He nodded and toyed with the gold ring on his pinky finger. “I have faith in you, kid.” He turned to go, and then turned back like it was an afterthought. “Hey, have you heard from our boy since the fight?”
He scanned my face for clues that I refused to give up. I’d spent my whole night tossing and turning, playing this exact part of the conversation over in my head, so I was more than prepared.
“Yeah. I called him last night to let him know I was back in town. We’re going to meet on Wednesday to talk about the strategy for the fight. He’s not happy about it, but I think he’s coming around to the idea of throwing it if he has to.”
I wasn’t the best of liars, and even as determined as I was, part of me felt like he’d see right through me. After a long moment, though, he nodded, the smug satisfaction apparent on his face.
“I figured he’d see reason eventually, the little prick. I’m sorry I put it out there like that, though.” He shook his head regretfully. “I thought you had told him already. I didn’t mean to cause trouble for you.”
That was bullshit and we both knew it. He hated Matty and had every intention of driving a wedge between us. But that didn’t matter anymore. If I wanted to carry on like it was business as usual, I had to let it slide.
“I know. It was for the best, anyway.” I kept my voice light, and leafed through a handful of papers on the desk in front of me. “After spending the week thinking about it, I know you’re right. He’s more trouble than he’s worth and I’m not going to let him come between us.”
He nodded, clearly satisfied with my answer.
Hook, line and sinker.
“I’m proud of you, sweetie. Family first and always.”
That sentiment sent bile rising in my throat along with words unspoken.
What about my mother, you son of a bitch? She was my family too.
I looked away from him then, sure the fury roiling in my gut was going to shine through. “I better get to it if I’m ever getting out of here tonight.”
“Sure, sure. Hey, I’m going to La Fortuna for lunch at noon if you want me to bring you back a meatball sandwich.”
I didn’t look up, still not trusting myself to keep it all together. “That would be great, thanks,” I said brightly.
He turned and then walked out, and I kept my eyes averted until I was sure he wasn’t coming back. A minute later, I slumped over the desk and pressed my cheek against the cool mahogany, trying to calm my rioting nerves.
How was I going to do this? I’d barely made it through a three minute conversation and my whole body was shaking like a leaf. What if I had to be here another week? Or longer?
The cell phone sitting on the desk next to my ear vibrated and I lifted my head. I peered down at the screen to read the text message flashing there.
It’s going to be okay, Red. We got this. Call if you need me.
Matty.
It was like he knew. Knew that I was falling apart at the seams and was trying to help sew me back together again. The fact that he was still willing to put himself out there and let me know he still cared after all we’d been through and how we’d hurt each other meant more than I could ever express.
But I wasn’t about to confuse gratitude with anything else. In the short time we’d been together, it had become remarkably clear that the rule of double negatives didn’t apply to us. Put us together, and we were anything but a positive. Too much baggage on both sides. Too much pain, old and new. As much as I’d wanted to believe otherwise, we would have destroyed each other.
For now, though, we needed each other to complete this task. Matty would get his life back if Mick went to prison. And me?
Everything I knew and held dear would be destroyed. I would betray the one person who loved me. I would lose my job and my identity and life as I knew it.
But my mother would be avenged.
Someday, that would be enough. Someday, I’d be able to pick myself up and dust myself off and move on. I didn’t expect that day to come any time soon.
I picked up the phone and punched out a quick response to Matty.
Thanks. I’m good. Getting it done.
I tossed my cell onto the desk and straightened, rolling my shoulders. For the rest of the morning, I’d make as much headway as possible on this paperwork to keep up appearances. But come noon, the second Mick and his boys left for lunch, I was going to tear this place apart. The warehouse was the heart of the entire organization. Always had been. All I had to do was get through the flesh and bone protecting it, and then he was mine for the taking.
The next couple hours went by in a blur as I did my best to get through as much of the grunt work as I could. Even in that, little things caught my eye that I’d never really thought about before. Willful, blissful ignorance. An invoice for a bunch of new furniture that we’d never received. Bills for rent on properties we were subletting for eight and nine times the cost. Between just money-laundering scams and extorting cash from people in exchange for “protection”, Mick could have made a great living.
But all that was small potatoes and nobody gave a rat’s crap about it. The Boston PD and everyone else was happy to look the other way while he did his little business, just like I had. Not going to cut it. Like Matty said, we needed to find something big. Something that was going to stick. Proof that he was dangerous.
Deadly.
After pouring myself a cup of coffee, I dove back into the mess. The next time I poked my head out of the pile and looked at my watch, it was noon on the dot.
Game time.
I shoved back my chair and stood, a curious mix of anticipation and dread coalescing in my belly like congealed, Thanksgiving gravy. Once I started, there was no turning back. Mick had eyes and ears everywhere and it wouldn’t be long before he realized I was poking around. The fact that he trusted me implicitly right now meant that I had some leeway. I could make excuses, throw him off the trail. I figured that gave me a week, maybe two, before he got suspicious and he realized I was up to something.
I had to find the mother lode before then, or I was going to be in a world of hurt. The only thing more devastating than the immediate future I had planned was the immediate future if I failed.
If I sacrificed it all only to have Mick come out the other side of it clean? I’d be truly alone in this world with nothing to cling to.
No comfort in my revenge. No relief at a wrong made right. No peace in the knowledge that my mother’s killer had been put behind bars, never to kill again. I’d be adrift, like a sailboat without a mast, whose crew had abandoned ship.
Screw that.
With a renewed sense of purpose, I strode toward my office door and flung it open. I made my way down the hall toward the reception area.
Ariel, the girl at the front desk, was still pretty new. She was the daughter of one of Mick’s thugs and had needed a summer job before she left for her first year in college. Mick had her doing some filing and answering phones for some of his more legit businesses, but she wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.
All the better for me.
I strode in, muttering curses under my breath, but loudly enough for her to hear me.
“Oh, hey!” Her chair squealed furiously as she rushed to shut down a window on her desktop that looked an awful lot like a game of Candy Crush, only to expose a second window that featured what appeared to be a close-up of a guy masturbating.
She gasped and shut that one down too before looking up at me with guilty blue eyes. “Um…so…everything okay?”
Perfect.
“Yeah, yeah.” I bit back a smile and raked a hand through my hair, trying to look harried. “I’ve just been looking for this one file all morning and I think it got archived. I’ve got something super time-sensitive on my hands that can’t wait, but Mick won’t be back from lunch for a couple of hours.”
The filing system at the warehouse was archaic by design. Mick loved technology, but he didn’t trust it. Everything he had o
n a hard drive somewhere, he also had on paper. The only problem was, other than things from his legal ventures, all that paper was behind closed doors in his office, which he locked without fail. I’d never really needed the key before, but the Little Mermaid here had a copy in her desk in case of emergencies. All I had to do was get it from her.
“Can I use the spare key to his office so I can look through the inactive files real quick?” I offered her a pleading wince. “I’m desperate.”
She opened her mouth and closed it wordlessly before turning away. “I’m not sure. I’m not supposed to give it out. It’s for Mick if he loses his.” She shifted in her chair and fussed with a paper clip holder. “And emergencies…”
I cocked one hip and half-sat on the corner of her desk, leaning down until she was compelled to meet my gaze.
“Well, this definitely qualifies, if you ask me. And,” I shot a pointed glance to the monitor in front of her, “I won’t tell if you don’t.”
Her cheeks flushed and she cleared her throat, working up a trembling smile. “Yeah, um, sure. You’re his daughter, so I don’t think he’d mind anyways.” She lowered her voice, shooting a quick look at the entranceway over my shoulder. “Can you hurry though? I don’t want him to come back and yell at me, just in case I wasn’t supposed to.”
A jolt of adrenaline pumped through me in a rush, but I forced myself to stay calm. “No problem, I’ll be back in a jiff.”
Or, however long it took me to skulk out the back door, run to the Home Depot down the street and make a copy of the key.
She unlocked a drawer in her desk and fumbled around until she came up with a single, gold-hued key. She hesitated and for a second I thought she was going to back out.
“That…thing on my screen when you walked in?” She wet her lips nervously. “That wasn’t mine. A friend emailed it to me and I opened it without knowing what it was. You’re not going to tell my dad, right?”
I didn’t even remember which goon her dad was, so there was no chance of that, but I shook my head and playfully used the key she’d handed me to lock my lips before pretending to toss it aside.
She let out a long breath and her shoulders seemed to slump. The smile she gave me this time was genuine. “Thanks, Kayla.”
I stood and gave her a quick wave, ignoring the prickle of guilt at the exchange. Even if I got caught red-handed at some point with my copy, I’d tell Mick I had it made from his set. No way would this ever come back on Ariel. We’d made our little deal and as long as I hurried, it would be done before the lunch time was over. No harm, no foul.
I jogged down the hall to my office and grabbed my cell and my purse, taking a quick look at the clock. Plenty of time to get to the hardware store and back.
So far, a productive day. I’d gotten the key to the castle. Now I just had to figure out how to convince Matty that I needed to be the one to use it. Because if Mick found me there snooping, he might take pity on me and just break my legs. If he found Matty there alone?
He’d kill him on the spot.
Chapter Three
Matty
“No.”
I could tell by the way her lids lowered to half-mast and her expression went chillier than Boston in February that I’d said the wrong thing, but I was too pissed off to care.
“That’s just not going to happen,” I added in a clipped tone.
She snorted and continued to shoot daggers at me from her eyes. “And exactly who died and made you boss, McDaniels?”
I pushed aside the ache at her use of my last name instead of “Matty”-- or even “Matthias” like she did sometimes when we were in bed. It wasn’t the time to sink back into “poor me” mode. Someone needed to straighten her ass out and there was nobody else in a position to do the job but me.
“I’m just telling it like it is. If you think I’m going to let you break into the warehouse in the middle of the night, you’re even crazier than you look.”
That last part was no joke, either. She’d obviously been sleeping about as well as I had, and purple half-moons smudged the ivory skin beneath her eyes. Her hair was in a sloppy knot on top of her head and she was wearing a threadbare T-shirt she’d apparently taken scissors to sometime in the eighth grade and had cut the neck out of. It hung off one narrow shoulder, calling attention to the weight she’d clearly lost in the past week.
“Are you eating?” I asked abruptly.
I must have caught her off guard with the sudden shift in conversation, and she rocked back on her heels. “I…some, I guess.” A frown furrowed her brow and she shook her head as if to clear it. “And don’t try to change the subject.”
I stared at her, crossing my arms over my chest, my gaze never leaving hers.
After a long moment, she blew out an exasperated sigh and stalked across her kitchen floor to tug open the refrigerator.
“I have bologna and cheese, but that’s about it.” She straightened and leveled me with another glare. “Will that do, doctor?”
I nodded, pulling out a chair at the two-person table. “That’ll do.”
She flitted around the kitchen, putting together a couple sandwiches and then setting one in front of me on a paper towel.
“Bon appétit.”
She lowered herself onto the opposite chair and took a giant bite, making a show of chewing it. Once she swallowed, she locked gazes with me again. “Now, back to the conversation at hand. I know you want to save the day here, and I appreciate it. But what part of ‘he will kill you’ don’t you understand? It’s like you’re being thick on purpose or something.”
I kept my anger in check, but barely. I knew she was just lashing out because she was hurting, and me doing the same would only make things worse. Instead, I slowed my roll, took a bite of my stale-ass sandwich and thought about how to explain my point of view in a way she would connect with.
She’d already taken an enormous risk making a copy of the key. The thought of her putting herself at even greater risk made me want to tear the whole fucking warehouse down and set a flame thrower to what was left. There was still a very real part of me that wished I could toss her in my trunk, drive to Mexico and convince her to stay there with me forever. She’d be safe, we’d be away from Mick. Together.
But now that we both knew at least some of what Mick was capable of, there was no shot of her walking away. I knew her well enough to know that she needed to close this chapter of her life if she ever had a chance in hell of starting a new one. So I was in it for the duration. Whatever it took.
I set down my sandwich and shook my head slowly. “I know you think he wouldn’t hurt you, Kayla, but I need you to trust me that you’re wrong about that.”
“Don’t you think I realize that now?” Her lower lip trembled and that gutted me. “I know he would hurt me. But he won’t kill me. Don’t ask me how I know it. I just do.”
The mulish expression on her face and the tilt of her head told me she was digging in her heels, and I opted for another tact.
“Fine. But can you at least accept that I need more than just a feeling? It’s not enough for me to put you in a potentially volatile situation and cross my fingers.” I sat back in my chair and rubbed at my now-pounding temples. “I really just need you to give me the key and let me handle it from here.”
She dropped her mostly-uneaten sandwich onto the paper towel in front of her and shoved it aside. “That’s never going to happen, so stop wasting your breath.”
We were at an impasse, and I was out of ideas.
“So let’s compromise, then,” she said slowly. “What if we do it together?”
I opened my mouth to shut her down again, but she cut me off before I could.
“Either we do it together, or this partnership is over. I stop taking your calls, I stop telling you what I know, and I go it alone. The key is in my possession, Matty. Take it or leave it.” All the annoyance, all the bluster and irritation was gone from her voice. She was tired, she was resolved and she was spit
ting the truth.
If I didn’t go along here, she was cutting me out.
The weight of that tore at my guts. It was nothing new. Since the day we’d met, it had been an exercise in awful/amazing compromises. I would work with the daughter of my enemy, but we’d get to fuck sometimes. She’d land great fights for me and I’d be allowed to win some of them, but I’d have to lose some on purpose. We could finally be in a relationship, but we had to keep it a secret from her father.
And just like always, I was stuck.
Stuck on her, stuck in love. Stuck, because, even though Mick was to blame for killing her mother, I was the one who’d brought this demon to her door. She could’ve gone on not knowing. It was only my fear for her long-term safety being tied to a person like Mick that made me tell her in the first place.
That didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
I hadn’t been the guy who sentenced her, but I was the one holding the noose. I was pretty sure she’d never forgive me for that, and I knew for damn sure I’d never forgive myself.
It was decision time. I could go along with her. Do my best to protect her. Be there for her. Or I could walk. Odds were, she wouldn’t get caught. And just maybe she’d get something big on Mick and he’d go to prison. My contract with him would be void and I could go on my merry way. But even if everything went off without a hitch, that still left Kayla to face this nightmare alone.
That I couldn’t do.
“Okay. Together, then. When do we make our move?”
***
Kayla
I nearly went limp with relief at his words.
Did I want him at risk? Not even a little bit. But the fact was, if I got caught, Matty was going to be on the hook too, whether he was there or not. To Mick's mind, he would think I was just mad at him because he’d wanted to fix the fight. That Matty had gotten under my skin and was turning me against him.
Mick had no clue that I knew the truth about what he'd done to my mother.
At least this way, we were in it together. Of all the possible ways to handle the situation, none of them were perfect, but something deep inside me had clicked when I'd suggested it. Like this was the only right decision.
Trust Me: Matty and Kayla, Book 3 of 3 (The McDaniels Brothers 7) Page 2
