I’m trembling with terror. That sounds like being buried alive. My knees go weak and I want to scream. I know what happens to me in that office when I disobey.
But Finn speaks up. “We’ll go. No more fighting. Just don’t hurt Caroline.”
“Smart man.”
Dad’s smile is wicked and proud. He jerks the gun. “Step inside. Let’s go straighten this out.”
38
CAROLINE
Mom’s body is covered with a bloody sheet. She’s lying in the corner like a piece of furniture. The room is still a horrible mess and it’s starting to smell bad. Dad stands behind his desk, opens a bottle of whiskey, and drinks straight from the neck.
This is all wrong. This can’t be happening. I’m so scared I could scream, and the only thing keeping me from collapsing into a blubbering, horrified mess is Finn. He seems totally at ease like he’s sure this is going to work out, but I can’t see it. I don’t know how. There’s no way this ends anywhere but a coffin for both of us.
And the part I hate the most is Dad and Mal will get away with it.
That’s the fucked-up thing in all this. Men like them are protected by their power. The people who can stop them are usually too invested in their schemes to really do anything. It’s a sick, fucked-up cycle, where abusive monsters continue preying on innocents and everyone enables them by turning a blind eye. Profit’s more important than anything else. With us dead, Declan will find a way to make peace, and maybe Cormac andSeamus will be unhappy about it, but they’ll fall in line too. Why rock the boat? Why make a scene?
That’s always been my life. No matter what, evil prevails, because evil isn’t always a blood-covered room and a murdered woman. Sometimes evil is a brother pretending to be pragmatic, or a lazy cop too tired to follow a lead, or a bunch of scared nobodies pretending like nothing’s wrong. Evil is the car that refuses to pull over when there’s a bad accident right next to them. Evil is doing nothing. Evil is so damn easy, and that’s the problem.
Dad wipes his lips. He looks over at Mom’s shrouded body and sighs.
“Your mother was a good woman. She understood her place. She didn’t always love the choices I made, but she knew the family was more important than any one individual. Your mother was strong.”
“My mom was a psychologically damaged abuse victim who couldn’t admit the truth staring her in the face.”
Dad’s face twitches. “You’re wrong. My wife was a good woman. I’m going to miss her deeply, but this is what happens when you raise strong boys. Things sometimes break.”
“Everything around you breaks.” I don’t know why I’m talking. I learned the hard way many, many times to keep my mouth shut, but I’m done. We’re at the end anyway. I might as well stand up to him now in this place under the shadow of my husband with my dead mother’s corpse still cooling nearby.
“Careful, Caroline,” he warns.
But I ignore him. “That’s all you do. That’s what you taught your sons to do too. Shane was a violent monster. Redmond was a self-righteous asshole. Dermot was so in his own world he couldn’t even imagine anyone else hurting. And don’t get me started on Malachy.”
“Go ahead, get started,” Mal says, still aiming the gun at Finn’s head. “I’d happily blow your husband’s brains out.”
“I see you both. I see all of you. You’re animals. You’re insects. You hurt other people and don’t care about it. You hurt me, my whole life?—”
“You fucking deserved it!” Dad’s roar is a shock. I twitch back on pure instinct as he comes around the desk. He throws the bottle against the wall and it shatters, whiskey spraying all over. “You stupid, selfish little cunt. God, I wish I drowned you when you were a baby. I wanted to, did you know that? You screamed and cried so much I told your mother to just put a pillow over your face until you shut the fuck up. What’s the use of a daughter anyway? And now looking back, I was right.”
“That’s always been your problem, right, Dad? You’re just too weak.”
His fist snaps back. There’s a second, dangling in the air, where I think he won’t do it. But then he slams it forward and smashes his fist into my face.
My chin jerks up and my head cracks back. I groan as lights flash in my vision. The pain hits me like a wave and I taste blood where I bit my lower lip.
Finn roars in anger. A gun goes off. I scream, throwing my hands up, reaching for my husband?—
But the world tips sideways.
The noise is incredible. It’s so loud my eardrums nearly break. The windows shatter inward and books fly off the shelves. I’m thrown off my chair and to the floor, hitting hard against my shoulder, rolling to a stop against the desk. The house is shaking, lurching, and there’s another blast like a door slamming shut. More paper scatters all over.
Finn’s got my father by the throat, but a third blast makes both of them topple over. Malachy’s screaming something, and I realize he’s scrambling around madly for his gun, searching through the mess on the floor. I sit up, dizzy and confused?—
And spot the pistol a few feet away.
I stare at it. Mal finds it the same moment I do.