. “Jaysus. Do Brody and I need to be worried about you again?”

“Oh, don’t go doing my head in.”

“Cillian, I’m serious.”

I waved him off. As long as Brody and Liam lived, there was no point in worrying. If they died…well, who the fuck cared at that point?

“It was nothing. It’s always fecking nothing in our lives anyhow.”

“What? Getting shot at not good enough for you anymore?”

“You ever wonder where this is going? The debt’s almost paid. And then what?”

“We keep making money.”

“That all?”

He shrugged. “I happen to like money. And pussy. Unattached pussy.”

“There’s more to life than money.”

“Not for us,” he stated plainly, as if that reality didn’t burn. The O’Leary brothers were all cursed to remain bachelors for the rest of our lives. No wives. No lovers. No kids. No legacy beyond this pit.

My phone buzzed. I swiped away the notification from the concierge of my apartment building. Considering the date, it was most likely the delivery of a new parcel of divorce papers from the De Villiers by twenty-four-hour courier. In the next hour, I would also receive an email with the same attachment. Same as it was every two weeks. If I knew anything about the woman, it was that she was persistent and wasted a lot of paper.

I turned back to the window, catching sight of a motorcycle dealership with dirt bikes on display. Now that was exactly the type of high I needed, and there were a few off-road trails not far out of the city.

“Pull over, Paulie. Drop me off here.”