Shauna’s dark eyes fastened on his. ‘I don’t know a thing about any of it,’ she said. ‘All I know is your dad was all I wanted, always.’

If he believed nothing else, Connor certainly believed that. Mum had verged on the obsessive about Dad.

No wonder the poor fucker ran for the hills. Got tucked up again with a sweet little honey like Claire Milo.

He shouldn’t even be thinking that. But what he was thinking about now was Kylie, his ex. Stopping her in the shopping mall, and her looking scared and saying, Ask your bitch mother and her pet ape. What the fuck? Who was this ‘ape’? Was it – could it be – Jeb Cleaver? And had Jeb and Shauna fallen out over something? Was that why he’d swung an axe at Connor while mentioning his mother?

Christ! What the hell had she been up to?

‘Anyway!’ Shauna drew a breath, swept a long-nailed hand across the marble worktop between them as if drawing an invisible line. ‘Forget that shit. What matters is what I want to talk to you about now.’

‘Oh?’ Connor eyed his mother.

‘Yeah.’ Shauna reached into the drawer under the worktop and pulled something out that shocked Connor to the core.

‘Christ,’ he said as Shauna pushed the thing toward him.

‘Don’t tell me you ain’t seen one of these before,’ she said.

‘What the . . . ?’

Connor stared at the big Magnum pistol. He looked up at his mother’s eyes and she was smiling. She looked mad.

‘Take that,’ she said. ‘And kill that bitch Claire Milo. And her runt of a daughter.’

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145

There was a long, chilling moment of silence. Then Connor spoke.

‘I’m not killing anyone,’ he said, pushing the gun back toward her. ‘Are you off your fucking head?’

The smile dropped from Shauna’s face like a discarded mask. ‘I’m your mother, Connor Flynn. And I’m telling you to do it.’

Connor stood up so suddenly that he knocked over the bar stool. He didn’t pick it up.

‘No,’ he said.

‘What, you ain’t got the balls for it?’

‘I’m not doing it.’ Connor flicked the thing back across the countertop. ‘Get it out of your head. It ain’t going to happen.’