Page 1 of Bittersweet Revenge (Sins of the Father #1)

Dean

Four years old

I ’m half asleep when I’m jerked out of bed, making my heart jump.

“Riordan. Be quiet. Come with Mommy. Hurry.”

Are we playing a game? Mommy has never woken me in the middle of the night before, and definitely not to play. I usually get in trouble if I get out of bed when I’m supposed to be in bed.

I wrap my arms around her neck, too tired to focus, too tired to do anything other than snuggle into her and try to sleep.

“Get down here, Audrey. Quick!” Daddy’s voice sounds funny, tense. Like he has to get the words out super fast.

My heart beats harder, fear beginning to clear the fog in my head. “Mommy?”

She puts her hand on the back of my head, lifting me higher against her. I wrap my legs around her waist. “Shh. It’s fine.” She kisses my forehead. “Everything is going to be fine.” She hurries down the stairs, then into the living room.

“Come on.” Daddy pulls us toward the hidden door in the bookcase. He always says it’s a secret. We’re not allowed to tell anyone about it, not even family. Just me, Mommy, and Daddy. He says it’s to keep us safe, but why would he need to keep us safe from the people we love?

“Daddy?” I ask, pulling my face out of Mommy’s neck. She smells like strawberries, the scent fading when I’m not as close.

“It’s okay, big guy. I need you to do me a favor. I need you to be real quiet and not say a word. Can you do that for me?”

I nod, my floppy blond hair in my eyes. It’s the same color as Mommy’s, not dark like Daddy’s.

“That’s my big boy. I also need you to do one more thing for me…I need you to take care of your mom for me. You always protect her, and you always take care of her. That’s your most important job.”

I smile. I love it when he gives me something to do.

I know he’s super important, and it makes me feel important too.

“I’ll do it! I’ll take care of her!” I say excitedly, but then ask, “Where will you be?” Is he going on a trip?

To work with Uncle Sloan? He’s not really my uncle, but Daddy says we’re a family. We’re all family. Part of the O’Sheas.

“Right here,” he says, his smile not looking like it normally does. “I’ll always be with you.”

“Liam.” Mommy’s voice cracks on his name, her body shaking, which makes mine shake too.

“I’ll be fine. Everything will be fine. Just a precaution, all right?”

She nods, just as we hear the sound of a car door closing outside.

“Fuck.” Daddy kisses me, then her. “I love you both. So much. I’ll always love you.

You’re the most important thing in this world to me.

” He looks at me, his eyes wet. Is he crying?

I didn’t know dads could cry. I’ve never seen mine do it before.

“I’m prouder of you than anything I’ve ever done. Now go.”

Mommy runs to the bookshelf and clicks the button so the door opens. Quickly, we rush inside, both of us watching Daddy, like something really bad is happening.

A second later, we’re surrounded by darkness.

“Mommy?”

“Shh. You can’t talk. Let’s play a game. If you can be really, really quiet until Mommy says you can speak again, we’ll get ice cream and video games.”

I smile. “Vanilla.”

She kisses my cheek. “Yes, sweet boy.”

Vanilla is my favorite.

We sit down, and she pulls me close, her arm around me.

“Why are we in here?” I ask.

“We’re playing a game, remember?”

A tear lands on my cheek. If this is a game, why is Mommy crying?

Muffled sounds come from the other side of the wall, voices getting louder and louder. Mommy’s shaking gets harder too.

I’m scared now, though I don’t understand what’s going on. Why are we hiding? Are bad guys here? Daddy says we always have to watch for bad guys. It’s what the family does. But if they’re here, why didn’t Daddy call Uncle Sloan? Uncle Sloan is the boss. Everyone listens to him. He would help.

Mommy leans forward, flicking something open, and then we can see through a small crack in the shelf. We’re low to the ground, so I don’t see faces, but I recognize Daddy’s sleep pants.

“You fucked up, Liam.”

Oh…Uncle Sloan is here. There’s a sharp bite to his voice. I don’t like it when he’s angry. He gets really scary.

“Where’s Rian?” Daddy asks.

“Think he’s going to save you?” Uncle Sloan snaps.

My eyes fill with tears, my stomach twists. Something is very wrong. If there’s one thing we never want to do, it’s make Uncle Sloan mad.

“Where are they?” Uncle Sloan asks.

“Gone. You think I’m stupid enough not to send Audrey and Riordan away?”

Why would Uncle Sloan think he’s stupid? And we’re here, right here, hiding.

I open my mouth to tell him, but Mommy’s hand covers it.

“You know you’ll never be able to hide them, and when I find them, they’ll die because you’re a traitor. A shame for Audrey and the kid, suffering for your mistakes.”

Mommy bites her hand, her crying harder, but trying to win the quiet game. She pushes my face into her neck. I try to pull away, but I can’t. She’s stronger than me, not something she’s ever tried to show me before.

“Please, baby,” she whispers. “Don’t move.

Don’t look. Mommy needs you to be quiet.

We have to do what Daddy said.” Her voice is so low, I can barely hear it, but I want to do what she says.

I want to listen to Daddy, to make him proud.

He can always count on me. I’ll be the best son in the whole world.

He’s going to be so proud of me when he gets us out of here.

“You’re not going to touch them. I’ll fucking kill you, do you hear me? I’ll fucking kill you, Sloan!”

I turn slightly—Mommy must not realize she’s not holding my head so tightly against her neck anymore—and now I can see what’s happening. There’s a sound like something hitting something else, and then Daddy falls to his knees, the side of his head bleeding.

And I know this is all wrong. Uncle Sloan is the bad man this time. Daddy says they take care of bad people, but this time, the bad man is Uncle Sloan.

He laughs, the sound making me almost throw up, making my teeth grind together. “How are you going to do that when you’re dead? It’ll be fun. I’ll do them real slow. You know how much I’ve always liked Audrey. Maybe I’ll play with her a little first.”

“You motherfucker.” Daddy lunges, but at the same time a gun goes off, and he falls to the floor, blood gushing from his head, spilling all over Mommy’s pretty white rug. It’s her favorite one. She doesn’t even let me eat on it.

Mommy’s body is vibrating so hard, it feels like she could take the house down with her.

I hear her soft cries as she shushes me and hugs me, tells me she loves me, but I’m not crying anymore.

I don’t feel anything at all. It’s like everything inside me shuts off, the sound of the gun somehow having scooped everything out of me.

Sloan leaves, and someone else comes in, wraps Dad in Mom’s favorite rug, and takes him away.

We stay hidden in the tiny room. I have to pee in the corner, and my stomach is growling, but there are people in and out of the house all day, cleaning and going through our stuff. I try to color, it’s one of my favorite things, but it’s hard to see and my dad is dead.

When it’s dark and the house has been empty for a while, Mom drags me out of the room. My legs are stiff from being locked up for so long.

“Come on, kiddo. We have to go.”

I want to ask her why, why that happened, and what about my things, but it’s like I forgot how to let words out.

We walk out back and through the woods. There’s a flashlight and a bag of food hidden in a tree.

“You’re being so brave. I’m so proud of you,” she says, but still, no words come out.

Finally, when we get through the trees, to the houses behind ours, Mom goes to a car, bends under it, pulls something out, then unlocks it.

“Let’s get you strapped in, big boy.” She tries to smile, but her chin wobbles.

All I can do is nod.

Mom takes us to a house I don’t recognize. It’s tiny…and empty, except for suitcases and bags hidden in the closet.

“We’re going to play another game now—the name game. Your new name is Dean. If anyone asks, you must tell them you’re Dean, okay?”

I nod. Why can’t I talk? Did my words get lost?

“We’ll be okay, Dean,” Mom says.

I nod again, and we drive away, getting as far away from Boston as we can.

*

Dean

Fifteen years later

I’ve been stalking the O’Sheas for as long as I’ve been able to be on the internet by myself.

Mom spent most of my life being overprotective, hardly letting me out of her sight, but she couldn’t keep the internet from me.

It became my only friend, in a way, because we moved too much for me to find any real friends—not that I want to.

Fuck that. To have friends, you have to trust people, and I sure as shit won’t ever do that.

Dad had trusted the O’Sheas, considered them family, and look what happened to him.

So yeah, I’ve spent a lot of fucking time online.

There’s not much I can’t do with a computer.

It comes naturally to me—coding, hacking—but so much of what I do is watch him , watch them .

The people who used to say we’re family, who said they loved us, then killed my father in cold blood, simply because he wanted a different life for my mom and me.

And I’ll kill them just as coldly.

I was fifteen when I chose my way into the O’Shea family.

Tiernan.

Sloan’s son.

I have fragmented memories of him from when we were children. We played together until that day when I was four years old and everything changed. When Riordan died and Dean was born. I haven’t been the same since, and I never will be.

I scroll through Tiernan’s photos on social media.

I’m surprised his father lets him have this page.

Or maybe I’m assuming his life would be anything like mine, though I don’t know why.

Sure, his dad is the boss of one of the deadliest crime organizations in the country, but Tiernan didn’t grow up in hiding like I did.

He didn’t have a mom who spent her life sad and alone because she lost the only man she ever loved, and working odd jobs so as not to draw attention to herself.

Now she’s gone too, and it’s just me.

My skin heats like fire is licking up my skin, so I close out of the site before I end up throwing my phone against the wall and busting it.

I have a bit of an anger problem, at least that’s what Mom used to say.

I’ve gotten into boxing, hoping it’ll help, but all it has done is make me a better fighter and showed me I like hitting things.

Reading and drawing help and are probably better alternatives to deal with shit.

And I do love both, but they aren’t always what I need.

“You’re so angry, kiddo. I want better for you. I want more. Your dad would too.” She said that to me countless times over the years.

What my dad would have wanted was to be here with me, but that didn’t happen, did it?

All because Sloan O’Shea discovered my dad wanted out.

I pace the apartment that’s decorated the way Mom left it six months ago. A stroke, they said, but I think she died from a broken heart.

I should go to my high school graduation. She would want me there, would have cheered and cried and told me how proud of me Dad would have been.

There was a time when I think she doubted I would finish school.

I started a year late, and I didn’t begin speaking again until the third grade.

But I did well in school. No matter how many times we moved, I studied hard because I knew it would be my way out.

College had been our plan, but what she didn’t know was that all the schools I applied to were a facade—all except Ashford University.

All that matters is getting into that one place. Where Tiernan goes. Where his father had gone. Where I’ll find a way to get close to him, the boss’s son, then take his father away from him, the way mine was taken away from me.