“It’s not too late to back out,” Father Flanagan said to me, not looking at me but at the scene in front of him. “No papers have been signed.”
He had asked me that before, during our meeting, if I wanted an out. He said he’d known Cash his entire life, since he was a wee babe, and how persuasive he could be when he set his mind to something. It seemed Father Flanagan knew more about this situation than he cared to admit. However, there was no out for me.
“No,” I said. “Papers weren’t signed, but this is a done deal. I made vows I intend to keep. They mean something to me, regardless of the circumstances.”
“Ah,” Father Flanagan breathed out, and there was something almost funny about the way he had done it.
I turned to look at him and a huge smile lit up his face.
“What?” I said.
“Oh, nothin’,” he said, with the same la de da attitude Kelly pulled off. “I…I’m delighted! I’d tell you to give him hell, but I’d prefer it if you’d give him a taste of heaven, since…”
I lifted my dress, prepared to ride with Harrison to the police station. “Hell is more his speed.”
“Somethin’ like that.” He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Go with vigor and grace, my child. You’re going to need both.”
I met Harrison outside as they put a hand to Cash’s head, pushing him into a waiting police car. There were five cars, each one holding two policemen, for one man.
“What are they arresting him for?” I asked my brother.
Harrison shook his head. “Murder.”
I turned and really looked at him. He shrugged, like the charge was nothing too exciting.
“Did he do it?” I asked.
“Draw your own conclusions, but they never have enough evidence to convict him.”
I let that sink in for a moment. They never have enough evidence.
“More than once?”
Harrison sighed. “There were two murders not long ago. They’re trying to pin both on him, when the facts show whoever killed the two guys—” my brother paused and gave me a “listen beyond my words” look “—did so in self-defense.”
“Let’s go,” I said, moving in the direction of Kelly’s building, where I assumed Harrison’s car was parked.
Harrison put a hand on my arm to stop me. “We can stop this, Kee. None of the papers have been signed. You only said your vows.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Stone’s gunning for him. He’s not going to rest. He’s not going to stop until Kelly is either locked in a cage for good, or he’s six feet under. If I make a mistake—in trial, I mean—maybe I can take care of the first issue and you’ll be free.”
“What about Kelly’s brother?”
“I doubt he’ll force you to marry him, too.”
“No,” I said. Again. “Even though no papers have been signed, I’m married to Kelly. It’s done.”
“You can’t move him, Keely Shea! I’m giving you an out, and you’re not fucking taking it. He’s never been proved wrong. Never. You’re not going to change him.”
I took a step closer to my brother, hoping my eyes conveyed how serious I was. “You mess up on purpose and he’ll know. Do your job, Harrison, and do it right. Get my husband out of jail and out of trouble.”
“Your husband.” He took a deep breath and then shook his head. “This is not some feral cat you can try to tame. Feeding him is not going to work. Taking him in is not going to work. Neither will compassion. Some men are born more animal than man. Cash Kelly is a wild animal.”
I went to walk off when his next words stopped me.
“He’s not going to fill the void Roisin left behind, Keely.”
I stood motionless for a second, my temper too high to even respond.
“If Mari can’t do it—”
I whirled on my brother, my veil catching in the wind, flowing behind me like a flag. It should’ve been stained red from my anger. “No one will ever replace Roisin in my life. You have no idea what you’re fucking talking about.”
“Really?” He took a step closer to me and I balled my hands into fists. “What about Broadway, Kee? I know you enjoy it, but do you love it? Or are you just trying to please Mam?”
“What does any of this have to do with Kelly?”
My brother ignored my venomous tone and battled forward. “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “But somehow I know it’s connected. You’ve never gotten help to deal with the loss. Mam was too blinded by her own grief to reach out for you. All of Roisin’s hopes and dreams were put on you, because Mam can’t fill the emptiness either.”
“None of this is related,” I snapped at him. It wasn’t, even though I knew his words were the truth. But this had to do with Kelly and the vows I’d just made. There was no way I was letting Stone get even when it was my heart at stake. If anyone was getting even, it’d be me, and I couldn’t do that with my wild animal of a husband in a cage. “No matter how you feel about this, it is what it is. Now take me to the police station and do the damn job Kelly pays you for.”
I started walking toward the building, and as I did, I heard my brother grumble, “Yeah, Mrs. Keely Kelly, whatever you say, Mrs. Keely Kelly. Serves you right, Keely Kelly.”
I shot him the bird.
After a few hours, they had to let my husband go. Not enough evidence to convict him.
Kelly walked out with a grin on his face, and when he caught the one on mine, his fell and his eyebrow shot up. I wasn’t smiling because they had let him go, even though I was getting sick of waiting around in my wedding dress, but because I’d overhead two cops talking about my brother—what a tough-ass lawyer he was.
“What?” I stood, fixing my dress. “Don’t trust my smile, Kelly?”
“Not just your smile, darlin’. ‘I woke up today to ruin a man’s life’ is written all over your face.”
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t take you for being dramatic. But here we are.” We started to leave together when I stopped. “And I wasn’t smiling because they let you go either. Just for the record.”
“Noted.” He nodded toward the front of the building, ready to walk. A second after we did, he cleared his throat. “You don’t care about all of these people?”
“What about them?” I said.
“They’re staring at you.”
Probably because I was in a wedding dress in a police station, but either way, I shrugged. “They must like what they see, if they keep looking.”
Kelly smiled and then laughed.
Like the ring on my left finger, I’d never truly paid attention to it until it seemed to steal my breath. His smile? One front tooth came out slightly more than the other one, and the imperfection made him even sexier. His laugh? It was deep and melodic, like the sound of his voice.
“Good bones,” he said, and I had no clue what he was talking about.
“See you next time, Cash,” a short policewoman said from her spot at the front desk.
What was it about this guy that made people either love or hate him? There was no in-between. The little woman behind the desk seemed to love him. Her eyes went soft when he walked past her.
“She thinks you’re so charming,” I said. “La de daaaa!” I twirled my pointer finger in the air.
“I am,” he said.
“Not on your best day. Not to me.”
“You have a tongue made from sin, darlin’. If only I was fooled by the lies.”
“Are we really going to fight on our wedding day?” I mocked being upset, throwing a hand over my heart.
“Considering I was locked up for part of it?” He shrugged. “I’d say an argument was—”
“Just grand,” I said, copying his Irish accent. “Just grand.”
After a few steps, he said, “No one is indifferent to me.”
“No speaking in riddles,” I said, demanding to understand this time.
“Love and hate are both driven by feelings. I do something to make another
man hate me—” he shrugged “—more than likely, I stood up for my beliefs, challenging his. A beautiful woman falls in love with me—” he grinned “—it means I used my persuasive charms to claim what’s mine, even if she had to fall through hate first.”
He opened the door to the police station for me and I stepped out first, waiting while he held the door for another woman before meeting me again. We started toward Harrison’s car.
“Claim?” I stopped walking. “Or steal?”
He studied me for a minute. “Hearts are stolen every second, every minute, every hour, of every day, darlin’. I doubt anyone would give such a sacred thing over willingly.”
“Me,” I said. “I was prepared to give it.”
“To Stone.”
I shrugged. “Whoever.”
“Give me the difference between giving and stealing when it comes to a heart.”
“Giving means handing over less power. I’m giving it, so some control is still mine. Stealing it—that’s consuming. If…whoever can steal my heart, whoever can steal everything that means something to me. I’m not down with that.”
“Ah.” The lights from the buildings lit up the mischief in his green eyes. “The safe path. A relationship that’s built on something other than animalistic attraction. Or maybe you’d call it passion.”
“Sex is sex,” I said. “It’s good or it’s not. Feelings? Those should build over time, because if they run too hot, too fast, they burn everything down around them.”
“Sex is sex,” he repeated. The look on his face echoed the look he’d given me at church, when I’d dared him with my expression to kiss me. It was a subtle physical change, but it didn’t seem to matter. I could feel the changes in him rather than see them.
I shook my head, confused about all of this, and turned to walk away from him. I made it a couple of steps before someone called my name. I sighed, turning around.
Scott stood on the other side of Kelly, like no feud stood between them. Except when you looked at it from my point of view, I was the center. They each stood on a different side of me.
My eyes connected with Scott’s before he looked me over from head to toe. I thought I’d see hurt, but I only found disgust. He moved closer after the judgment, stopping when he was next to me. “Marrying him is one thing,” he said, his voice a hot whisper. “But coming here to support a murderer? Who. The. Fuck. Are. You?”
I didn’t respond, but I refused to move my eyes from his. He stared at me for a minute longer, the disgust even thicker, before he stormed off.
Kelly helped me into the back of Harrison’s car, taking care to move my veil from the seat and setting it on the window behind us, and then he slid in next to me.
I looked at my shiny new husband as my brother started the car, heading toward Hell’s Kitchen. “Scott’s disgusted with me,” I said. “He hates me.”
Kelly laughed a little, and Harrison looked at him from his rearview mirror.
“How’s this funny, if it’s going to ruin your plans?”
“Not funny,” he said, shaking his head. “Amusing.”
“Amusing. Funny. Same damn thing.”
“Harry Boy,” Kelly said, hitting my brother’s seat, “is it disgust you feel for Mari when you see her with Macchiavello? Or is it pure hate for what you want the most and can’t have?”
I met my brother’s eyes in the mirror. He said nothing.
“There’s your answer,” Kelly said, sitting back and relaxing in his seat. “No answer is still an answer. Love does strange things to people, darlin’. It’s like a disease—it affects everyone differently.”
True, so I didn’t argue.
We all became quiet as we drove down the streets of Hell’s Kitchen. My new home. The closer we came to Kelly’s place, though, the thicker the crowds became. Music thumped from outside. Tables had been set up, lined with food. Clumps of people were talking and laughing. Kids ran around like it was the fourth of July.
The crowd was diverse, made up of many different faces, all coming together to form a party.
My brother, acting like a chauffeur, parked the car in front of Kelly’s place of business, and after getting out, opened the passenger side door so he could help me out. Kelly slid out behind me and put a hand to my lower back, urging me forward.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“A party.” Kelly nodded at a man in passing as we came closer to the thickest part of the crowd.
“Yeah, I can see that. What’s it for?”
“Us,” he said.
Ooh. On his face, was that…not thankfulness, not humbleness, but something close to both of them that wasn’t actually either one of them? Did I dare think something I never expected? Pride, but not for himself.
“You stare at the devil for long periods of time, darlin’, and it does wicked things to your face,” he said.
I laughed a little. “It’s not that I’m staring at you because I like what I see, Marauder. I’m staring at you because I had no idea this many people liked you.”
“Like is a strong word. I’d call it respect and then call it a day.”
“Mr. Kelly!” A man who didn’t look much younger than Cash, holding a baby on his hip, came up to us. A woman stood next to him, holding a little girl by the hand. I assumed she was his wife and the two kids were theirs.
The man and Kelly shook hands, and then he introduced me as his wife, full name and all. The man worked for Kelly, though I wasn’t sure in what capacity. He didn’t seem like the marauding type, so maybe he legitimately worked for him. Harrison had told me that Kelly owned legitimate businesses.
I smiled at the little girl, who was staring up at me. I didn’t give a shit if adults stared at me, but I drew the line at kids. Most of them were too cute to ignore. “Hi,” I said to her.
“Hi,” she said, and then she started swinging her mom’s hand back and forth while she sang, “Keely Kelly. Keely Kelly. Oooh. Keely Kelly.”
Her mother told her to hush, but she kept on. Harrison stood close and started laughing so hard that he had to excuse himself from the conversation he was in. Raff did the same.
Asses.
After some time had gone by and I’d met too many people to remember, I decided to grab a drink and take a seat. This was Kelly’s party, everyone wanting a piece of him, so I sat back and watched it all unfold.
I mean, despite him being a marauding bastard, these people were treating him like fucking Robin Hood. I couldn’t claim that he was friendly with them, but there was something about him while he was around them that made me watch him even closer.
Cash Kelly had found a purpose in these people?
Harrison had also warned me about the war going on in Hell’s Kitchen—apart from the other one Kelly had started with Scott—because he wanted me to be careful. But here? Among these people? It didn’t seem to exist. They were having a grand time. Even the senior men of the group had gotten together and started to sing old Irish tunes for the fun of it.
If I set this scene next to the one Kelly always painted in my head, it made no sense.
Or maybe these people were too afraid of him not to come and celebrate? He was hell-bent on ruling these streets again, so maybe he did whatever it took to get these people to go to war for him?
“Sit here, Connolly. Granny’ll sit right there.”
I was sitting in a beach chair, and I turned to find an older woman taking a seat in the chair closest to mine. A little girl, maybe about seven or eight, sat next to her.
The older lady met my eye. “Congratulations,” she said, tipping her head to me. She wasn’t your usual “grandma” type. I couldn’t find anything sweet about her. She seemed as tough as nails. “I have to say, Mr. Kelly chose a good bride. You look sturdy enough to take on a man like him. I’m not speaking physically, either.”
I found no offense to her words. I even wanted to grin, but I held back for the sake of respect. “I hope that’s true, Ms…?”
“Maureen will do,” she said. She nodded toward the little girl. “This is my granddaughter. Connolly.”
Even though her grandmother spoke to her, she looked away, and not at the crowd. She stared at a spot on the building, where no one was standing to block her view.
“What a beautiful name,” I said, and I meant it. It fit her. She didn’t answer so I tried again after a minute. “Are you having fun?”
Kids her age were everywhere, but she wasn’t even bothering to look at them, either.
“Connolly chooses to stay silent,” Maureen said.
I looked at Maureen, hoping my face conveyed the question. Chooses to stay silent?
Maureen set her hands on the chair and then groaned as she forced herself back up. “Would you mind keeping an eye on her? I’m going to see if she’ll eat if I make her a plate.”
Not bothering to wait for my answer, Connolly’s grandmother headed in the direction of the tables set with food. Maybe it was my imagination, but she seemed almost relieved to have walked off.
I relaxed in my seat, but I was determined to try to talk to her, even if she only listened. The old men were singing a song that put a smile on my face. “I had a sister,” I said to her. “My twin. Her name was Roisin. Which is close to Connolly—” she shot me a look “— sort of.” I smiled and her eyes narrowed, but I got her to look at me, at least. “She loved this song. She could even dance to it.”
After a second, she turned away from me again.
I started to hum along to the song, moving my feet against the cement in a steady rhythm. “Do you know any old Irish songs?”
Nothing. Not a nod. Not a look. Her eyes were glued to dead space.
“Maybe one day, if you’d ever like to learn them, or how to dance to them, I can teach you.”
Silence. No movement.
“Yeah, who likes old music anyway?” I said. “You gotta get down with the times, right?”
She sighed, and for a second, I wondered if I was bothering her. Then I wondered if she just didn’t care for casual conversation.
“I understand,” I said, my voice low. “After my sister…I didn’t want to talk either. It hurt. I didn’t know what to say to make it go away.” Why was I telling this child this? I had no clue, but the words kept coming.
Marauder (Gangsters of New York Book 2) Page 14
