Page 56 of Starting Over

“Me? What the fuck is wrong with me?”

Ignoring my previous command, King paced around my office while I read everything Nav found.

“We have another fucking brother that no one bothered to mention to me, and that brother is the head of the fucking Irish Mob. And you ask what is wrong with me?”

“Close the fucking door,” I growled.

I didn’t need the entire station hearing this conversation.

King pushed the door closed and slammed himself down into the chair in front of my desk and glared at me.

“Why?”

“Why what?” I asked, reading through the papers.

“Why was this kept from me? Why didn’t he move to Arkansas? He was only seventeen. He wasn’t an adult yet.”

“He stayed with his father,” I answered absentmindedly, still looking for the piece of information that would tear everything my parents worked for into shreds.

“Dec, what the fuck is going on?”

Hearing the sound of defeat in his voice, I looked up, and that was when I saw it.

The hurt.

The pain.

The president of the Silver Shadows, a former 1% motorcycle club, was gone. Sitting in front of me was the ten-year-old boy, who had his world shattered when I had to tell him his parents were gone. That the mother and father who loved him and protected him were never coming back home.

“King. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t mean shit. I want the truth.”

Closing the folder, I sat back in my chair. With a heavy breath, I told my brother a series of half-truths that I prayed he believed. Maybe with this information, he would stop digging.

“Mom had a son before she met Dad. He was four when Mom and Dad got married. Braesal O’Malley is five years older than me, and he is our half-brother. When Dad got the job offer in Arkansas, I was twelve and Sal was seventeen. His father wasthe head of the Irish in Boston. His grandfather was Casper O’Malley. The former head of the IRA.”

“Jesus Christ,” King whispered. Leaning forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees, my brother dropped his head into his hands.

“Seven months after we moved, you were born.”

“Nav couldn’t find any medical records for my birth. Aside from my birth certificate. No medical records of Mom ever being pregnant.”

I knew the question he was asking. The answer was one my mother had drilled into me over and over for ten solid years until she was gone.

“You were born at home with a midwife. It was the eighties, there was no internet, and no digital records. I’m sure the birth records are in a box somewhere in the basement of someone’s home.”

“Did she stay in touch with him? Sal? How were you able to keep everything hidden from me?”

This was where it got tough. Where I might have to lie outright to my baby brother. This was the only thing I had ever lied to him about, and it was to keep him safe. I could only pray that if he ever found out, he would understand.

More importantly, that he would forgive me.

“Mom tried to stay in touch for a while. But after we moved, Sal’s father Eamon started grooming him to one day take over. And he did. Sal killed his father when he was thirty and took over the Irish Mob.”

“I was thirteen then, and Mom and Dad were already gone. So that wasn’t why I was never told. What aren’t you telling me?”

I ran my hand over my face, buying some time to come up with a plausible explanation.

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