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“W hy Margaret?”

Hunting my sister down to this little shithole dive bar off Route 17 wasn’t all that difficult. Holiday traffic slowed us down, but we arrived to find her hiding out in the supply room of a guy she ran guns through.

The only thing was Jimmy O’Keefe was Connor Callahan’s. The prick gave her up rather quickly in exchange for a little money.

“You think you won here, boyo? I’ll never stop coming at you. I’m the head of the family! That little fat fuck I arranged for you to marry is nobody. You have to do what I say,” she yelled, sounding hysterical.

Madness danced in her eyes, and though it pained me, I knew what I had to do. My heart ached with it, but I staunched that feeling almost as quickly as it started.

I couldn’t recall one good thing about my parents. They were both gone. No cousins either. Margaret was my only living relative, but after what she did, that was over. She was nothing to me now.

Any loyalty I had. Any sympathy for her plight. All that had fled the second she targeted my wife.

“You shouldn’t have done it, Maggie. You should have never touched what’s mine,” I growled, allowing anger to fill me one last time as I picked up the syringe that had already been filled with just the right amount of pharmaceuticals to induce a permanent state of catatonia.

“No, no, no. I’m the boss. I’m the boss. I’m the fucking boss! You can’t do this!”

“I can. I have. Goodbye, Maggie,” I told her, sticking her arm with the needle and pushing the plunger down.

I nodded my head at the bodyguards/orderlies I brought with me. They were going to remove her to a private facility where she would live out her days in solitary confinement, trapped in her own disheveled mind.

No, I wouldn’t kill Maggie.

I wouldn’t slaughter her the way I did every fucking man who worked for her. The ones who’d kidnapped my sweet Michaela. Who’d kept my wife a fucking prisoner and plotted to kill her.

Nope. I would not murder Maggie for the simple reason she was my sister.

But there were things worse than death.

And that was exactly what she deserved for touching my Sweetheart.