Page 71 of Dirty Eoin

He can’t scream, but he makes harrowing sounds as Eoin uses his bare hands to rip apart his flesh to expose his ribs. He then uses surgical shears to hack open his rib cage.

I taste vomit.

Mr. Unfortunate passes out. Eoin throws water over him. He wants him fully conscious for the grand finale. The piece de resistance. He wakes with a start. He’s struggling to breathe, likely due to blood loss.

Eyes bulge. Tears stain. Snot streams. All topped off by a river of bright red blood.

He’s no longer trying to speak. If he could, he’d beg for a quick demise and for this dance with the devil to be over.

But he knows what’s coming next. He’ll be dished up what I ordered from the menu on his behalf.

I watch as Eoin uses both hands to prize out Mr. Unfortunate’s still-beating organ. I want to put my hands over my ears at the inhuman sounds he makes, but I don’t. Instead, I watch his eyes widen in pain and shock as Eoin shows him the last thing he will ever see before shoving the thing in his mouth.

His own heart.

I’m sure I can feel the texture against my own tongue. That I can taste the copper tang of his blood mixing with the taste of my vomit.

It’s over.

Or is it?

Because I will never forget what I witnessed here today. Eoin O’Connell has made sure of that.

The sounds. The sights. The smells. The tastes. They’re all now branded to memory. And for the first time in my life, I felt it. Only fleetingly. But I did all the same.

Good old-fashioned fear.

I’m also sure I felt the ice-cold fingers of death himself as they whispered across my skin, causing it to prickle in awareness.

I always insisted that Eoin O’Connell had The Almighty stuffed in his back pocket. It’s quite the opposite. He has Satan.

And I take back what I said. He’s nothing like Delaney. Delaney might be an insane killer. But Eoin O’Connell?

He’s a monster, but given I chose the sentence and he merely delivered it, what does that make me?

Today, the future Irish king extended me an invitation to witness him in all his mobster glory.

He offered. I accepted.

Contract in place, he then allowed his dark soul to wrap itself seductively around mine in some sort of fucked-up invisible claiming.

I think in his twisted mind that now makes me his.

CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR

JAINE

The Meeting Rooms, New York

It’s beenover two years since Sarah and I were abducted from this place. So much has happened since.

Finian born. Jason Junior born. Irish married.

Ace gone.

While the tears have subsided, the relentless sadness still holds me in its unforgiving grip.

What if. What if. What if.

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