He let my chair go and I bounced before I settled. I hopped up from my chair before he left me alone.
“Kelly!” I said.
He stopped, his hand on the door.
“You first.”
The arrow hit its mark. His shoulders tensed and his back stiffened. The cords in his neck were coiled tight. He never brought up what Scott had told him that day in the interrogation room, but I’d caught him staring at the picture of his father more than once. I knew he was wondering why the man would lie to him, if it was the truth.
Why hide him from his mother?
If the question lingered for me, it had to be playing nonstop for him. But I wasn’t going to allow him to call me out on my shit when he refused to deal with his own. We both had ghosts to expel, and sooner or later, Cash Kelly would have to take a deep breath in and then face his.
22
Cash
She’d called me out on my bullshit.
It was true. I hadn’t dealt with my issues. Mainly, did my old man lie to me, and if so, where was the woman I had once called mother?
If. If. If. Fucking if. It was triggering my insomnia.
Between my old man coming to me in his old ways and my wife coming to me in new ones, I averaged minutes of sleep every night. If that. It was the strangest thing I’d ever experienced in my life because I couldn’t control it. It fucked with me beyond what I felt comfortable admitting to anyone.
I had admitted it to her, though, in my own way. Apart from Tito Sala, I had never told anyone that insomnia crept on me like a silent advisory, night and day. It was the only thing I’d never been able to bend to my will.
Until she came along.
She gave me something no one ever had before: A power that went beyond this world.
Peace.
Then she fucking stole it from me, which was worse than never knowing what it felt like. Because once I had, it fucked me up worse than the insomnia.
No. It wasn’t the insomnia.
It was her.
She was fucking with me in ways I’d never experienced before, and she was clever about it. The smartest adversary I’d ever been up against.
She refused to kiss me.
Refused to kiss me.
Gave me her cheek, like she was offering me her right after I’d assaulted the left side first.
She refused to sleep with me. She refused to fuck me.
If that wasn’t cause enough to drive me to the edge, she found a loophole in my one demand: Eat dinner with me.
She didn’t eat. Not really.
She’d take a bite or two of her food and then stare at me, arms crossed over her chest, like a spoiled fucking kid. She was losing weight, but it wasn’t completely physical.
How did I know that? I couldn’t fucking tell you. We were bound together by something I didn’t have a word for. It was a feeling. Something that went beyond flesh and bone.
I didn’t have bags underneath my eyes, either, and she knew that, too.
We were both at war with one struggle.
Sitting at our table, watching her pick at her food, while everyone—Maureen and the little girl—ate and carried on like nothing was wrong made me want to flip the table over. I’d found peace through chaos before, knew the meaning of it, and I was ready to claim mine again.
I needed fucking sleep like a heart needs an artery.
As if she could hear me, my wife’s eyes rose to meet mine. She dropped the vegetable she’d just picked up from her full plate a second later.
The tension in my jaw was tight, sending shocking lines of heat up to my temples. She wasn’t playing games, not on this, and that unsettled me even more. The heart I stole from her was doing a wicked thing to seek its revenge—it had gone on strike and refused to beat. And that beat was what calmed every noise that was causing chaos in the emptiness for me.
I picked up my drink, putting it to my lips, wondering if the glass was going to shatter in my hand. Something soft tapped against my skin before the liquid touched my tongue. I looked down and saw Connolly, who had her hand on mine. She smiled and then inclined her head behind her. I turned to look. Maureen had set out a pie.
“You want dessert?” The sound of my voice echoed inside of the glass. I put the fucking thing down; I hadn’t even taken a drink out of it. I glanced at her plate. “You ate all of your food.” My eyes met my wife’s again, but this time she rolled them at me.
Connolly giggled and shook her head, moving her warm hand on my arm and pulling herself up closer to my ear. “Ha-ppy,” she whispered in a scratchy, low voice.
I narrowed my eyes at her and she narrowed hers back. She was getting plenty of practice in for later—her man wasn’t going to know what to do with her someday, either. All female talk was in fucking code.
Instead of waiting for me to understand, she jumped up, going for the pie on the counter. Keely followed her, going to help. It was the only time she smiled, when she was doing something with one of the kids.
Books. Movies. Broadway. Archery. Even painting. Nothing compared to when she looked at those kids.
Connolly’s smile was even bigger when she set the plate in front of me and then patted me on the head. Maybe she thought I was a big fucking cat.
“Ha-ppy,” she repeated, staring at me.
She kept staring at me.
I looked around. Everyone was staring at me. Maureen was trying to hide her grin. Keely was scowling, as if I better do something then and there or she was going to fling the pie in my fucking face. I opened my mouth to speak, but I was met with a mouthful of whipped cream before I could.
I’d never heard a kid laugh so hard. Connolly doubled over, the spoon still in her hand, laughing so loud that the entire table started to do the same.
Except for me.
She’d just spoon-fed me like she tried to do her little brother.
Me.
A grown-ass man.
I tried to ignore it, but my wife’s laughter rose above the rest.
A second later, Connolly came back with another spoonful, and this time, when she stuck it in my mouth, I bit down, not letting it go. I growled at her and she growled back. Pie was flying in all different directions, and it was a fucking sugary mess, but the kid was laughing so hard, I worried for her lungs.
In short, though, she was finally enjoying her life. She was comfortable in this house, with us.
I looked up before she came in with another spoonful and met Keely’s stare. She was still smiling, but her eyes had changed. They were at war with the rest of her face. She couldn’t hide the internal war that raged.
“Okay!” she said when she realized that I’d noticed it. She scooped Ryan up, making him laugh, and stuck him on her hip like he was made to sit there. “Bath time!”
Connolly gave me one more bite and then stuck a finger on each side of my lips, where my mouth dimpled from grinning at her. “Ha-ppy,” she said again before she ran behind Keely, following her up the steps.
Maureen appeared beside me, going for my empty plate. “It’s not that hard,” she said, patting me on the head. Yeah, I was a fucking pet that needed to be domesticated. “If you want to understand our language, you just have to pay attention. Now go get some rest. Because I pay attention, too. It’s not only ghosts that walk these halls at night.”
I followed the sounds of laughter coming from upstairs. Keely and Connolly were getting Ryan ready for his bath. Keely was helping the little girl hold Ryan.
“That’s it, CeeCee,” she said, helping her steady him on her hip. “He’s heavy, but you can do it, baby girl.”
Connolly stuck her hip out, trying to distribute some of his weight, a big smile on her face. While Keely ran his bath water, the entire bathroom smelling flowery, Keely started to sing. Maybe she could hear. Maybe she couldn’t. But the little girl hummed along with her.
The change in Connolly was shocking.
Life. She had life in her.
Keely turned arou
nd to take Ryan from his sister and caught me standing there. “Need something, Kelly?” Her voice was flat, but she kept kissing his fingers while he tried to stick them in her mouth.
“Nothing but a good night’s sleep, darlin’.”
“You know which way the bed is,” she said, turning around, giving me her back. “And it’s not in here.”
There was that touch again. I looked down. Connolly looked up. She had set her hand in mine. She pulled me in the direction of the master bedroom and nodded toward the bed. I took a seat, wondering what she was going to do after she left me alone. A minute later, she came back with a couple of books from the library.
“Are you going to read to me, lil’ darlin’?” I said.
She shook her head and pointed at her chest.
“I’m going to read to you.”
She gave me a sharp nod.
I sighed, staring at her for a minute. Resigned, I took the books from her and nodded to the sitting area in the corner of the room. Keely had set it up with two chairs.
“Pick a seat,” I said.
She took the left one, her legs too short to reach the floor. But she settled in, getting comfortable. I read four short books to her … and then I realized that my eyes had closed, and I had fallen asleep. It was dark outside when I woke up, insomnia hitting me hard in that spot where it usually did. But I had slept, if only for an hour or two.
A blanket covered me that wasn’t there before.
The next day, I checked the clock on my dash. Twelve o’clock—lunch—sharp. I was meeting a retired judge who had been friends with my old man.
The valet came out to meet me, and I threw him my keys as I stepped out of my car.
“Mr. Kelly,” he said, catching them. “Have a nice lunch, sir.”
I nodded to him, walking through the door and breathing in the cool air of the country club. It smelled of old money and whatever was fresh on the menu. Maybe some kind of expensive fish.
I bypassed the people at the front desk. They knew better than to stop me. I had no patience for them, no manners, and I refused to play the power-trip game—they knew I had an appointment, so that was that.
Judge McLean stood as he waved me over to his table. We shook when I was close enough.
“Good to see you,” he said, nodding toward the seat across from him. “I ordered you whiskey.”
I pushed it toward him after I took a seat. “You enjoy,” I said. “I’m driving.”
He grinned at me, knowing better. There were only a few places I’d eat or drink from, and his country club wasn’t one of them. Too many rats in the kitchen wearing suits and ties that wanted a big cat like me dead.
“I suppose you ate already?”
I nodded. “Big breakfast.”
“Ah,” he said, sitting back when his plate of fish was delivered. Right on time. They knew when he wanted his food and how it was supposed to be cooked. “Not that marriage has anything to do with breakfast, but I heard you got married. Congratulations.” He lifted the whiskey I’d pushed toward him and then drank. “It would’ve been nice to get an invite to the wedding of the year, though.”
Same here, I was going to say, but just nodded and told him I appreciated it.
He wasn’t a man to shy away from talking business during lunch, so we went over a couple of things, and then I said something that made him look up from his almost empty plate.
“Adoption?” he repeated.
I nodded, taking the butter knife from the table, standing it up between my fingers. “Tell me about the process.”
He wiped his mouth with his napkin and then signaled to the waitress. She came over right away, taking his plate, while another delivered him a slice of cake.
“Depends,” he said, after she’d gone. “Through the regular system?” He shrugged. “Could take a while. But if you need this from me—it depends on who’s asking.” I figured he’d say that. His hands might’ve been dirty, but he grew up an orphan, and he was a huge advocate for children.
“I’m asking,” I said.
His eyes narrowed. “Are you drunk, Kelly?”
I laughed, shaking my head. “No.”
“Do you need to be?”
“Not this minute.”
He stared at me and I stared at him. He finally sighed and nodded his head. “Tell me about the situation.”
We talked for another hour or so about things before I left. The same guy brought me my car, and after I drove off, my front tire started to make noise, so I pulled to the side of the road. The country club was in a private area, separated from the rest of the world by a thick wooded patch, off the beaten path. Not too much traffic coming in or out for me to worry about.
I started rolling up the sleeves to my shirt before I even stepped out, having a clue as to what was wrong.
Yeah, the motherfucker had a flat.
I popped the trunk, going for the jack, tire iron, and spare. My head was lowered while my hands dug around, searching for the end of the cover over the tire so I could pull it up.
I heard footsteps, and before I could turn, something heavy rattled my skull. It wasn’t enough to knock me out, but it did shake me some. Hands pushed me from behind, trying to force me into the trunk.
Bracing my knees against the bumper with one palm flat against the inside of the trunk so he couldn’t easily shove me inside, I snatched the tire iron. It was a fucking struggle trying to get to my feet. He shoved while I tried to stand. Warm blood ran from the back of my head where he had hit me with a pipe or something equal to it.
The tire iron ended up in my left hand, and swinging blindly over my right shoulder, I cracked him on the forehead with it. He stumbled back a bit, giving me just enough time to turn around and brace myself for his attack.
He came at me again a second later, blood running from the top of his head, down his nose, into his eyes. “You’re going to pay for that, motherfucker,” he said, swinging a wooden stick in his hand. It whistled as it swung through the air. I dodged it a second before it struck me in the face.
Whoever he was—I had no fucking clue—he wasn’t trying to kill me. He wanted to knock me out to get me in the trunk. I acted like I was going to fling the tire iron at his head, to give me time to grab for my gun, but he was too fast. The wooden stick came down with a whap! against my arm, sending a shock to my chest when I lifted my arm.
He must’ve trained using the stick. He swung it like a controlled weapon.
I danced with this guy, getting hit here and there, trying to use the tire iron to deflect his stick. My knuckles were busted from getting in the way too much. On one go, I met his stick in the air, and he pushed against me as I pushed against him. Suddenly, he let go, going back a step or two, and when he came back at me, I kicked him in the kneecap as his stick hit me in the ribs.
I lost my breath, but he lost his balance and fell to the ground. Even with him being down, I couldn’t get close to him again. I knew he was going to use that stick to hit at me if I did. It was like a constantly striking snake.
Taking a deep breath, breathing in air and then releasing fire after I did, I took out my gun and pointed it at him. “You have five seconds to tell me who you belong to.”
He wasn’t with Grady, and he definitely was not a Scarpone. They would’ve whacked me and then hacked me. Or buried me in the woods to rot.
He lifted his head, laughing a little. “Go to hell,” he said, right before he went to reach for something inside of his jacket.
“See you there,” I said as I pulled the trigger and hit him in the center of his forehead.
He went completely still after the blast echoed around us and rattled the loose pieces of my skull. Moving his jacket to the side, I found the gun he was going for. He should’ve just used it from the beginning. Less trouble.
Again, though, he didn’t want me dead. Which was fucking strange. Not wanting to have a debate with myself on the street about it, I took him by a foot and dragged him across the
cement, leaving him on the other side of my car. His head left a wet trail of blood.
What was I going to do with this fucking stick wielder?
I looked up as a car was coming from the direction of the country club.
It was an expensive make and model, and judging by the silhouette, a woman. She slowed when she came close, stopping over the main blood puddle. She rolled down the window. She was younger than I expected. “Do you need help?”
“Nah,” I said. “Flat tire.”
She stared at me for a second before she lowered her designer glasses. “Are you sure?” Her voice went lower, and her eyes were hard on mine, trying to establish the connection.
She could tell I was trouble, and in her plush life, exactly what she was probably looking for. A different kind of dangerous than the one she was probably married to. I was the one her husband called when he wanted someone snuffed out.
“Move along, miss,” I said, leaning down to pick up the tire iron. “Your husband is waiting at home for his dinner to be served.”
She huffed at me as she pulled off.
I checked my watch. Yeah. It was getting late and I had to get home to my wife. Even if she didn’t eat, she still had to sit with me at the table every night while I did.
I touched my head and pulled back fingers stained with fresh blood. Maybe Maureen would be generous enough to stitch me up.
Sighing, I took the fucking stick wielder by the leg, dragging him toward the small patch of woods. More traffic might pass through soon if something was going on at the club. These were high-powered figures who didn’t all think so highly of me.
That was the last thing on my mind, though. I kept going back to why the guy didn’t finish me off. He wanted me in that trunk.
It wasn’t wise to rule anyone out, so taking that into consideration, it could’ve been Grady who sent him, or one of his men, or even someone the Scarpones paid. But again, it made no sense. They would’ve never come in that way, with a fucking whistling stick and only one guy.
Marauder (Gangsters of New York Book 2) Page 23
