Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 93929 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93929 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
I step forward, heart racing. I roughly rip my shirt up and show him the scars on my side. I point to one, an ugly jagged mark. I feel Seamus and Cormac staring. “Shane did this. Stabbed me with a pencil. I still have some graphite in there somewhere. You ever wonder where I got all these fucking scars? You know their names. Shane, Redmond, Dermot, Malachy, and Eamon. That’s why I look like this.”
Declan's jaw is tight. “They were assholes. They beat you up—”
“They viciously abused me.” I snarl the words at him, fed up with hiding it. “You ever wonder why I never went swimming without a shirt on when we were kids? I was hiding all this.” I take my top off and throw it aside. I doubt my brothers have ever seen me without something covering my skin before. All these ugly scars. I let them get a good look.
Declan takes me in. His jaw works slightly. “That was all them?” he asks after a long few seconds of scrutiny. “Why didn’t you tell us before?”
“Mom knows. Dad did too. But the Flanagans are important, right? They decided it was nothing, I was exaggerating, and they swept it under the rug. By the time I got old enough to know what happened to me was beyond fucked, I’d already gotten used to hiding it. Shame kept my mouth shut for years, but anger kept me living.”
Seamus speaks up. “Dad wouldn’t do that.”
“Bullshit.” I turn to stare at him. His face is red with anger. “Come on. You think Declan would’ve done anything different? Eamon Flanagan’s important now, but he was even bigger back then.”
“I wouldn’t have.” Declan’s voice is quiet but there’s a hard undercurrent.
“They beat me. They stabbed me, tortured me, sliced me, cut me, and laughed in my fucking face. Mom and Dad kept sending me out to that hell every summer, and they knew what was happening, they just didn’t want to admit it. And every nightmare I went through, Caroline dealt with her whole life.”
She’s crying now. Quietly, but her shoulders are shaking. She nods, her face in her hands. “It’s true,” she manages to say, and I squeeze her shoulder to let her know that’s more than enough.
Declan sits back in stunned silence. I should’ve done this a long time ago. This secret’s been killing me for years. I’ve been hiding it with smirks and laughter since I was a kid. That’s all I ever knew how to do.
But now I have Caroline. She suffered even worse than I did, and if I can’t face what happened to me for myself, at least I can do it for her.
“I believe you,” Declan says, face back to its grim cast. “But you still can’t go around murdering Flanagans.”
“They deserve fucking worse,” Seamus says sharply, his voice trembling with barely restrained anger. “Are you kidding me right now, Dec? We should burn them to the fucking ground.”
“He’s right.” Cormac sounds detached, which is a bad sign. For the Flanagans anyway. “They need to die.”
Hope blooms in my chest. I’ve always loved my brothers, but there’s a distance between us. This secret I’ve carried all my life eats at me and makes me feel like an outsider, like they can’t possibly see the real me. Now there’s a bright light, strong enough to disinfect my rotten past, and it feels good. My insides are all twisted up, but hearing Cormac and Seamus support me is one of the best moments of my life. It lights a fire inside my heart and makes me feel like I’m really a part of this family after all.
Declan leans forward. “No.”
“Fuck that,” Seamus snaps, surging forward. Cormac has to hold him back. “You fucking see him, right? You see the scars? If I knew—bro, if I had known—” His voice cracks. Strong, proud, vicious Seamus. It kills me, hearing the raw emotion in his tone.
I go to him. I take his hand in a strong grip and pull him into a tight hug. He squeezes back hard and takes a deep breath. “If I had known—” he says again but still can’t get it all out.
“I know, bro, I know.” I step back, taking a shaky breath. Caroline’s still crying, but she’s calming now. Cormac’s face is ice like always, but there’s an edge to him, and he’s staring right at Declan.
“No,” Declan says again.
“Why not?” Cormac asks simply.
“Look at this from the perspective of the other families.” He grimaces when Seamus lets out an ugly, rage-filled laugh, but presses on. “This is my fucking job, you assholes. You three get to stand there and be all pissed, but I have to think about this. And the ugly truth is we can’t just burn the Flanagans to the ground for personal shit they did years ago. We just can’t. The other families will be absolutely livid and they’ll start thinking we might do it to them. The second they start to wonder if life is better somewhere else is the second we start losing power. It can’t happen. The answer is no, we can’t just wipe them out.”