Marauder (Gangsters of New York Book 2)

by Bella Di Corte

  He echoed my nod. “Sos,” he said. “Truce.”

  The word sounded like “sauce,” but he’d said it in that way people do when they’re pronouncing a foreign word.

  “Sos,” I repeated, squeezing his hand.

  We released the chain from between us, and he stood from his stool, holding out his hand for me. I took it, and he led me to the middle of the restaurant, stopping to pull me close and move me to a slow song that the band in the corner was playing.

  “I never got to dance with my bride,” he said.

  I laughed in his ear as we moved. “That’s what happens when you steal a bride.”

  “You get a heart,” he said. “So fucking grand.”

  I laughed even louder as he dipped me.

  After our dance, we ate at the bar, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so much. Kelly had jokes for days, ones I knew Mari would appreciate, and every time he’d smile at me, I found that he no longer had to steal my time and attention. Without ploys and games and barriers—I was giving it.

  We spent so much time at Sullivan’s that, by the time we left, it was already dark out and too late to attend the event. Kelly didn’t seem to care, and neither did I.

  It was a beautiful night to be out, no place to be, and as we walked down the street holding hands, I thought about how nice it was going to be to spend some time with Kelly outside of New York.

  He was always preoccupied with his “work.” He even worked on Sundays. My schedule was rigorous, and with Maureen and the kids, it seemed like my days were always filled up.

  I wasn’t sure what it would be like to have more than a couple of hours to spend with each other. It wasn’t an extended trip—I had obligations with work. A couple of days, though, with no work distractions, were going to be a change of pace.

  I imagined Kelly on a beach in Sicily somewhere, no shirt, and a shot of desire coursed through my veins.

  He whistled as he walked, and I smiled to myself, liking the sound of it.

  “Can you sing?” I looked at him.

  “A little,” he said.

  “I call bullshit.” Then I sucked in a breath and clutched the heart pendant when three men seemed to materialize out of the darkness, no warning.

  One stepped directly in front of Kelly, and the other two stood on each side of him. Three guns were pointed at us.

  Kelly nodded his head real subtle, behind him, and I caught it. I moved, standing against his back. “Move along, fellas,” he said. “Not here. Not now.”

  “Maraigh might have given passes if the mark was out with family, but you know how we run things, Kelly. And it ain’t like your old man. That’s why he’s dead and you’re about to be.”

  “We’ll make this simple, Kelly,” another one said. “The drugs. You tell us where they are. We’ll let the wife walk.”

  I looked between Kelly and the three men. This was the first time I’d heard anything about drugs. I knew Kelly was a thief, one of the best, but drugs? Was that what he was stealing and then selling? Maybe the bullshit warrant wasn’t bullshit at all.

  “Seems Kelly keeps secrets from the missus,” Guy Two spoke up, staring at my face, laughing a little. “You didn’t know, Red? Your husband steals drugs that don’t belong to him and then sells them in the streets for more than we do. He’s high class, the marauding tiger.” Guy Two hit Center Guy on the shoulder. “Then he lets the children of those parents he sold drugs to live at his place. How’s that for repaying a debt? At least his old man was honest about it.”

  My thoughts went to Ryan, how small he was, how he could potentially be facing life-long consequences for his mother’s addiction, and my blood ran cold. I would’ve taken a step back from Kelly, but the seriousness of the situation kept me in place. These guys were not fucking around.

  In my peripheral, I saw someone moving behind the three men. Someone they hadn’t noticed. Maureen. She had a bag of trash in one hand and a cigarette in another. She must’ve stepped out to sneak a smoke under the guise of taking the trash out. Her eyes connected with mine before she tilted her head a bit, maybe realizing what the fuck was going on.

  Without trying to be too obvious, I turned my eyes back to the situation, but Guy Two had noticed. His head whipped around but Maureen had already gone.

  Maybe she was going to get Raff.

  Center Guy was demanding the drugs again. “Where are they?” He had started to sweat. He pointed the gun at Kelly’s head. “Where the fuck are they, Kelly?” When he didn’t get a response, the gun moved and trained on me. “You have two seconds, or you’ll be cleaning up your wife’s brains from the street you love so much. One.”

  Kelly made a subtle move, one where either way he was getting the bullet, but on Center Guy’s count of two, Maureen swung the garbage bag with all her might, and it connected with his head in a sickening thunk! She must’ve filled it with rocks or something. The crack seemed to echo before all hell broke loose.

  Kelly shoved me to the ground. He swept up the gun that Center Guy lost after he went down and shot Guy One point-blank in the head. Guy Two shot Kelly in the shoulder, but a second later, Kelly made two more head shots—one for Guy Two and one for the guy who got whacked by Maureen.

  I’d never seen anyone move like that, so quick that it was hard to keep up. Bang. Bang. Bang. All three men were laid out on the concrete, blood spreading on the cement.

  Kelly stood for a second, his breathing normal, but his eyes were so dangerous that it sent a spike of fear up my chest. It was the kind of look an animal got while hunting. The pulse in his neck was frantic, but it looked like it belonged to the tiger.

  I lay on the concrete, my palms and knees burning from the fall. My elbow was bleeding. My ears were ringing. The scent of blood and gunpowder filled the night air.

  Kelly seemed to snap out of his thoughts when Maureen picked up the trash bag. He held out his hand. “I’ll take it,” he said.

  She handed it to him without a word. Then she nodded to me. “Come with me, Keely.”

  Kelly leaned down to help me up, but I slapped at him. “Don’t touch me,” I hissed.

  His eyes narrowed before he looked at Guy Two and then back at me. The guy who told me the truth about what Kelly’s business was all about.

  I stood on my own and walked next to Maureen as we made our way back to the house. A few steps away, another gunshot blasted through the air, and I turned, afraid that one of the three guys had gotten up and took his revenge on Kelly. But it was Kelly who held the gun. He had put another bullet hole in Guy Two. Right in his heart.

  20

  Cash

  “Ah,” I cleared my throat to speak, but only thoughts came. It’s been however long since my last confession, and after my wife walked out of our place to fly to Italy for her friend’s wedding, I’m an animal in a cage who can’t stop pacing. This cage feels worse than prison.

  That was not the reason I came to church, but it was the only words that seemed to keep circulating in my head. Instead of trying again, I stepped out of the confessional.

  Father Flanagan stepped out a minute later. “What’s the trouble?”

  “I’ve come to a point. This.” I waved a hand around, the necklace dangling in its grip swinging like a pendulum. “Is pointless. What I’m about to do has been known before I even knew I was going to do it.”

  “From my understanding, that was never the point of you coming here.” He pursed his lips at me and then they opened with a pop. “How many times does one man have to repeat himself, Cashel Fallon Kelly? If I’ve said this once, I’ve said it a million times. Perhaps our actions are known before, but that doesn’t mean they’re written in stone. We can change our minds. We can have a change of heart. We all have the right to change our courses while we’re here, so we don’t have to answer for them after we’re gone.”

  I paced up and down the aisle, my grip on the chain even tighter. I’d given her a metal heart because it was stronger than a re
al one. A prosthetic replacement for what couldn’t be developed in the natural sense.

  “My wife left me,” I said. She packed up her things and took them to a different room. The next day, after she left for Italy, I found the necklace I’d given her on my pillow.

  He was quiet for so long that I stopped moving. We faced each other.

  “Ah,” he said. “Your discord comes from marital strife.”

  “There can be no marital strife if only one married person is left.”

  “Did she leave for good? Or did she leave for her friend’s wedding in Italy? Which I believe, if gossip in this community serves me right, you were supposed to attend with her.”

  “Plans change,” I said. “Still doesn’t make it right that she believed the words from another man’s mouth over my actions.”

  “Actions,” he repeated, like he was thinking over the meaning of the word. “Does she even know why you fight as hard as you do?” He held a hand up. “She knows who you are, Marauder, but does she know the plight Ronan Kelly left to you? And why you took it up so fiercely? She sees a community that looks up to Cash Kelly, but no reason behind it. By all means you’ve done some senseless things in your life, things I’d rather not discuss out in the open. No rhyme or reason to them. But the one thing that feels like your salvation, you haven’t shared with her.”

  “There was no rhyme or reason for you to not tell me my mother wasn’t dead.”

  Seconds passed. He opened and closed his mouth. He shook his head. “She did. In Ireland. What are you talking about?”

  “Scott Stone delivered the news.”

  “He’s a liar, and I’ll say it right here.” He stomped his foot. “Your father told me.”

  I looked up at him, and something flickered in his eyes that he tried to hide before I caught it. Doubt. Instead of pressing the issue, I let it ride, deciding to believe that he thought my mother was dead, too. He’d never lied to me before.

  “Let’s get back to the truth,” he said, changing the subject. “Something worth our time.”

  My chest felt winded even though I hadn’t taken a step. I stuck the necklace back in my pocket and took out my phone. I found what I wanted and then turned the phone toward him.

  He squinted at the screen and then reached for his reading glasses, grumbling. Once they were on his face, he took the phone from me and held it up almost to his nose. “A picture of Mrs. Kelly looking away from the camera.”

  “Maureen took it of her at the airport and sent it to me.” Since my wife was only going to Italy for a couple of days, I sent Maureen and Connolly with her. The baby, Ryan, had round the clock care at Maureen’s place from nurses who had cared for him at the hospital and were trusted in our community.

  He looked up from the screen. “I’m not following.”

  I nodded toward it. “That’s what Maureen sent, the picture of her looking behind, along with a caption that said, every five seconds.”

  The light went out on the phone, but his face seemed to brighten. He handed the phone back and then patted me on the shoulder. “The girl was waiting for you to come after her, Kelly.”

  I turned around to face his retreating back. The smugness rolling off of him was as strong as incense.

  “This is a problem,” I said. From all of my experience with women, in the face of Keely Kelly, none of it mattered. I could deal with her games, even her truth, but I had no clue how to deal with her silence, or the reason why she wanted me to come after her if she made it clear she was returning the necklace.

  Going after the woman was something a prince would do. My role was the villain in this tale.

  “It happens to the best of us!” his voice echoed. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you, lad!” His robes melted into the darkness of the church, where I usually felt more comfortable, and then he was gone, but his low laughter seemed to linger.

  As I was walking from the church to Sullivan’s, a whistle sounded from behind me. I turned to find Raff running to catch up. I stopped and waited for him.

  He dangled a single key in front of my face.

  “I’m not in the mood for fucking riddles,” I said. “Or rhymes.”

  “Anybody want a peanut?” he said in an accent I didn’t recognize, and then he grinned at me.

  I narrowed my eyes at him.

  His head came forward a little, naming the movie. When I didn’t answer, he sighed. “Your wife loves that one.”

  Movies. Books. Broadway. My wife seemed to love all of those things.

  Movies because her brothers did.

  Books because her Da did.

  Broadway because her Mam and sister did.

  I watched her while she read, while she watched movies, while she performed on stage, and none of those things lit her up like when she was painting the room she had claimed as Connolly’s.

  After she was arrested, she’d gotten right back to work on it. She even painted a mural on the wall. She’d told me Mari’s adoptive mother let Mari pick out anything she wanted to paint on the wall in their house. Mari had picked a butterfly.

  Keely painted a pink and purple dragon, with an exaggerated smile and long lashes, because she knew it meant something to Connolly. Maureen had told Keely that Connolly’s mother had given her a toy dragon, and the little girl slept with it every night.

  Whatever it was between my wife and Connolly was strong. No one was able to bond with the child because she’d been let down by her parents from an early age.

  Connolly’s parents had been good people—he had a decent job, she was in college, and they had been together since high school. Then he started selling to make some extra money, then he got hooked, and so did she. A little here. A little there. Until he started mooching off of Maureen until she could hardly pay her bills.

  My wife, though, she was a fixer. She wanted to fix all things that seemed crooked. Except she was avoiding fixing the one thing she felt she had no control over: the death of her sister.

  When she found out about the bastard who had killed her twin and their grandparents, I knew she assumed it was me who had done it.

  It was.

  She had called a truce at Sullivan’s because of it. I’d earned her trust, and even more, had her heart without the tug of war—if I wanted it without the fight. There was more to it for me, though. I still had to bleed to win it, or we would never be square.

  Her heart was worth the fight, the bloodshed.

  It was worth my blood.

  What I had done for her family, killing that bastard, was payment on a debt my old man owed to hers. This—whatever it was between us—was between us.

  One thing still puzzled me, though. She never tried to fix me—the crookedest motherfucker there was. Maybe it was because I didn’t give a shit if she loved movies, or books, or Broadway, or even painting. I only cared if she was unhappy. I found myself wanting to kill anything that stood against what was best for her.

  “Kelly.”

  When I blinked, Raff pushed the key closer to my face.

  “A key.” He smiled. “To one of the trucks that’s going to make the load. Vegetables. They’re going to hide them underneath a bunch of the earth’s best.”

  Unless Lee Grady had changed the place or time at the last minute, things had happened too soon. Rocco had given me a specific time and place.

  “Who?” I said, taking it from him.

  “Colin.” He searched my face. “He was in Sullivan’s. Some of the Grady’s have a table. He overheard them talking about a pricey vegetable delivery. Then they handed this kid a key. A few young guys have been going in and out, stopping at the table and leaving with a key. Colin followed him to the shitter and picked it right out of his pocket. Then he tripped him and flung the key to his Granny’s apartment next to the kid. Told him his key fell out of his pocket and handed it to him. Doubts the kid even knows the difference.”

  Colin’s granny was my secretary, Susan.

  “He got a time and a place?”


  “No,” he said. “But he thinks he overheard something about a place that distributes vegetables.”

  “It’s happening soon.” We stood there, both of us thinking. After a few minutes, I started to move. “See if you hear anything on the street. I’m going to Sullivan’s for dinner.”

  “Watch your back, Kelly,” he said.

  I lifted a hand, acknowledging the warning.

  If I could figure out when this delivery was going to take place, and botch it up, not only would Grady be after me, but the Scarpone family, too. Grady had probably been running his mouth about how it was me stealing from them constantly. It was, but only to a certain degree—I only stole the drugs.

  The Scarpones were smart enough to know they had a ghost out for blood. Their shit had started going missing while I was locked up. Grady never connected the dots, which made the Scarpones suspicious of him, but since things were fucking insane on their end with the ghost, it was hard for them to tell who was really doing the damage.

  I stopped and turned before I got too far. Raff had his phone out, looking down at the screen. He looked up when I called his name.

  “Colin,” I said. “Stay clear of him until we talk again.”

  “Got it, boss.” Raff smiled and then winked at me. He started walking in the opposite direction.

  Sullivan’s was packed with the dinner rush. It made the perfect place for the Grady’s to handle their business. It was the perfect place for any of us. Sullivan’s was considered neutral territory. We could talk business, even use it as a front from time to time, but not act on violent orders, or be violent, on the premises.

  If anyone screwed up, they were never allowed back in again. It was the only rule we all abided by—that, and giving a pass to marked men who were with their women and children.

  Grady wouldn’t break Sullivan’s rule, but he had already broken one that had become my top priority. After how close my wife came to paying for my sins, I gained two more eyes in the back of my head.

  She was safe in Italy with Macchiavello and his family, and that was the only thing I truly understood was for the best. Her confusing behavior, though? Still not a fucking clue.