for me, he had some business to attend to this morning with the Russians and didn't want me in attendance, so I was escaping at least a few hours of his lecturing and so called 'preparations for my future role.' The thing was, he was definitely training me up to take over from my dad after graduation, wanting me to spend time learning the ropes of his job so that I would be ready to front the legal side of the family business, but he was teaching me a lot of shit that had nothing to do with that too.
Like last night, when he'd sat me down with a goddamn family tree and talked me through the way each and every one of his brothers, kids, cousins and the rest of the family were strong and how they were weak too. I now knew my uncle Dougal was both lethal, hard-nosed and a perfect enforcer, but that he also had a taste for coke and hookers after celebrating a job, which made him loose lipped from time to time. He'd never given up anything incriminating enough to warrant his death, but I could tell that he was treading a fine line. Betray the family and you weren't family anymore. Every single O'Brien knew that. And if you weren't family, then you were dead. No two ways about it. Once you were in through blood or marriage, you were in.
It made me more than a little uncomfortable to know that Tatum was enveloped under that mantra now too. But I also knew she'd never betray the O'Briens because she'd never get caught up with them beyond her link to me. I wouldn't allow it. No matter the cost to myself.
Most of the secrets I’d learned about my family weren’t all that hard to have figured out myself, though my grandpa’s clear disdain for most of them was a little surprising. For someone who was so caught up on the ideals of this family shit he spouted all the damn time, he certainly didn’t think much of his relatives. The only one he’d spoken about with pride so far as I could tell was Niall. Though he didn’t fail to list all of his weaknesses too. He’d said, “Niall is a good soldier. Ruthless, merciless and thorough. If I give him a job he gets it done no matter what. But losing his wife cracked something loose inside his skull that was already a little fractured to begin with. He’s callous, reckless and fearless which are all skills to be admired. But he doesn’t plan for anything and he takes unacceptable risks. He’s no threat to the family because he lives and breathes this life. But he’s a threat to himself every damn day. He has a reputation for being the most terrifying O’Brien and I’d say that’s well earned. But it’s also well-known he’s unhinged. Something broke in him the day those bastards killed Ava and without it he’ll never be a good candidate for leadership. He just isn’t capable of owning that much responsibility. He doesn’t care about his life or anyone else’s enough to own it.”
Liam had sighed like that disappointed him but mostly it just made me feel sad for my uncle. He deserved more than that from life. He deserved better than to live each day just waiting to die. But I wasn’t capable of changing his fate. I just hoped one day he met someone who was.
So over all I was spending the days 'preparing for my role' while getting the impression that that role might be a little different than the job description and the more the idea niggled at me, the more I began to believe it was the truth. But that left me with one rather uncomfortable notion which I needed to discuss with the others sooner or later. Because I was getting the impression that Liam was considering me for leadership. For his role after he died. And if that was the case then in the years between now and his death, I was certain that I’d be tangled up in the web of this family so tightly that there wouldn’t even be a way out for me by the time the old bastard croaked. And I had no desire to head up a family of Irish gangsters.
Nash and Blake were bickering over the merits of training for long distance runs, debating the use of weights and sprints and getting all macho