Savage

by Michelle St. James

  Jenna laughed. That did sound like Mrs. Hodges. “How is she?”

  “She’s the same old bat she’s always been,” their mother said, taking a dainty sip of tea.

  “Mum!” Kate said.

  “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” their mother said.

  “That doesn’t make it nice,” Jenna said.

  “Oh, you two.” Their mother waved away their protestations. “You’ve always been too worried about how nice things are. I’ll take honest over nice any day.”

  Jenna looked around the room, her happiness at seeing Kate and her mother tempered by the vacuum left by their father. Photographs of their childhood were all around them. Most of them had been taken in and around the neighborhood, although a few catalogued a trip they’d made to the beach when Jenna was ten. The photographs gave no sign that his life had been difficult. He looked happy in them, and she half expected him to step into the house, shake off the rain, call out for them.

  As if sensing her distress, her mother reached out and took her hand. “I’m sorry about your father.”

  Jenna swallowed the lump that had risen in her throat. “Me, too. Do they know anything about who did it?”

  “Not yet,” her mother said. She reached out for the coffee table and handed Jenna a clear plastic bag. “But they gave us this.”

  Jenna looked down at the envelope. “What is it?”

  “It’s everything he had on him when he was… when he died,” Kate said.

  Jenna dropped it back onto the coffee table. “I’m not ready to look at that.”

  “You’re tired,” her mother said. As if that explained everything. As if it wasn’t the fact that her father was dead. That he’d been killed in cold blood for what little money he’d probably had in his pocket. As if sleeping would make everything better when nothing would change the fact that her father was gone.

  “I am tired,” Jenna said. There was no point fighting it. She needed to regroup, and Lily was beginning to tip sideways on the couch. “I should get Lily to bed.”

  “Well, you have to eat something,” her mother said. “You must be starving.”

  “I’m not actually,” Jenna said. “We ate on the plane, and right now I think I’ll fall over if I don’t get a hot shower and a good night’s sleep.”

  “Well, if you’re sure,” their mother said. “You can put Lily in Kate’s room. Yours is just like you left it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jenna rose from the couch and made her way upstairs. She set Lily on the bed in her room, then helped Kate wrestle the bags up the narrow staircase before taking a quick shower with Lily in the house’s tiny bathroom. Once Lily was in her pajamas, Jenna tucked her into her own childhood bed. She wasn’t ready to be separated from her daughter, and she didn’t want Lily to wake up in the middle of the night and be scared or disoriented.

  When she was confident Lily was asleep, she slipped into Kate’s room. Her sister was smoking a joint on the narrow twin bed that had been hers since she’d been out of the cradle.

  “Are you smoking pot in Mum and Dad’s house?” Jenna laughed, sliding onto the bed and holding out her hand.

  Kate passed her the joint. “Only way to stay sane here.”

  Jenna laughed, then took a deep drag and passed it back to Kate. She immediately felt calmer. They sat in silence, shoulder to shoulder, the light from the bedside lamp casting a warm glow over the worn furnishings and old wallpaper. There were a million memories in the room, in the smell of the smoke that hung in the air, the feel of her sister next to her. How many times had they sat just like this in Kate’s room or in her own?

  She passed the joint back to Kate and noticed the plastic bag, full of their father’s things, open next to her. “What are you doing with that?”

  “I’ve been waiting to go through it with you since they gave it to us,” she said.

  “Why do we have to do it now?” Jenna asked. She didn’t want to touch her dead father’s belongings. Not yet. It would make everything too real. Too permanent.

  “I miss him already,” Kate said, sniffling. “I just want to see his things. Remind myself that he was our Dad.” She plucked at a loose thread on the old coverlet. It was something she’d done since she was little, and Jenna’s protective instinct reared its head.

  She squeezed Kate’s hand. “Nothing will change that, Katie.” She sighed. “But if it will make you feel better, go ahead.”

  Kate looked at her. “You sure?”

  She wasn’t. Not at all. But Kate had been dealing with everything alone the past few days. This was the least Jenna could do for her. “Of course.”

  Kate pulled the bag onto her lap and opened it. She removed their father’s wallet, opened it, and flipped through the contents. “No money, of course. Bastards.”

  Jenna spotted her father’s jacket inside the bag. Before she knew what she was doing, she was withdrawing the bundle of nylon, holding it to her nose, breathing in the familiar scent of aftershave and coffee and lemons, a scent that must have come from the cleaning supplies he used at the lab where he worked. The combination caused a visceral feeling of loss, and a bone deep ache opened up inside of her.

  “Look at this,” Kate said, holding out a strip of photos.

  They were sitting on their dad’s lap, making silly faces at the camera, the image old and a little grainy.

  “That was from the beach, I think,” Jenna said.

  “I remember,” Kate murmured. She put it on the bedside table next to the joint, then reached back into the plastic bag. “I think those assholes took his football ring.” She looked at Jenna. “Do you have it?”

  Jenna shook her head. “Just the jacket.”

  “Those peckers took his championship ring but left his wedding band? Must have fancied themselves generous,” Kate said bitterly.

  Jenna wasn’t all that surprised. People in the neighborhood were passionate about football. It had been one of her father’s few hobbies, and no one had been more thrilled when Reading won the championship in 2006. It was his hometown team, and she and Kate had saved their spending money for two months to buy him a commemorative ring for Christmas. It had been a cheap little thing, but he’d loved it madly. It hurt to think of a petty criminal walking around with it now.

  She held the jacket tighter to her chest, trying to stem the pain of loss. She froze as something crinkled, then reached into the pockets, expecting to find a crumpled receipt or stray pound. But the pockets were empty.

  She patted the jacket, trying to recreate the rustling. When she heard it again, she followed the sound to the lining near the left arm. Something was underneath it.

  “I think there’s something in here,” Jenna said, bringing it closer to her face.

  “Inside the jacket?” Kate asked.

  “Inside the lining of the jacket.” Jenna inspected the seams, only now seeing that they were irregular and crudely sewn. Like someone had opened it up and sewn it back up. Someone who didn’t have much skill with a needle and thread.

  She plucked at the thread, working it loose with her fingernail until she was able to pull open the whole thing.

  “You’re ripping Dad’s jacket!” Kate cried.

  “I’m telling you, there’s something in here.” Jenna reached into the cavity between the nylon exterior and the lining and withdrew a small bundle held together with a rubber band.

  “What is it?” Kate asked, leaning forward to see.

  Jenna pulled off the rubber band. “It’s his passport,” she said. “And a… key card?”

  “Let me see those.” Kate grabbed the passport from her hand before she could protest. “Dad has been to Spain! And Amsterdam!”

  “What?” Jenna shook her head. “That doesn’t sound right. Let me see.”

  Kate handed her the passport and Jenna flipped through it, looking at the stamps. Madrid, three months ago. Amsterdam five months before that.

  “This looks like a hotel key,” Kate said, holding up th
e electronic key card. She lowered her voice. “Do you think Dad was having an affair?”

  “Of course not,” Jenna said, snatching it from her sister’s hand. But Kate was right, it did look like a hotel key card, but the only markings were a number at the top: FBS38792. Not exactly reminiscent of a room number.

  “Well, I wouldn’t blame him if he was cheating,” Kate said. “Mum isn’t exactly easy to live with.”

  “He wouldn’t cheat,” Jenna said. “He loved her.”

  “Of course he did,” Kate said. “But he was still a man.”

  Jenna looked at her. “Not all men cheat.”

  “Says you. Anyway, I don’t want to know. It doesn’t matter.”

  She put the wallet back in the plastic bag and reached for the jacket. “I’ll give this all back to Mum. She’ll want to go through it eventually.”

  Jenna handed over the jacket but kept the passport and key card.

  “What are you doing?” Kate asked.

  “Mum doesn’t need to see this,” Jenna said. “Nothing good will come of it now.”

  “If you say so.” Kate picked up the joint and took another drag, leaning back against the headboard. They sat in silence for a moment before Kate spoke again. “Will you see him while you’re here?”

  Jenna didn't have to ask who she meant. “No.”

  “You don’t think he should know?”

  She looked at her sister, said it more insistently. “No.”

  “He’s her father, Jenna. What would life have been like for us without Dad?”

  “Farrell isn't Dad,” Jenna said, her throat closing with emotion. She didn’t know what hurt more, the thought of Farrell or the memory of her father.

  “No, but he’s still Lily’s father.”

  Jenna leaned her head back, avoiding Kate’s eyes. “We’ve been over this.”

  “He doesn’t have to raise her,” Kate said. “He doesn’t even have to know her if he doesn’t want to. But he should make that choice for himself, and he might be able to help you with money. He’s got quite a lot of it.”

  Jenna looked sharply at her. “How would you know?”

  Kate shrugged, took another drag. “I hear things.”

  She moved to pass the joint, but Jenna waved it away. “What things?”

  “He’s a big shot now,” Kate said, her voice strained as she worked to hold in the smoke from another pull. She always could smoke like a chimney. “Runs the London mob.”

  Jenna chose her words carefully. She already knew that about Farrell from her work with Nico, but she didn’t want Kate to know that.

  “So?”

  “So,” Jenna said, “he’s rich. And powerful. He could make sure you and Lily are taken care of.”

  “I make sure we’re taken care of,” Jenna said. Kate didn’t say anything, and Jenna continued. “Don’t you want Lily to have a better life than we had?”

  “You’re not an alcoholic. Farrell’s not a janitor,” Kate said. “Lily will have a better life than we had whether you’re with Farrell or not.”

  “I’m not talking about the money,” Jenna said. “That doesn’t mean anything to me. You know that. I’m talking about stability, about safety. You said it yourself — he runs the London mob. Do you really think that would be a safe life for Lily?”

  Kate pinched the joint out between her fingers. “Maybe she’d be safer with him than without him.”

  Jenna looked at her, unable to believe what she was hearing. “What are you talking about, Kate?”

  Kate shrugged. “I’m just saying, it’s a shitty world. A dangerous world. Look what happened to Dad. Maybe it’s better to stand behind someone like Farrell.”

  Jenna looked away. “I refuse to believe the only way to be safe in the world is to stand behind the very people who make it unsafe.”

  “Do you still love him?” Kate asked.

  “What does that matter?” Jenna asked. “If it’s not good for Lily, it’s irrelevant.”

  Kate laughed.

  Jenna glared at her. “What?”

  “I don’t think that’s how love works.” She slid off the bed, headed for the bureau, and put the joint in the top drawer. “Do you need me to bring you anything when I come tomorrow morning?”

  “You’re not staying?” Jenna asked, suddenly sorry for being testy.

  Their upbringing had given her a burning desire for security. Kate had embraced the chaos instead. She worked shitty jobs, dated and slept with whomever struck her fancy in the moment, ate junk food and drank soda like a twelve year old. Jenna couldn’t blame Kate for being Kate anymore than she could blame herself for being who she was. They’d both been shaped by their beginning. It was no one’s fault they’d been shaped in different directions.

  “Got a bloke coming back to the flat,” Kate said.

  “The night before Dad’s funeral?”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “I like to think wherever Dad is, he’d want me to have a good shag right now.”

  “Good god, Kate.” Jenna shook her head like that would dispel the image that had arisen in her mind. “Please don’t talk about our dead father wanting you to have a shag.”

  Kate returned to the bed, bent to kiss Jenna on the cheek. “I’ll be back in the morning. Text me if you need anything.”

  Jenna watched her sister disappear into the hall. Then she got up, turned off the light and went back to her own room.

  Lily was asleep on her back, arms flung out on both sides, one leg sticking out of the blankets. Jenna covered her up and slid into bed next to her, pushed a strand of hair back from her daughter’s face.

  Sometimes she could hardly believe she and Farrell had created this tiny, beautiful, perfect human being. Then she’d think of Farrell, of his raw beauty and the depth she saw lurking in his eyes and the fierceness with which he’d loved her, and she wasn’t surprised at all.

  Lily was the best of them both. She would remember Farrell through their daughter. It was as close as she dared get to him.

  5

  Farrell hit the heavy bag again, oblivious to the sweat streaming down his face, soaking his bare chest. The bag lurched, and he hit it in a quick succession of orchestrated punches.

  Hook, jab, uppercut, cross.

  He bounced on the balls of his feet before coming at it again, relishing the familiar impact against his fists, the slight give of the bag under his knuckles.

  He’d started fighting when he was at Oxford, after his father was killed. He’d started doing a lot of things after that. It hadn’t been pretty. He’d been raised by a virologist, a man whose work required delicate hands, careful precision. The furthest thing from a brute. Farrell didn’t know the first thing about fighting back then, but in the months after his father’s death he’d stopped going to class, stopped completing his school work. Instead he’d gone out every night spoiling for a fight.

  He’d started with the pubs around university, but his unspoken rage had given fuel to a surprising talent for beating people to a bloody pulp. It wasn’t long before it was too easy to pummel his peers — other upper class, over-privileged schoolboys — into submission. He’d gone looking for more worthy opponents then. For men who would fight back. Who would do more than land a punch — who would force Farrell to fight better and meaner. He’d found that and more, eventually catching the eye of Jerome Ruskin, the man who’d been head of the London Syndicate at the time.

  The rest was history. Farrell had never lost his taste for blood, for the release he felt when he was beating on something with his bare hands. He’d understood why the New York contingent had rebelled when Nico tried to introduce a more modern version of their business. Men who worked outside the law — or above it, as Farrell liked to think of it — didn’t want a cleaner, less dangerous vocation.

  They wanted brutality. Pain. Blood.

  It was the only way they felt alive. The only way they felt anything.

  The one thing that felt better to Farrell than fighting was fuck
ing, and even that pleasure had decreased in the years since Jenna walked out of his life. He’d had his share of women since, but they were nameless, faceless. He hardly remembered them from one day to the next. They were no different than the punching bag in front of him. A vehicle for his release. There was no need to keep his promises to them, because he never made any. He wanted to fuck them and then he wanted to leave (he never let them come to his apartment, or even the club).

  End of story.

  Jenna had been different.

  He moved to the striking bag that hung from the ceiling, hitting it in a series of quick motions, trying to banish her from his mind. He’d been hoping to exorcise the need that had been raging in his blood over the past few days. It was only because of the funeral. Because he knew he would see her later today. He’d been fine in the five years since she’d left. He’d taken control of the London branch of the Syndicate after Ruskin was killed, kept everything together after the Syndicate fell apart. He was creating his own empire, outside the rules and regulations once set by Raneiro Donati, now in prison serving more than one life sentence. Farrell had amassed a small fortune. Bought homes all over the world, sanctuaries where he could retreat when the past felt too close.

  He’d been fine, and he would continue to be fine once Jenna went back to New York.

  He simply needed to get through today.

  He was shaken from his thoughts by the ringing of his cell. He walked over to the table and glanced at the phone he’d left sitting there when he’d started working out. When he saw the name on the display, he pulled at his gloves until he could press the buttons.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Frances Moore calling from Huntington Hills.” The woman’s voice was crisp and clear in his ear. He recognized the name from the last time he’d gotten a call like this one. “May I speak to Mr. Black, please?”

  “This is Farrell Black. Is everything okay?”

  “We had another incident today,” the voice said. “You asked us to contact you.”

  “Yes, thank you,” he said. “Is he calm now?”