Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 132791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 664(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 664(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
In lieu of a fully functioning father, Tiernan leaned into his relationship with his brother. Adopted his Irishness and carved himself into something so eerily similar, no one could have guessed the brothers grew up in different countries.
He loved Fintan something fierce. A love that was different than the one he had for Tierney. With Tierney, it was all laced with worry, and anxiety, and a cloying desperation to protect her. His love for Fintan was more free. He took, not just gave.
Unlike Tiernan, his twin sister couldn’t find it in herself to forgive her surviving relatives for what happened.
She reinvented herself as a New York siren. Her accent was American, all nasal vowels and laid-back intonation. Her clothes were Italian and French. She was cordial with Fintan and Tyrone, but kept her loyalty to Tiernan only. She blossomed like a rare flower tangled in ferns. A completely different breed from the men in her family. Flirtatious, careless, and extravagant. Disarming in a way only a woman who tasted the wrath of a lethal weapon could be.
They all worried about her, but decided not to poke the wounds she concealed so expertly with makeup and designer clothes.
They let her pretend everything was okay, hoping one day she, herself, would believe it.
_______
Over the next three years, Tiernan had slowly discovered the extent of his own trauma. It was like unmooring a festering, infectious wound after a long journey. Getting the first good look at the pus and the clotted blood, the gore and the slithering maggots.
He didn’t like girls. No, scratch that. He detested the entire human race. Could only enjoy women the way Igor had taught him to—from behind, in the arse, when they were hurting. He had no interest in what wasn’t offered for a wad of cash. And he never formed any relationships deep enough to allow intimate questions.
He was an excellent soldier, sniper, negotiator, and executor; everything Fintan lacked in discipline and character, he made up for in spades. But he was cold, and growing colder by the day.
And he couldn’t, for the life of him, find a good reason to stay alive.
The only thing he felt was pain. It was everywhere, reminding him he was still breathing.
Breathing was becoming a chore, and he had quite enough of those already.
He was an eighteen-year-old who never smiled, never laughed, never took joy in alcohol, music, food, a passionate fuck.
He kept waiting for happiness and relief that never came, until one day, he stopped waiting.
The decision to take his own life was a pragmatic one, devoid of depression or big, morbid feelings.
Tiernan didn’t like pointless things, and he found his own life lacking in meaning. Save for Tierney, no one truly wanted or needed him. And recently, Tierney didn’t look like she needed anyone much.
As with everything else, he considered the different forms of suicide and landed on a bullet to the head. Drowning was unnecessarily cruel, and flinging oneself off a cliff was too unreliable. He wasn’t in the mood to drool in a hospital for the next fifty years in a vegetative state. He just wanted an out.
He chose a .45 caliber and drove to Fermanagh’s, considerate enough not to make a mess at Da’s new mansion. Went up to the steep rooftop of the converted church with a bottle of whiskey. Drank himself into a deeper state of numbness.
It was dark, raining, and sufficiently miserable. A good night to take your own life.
Wrenching the gun from his holster, he pressed it to his temple.
His index began to push the trigger when he heard a familiar voice.
“Don’t you fucking dare, lad.”
Fintan.
His older brother staggered across the steep roof, looking fifty shades of ossified. Fintan yanked the gun from Tiernan’s temple, slapping it away. It skidded across the roof, tumbling into the gutter.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Relieving myself of my oxygen duty, until you came along.”
Fintan tugged him up by the collar of his shirt. He wasn’t much of a fighter, or a mobster, but he was built like a Callaghan. Tall, broad, muscular, inherently strong. Tiernan whirled around to glare at him.
“You really that unhappy?” Fintan’s face crinkled softly.
“I’m really that unbothered,” Tiernan corrected on a snarl. “Nothing means anything.”
“Bullshit.”
Fintan snatched the back of his baby brother’s neck, plastering their foreheads together. He was panting hard. So was Tiernan, he now realized.
“You have everything to live for, brother.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Revenge, for one thing. You cannot let Igor win.”
Oh, but he’d already won. He shaped Tiernan into the monster he, himself, couldn’t stand.
Tiernan said nothing. Fintan clasped his cheeks, growling into his face. “You can’t die before you kill him, because it’s your duty not only to avenge your own pain, but Tierney’s and Mam’s, too. Da’s honor. You’re the only one who can take him.”
Fintan was right.