Page 91 of The Chief
“If you expect me to protect both you and your sister, I need to know everything.” Finnan’s words pushed me past my indecision. I needed him at this moment.
“Almost ten years ago, I killed my stepfather in my sister’s room.” From under my lashes, I glanced in Finnan’s direction. His expression remained the same, but a spark of interest flashed in his green eyes.
“I killed him because he’d been abusing me for nearly seven years. I had gotten too old for him, so he’d started on my sister, Orla.”
“His own daughter?” Finnan asked, disgust in his voice.
“I woke up one night hearing her cries, and I knew what he was doing. I confronted him and beat him to death. Afterwards, I ran, and left my mam and sister behind. I went to Dundalk, where I met Grady. We started a relationship, and I trusted him with my secret. When he started abusing me, I ran again, this time moving to Galway. My new life was good until four years later, when my past caught up with me, and Grady told me to deliver the bullet or my sister would get hurt.”
“I know all this. Where does Owen come in?”
Sucking in a bracing breath, I told them the rest. “The Garda didn’t have any leads and no suspects. My sister and mother lied to them, and it gave me the chance to escape. But Owen became obsessed with the crime. He had the bat I used to kill my stepfather removed from evidence and kept it in a shrine. First, he tracked me down, then used Grady’s connection to me to bring me back to Dublin. He said I was his soul mate.”
I felt both men staring at me as I scratched at my bound hands. “The declaration of wardidn’tcome from the Fiach Clan.It came from Owen O’Mahony himself. He was attempting to create his own clan, to move away from his father’s control.”
“A new clan?” Finnan asked, sitting forward.
I finally looked up, staring into Keir’s eyes. He didn’t know all this. Didn’t know the level of obsession Owen had had with me. “That’s why he took Orla. To secure my compliance in his little coup. He sent me a message when we returned to the Sionnach Clan house, luring me to Naul Village where he was holed up.”
“That’s why nobody had seen you,” Keir said to himself.
I nodded. “Yes. I slipped out while you were busy making phone calls and Mila was asleep. I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave if you were there.”
“He could’ve killed you.”
“No, he wouldn’t have killed me,” I told Keir. “He needed me alive.”
“So, you went to get your sister, then what happened?” Finnan interjected, clearly annoyed about being left out of the conversation.
“I traded myself for Orla’s safety, then sent her back to Ballsbridge in the Rover. But I slipped my phone into the car so Keir would find her before she reached there. I wasn’t sure if Gael had been compromised too, or whether his son had gone rogue.”
“All right, so it’s now just you and Owen. What happened?”
“He took me upstairs…” I paused when I saw Keir physically recoil at the words. “You don’t have to hear this,” I whispered to him.
“Yes, I do,” he replied. “I want to know this shit, so it’s better you only have to say it once.”
After taking a shaky breath, I continued. “He took me upstairs, where he showed me two bedrooms. One was a replica of my own bedroom growing up, and the second was Orla’s bedroom the night I killed Brian.”
“Your stepfather,” Finnan clarified.
I nodded. “My stepfather. Owen had the bat propped up against the wall of my childhood bedroom. The same bat I’d used that night. He told me he wanted to fuck me in that room, but he wanted to know every single detail of what had happened that night too. It was getting him excited, but I refused him what he really wanted.”
Silence fell heavily on the room, but my attention was on Keir. I had no idea how he was taking this news—how he was processing it—or what he would do after.
“He was going to kill me,” Keir said softly, his eyes unfocused. He turned to me. “On our way out the door, you stopped him. You told him you’d give him what he wanted if he let me walk out of there unharmed.”
“Yes.”
“What did he want?”
Shrugging, I said only one word. “Submission.”
“He wanted you to fuck him?”
“Yes, but more than that, he wanted me to rule by his side. He wanted us to have children who he hoped would be as depraved as he was. Who had the same lust for murder and blood.” Even as I said the words, my stomach pitched. He had it all wrong, but hearing someone say aloud what I had believed for a very long time chipped away at my soul.
“And you cut off his dick,” Finnan summarized elegantly.
