THY KINGDOM COME (Deliver Us from Evil #1)

One-1

“How hammered are ya?” asks Orla Ryan as she drags my wasted arse up the stairs of her parents’ home. Strangers look on, gossiping behind their hands.

I moan in response, sinking further into her as she tightens her hold around my waist.

Orla has had a crush on me since I cut off one of her pigtails in primary school. I never understood why. I still don’t. I don’t understand why most girls have a crush on me.

My mates tell me it’s because I’m dark and mysterious or something naff like that. With a hooped piercing in my nose and one in my lip, I don’t really look the part of Prince Charming, but it doesn’t seem to matter. I thought my tattoos would steer them away, but again, it only enticed them all the more. This has worked in my favor for many reasons—just like right now—and I hate it.

My long fringe flips forward as my chin drops to my chest. My dirty blond hair is cut short on the sides and long on top, and I wear it this way just to see my father ragin’. Just thinking about that fucker has me clenching my jaw.

He’s the reason I’m here. He’s the reason for all this.

Focusing on Orla and where she’s taking me, I shake my floppy head. “Yer parents’ room,” I mumble, semi-coherent.

“Yer so bad, Puck Kelly,” she whispers excitedly and changes course, obeying my command.

She opens the door and flicks on the light, still clinging to me, and leads me toward the bed. We both collapse onto it, a trail of giggles spilling free from her. I’m on my back, and Orla doesn’t waste a second as she straddles me, lowering her mouth to mine.

She kisses me softly, cupping my cheek and coaxing me to reciprocate, but that’s not why I’m here.

I don’t like intimacy. Honestly, I hate it. I don’t like being touched. The only person whose touch I crave is dead, and when she died, I died with her. To the outside world, I look relatively “normal,” but it’s a whole different story on the inside.

On the inside, all I think about is revenge and blood…my mum’s blood staining the white carpet a bright red.

Cupping the back of Orla’s neck, I give her what she wants, returning her kisses with a brutal passion and pushing aside the need to hurt her. This is the only way I know how to be. I wish I could be gentle and enjoy the things most twenty-one-year-olds do, but I can’t.

The only thing coursing through me is vengeance, and, being a Kelly, I must deal with that in the most deplorable of ways. Just like right now.

Orla runs her fingers over my T-shirt, circling the barbell in my n****e before stopping at the button on my ripped black jeans. When she flicks it open, I reach down and stop her.

“Ya don’t wanna?” she breathlessly pants against my lips. Her hot breath reminds of me of the warm blood that coated my knuckles last week when I paid a visit to one of my dad’s customers who was late with their payment.

“I do,” I confirm, threading my fingers through her hair. “But could I trouble ye for some water?”

Orla’s disappointment is clear, but she’s a good Protestant girl and nods. “Aye, no bother.”

She gingerly slides off me and arranges her dress, not wanting to alert the partygoers downstairs what we were just doing.

“I won’t be long.”

Nodding, I throw an arm over my eyes as if snuffing out the bright light. In reality, I’m blocking out all the atrocities I’ve done.

The closing of the door announces her departure, which is my cue to follow, but just not in the way Orla thinks.

I spring to my feet, my drunken state miraculously gone because I’m not plastered. I never was. Locking the door, I get to work for the real reason I’m here.

The corner of my mouth lifts when I open the bedside dresser and see Mrs. Ryan’s pink dildo. I wonder if Nolen Ryan is privy to the fact that his Holy Joe of a wife has a battery-operated friend feet away. Unable to help myself, I swipe it and slide it in my back pocket.

Closing her drawer, I round the bed, and when I open Nolen’s dresser, I curse under my breath.

The bastard was right.

Reaching into my backpack—which I slipped under the bed earlier—for my phone, I snap a picture of the evidence before taking it and the Catholic rosary beads from the drawer. I slip everything into my backpack. My job here is done.

The party is in full swing downstairs, and I know it’s only a matter of time before Orla comes back. I walk toward the window, unlock it, and look at the two-story drop.

“Ach, finally,” says my best friend, Cian Davies, peering up at me as he flicks his feg into the bushes.

I’ve known Cian since I was born. Our fathers have been best friends since their teens, and it was expected we were to follow in their footsteps. His father is an eejit, but thankfully, his son just so happens to be the coolest person I know.

We’re often mistaken for brothers because many have said he’s my double. It’s helped with our alibis in the past.

“Stop faffin’ around. Rory is keepin’ d**k for us down the street. Get a move on before the peelers come.”

This is so like Cian—always worrying about the what-ifs, the complete opposite to who I am.

Clucking my tongue, I calmly say, “Houl yer whisht, y’ll jinx us. I’ve a present for ye.”

Before he can ask what it is, I reach into my back pocket and toss Mrs. Ryan’s dildo down to him. On instinct, he catches it, and it takes him a few seconds to realize what it is. When he does, he shrieks and flings it into the bushes.

Laughing, I climb over the windowsill and peer downward.

“Punky, yer not gonna jump, are ya?”

Of course, he’d assume I’d scale down the drainpipe, as that’s what any normal person would do, but I never claimed to be normal. What’s that? While most people are inside, hiding from the thunderstorms, I’m outside, playing in the rain.

Before Cian can protest, I use my legs and launch out the window, relishing in the adrenaline rush as my boots hit the soft grass. I wish it was higher. It’s only in the face of danger that I feel alive.

“Ya jammy bastard!”

“Luck has nothin’ to with it, Cian,” I say with a grin as we commence a discreet walk across the Ryans’ front garden.

It’s in the wrong, corrupt, and violent where I thrive.

Keeping my head down as I’m supposed to be wasted and passed out upstairs, we avoid bumping into anyone and head down the street to where our friend, Rory Walsh, is keeping a lookout. When he sees us, he flashes the lights on his car.

After we all quickly get into his BMW, he puts the car into drive and speeds off down the street. Like thieves in the night, we’ve gotten away unscathed. It shouldn’t be this simple, but it is.

Even if anyone suspected us, they wouldn’t dare wage a war against the Kellys, the Davieses, or the Walshes as our families rule all of Northern Ireland. Belfast is our base, but paramilitary groups who run their own “areas” are still under our control. There are a few paramilitary groups in the past who have fought against each other, but they soon learned that we don’t tolerate rebellion.

It’s been this way for generations, and we’re expected to take over from our fathers when the time comes.

I never chose this life. It was my birthright, according to my dad, but all I see is the curse that it is. It’s because of the Kelly name that my mum was slain by the Doyles—our Catholic cunt counterpart in Dublin.

They don’t come into Belfast, and we don’t go into Dublin. If a Doyle dares to flounder these century-old laws, they will pay with their life. Some have tried, but all have failed. And I’m just waiting, anticipating the day one smug arsehole tries his luck.

When he does, I’ll be there waiting, because the Doyles will pay for what they did to my ma.

My dad may have been able to move on with his life—remarrying and having twins, like his first wife wasn’t murdered because she bore his name—but I cannot. She paid for being a Kelly. Her death was supposed to incite a war, but my father simply laid down his arms like the coward he is.

I don’t even know why she died. My dad refuses to tell me why, and that makes her murder all the worse. He’s happy to forget she existed while I exist only to avenge her death.

I stayed nestled with her corpse for three days before my father came. At five years old, I didn’t understand the concept of death.

My face was painted, reflecting her injuries and tallying how many men caused her the heinous injuries she sustained. This was my way to shoulder her pain when I couldn’t help her because I was locked in a wardrobe, thanks to my ma saving me until the very end. It was also to ensure I never forgot who was responsible for killing her; not that I ever could.

I remember bits and pieces, like a moving picture flickering in and out of focus, but I’ll never forget the man who turned toward the wardrobe and gestured for me to stay quiet. He knew I was there, so the question is, why did I not face the same punishment as my ma?

My dad has a single photo of me from that night. He keeps it locked away in his desk drawer, but when I was ten, I found it. It was a reminder that the nightmares were real. That she really existed. But he never answered my questions, and after a while, I realized if I wanted answers, I’d have to find them for myself.

The three bloody lines fingered down the middle of my forehead were in honor of the three men who took away the only person who ever loved me. This is their future, imprinted on my skin because they’re already dead—they just don’t know it yet.

Rubbing over the crucifix tattooed on my left wrist, I remember one of the men who brutalized my ma had the same brand. I had it tattooed so that every time I look down at it, it provokes this burning desire to kill every last Doyle who walks this god forsaken earth.

I hated my father growing up, but now, that hatred has grown into something else.

He did nothing to avenge my ma, and I need to know why. His brother, my uncle, Sean, is the only person who seems to give a s**t about her. I often wish he was my father instead of Connor Kelly. He was the one who told me the Catholics had broken into the bungalow Ma bought without my father knowing and killed her to start a war over territory.

The Kellys deal drugs, stolen guns, dabble in money laundering, and everything in between. If you were expecting us to be moral citizens, I hate to disappoint. We’re anything but.

The Doyles are the same. They keep to their area in Dublin, and we to ours in Belfast, but it seems they wanted that to change when they took the life of my mum. Utter blasphemy, as Uncle Sean speculates that the Catholics not only wanted to steal our territory but they wanted to sell to the Protestants on the down low as well.

They would be seen as traitors in the eyes of other devout Catholics, but they wouldn’t tell them. The Doyles wanted it all. They wanted our turf, our business, and our people. Killing my mum was them challenging my dad, but she was innocent. This war was never hers, yet she paid the ultimate price.

What I don’t understand is why my mum bought that bungalow without my father’s knowledge. Where was my dad for three days? And how did the Doyles find us?

I have more questions than answers, which is the only reason I do my father’s dirty work. One day, he’s going to slip up, and I will uncover what happened on that cold November night. It’s the only reason I’m still here.

It’s the only reason he’s still alive.

“Did ya find it?” Rory asks, looking at me in the rearview mirror.

Nodding, I hunt through my backpack for the Catholic Bible and rosary beads. “Nolen Ryan is so fucked.”

Rory whistles when he sees the evidence my father ordered me to find and bring back to him.

Nolen is a trusted confidant of my dad’s, but my dad suspected he was double-crossing him when someone reported seeing him at Sunday Mass—a Catholic Mass near Dublin. It goes without saying, this cannot go unpunished, and Nolen will be made an example of.