Chapter 6 - THE MEN I PUNISHED FOR LEO
Two men died because I believed they killed my brother.
One disappeared.
I ordered none of the details personally.
At thirty-four, I still preferred language that allowed me to sleep.
“Handle it.”
“Make sure they can't do it again.”
“Finish the problem.”
Everybody understood.
Marcus understood best.
He brought me photographs.
Names.
Motive.
A debt dispute involving one of Leo’s clubs.
It fit.
I never asked how he assembled everything in less than six hours.
Now I did.
The evidence looked thinner.
One witness recanted years later.
I never knew.
The weapon was never recovered.
A vehicle connected to one suspect turned out to have been sold months before.
Again:
I never knew.
Because once Marcus gave me an answer that matched my grief, investigation became revenge.
Emily watched me read the old file.
“What?”
“I killed people who may not have killed Leo.”
She did not comfort me.
Good.
Then I found one detail.
Leo’s phone vanished after the shooting.
Marcus told me police had it.
Police records said no phone was recovered.
“Who reached the scene first?”
One of Marcus’s men.
Dead now.
Heart attack.
Convenient but ordinary.
Then there was Father Brennan’s claim.
Leo had discovered Patrick was alive.
Who else knew?
Brennan refused to speculate.
Emily offered one fact.
The threat she received after Leo’s death used a sentence:
ONE RILEY HEIR IS ENOUGH.
The phrase bothered me.
My grandfather used something similar.
One captain.
One heir.
One chain.
Marcus had grown up around him.
So had I.
Still not proof.
Then Lily entered the room carrying crayons.
She had begun accepting my presence carefully.
I was not Dad.
I was Damon.
That was appropriate.
She climbed beside Emily.
Looked at the crime-scene photographs.
Emily closed the folder.
Too late.
Lily asked:
“Is that Uncle Leo?”
I stared.
“How do you know him?”
Emily went still.
“I never showed her.”
May you like
Lily pointed toward the photograph.
“Grandpa did.”
