Page 194 of Sins of Innocence

"And who needs to be tormented for the next few years," Mick mutters under his breath.

Not for the first time, I'm glad that Mick is my friend and not my enemy.

"Brogan approved me being the executioner at the tribunal?" I unlock the door and we walk out, leaving Kenneth passed out in the chair.

Mick nods. "He wanted to do it himself, but I pointed out that Kenneth tried to kill your wife, not once but twice and kept her trapped working for him for several years. The kill should be yours."

That's the thing about Mick. He's fair. A lot of bosses would have demanded the right to take the kill to cement their reputations. Mick doesn't need that kind of bolstering to his.

We all know he's not a man to cross.

Too bad for him, Kenneth didn't get the memo.

Chapter forty-three

Mob Justice

WRAITH

The Bunker gym doesn't look like a gym anymore.

The equipment is gone, pushed back or removed entirely. Folding chairs fill the floor in rows, every one of them occupied. Lieutenants in the first row, captains in the next two and foot soldiers fill the rest.

The stage at the front is elevated so the whole room can see its occupants, with a screen behind it large enough that even the guys in the back will be able to read the fine print on the evidence that will be presented.

I've been in this room hundreds of times, sparring, working out, training with my brethren. It's the place we all come several times a week, the one place lieutenant and foot soldier run into each other on the regular.

It has never felt more like the core of Bunker.

Stern and commanding, Brogan sits behind a sturdy wooden table in the center of the stage. Nicked and scarred from decades of use, it looks its age. Mick told me that it's the table where the original Shaughnessy Mob Boss met with his inner circle around, here in the Bunker, back in the 1920s.

Mick's to Brogan's right and Kara is to his left.

I take my position to the side. Standing.

I am not the authority in this room. I am the instrument of it. But because of the people on this stage, I do have power in our organization. Power I will respect and honor as the man whose place I took never did.

Men shuffle in their chairs, but no one speaks. We all know why we are here.

To watch the sentencing and punishment of a traitor.

A rat.

A low murmur starts up when Kenneth is brought in, his hands zip-tied in front of him, a soldier on either side of him.

He's been worked over. Courtesy of me and Mick.

Neither of us was interested in sparing him during interrogation and while we used our designer compounds to loosen his tongue, we didn't rely on them to get the answers we wanted.

Kenneth tries to walk with dignity but there's a pronounced limp from a strike from Mick's flapjack to his knee. He got the vivid bruise on his left cheek from my bare knuckles.

He glares at Mick and then his eyes land on me.

Whatever he sees makes his gaze drop before he is forced into a chair on the left of the stage.

Brogan lifts his hand for silence.

The murmurs and shuffling stops until the gym is silent but for the sound of nearly two hundred people breathing.