I flipped open the zippo lighter and took a long drag on the cigarette as I lit it before picking up my charcoal again and trying to capture the curve of the eagle’s wings as he soared overhead. There was a patch of skin to the right of my abs which wanted filling and I was convinced that I was on to the right design here.
If I kept adding to my ink at the rate I was going, I was pretty sure I’d run out of skin to decorate by the time I was thirty. But as I didn’t expect to live much beyond then, I guessed it didn’t really matter. In fact, as my phone started ringing again, I had to wonder if thirty was a pipe dream.
I should have known my family wouldn’t just let me go as easily as they had. But I guessed I’d been a hopeful idiot, caught up in the dream of freedom.
Smoke billowed between my lips as I continued to sketch the eagle but as my phone started up again, I had to accept that I couldn’t keep putting it off.
I flipped my sketchbook closed and pulled my cellphone out. Unknown number of course. I wondered who it would be. Dougal with his softly spoken words and deadly intentions? Dermot with his hot temper and threats? Connor with his long stories and roundabout murderous implications? It wouldn’t be Ma, she never disciplined me herself these days. Always a brother to call in for the job. One perfectly suited to whatever crime I’d committed against the family with my existence and opinions and Roscoe attitude. Which basically meant I wasn’t a willing pawn for the O’Brien empire and they didn’t like that one bit.
Whichever one of my uncles it turned out to be, I was pretty sure they were about to pull rank, make threats, let me know exactly how much attention they’d been paying to me during the last few months since I’d cut myself off from them and demand I come back.
For a moment there I’d let myself think I was free.
What a pretty fucking idea that had been. Had I ever really believed they’d just let me go? Or was I just a fool who’d wanted to try and build a life inside a dream?
“Yeah?” I answered, taking another long pull on the cigarette.
“You’ve made your poor mammy quite distraught, lad.” I fell utterly still at the lilting Irish accent of my grandfather’s voice. Liam O’Brien, the head of our entire family. He was the only close member of my family with a full accent like that, though more than a few of my uncles and cousins had a touch of it from their time spent back in the homeland. But the man who headed our criminal empire was born and bred in Killarney with the rich sense of patriotism for his homeland. In fact, I was pretty sure he loved Ireland far more than any of his nine children or subsequent grandchildren. He certainly didn’t pay attention to me all that often.
“I’m surprised she noticed I left,” I said in a rough voice. I wasn’t just going to bow to him, but I wasn’t a fucking idiot. He could have me killed in whatever heinous way he desired before the sun set tonight if the notion took him. But I was the polished front they wanted for their crime ring. The name that opened doors. My Dad did all of that for now, but I knew they wanted me to take over from him soon enough. To get someone with O’Brien blood and the Roscoe name doing their dirty work instead of trusting it to the in-law.
But they hadn’t really counted on me being my own man. On me wanting out of their plans and away from that life. But of course it wasn’t going to be that easy. They wouldn’t just let me choose.
“Connor says he took you to Royaume D'élite and you threw a fit over your initiation like a wet little babe,” Liam said in his unhurried tone. I had to call him Grandpa to his face, but that name always seemed too doting for the cold man I knew. “I told him that my golden boy wasn’t afraid of nothin’. That there was no way the things you’d seen and done there could have shocked you into runnin’ off like a little pussy. So I wanna hear it from your mouth. In your words. Why are ya breakin’ ya ma’s heart?”
“She doesn’t have a heart and we both know it,” I deadpanned, taking another long drag of my cigarette.
It was so beautiful up here that I could almost pretend the man on the other end of the line was in a whole other world. Somewhere he couldn’t hunt me down and gut me like a pig for choosing my words poorly.
He laughed darkly but there was no real humour in it. “C’mon boy, I don’t have all day. I’ll have the truth from your lips now or I’ll send Niall to come get you for a more personal chat.”
Another lungful of nicotine gave me the strength not to curse him. Niall was arguably the worst of my uncles. Certainly the most unpredictable. He might come down here and cut one of my balls off just for causing him to make the journey. Or he might gut one of the other students out of boredom. He could just as easily do nothing at all and come at me with jokes and smiles. And
