The Devil’s Keepsake by Somme Sketcher
Lorcan
My eyes flick between the pliers resting in the open drawer of my desk and the industrial padlock on the drink’s cabinet on the other side of the room. A few specks of rusting blood on the jaws remind me that these pliers are usually used for breaking fingers, not padlocks.
I promised Antoin I’d keep my head straight while we come up with a plan, which means not getting black-out drunk. He had Eileen lock up my liquor and now I feel like the fat kid whose mom has to lock up the treats in a cupboard. But I’m tweaking like a crackhead, fingers itching towards my torture tool to smash it the fuck open.
I don’t like having a clear mind. Because when I do, all I can think about is her.
For want of a distraction, I rise to my feet and stride across the office to the window. The sun’s rising on my city, and directly below, my men are guarding the front door to the building. We’ve doubled down on security while we get our game plan straight. But how can I think of winning a goddamn war when all I think about is Murphy’s daughter.
A growl rumbles deep in my chest, my eyes flicking instinctively to the cabinet.
I’m too erratic for plans, always have been. They come and go, passing through like a bad smell on a breezy day.
I’ll blow up the Bratnovs and make an example out of them. No, I’ll plan a sneak attack.
I’ll claim Poppy’s innocence the second I lay my hands on her. No, I’ll wait and savor every second.
There was one plan I had that lingered around longer than most.
Telling Poppy who her father really is.
I’ve been looking forward to it since the day she sliced my cheek open like a pack of deli meat. It was the reason I didn’t crush every bone in her body; I was going to crush something even better—her heart.
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Marcus Murphy would come looking for his daughter, which was when I’d tell her who her father really is.
But he never came.
He’s crueler than I thought.
There’s no liquor haze to dumb the cocktail of anger and guilt swirling in my veins. It’s all-consuming, eating me up.
If I can’t turn to the bottle, I’ll have to turn to the man himself.
* * *I see him arrive. A small, fat speck of a man rolling up outside the building in a beat-up Civic. A snarl quivers on my lips as I watch him spread his arms and legs, allowing my men to pat him down.
When he disappears into the building, the wait is on. I pace the carpet, up, down, up, down. Waiting to hear the elevator ding, for Eileen to buzz my phone and let me know that my visitor has arrived.
My eyes fall on the pliers in my top drawer. Depending on how this plays out, there’s a high chance I’m going to be using them for their intended use, snapping fingers.
When Marcus Murphy emerges in the doorway of my office, my heart races with hatred. It’s ingrained into every fiber of my being and has been since my early twenties. It takes every inch of self-restraint not to slam his goddamn head against my oak desk and chuck him out of my window in a body bag.
“Mr. Quinn,” he says solemnly, lowering his eyes to the carpet and clutching his hat to his chest. His suit barely fits him; too long on the arms and legs, too tight around his bulging stomach. “When your office called, I came right away.”
“You want a medal for timekeeping?” I stab in the direction of the chair opposite. “Sit.”
He does as he’s told.
“I haven’t been in this office in years,” he says quietly, scanning the room.
I want to claw his eyeballs out to stop him from looking. Instead, I decide to get right to the point; the quicker we get this over with, the quicker he’ll be out of my sight.
“I have your daughter.”
I pin him with an unwavering stare. Watching, waiting. His jaw clenches, unclenches. He blinks.
“And I hope that you’re treating her well.”
I rest my weight against my palms on my desk, casting a dark shadow over him. “She’s a tight little fuck with a mouth I enjoy shoving my cock in. Perhaps you’ll be interested to know, she calls me ‘daddy’ now.”
Another blink, another muscle twitch. Then nothing. He matches my stare with those emerald eyes. The only thing he and his daughter have in common.
“I got what I deserve,” he says quietly, “I’m just thankful that you kept us both alive, sir.”
The rage washes over me like a tsunami, my fist thumps down on the desk. “Show your true colors, Murphy,” I snarl like a rabid dog, “My father might have bought this down-and-out act, but I never have.”
He pauses, biting his lip, before he asks, “Does she know?”
Marcus Goddamn Murphy. A walking betrayal.
His story reads like a twisted fairy tale. Once upon a time, Marcus Murphy stood shoulder to shoulder with my father. They were best friends, business partners, ruling the streets of Boston together. My father had the business ideas, Murphy had the iron fist that enforced them. We weren’t the Quinns, we were the Quinn-Murphys. The most feared mob family on the East Coast.
But Murphy was a greedy little cunt. The East Coast wasn’t enough for him, and he was sick of living in my father’s shadow.
I was just young, dumb, and twenty-one when it happened. When he called in a favor from the O’Sullivan family on the West Coast. He promised them if they helped him overthrow the Quinns, they’d work together to take over every piece of land between New York and Los Angeles.
But Murphy wasn’t a businessman, he was a brute. And when the O’Sullivan’s stormed the Quinn estate, shooting three cousins and two uncles and an aunt, he didn’t see the betrayal coming until they turned their guns on him too.
The O’Sullivan’s learned the hard way that going up against the Quinns was a guaranteed death sentence. We found every O’Sullivan between California and Connecticut and ended their lives. All but one. Cedric O’Sullivan, the head of the family. He ran.
Murphy should have been dealt the same fate as all the other bastards, but my father refused to bring the gun to his head because Rosa Murphy was pregnant. She was best friends with my mom, and she pretty much became my mom’s replacement when she died. A fiery Italian woman with the biggest heart I ever knew. She’d accompany the driver to pick us up from school. She taught me how to play chess. Hell, I told her when I had my first kiss behind the bleachers in sixth grade. My father couldn’t leave Rosa Murphy pregnant and without a husband.
So, he decided on a lifetime of humiliation instead. The whole city would watch him fall from grace. A proud man like him, it was harder to move into the roughest neighborhood in town and become nothing more than the Quinn family’s bitch. Demoted to corner boy, taking orders from the cousins he used to give orders to. One last final blow was when we caught Cedric O’Sullivan nine years later. Donnacha and I, we brought him to Murphy’s house in the middle of the night and made him look him in the eyes while he slit his throat.
Murphy’s fall from grace wasn’t enough for me. And I hated that despite his betrayal, my father kept one promise, even after Rosa killed herself. As long as the Quinns ruled this city, Rosa’s daughter, Poppy, would never find out what a cunt her father was.
And when his carelessness led to my father and brothers being blown up into smithereens, I’d had enough of the leniency. I had to deal him a fate worse than death. Take his precious daughter that he wanted to protect from the truth so badly.
Only Murphy doesn’t seem to see it like that.
“Why didn’t you fight for her?” I growl, fist twitching towards the pliers. “We took everything from you and your daughter was the only thing you had left.”
Murphy rolls my question around his head. Despite his tattered clothes and the stress of poverty etched into the deep lines on his face, the ghost of a mob boss is still inside him somewhere. I can feel it in his slow replies. In the way he lowers his tone, commanding that the room listens. He learned a lot from my father.
Eventually, he lets out a deep sigh and says, “I betrayed your family twice, Lorcan. Once on purpose, with the O’Sullivans, and then again by accident. If I had just checked that package—” he chokes on the memory.“ I’ll never forgive myself. You should have killed me a long time ago, but you didn’t. I deserved any punishment you saw fit.”
I drink him in. The dirt under his fingernails and the flapping sole of his shoe. Besides taking his daughter, after the funeral, I dealt him the same fate as the postwoman who delivered the package. Completely cut off. He was left with nothing but the crumbling condo and a burner phone in case I ever needed to get hold of him.
“Get out of my sight, Murphy,” I snarl, nodding towards the glass door of my office. “The next time I see you it’ll be to put a bullet between your eyes.”
Murphy nods so low his forehead almost touches the carpet, before making a swift exit. He knows better than to be asked twice. If only his daughter would get the memo too.
Poppy Murphy, my fine, rare, China Doll. But as beautiful as she is, she was always Marcus Murphy’s daughter. The blood that rises to her cheeks whenever she sees me is the same blood that runs through his veins.
Maybe it’s the whiskey withdrawals, but I close my eyes and make a vow.
I’ll take better care of his daughter than he ever did.
Opening them again, they lock straight on the drink’s cabinet.
“Fuck it,” I mutter, slipping off my suit jacket and wrapping the fabric around my fist. I slam it into the glass window with an almighty crash and reach for an unopened bottle of The Smugglers Club.