Page 93 of Desperate Measures

An evening of cookies and wine, gossip and giggles—that was exactly what I needed after the chaos of the day, after the horror of being kidnapped and threatened.

I knew it should have bothered me, watching my father and my husband kill two men. But it didn’t. Those guys had been warned, and they chose to participate. It was their choice and their fault.

After all, it was hardly fair to start a fight then cry when you lost it.

The girls were good company, but my thoughts drifted to my husband frequently while they were there.

“You know, you look happy, Micky. Love and marriage look good on you,” Shelly said, and I smiled, feeling myself glow from within.

“Thanks, Shell.”

The sweet scent of freshly baked cookies permeated the air, and the sound of our laughter mingling with the low hum of music in the background was just perfect.

Everything I needed.

Exactly everything.

But there was one thing I needed more—one thing that no amount of wine or cookies could satisfy.

And that was him.

My Liam.

His presence.

His warmth.

His closeness.

He was my peace, the calm in the middle of all the noise. And in that moment, with everything else stripped away, all I could think about was how much I could not wait for him to come home.

I was desperately in love with my husband and for the first time since I had that revelation weeks ago, I wanted to shout it from the rooftops.

He was all I needed. Nothing else in this world could compare, and when he came home tonight, I was going to show him.

Chapter 38-Liam

“Why Margaret?”

Hunting my sister down to this little shithole dive bar off Route 17 wasn’t all that difficult. Holiday traffic slowed us down, but we arrived to find her hiding out in the supply room of a guy she ran guns through.

The only thing was Jimmy O’Keefe was Connor Callahan’s. The prick gave her up rather quickly in exchange for a little money.

“You think you won here, boyo? I’ll never stop coming at you. I’m the head of the family! That little fat fuck I arranged for you to marry is nobody. You have to do what I say,” she yelled, sounding hysterical.

Madness danced in her eyes, and though it pained me, I knew what I had to do. My heart ached with it, but I staunched that feeling almost as quickly as it started.

I couldn’t recall one good thing about my parents. They were both gone. No cousins either. Margaret was my only living relative, but after what she did, that was over. She was nothing to me now.

Any loyalty I had. Any sympathy for her plight. All that had fled the second she targeted my wife.

“You shouldn’t have done it, Maggie. You should have never touched what’s mine,” I growled, allowing anger to fill me one last time as I picked up the syringe that had already been filled with just the right amount of pharmaceuticals to induce a permanent state of catatonia.

“No, no, no. I’m the boss. I’m the boss. I’m the fucking boss! You can’t do this!”

“I can. I have. Goodbye, Maggie,” I told her, sticking her arm with the needle and pushing the plunger down.

I nodded my head at the bodyguards/orderlies I brought with me. They were going to remove her to a private facility where she would live out her days in solitary confinement, trapped in her own disheveled mind.