Page 23 of Layne Closure Ahead

Her thoughts were disrupted when she heard the sounds of the front door opening and quickly slamming shut. Lifting her head at the intrusion, she pushed herself up onto her feet and stepped over several piles of documents.

Liam nearly ran into her when she got to the door, neither of them expecting the other to be there. She extended her hands out to brace herself in the event of an actual collision. Fortunately, all that resulted was a small bump into one another.

“What the hell are you doing here, Layne?” Her little brother already had a tone in his voice making it clear he didn’t appreciate her presence. His eyes looked beyond her and saw all the boxes and papers in disarray on the office floor. “What the fuck is this?”

She shrugged. “I’m going through Dad’s things, looking for anything that might be useful.”

Liam pushed past her going to the nearest box and peering inside of it. “This is all trash, I should have just burned it all after the funeral.”

He stepped away from the cardboard banker box, carelessly walking over some papers left on the ground on his way over to the wet bar built into the bookcase along the back wall.

While his back was turned to her, she began to clean up the mess she had made. One knee on the floor while she packed the papers back up, a blue letter-sized envelope slipped out from between a few other pages. It was seeing her name sprawled across it in her dad’s handwriting that truly caught her eye.

Glancing up, she saw that Liam was still busying himself and opening up a fresh bottle of booze. Layne took the envelope and slid it into her back pocket. Quickly, she wrapped up cleaning the floor of the remaining disaster.

“While you’re here, I got a call this morning,” Liam spoke up before turning around and sipping whichever high-proof liquor had called to him today.

Layne finished stacking a few boxes on top of each other off to the side of the room. “From the therapist you haven’t hired yet, because you don’t think you need one?” Not that she should have been one to talk given her own mess she was actively ignoring.

He ground his teeth together, biting back the urge to immediately lose his shit. No, he was biding his time on this. “It was from Russell Spencer.”

Oh, that call. It had only been a matter of time before word got back to Liam, being that he was technically the O’Reilly man in charge. Out of professional courtesy, it wasn’t unexpected that in events where another faction’s associate stepped out of line, the big guys ended up hearing about it.

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Go ahead, Liam, say what you’re going to say about it.”

As he did, he waved his hands around in corresponding gestures with his words. “Who the hell do you think you are? Acting like you’re the damn head of this family, making stupid as fuck decisions like you have the authority to do shit. Why can’t you just leave everything alone and stay out of things?”

“Because I’m trying to clean up your inability to get shit done, Liam! How many times do we have to have this conversation? You want to sit back and let things roll. Do you know where that has gotten us? Our guys, the few we have left in our ranks, are coming to me to put out fires you should have made sure never existed. So, yeah, I may have made a stupid decision with Russ, but it’s because I’m tired of playing this game with you.”

He forced the glass in his hand down onto his desk with a loud clunk that threatened to put a crack in the bottom of the drinkware. “Get the hell out! I don’t want to see your face in here again.”

Layne goaded him. “Or what? What are you going to do, Li?” Her eyes locked on his every move.

He took the bait and stalked his way towards her. When there was little room between them, he forced his arms out in an explosive shove.

Fortunately, she had seen it coming a mile away and dodged to the side. She grabbed his non-dominant arm with both her hands and painfully twisted it behind his back while bending his wrist at an awkward angle. To further make her point, she shoved him forward face first into the door. Her foot came up and struck down on the back of his knee causing him to automatically drop to the floor. Layne released his arm during his fall to his knees.

For extra measure, she grabbed a handful of his hair and drew his head back to look up at her. “I’ve learned how to play with the big boys, Liam. It’s about damn time that you did, too.” She thrust his face forward again letting it collide with the door before she stepped back from him.

Liam howled out as he sat back on his ankles, his hands going up to his face where a superficial nosebleed had begun from the two collisions against the door.

She left him there, hoping he would have some sense come to him after that. Layne was doubtful though. If Liam hadn’t had his moment of grand enlightenment by now, she found it unlikely he ever would.

Once she was back in the driver’s seat of her car, she sat there trying to focus on her several deep breaths after dealing with Liam’s inability to do anything but manage to piss her off. She wanted nothing more right now than to take the edge off of things and lay in bed in a beautiful foggy haze to escape from the hell she was dealing with day in and day out. After Joey had verbally laid into her before disposing of most of the stash she had on hand, she had been trying to go without.

Reaching behind her into her back pocket, she retrieved the blue envelope she had discovered amongst the other papers. Her eyes looked over the curve of each letter of her name in her dad’s elegant penmanship. A breath caught in her throat as thoughts about how much she needed him there right now crept into her mind.

“Layne, you will never have it easy in this business. All the odds are stacked against you.” Her father solemnly looked at her as he sat up in his bed after yet another surgery.

She frowned, waiting for him to try and convince her to leave this lifestyle behind. Go get married, have a kid, and all that bullshit.

He gave a reassuring smile instead. “But, that is what will be your greatest strength. Nobody pays attention to the team that has to overcome a fifty-point gap. Take advantage of that.”

Hastily she shoved the envelope into the center console between the two front seats. She needed to be anywhere else right now but here. She needed to be somewhere where she could clear her mind. Layne needed a place where all the noise of her thoughts weren’t overwhelming her.

“C’mon.” Joey kept a hold of her hand and led her towards the quiet and unoccupied beach.

It was a welcome reprieve from the constant noise pollution of Manhattan. Joey released her hand so he could hide both his hands in his pockets as he stared at the last bit of sun reflecting off the water as it sunk lower in the sky.

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