Page 39 of Retribution

“Come on, now, Derry. You don’t trust me?”

Silence greets us as Derry stares at him, uneasy.

“Kimmy.” Finn checks for me in the crowd. “Come in with me. I know how much Derry loves looking at a pretty woman.”

“Women are only useful when they’re on their knees or bent over my desk.” Derry smirks as his focus travels along my body.

Finn’s eyes narrow. “It’s my understanding my brother warned you about speaking like that to her.” He cocks his head to the side, a puzzled expression on his face that I’m sure is fake. “Are you disrespecting my brother?”

Derry swallows. “No. No.” He enters the room and sits behind his desk. “Come in, Finn.” After a brief hesitation, Derry says, “Have a seat, Kim.”

I lower into the chair beside Finn, but the air is so tense in the room, I can’t relax. The door clicks closed behind us. Derry has five men around the back of him. This setup is very different from yesterday with Lorcan. Is it because Finn thinks Derry killed his father? Or is it something else?

“Lorcan was here yesterday.” Finn slides a knife and a block of wood out of his jacket pocket.

Derry eyes Finn warily, and then his attention flicks to me, accusing. “He was.”

Finn whittles away at the piece of wood, letting the chips fall to the ground as he takes his time continuing the conversation. “Your offer was shit.”

Swallowing, Derry sits up straighter and puts his forearms on the desk. “What do you care? He’s trying to get funds to go to war with you.”

“We’re not going to war.” Finn glances up. “If that’s not happening, then your shitty offer to him was actually a shitty offer to me.” He digs into the wood with the knife. Something is starting to take shape, but I can’t quite figure out what it is. “How do you think that makes me feel, Derry? To know you were fucking me over through my brother?”

A thin sheen of sweat appears across Derry’s forehead. “I didn’t know.”

Finn blows on his carving, and I realize what he’s doing. My lips quirk up, and I focus on the boxing photograph above Derry’s shoulder to avoid an outright smile.

“Until bullets start flying in the streets, assume that when you screw over my brother, you’re screwing over me. You got me, guy?”

It’s the first hint of an accent I’ve heard from Finn. His voice is dipped low, menacing.

Derry’s hand inches toward the edge of his desk.

“Your hand goes anywhere near your gun, and I’ll blow your head off.” Finn looks up at him, their gazes connecting.

Holding up his hands, Derry tilts back from the desk. The O’Malleys are too afraid of Finn to have killed anyone in the Donaghey family. It’s so clear to me. I can’t understand why he would even try to blame them.

Finn places the tombstone with the wordO’Malleycarved into it. “You’ll notice I didn’t put your name on it, Derry.” His flinty blue eyes pierce the men in the room. “’Cause when I come for you, it ain’t only you. It’s your whole family—guilty, innocent, doesn’t matter to me.”

Shoving back his seat, Derry says, “I know how you work.”

“Then I shouldn’t have needed to come remind you.”

“I thought I was dealing with Lorcan.”

Finn’s jaw tightens. “We’re family, me and Lorcan. Until one of us is dead, we’re a package deal.”

“Not sure Lorcan got that notice.”

Finn’s lips twist. “I’m working on it. You keep your own house in order and stay outta mine.” Tucking his knife back in his pocket, he rotates the tombstone on the desk and smirks. “Now, write up a contract that’s good to us, and we got a deal.”

Derry’s mouth flaps like a fish suffocating. “I—I—it was a deal for Lorcan.”

“Now it’s a deal for me and Lorcan. I’ll leave my Kimmy here to bring the paperwork back to the house. I got some other business to take care of around town.”

Inside, my heart tap dances. Thrusting my hands into my pockets, I brush them against the lining to get rid of the sheen of sweat that pops up. Lorcan warned me not to stay here alone. Suggesting I need support makes me appear weak to both Finn, who may not care, and to Derry who’ll circle me like a shark afterward.

The distaste on Derry’s face says it all. He smacks his lips together. “I’ll see what I can come up with. Your proxy can wait in the hall.”