Page 67 of Myla: The Hawthornes

“Are you sure?” Myla asked, moving in close to my side. “If you need a couple more minutes—”

“Yeah, I’m good,” I assured her. “Go.”

Myla walked out of the room, and from the corner of my eye, I watched most of the group outside the door drift away.

“Not hangin’ out with you in the shitter,” Tommy said. “Let’s go.”

I followed him out and walked quietly with the boys as they surrounded us. We took the stairs to the ground level and made our way over to the parking garage. Then we climbed all the way to the top. Tommy finally stopped in the middle of the surprisingly deserted rooftop parking lot.

“You know,” he said flatly.

“How do you?” I asked dully.

“Gray called me a couple of minutes before you came out,” Will said. “He’d been followin’ some leads, found the connection between Richie and that heroin fuckwad.”

“Richie said he was cleanin’ the money,” I mumbled.

I was fucking embarrassed, which was a little ridiculous. These men had seen me puking my guts out and nearly shittingmyself on more than one occasion. They’d seen me do stupid shit a million times. They weren’t judging.

I was judging.Iwas fucking judging.

How could Richie have done something so stupid? A part of me wanted to go back inside and berate him until I lost my voice. I wanted to drag Aisling to the hospital so he had to look at her and see what his actions had caused. I wanted to punch him in every sewn-up bullet hole.

But another part of me, a tiny one that remembered all that Richie had done for us over the years, wanted to convince the men around me that Richie wasn’t as stupid as we all knew he was.

“Christ on a cracker,” Bas muttered.

“He say anythin’ else?” Leo asked.

“That he was sorry.”

“Yeah,” Tommy said, hands in his pockets as he stared at his feet. “Bet he is.”

“Walk us through it,” Will ordered.

“He woke up and right off started talking about how sorry he was,” I replied, glancing at him. “He asked about Aisling. Mentioned Julian. Said hedidn’t know.” I let out a humorless laugh. “Hedidn’t know, but he was cleaning money using some remodel as a cover, so he must’ve knownsomething, right?”

“He say how he met Kitz?” Gray asked.

“No.” I shook my head. “This might kill Aoife. It might actually be the thing that sends her over the edge. Dad dying? She could take it. Mom? Good riddance. Raising four kids when she was a teenager? No problem. But finding out her husband is in bed with a bunch of drug dealers? No. Fuck no.”

“More likely to kill him,” Titus murmured.

“I know,” Bas replied.

“From what I’ve found, it’s just the one,” Gray said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I can’t find any connection betweenRichie and anyone but Kitz. Problem is, Kitz is in deep, and Richie’s been laundering a fuckload of money.”

“How?” I asked. My brother-in-law was a good man. Solid. Kind. Smart, but so far from a criminal mastermind, I would’ve more easily believed that Seanie was breaking the law at daycare.

“Let’s just say, the IRS is gonna have a field day. I’m guessin’ your sister isn’t livin’ large. Either Richie doesn’t claim the millions of dollars on his taxes—which would make sense but give the government more ammunition—or he does, and your sister is paying more money on taxes than she makes in a year.”

“The IRS?”

“FBI’s got an entire fuckin’ team on this branch of the Smith heroin family tree. They clocked Richie from the start.”

“Fuck,” I breathed. “Is Kitz still alive?”

Gray paused. “Everything I’ve heard points to yes.”

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