Page 127 of Handsome Devil

“We’ll take your three cargo ships. The ones docked here in Brooklyn,” Tyrone offered decisively. “We need them for shipments. They’re old enough that it’s not a financial strain on your end, and peace will be restored.”

“Have you lost your plot, Da?” Tiernan impaled him with a glare. “He should be giving us a spot on the board of GS Properties and a blow job for our troubles.”

I knew any reasonable man would accept Tyrone’s offer. But I wasn’t reasonable. And I definitely wasn’t letting his son off the hook after trying to kidnap my wife.Twice. It wasn’t about Daniel’s murderers anymore. It was about Gia. I wanted them to know no one went after my wife.

“You’re getting jack shit,” I drawled. “I don’t respond well to pressure from below.”

“We’re going in circles.” Luca put out his cigarette in an ashtray, immediately lighting another one. “Tiernan, Tyrone—Blackthorn isn’t gonna budge on this. I know the man. He’s as flexible as a three-day-old corpse.”

“And just as charming,” Achilles contributed. “You do what you will with this information. But this is his best and final offer.”

“His best and final offer isnothing.” Tiernan yawned, and I had a feeling he was the same brand of crazy motherfucker as Achilles. Two peas in a fucked-up pod.

“Incorrect.” I put out my cigarette. “The alternative is war, and trust me, you don’t want to go there. Cut your losses. Move on. Don’t ever get near my wife. Great deal.”

Tiernan bowed an eyebrow. “You won’t win this, Blackthorn. What I lack in resources I make up for in cruelty. I won’t be the first to blink.”

“Why did you come here if you didn’t want to strike any sort of deal?” Tyrone turned his attention to me. He wasn’t like his hotheaded son. In another life, we could’ve gotten along.

“Mainly to piss your son off.” I hitched a shoulder up. “See up close where I want to stab him. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and if he isn’t careful, that heart is going to end up as taxidermy in my Staindrop cabin.”

I was lying, of course.

I didn’t have a cabin in Staindrop. It was a shithole.

I had a cabin in Vermont, and I actually did need to decorate that wooden wall.

Tiernan stood up again and leaned across the table until our faces were an inch apart. His eyes glinted with madness. The violence dancing inside them told me he was the worst kind of a crime lord. The type who saw killing as the destination, not a means to an end.

“I want to be clear on one thing.” He dropped his voice to a whisper, fingers splayed across the table. “If you walk out of here without giving us a concession, something to show for our trouble, Iwillcome after you and all that’s yours. That’s not a threat, Blackthorn. It’s a promise.”

I stood up slowly, prolonging the moment. All eyes clung to us.

“Do your worst, Callaghan. I’ll do the same. May the best man win.”

Iwas eighteen when I checked on Andrin again. By that time, I was no longer scrawny, awkward Gabriel Doe. I was Tate Blackthorn, lacrosse star, Harvard darling, the mysterious son of a real estate mogul, a prodigy, the most handsome Prince Charming on New York’s social roster.

A quick Google search was enough to reveal Andrin’s destiny, and it wasn’t what I was expecting.

Three months after I moved out of the boarding school, Andrin found his death in a suspiciously unfortunate skiing accident. Suspicious because fucker didn’t ski.

Even more so because it wasn’t an injury that caused his death. The article stated he veered off course onto a secluded mountaintop, where he was mauled by forest animals. The death, the article suggested, was slow and painful and took threeor four days. His body—or whatever was left of it—was found scattered a couple of months later.

Peculiar still was the fact that he was found holding a black thorn.

There were no plants or bushes on the snow-covered mountaintops.

I didn’t have to ask Daniel about it. I knew.

Because I remembered that three months after I was adopted, Daniel called his mother—Nana Nelly—to watch over me for the weekend as he conducted urgent business in Zurich.

No part of me found it immoral or distressing that Daniel dealt with my abuser.

He did what he had to do. What I’d do for someone else if I ever was stupid enough to allow myself to love.

He took a life so I could live mine peacefully.

“And that’s the last of it.” Cal waltzed into Mum’s hospice room carrying a box of her toiletries.