Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 92629 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92629 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
“Good, good. We need to plan our next attack.”
Now was the time to speak up. If he stayed silent and someone ended up killed, he’d never forgive himself. “We should reconsider this.”
His old man turned rheumy eyes in his direction. “Your brother is dead, and you want to let his killer go free?”
“Of course not.” Even though he’d been considering doing just that if it turned out one of the girls really had been the one to kill Brendan. But he couldn’t say that to his father, not when the man had praised his oldest son’s initiative in some of his more creative ways of bringing in money. “But the O’Malleys and Sheridans didn’t kill him.”
“How can you be sure of that? Those bastards have been plotting against us from the very beginning. I’ll see them all hang even if I have to sacrifice everything I busted my ass for to do it.”
The truth hit him, leaving him so cold, it was a wonder his breath didn’t ghost the air in front of him. His old man was willing to get them all killed to fulfill some paranoid agenda he’d been nursing for fucking ages. James clasped his hands behind his back, wishing he could will them not to shake. There had to be some way to do damage control, though hell if he could find it right now. He had to, though.
The alternative was too horrible to even consider.
Callie pulled into the giant garage and waited for the door to shut behind her before she climbed out of the Escalade. It was unlikely someone would try to hurt her here, but old habits died hard. She hoped Teague’s call to James would work, but she couldn’t dismiss the Halloran threat until there was an official truce called. If James was anything like his older brother…
She shuddered. Best not to think about that, because if he was, then this whole thing was a lost cause. As things stood, she still wasn’t sure she trusted Teague. It was entirely possible he was playing her—probable, even. She certainly hadn’t told him everything over dinner, and she’d be a fool to think he hadn’t kept back more than he’d divulged. Only time would tell if she could trust him.
And time was the one thing she didn’t have.
Movement beside the car made her jump, but she took a deep breath when she recognized John. He’d been with her father since she was too young to remember otherwise and, as a result, she recognized the tightness of his jaw and the disapproval written across his face. He opened the door. “Miss Sheridan, your father is worried.” He gave her a significant look. “He expected you home an hour ago.”
Which she would have been if she’d come straight here after walking out of the restaurant with Teague. Apparently Micah hadn’t seen fit to report back exactly how long she and her fiancé had been in the backseat of the SUV. That shouldn’t matter, though. What mattered was that John was treating her as if she were still sixteen and he’d caught her sneaking out with her high school friends to meet some boys. Callie lifted her chin. “I had something to take care of.”
Something that her body was still humming with. That tangle of emotions was too messy to deal with right now, so she pushed it aside in favor of focusing on the problem at hand. “Is something happening?”
Instead of answering, he stepped back and let her pass. “If you’ll come with me.”
It was always like this with the old-timers who’d watched her grow up. The younger guys were mostly willing to follow whichever Sheridan was in charge, as long as they proved they were willing to do what it took to keep the family in power. They, at least, were willing to sit back and hold off judgment until Callie either sank or swam.
But the men who’d known her long enough to watch her play dolls and run crying to her father whenever Ronan’s playing got too rough and she ended up hurt? They couldn’t seem to acknowledge the fact that she was no longer ten, and was more than capable of leading if they’d just give her the chance.
She was the one who’d taken Moira’s, a floundering restaurant they used as a way to import some of the more sensitive illegal materials, and turned it into a raging success in its own right. At first Papa hadn’t been thrilled with the increase in clientele, but even he had to admit that the more people they had coming and going, the easier it was to cover up their people coming and going. Even better, with the expansion, it was now bringing in a good amount of clean money.
Riding high on that success, Callie had just turned her attention to another restaurant they owned when Ronan had died and she’d been thrust into the darker side of what being a Sheridan meant. She didn’t particularly like dealing with everything that it entailed, but she was more than qualified to do it.