O’Malley men had done the same thing he just had with the rest of his siblings, and a good portion of the guests. There were only a handful of idiots running for the doors. He met the gaze of one of his father’s men, Liam, and jerked his chin toward the exits. The scream had come from there.
They had to figure out who had pulled the trigger, and they had to figure it out now.
Callie squirmed in Teague’s grip, trying not to notice how good he felt against her while she searched for her father. “Papa!”
“I’m here.” He waved a hand from the other side of a wall of muscle that was John, his personal bodyguard.
Thank God. She allowed herself to relax a little. Whatever else had gone wrong, her father was okay. She glanced at Teague, taking in the intent way he searched the room. “What happened?”
“That’s what we’re about to find out.” He let out a breath. “We can get up now.”
She followed his gaze to where a man had just come back inside. One of his? It had all happened so fast, she couldn’t begin to say if it had been an attack or something else altogether less sinister. But all rational responses aside, her gut said this wasn’t all caused by an accident of some sort. No, this had been intentional.
It was nearly impossible to climb out from beneath a table with any level of grace, so she took Teague’s offered hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet. Or that was the excuse she told herself. It certainly wasn’t that she wanted to feel his skin against hers again.
Papa was already in motion, shouting orders in direct counterpoint to Teague’s father. The end result was the same—a group of men rushing to the main doors to find answers.
The man who’d come back in the doors approached their table and spoke in a low voice. “A drive-by. One of the guests was winged, but the bleeding has already stopped.”
A drive-by? Who would dare?
But even as the thought crossed her mind, she knew. “Halloran.”
“It makes sense.” Teague frowned. “Apparently he’s not too keen on the idea of you switching out husbands without missing a beat.”
She took a step back, removing her hand from his. For a moment there, she’d almost forgotten that he was an O’Malley and little better than an enemy. She turned away from him and stepped carefully around the fallen chairs to her father. She nodded at Micah, one of her father’s long-term men. “Talk to the couple outside. Find out everything you can.” She waited for him to head toward the doors to turn to her father. “Papa, I think it was the Hallorans.”
“Victor Halloran might be a crazy bastard, but not even he’s crazy enough to attack both our family and the O’Malleys at the same time. No, it must be someone else—some hotshot kid with a gun and more balls than sense who wants bragging rights for a skirmish with the Sheridans.”
She might have believed that under different circumstances, but she’d seen firsthand how grief for Ronan had changed and warped her father, affecting both his judgment and his health. And that was without someone heaping humiliation on top of it like they’d effectively done with Victor Halloran.
But he wouldn’t listen to reason, and now wasn’t the time to argue about it. “Papa, we need to go home and regroup.”
“Nonsense. The boys will take care of things.”
She reined in her temper through sheer force of will. “Someone drove by and fired on innocent bystanders to prove that they could.”
“Yes, and if we scurry like rats to our den, they will know they have the upper hand.” He straightened, towering over her. “I’ve been in this game longer than you’ve been alive, daughter.”
The same argument-ending statement he always made when he decided she was being too lippy. There would be no reasoning with him now, and if he backed down, it was a weakness he wouldn’t allow himself to show. There was no option but to stay here and be a sitting duck for whatever attack the Hallorans had planned next.
Maybe they’re done for the night. Wishful thinking and she knew it. Maybe they were, but it was always smarter to overestimate your enemy than to hope for the best. She tried to put herself into Victor Halloran’s shoes. From everything she’d heard, he’d done wet work for a prominent empire in New York before deciding to branch out for himself and carve out a piece of Boston. He’d worked his way up the ranks and created a reputation so brutal, people here had folded for him without a fight. She’d bet everything she owned that he wasn’t done for the night.
Callie motioned to John. He hesitated, looking at her father, but finally crossed over the stand next to her chair. “Yes?”