“It’s a very emotional time for me, ye son of a bitch!” the man standing near the far left corner of the room, presumably Declean, yelled.
“Hey!” the man in the right corner snapped just as every man in the room’s expression turned murderous.
“Watch yer f**king mouth!” Shayne snapped, shaking his head in disgust.
“Call Ma’ that again, lad, and ye’ll be able to taste yer balls in the back of yer throat,” Liam said with a glare.
“I didn’t mean it like that and ye know it!” Declean muttered defensively as he continued to pout in the corner, reminding him so much of Shayne at the moment and confirming an earlier suspicion.
“You’re all brothers,” he said hollowly, the over-the-top pout confirming it. They all looked similar with their black hair, green eyes, large builds and similar mannerisms and expressions.
“Yes,” Liam said with an approving nod.
He felt a little lightheaded, a mixture of the pain and the fear that what Shayne said earlier was true. He wasn’t sure what it meant or how it was possible, but he needed to know. He needed to know for himself, for Marty and for their baby. Christ, a baby. What if their child was as f**ked up as he was? His stomach twisted at the thought of his child going through the bullshit that he’d gone through growing up.
Was never going to f**king happen.
“And yer our little brother, lad,” Shayne explained softly with the same smile that used to help him get through the day when he didn’t think that it was humanly possible. Now it just left him feeling terrified.
What did this mean for his baby and for-
“How exactly is he your brother?” Marty asked as she walked around the couch and took the empty spot on the couch to his right out of habit. She was always careful of his left arm, taking great care to avoid touching it most of the time.
She had no clue how f**ked up his left arm was right now and he had no plans on making her worried by telling her. They had enough to deal with without bothering over something that could be fixed with a bag of ice.
“You need to go back upstairs,” he said, hoping that for once in their lives that she would just listen to him. But of course she didn’t.
“Nope, not going to happen,” she said as she glanced around the room.
“How did you get past Finn?” Liam asked with a frown.
“You mean the big crybaby upstairs?” Marty asked, looking thoughtful.
“Why would you call him a crybaby?” Liam asked, looking confused while Shayne looked quite amused and for good reason.
“Probably because she left him crying on the floor curled up in the fetal position,” Tristan said with a sigh, knowing his wife’s temper well enough by now to know what she was capable of.
Three weeks later and Tristan was still cringing on behalf of the dumb bastard that had made the mistake of shooting his mouth off about how the Chief’s daughter had f**ked her way into having permanent job security. If the man had known that Marty had been standing right behind him, he probably wouldn’t have called her a whore. Then again, if he had known that she was behind him, he probably would have been prepared for Marty when she decided to show him exactly how qualified she was to work for a police department.
Personally, he thought the guy got off easy for calling her a slut and insinuating that she did her best work on her knees. She’d only stolen his club, dropped him to his knees and kept him there until he was crying and apologizing for being an ass**le. Hank, after he’d had time to cool off, had suspended the young officer for violating several sexual harassment rules and sent the bastard home.
Tristan had kind of felt bad for the guy, being made to cry like that in front of the whole squad. He’d made sure to catch up with the man in the parking lot and shared that thought as he beat the shit out of him. He’d probably still be explaining things to the young officer if his father and brother hadn’t arrived to rush the man to the hospital to have his jaw wired shut.
“You might want to go check on him,” Marty said with a careless shrug that had Shayne chuckling.
Several of the men cursed as their forms began to fade, but before any of them could leave, Finn appeared on the living room floor, curled up tightly in a ball and gasping for air which was a bit odd since he didn’t need to breathe.
“My balls, my poor, beautiful, innocent balls,” he whimpered pathetically.
All eyes, including his, went from the poor bastard lying on the floor, whimpering and muttering prayers for his balls, to the small woman sitting next to him.
“What? He wouldn’t answer my questions!” she said defensively a split second before her glare landed on Tristan. He swore that his balls twitched in fear beneath that glare, but he didn’t let the very real possibility of having to face testicular recovery surgery keep him from doing what had to be done.
“Go back upstairs, Marty.”
He didn’t want her to try and escape, not with spirits after her. She’d never be able to outrun them and there would be no one to help her. She’d either end up dead or locked up in a mental institution somewhere and neither option was acceptable to him. He just needed her out of the room so that he could find out a few things without having to worry about her.
“I’m not going anywhere so you might as well get on with it,” she stubbornly said as she crossed her arms over her chest, giving them all a look that dared them to try and stop her.
“Please have mercy on my balls,” Finn whimpered, taking the decision out of his hands.
Chapter 30
“You were telling us how Tristan was your brother,” Marty said when the silence in the room became awkward.
Men were such babies. Seriously, what did they expect her to do? They’d left her with a man, well a male that wasn’t exactly human, that she didn’t know, who tried to keep her locked up in her bedroom. Did they really think that she was going to sit on the bed like a good girl and wait for the big boys to finish their super secret conversation?
Her father raised her better than that. She wasn’t the type of woman to leave it to a man to solve her problems for her and seeing ghosts or whatever the hell they were was definitely a problem. Now that she knew that she wasn’t going crazy, she could admit that this whole thing was kind of cool, even if it did frighten her.
Whatever that had been that had occurred upstairs with that bloodied man was definitely not something that she wanted to experience again. His touch had been cold and left her feeling depressed, hopeless, and had filled her with so much dread that if he’d killed her at that moment, she probably would have thanked him. It was something that she fully planned on avoiding in the future.