I wipe a bead of sweat from my forehead before it rolls into my eyes making them sting even more. It’s only early morning but already the July sun is beating down on us, and chopping up a dead body with an axe isn’t as easy as it sounds.
“Fuck!” Shane hisses as a splatter of congealed flesh and blood hits his t-shirt.
I grin at him. “I told you to take that off.” I look down at my bare chest which is covered in blood too.
“All right, Rambo. Let’s just get this over with so we can get cleaned up and back to the house.”
“There are showers at this new club we got, yeah?”
“Yep,” he nod as he wipes his brow and stands straight, wielding an axe in his hand like the grim reaper wields his scythe.
With a final blow, I chop through the last part of Paul’s leg, detaching his foot, and he lies before us in over half a dozen pieces. Now all we have to do is feed them to Farmer Murphy’s feral pigs. Jack Murphy has been offering this service for as long as I can remember. There is nothing his pigs won’t eat. He charges a small fortune for the privilege, however, out of respect for our dearly departed father, who was his best customer over the years, he has given us this one for free. He asks no questions and has no idea it’s our uncle his swine are about to feast on.
As soon as we got Paul’s body out of his house, Shane torched the place. Nothing but bad memories there. Then we called Jack Murphy in the middle of the night and drove straight here. We have both been focused on getting the job done as quickly as possible and have barely spoken other than to discuss the task at hand. Both of us are avoiding any mention of the two huge issues that are waiting for us when we get back to the house. The fact that Jessie snuck out of the goddamn house and could have gotten herself killed, and our uncle claiming to be Liam and Mikey’s father. But as we get closer to the finish line, the air becomes thicker with the tension of all the things we’re not saying.
“It’s a pity he wasn’t alive while we were doing this,” Shane snarls as he tosses our uncle’s arm into the pig pen.
“Sure is. Cunt!” I snarl as I toss his foot in after. Smelling the fresh meat, the pigs squeal up a frenzy and we throw in the remainder of Paul’s body parts, saving the head for the last. Shane picks it up by his hair, and then kicks it into the pen like a football.
After showering in The Peacock Club and changing into fresh clothes, we are on our way back to the house. Back to Jessie and our brothers. Shane is driving, anything to keep his mind occupied, but I can’t bear the tension any longer.
“So. when did you find out about the twins?”
“About a week before Alexei took Liam.”
I understand why it was hard to tell the twins, especially if he didn’t even know if it was true, but it hurts that he didn’t trust me. We have never kept any secrets from each other, at least that’s what I’d always thought. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“How could I, Con? I hated knowing. Why the fuck would I want to put you in that position, too?”
“You should have told us all,” I say with a sigh.
“You think?” he snaps.
I turn and look out of the window.
“I know I should,” he says. “I wish I had, Con. But I had no fucking idea things were going to pan out like this. If I had…”
“Yeah, well nobody could have predicted this.”
“I should have,” he sighs deeply.
“What? How?” I frown at him.
“It all makes perfect sense now. We knew Paul was a hired gun.”
“Yeah, but there are hundreds of them all over the world. The Wolf wasn’t just any hired gun.”
“We didn’t hear from him for years and then he resurfaces just as Jessie came into our lives?”
“Yeah, because his cunt of a brother was dying? At least that’s what he said, and maybe it was because of that? You couldn’t have known this was going to happen, Shane.”
“So why do I feel like I’ve let everyone down?” he says and I hear the words sticking in his throat. He puts so much fucking pressure on himself.
“You haven’t let anyone down.”
He doesn’t respond, he simply stares at the road ahead.
“You think it’s true? Was he their dad?”
“He told Em it was true. He saw her a few days ago and he told her all about it. How he and our mom had been in love. How he wanted us all to go on the run together after the twins were born, but she wouldn’t put us kids at risk and have us living on the run. Then when she died, apparently he wanted to take the twins and leave but Patrick wouldn’t have it. He almost killed him and that was when Paul left and didn’t look back.”
“Fuck!” I breathe as I lean back in my seat. That is some information to digest. Our mom and our Uncle Paul? It doesn’t make sense to me. She was terrified of our dad, she would never have risked her own life, never mind our lives, like that.
“You think his version of events is true?”
“Who knows what that sadistic prick was capable of? But that’s what he told Em and that’s what I’ll be telling the twins,” he frowns at me.
“Of course,” I agree. There’s an alternative version of events that I can’t help thinking about because we both know our uncle doesn’t particularly care about consent, but perhaps he was a different man back then? Maybe he really did love our mom? She was so excited when she found out she was having twin boys; I can’t imagine that they were conceived in anything other than love.
“And what about our little runaway?” I ask.
“I feel like putting her on a leash,” he snaps.
“Now that could be very interesting,” I chuckle and I see the hint of a smile on his face.
“She will give me a heart attack one of these days.”
“Yup. She did get the job done though.”
“She could have gotten herself killed,” he sighs.
“I know. But she didn’t. She’s safe. We’re all okay and the Wolf is gone.”
“If something had happened to her though…”
“But it didn’t, and you’ll drive yourself crazy thinking otherwise. You’ll also drive yourself crazy trying to control Jessie Ryan. She’s a law unto herself and the sooner we realize that I think the easier our lives will be.”
“What are you saying?” he frowns at me.
“I’m saying that just because she’s submissive when it comes to fucking, it doesn’t mean that goes for any other area of her life. She’s one of the most stubbornly independent people I’ve ever met. She looked after herself for ten years. She survived things most people wouldn’t.”
“I know that, but that’s why I want to protect her from anything like that again.”
“I do too, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t protect her. Of course we should, but she doesn’t need our protection and that’s the difference, Shane.”
“You’re losing me, Con,” he frowns.
“Us thinking we know best for her ended up with her sneaking out in the middle of the night and almost getting us all killed. I think you were right earlier, we should have listened to her ideas instead of shutting her down. That’s all I’m saying. If it was Liam or Mikey we would have listened, wouldn’t we? Even if we thought it was completely stupid we would have heard them out and probably gone along with it too.”
“Yeah,” Shane admits.
“So, I’m saying is that Jessie is as strong as any of us, and we can say she’s one of us, but we don’t always treat her like that, is all.”
Shane is quiet for a few moments, digesting what I’ve just said. It’s hard for me to admit too. “But if I didn’t have different rules for her, when would I get to punish her for breaking them?” he asks with a wicked grin on his face.
“Oh, I’m not saying she’s not going to get her ass spanked for last night or that we shouldn’t impose all kinds of rules for her to break,” I grin back. “But the big stuff? We need to let her have a voice so she doesn’t pull any stupid shit like she did last night.”
“You’re probably right,” he admits with a sigh. “What the fuck am I gonna say to them all, Con?”
“The truth, bro. That’s all they need.”
