He Caged Me for Fifteen Years novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: The Old Guard
Niall's POV
By Saturday night my arm was in a sling, and I had four old men left to turn.
I started with the drunk one, because he was the one who owed me most.
I found him in the barn, sitting on an upturned bucket with a bottle he had not opened.
He did not look up.
"I shot you," he said.
"You did."
"I didn't mean it for you."
"I know who you meant it for."
His hands shook on his knees.
"Her," he said. "God help me. I meant it for her."
"Then do something with it," I said. "Tomorrow, when Wolf comes, stand with her."
"Against Fergus."
"Against a man who wrote you down as dead before you got old."
He turned the bottle over once in his hands.
"I'll stand," he said.
That was one.
The second man was smoking at the end of the porch, where the light didn't reach.
He listened to all of it with his face turned to the quarry road.
"You think I don't know what he is?" he said when I finished. "I've known since the first year. A man who builds a cage in his cellar before he's even out of prison."
"Then why stay?"
"Because he fed me when no one else would."
"He fed you for a reason."
"I know it now."
He dropped his cigarette and ground it out.
"Tomorrow I stand where you stand," he said. "But I'm not doing it for you. I'm doing it for the girl who read that book out in the road with your blood on her hands."
That was two.
The third took longer.
He sat in the kitchen with his boots off, and he would not speak until I put the folded rag down in front of him.
It was the one I had kept the wolf in.
I did not unwrap it. He knew what was inside.
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