by Wild, Cassie
Mind made up, I trudged into the laundry room and began the tedious search for something to sleep in.
* * *
Lying flat proved to be almost as bad as standing straight up, sending a rush of blood pouring up into my head, which resulted in an annoying pulsing sensation. It only took a few minutes of that for me to realize I needed to find another way to sleep. Otherwise, I was going to end up with a migraine.
I popped a couple more ibuprofen as I shuffled past the kitchen and made my way into the living room.
My reading chair was perfectly comfortable, with an overstuffed ottoman in front of it. I’d whiled away plenty of evenings and afternoons there, napping away untold hours. There was no reason I couldn’t just sleep there.
As I tossed my blanket and pillow down, somebody knocked.
I looked at the clock. It was probably Cormac. Something in me felt absurdly grateful at the idea. I wouldn’t mind cuddling up against him, letting him stroke my back. Maybe it would help me sleep.
Maybe.
I peered through the peephole and saw his familiar form on the other side of the door. Not bothering to turn the light on, I opened the front door.
I didn’t think about it until I’d already stepped aside for him to enter—how was I going to explain my face?
The question died, though, when I caught sight of his. He stood framed in the porch light, and the sight of him made the spit in my mouth dry right up.
“What in the hell happened to you?” I demanded.
A bruise, twice as bad as mine, lit up the right side of his cheek, encompassing his eye and spilling down to cover most of that side of his face. He grinned at me, and I saw that his lower lip was split too. I started to wonder if he was sober, but as he opened the screen door, I got a good look at his eyes and decided he was stone-cold sober.
As he came inside, I stepped back out of habit to let him enter.
Inside the darkness of the living room, I couldn’t see his face as well, but the darkness of the bruise was still fairly apparent. I started to go to him, concern welling up inside.
But I stopped as his smile widened.
“I was thinking,” he said as he pulled something from inside his jacket.
Money, I realized. It was money.
“It’s a little too late for it tonight, but I’ve been thinking, and I decided I should take you out for a night on the town. What do you think, Briar?”
“What?” I gaped at him, my gaze sliding between him and the money. “I’m not interested in talking about date night, Cormac. You still haven’t answered me. What happened to your face?”
“This?” He waved off the bruise. “It’s nothing. A few bumps, a couple of scrapes. This is the worst of it.”
He displayed his hands, and I saw his swollen, raw knuckles. It was too dark in the living room to get a good look at his injuries, and just then, a wave of tremendous exhaustion swept over me. The headache that had started to subside decided to return with a vengeance. Under all of that, there was something else too.
“You’ve been in another fight.” For some odd reason, I felt numb. Lowering my head, my hair falling in a curtain to shield my face, I stared at my feet. “What were you fighting about this time, Cormac?”
“Nothing.”
I snorted and turned away.
“Really, Briar. I heard about a match and decided I’d go take a look.”
The light flashed on—both physically and metaphorically. As the soft golden glow of the lamp flooded the living room, I squeezed my eyes closed. It wasn’t just to block out the glare and protect my sensitive eyes, though. It was a weak attempt to block out my understanding of what he was telling me.
“You were fighting for kicks,” I said, my lips almost numb as I forced the words out.
“Well, kicks and money. Won a fair amount of money too. I—”
Spinning around, I shouted, “I get my hands bloody at work fixing up stupid men who go bashing each other up for no reason other than male ego, and now you’re here waving around money you won in a fight for no other reason than kicks and money?”
Cormac was no longer grinning.
He stared at me, his features set into a hard mask. Before I could say more, he strode in my direction. I jutted my chin out at him, which made it that much easier for him to grab it and angle my face to the right, putting my left cheek—and the bruise—on display. “What the bloody hell happened to you?”
I knocked his hand away. “I made the stupid mistake of trying to get between two men who had egos bigger than their brains!” I snapped. “Sound familiar, Cormac?”
He shoved his face into mine. “I want names.”
“Go fuck yourself,” I said slowly, enunciating each word. I shoved him back. It was like trying to shove a brick wall out of my way, but after a few seconds, he allowed me to do it. I pushed past him and made my way into the kitchen.
He followed along behind me. “Who hit you, Briar?”
“It’s being handled, Cormac,” I said sourly. “The cops are involved. You don’t need to concern yourself with it.”
He caught my arm and whirled me around. His face was flushed, eyes dark with fury. “I don’t need to concern myself?” He laughed, the sound heavy with scorn. “Right, the woman I’m sleeping with gets knocked around, but I should just carry on. Bugger that! I want his name, Briar!”
“Why?” I demanded. “So you can go get into another fight?” I jabbed my finger into his chest. “You’ve been in more fights just in the days we’ve known each other than I’ve ever even seen in my whole damn life, and you want me to make it easier for you to find another one? No!”
“Listen to—”
I clapped my hand over his mouth and rose up onto my toes, staring at him through narrowed eyes. “No,” I said again through clenched teeth. “I’m tired of stupid men who think using violence to solve their stupid problems is the answer to everything. And now, apparently, I’m involved with a guy who not only thinks fighting solves everything, he also does it for fun. Yell all you want. I’m not telling you a damn thing.”
I glared at him for a few more seconds to make sure he got my point, then I dropped my hand.
Turning away, I trudged the final few feet into the kitchen and opened the cabinet that held some of my loose-leaf teas. I grabbed the tin that held a blend of chamomile and lavender, hoping it might help calm my shattered nerves.
“You know, you talk right big, Briar. But your brothers and your da, they’re right down in the muck of it too. Violence is a big part of their lives, you know. Or do you have yourself convinced it’s different somehow?”
The tin fell from numb fingers.
His words tore across my heart like a barbed cat-o-nine-tails, sinking deep and tearing flesh wide open.
As the tin rolled off the counter to hit the floor, I slowly turned to look at Cormac.
“Get out,” I said quietly.
He stared at me, eyes shadowed.
The tin of tea rolled across the floor and hit the tip of his booted foot, and he stooped to pick it up.
Deep inside, I was trembling, hit with a cold so deep, it penetrated my very bones.
Cormac rose, extending the tin.
“Get out!” I screamed it this time, so loud my voice broke as the words rang around and around in my throbbing head.
He just nodded and put the tin down on the table as he turned.
I didn’t move until I heard the front door close, then I sagged back against the counter and started to cry.
Sixteen
Cormac
I’d done and said some stupid things in my life.
I’d done and said some cruel things too.
The stupid things, I tried to swallow them down and learn what I could, then forget and move on.
The cruel things…well, I lived a life where being cruel was sometimes part of it.
Like so many other things in my life, being cruel hadn’t ever bothered me much up until the past fe
w weeks. But the cruelty and those other things were keeping me up at night more and more. I was starting to think it would be an ongoing thing. Even if I left Philadelphia and went back to Miami, I was going to be haunted by whatever went down between Briar and me.
What had just happened tonight, though…
Fuck.
If I could rewind the past half hour…
Hell, the entire night. But if nothing else, if I could go back in time and take back the words I’d flung at her, I’d do it in a heartbeat, no matter what it cost me.
Every bruise, every ache made itself known to me over the next hour as I drove aimlessly around the city before finally pulling into the small space behind Rudy’s. The shop was still open and would be for another hour.
I hoped to slide in and make my way up to my place without anybody noticing me. My temper was hovering on a knife’s edge. Normally, I’d welcome the chance to burn off this temper in a bloody, sweaty fight, but Briar’s words rang loud and clear in my head, and I couldn’t banish them.
I’m tired of stupid men who think using violence to solve their stupid problems is the answer to everything.
The words stung. It wasn’t because she’d called me stupid. No doubt, in her mind, the way I handled problems was indeed the ultimate in stupidity.
No, it was the look of scorn in her eyes.
But the most cutting of all was the pain I’d seen at the end, pain that I had put there when I brought her family up.
I’d suspected it for a while, but now I really believed it was highly likely that she really had no idea just what kind of shit her family was involved in. And I’d just rubbed her face in it, shattered her illusions.
What kind of dick did that make me?
Oh, I had no doubt she had a right to know—she probably should know, for her own safety if nothing else. But that wasn’t why I’d told her. I’d done it out of sheer spite.
Brooding, I climbed out of the car and made my way toward the shop.
The back door swung open before I reached it, and I rocked back on my heels as Melia came sauntering out, a cigarette in hand. She looked me up and down, wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue. Despite the fact that the temperature had dropped down into the upper thirties, she wasn’t wearing a coat.
The thin white sweater she wore vee’d down between her breasts, and in the piss-yellow glow cast off by the street light overhead, it was easy to make out the darker shapes of her hard nipples stabbing into the material. She gave me a slow once-over, eyes lingering on my crotch before sliding back up to my face.
“Hey, Cormac,” she said, lifting the cigarette to her lips.
I answered with a wordless nod and started around her.
She shifted her stance, putting herself in my path. I’d have to touch her to get around her, and I wasn’t in the mood to do that. She laid a hand on my chest and smiled up at me. “Where’s your pretty doctor friend, honey? You two bored with each other already?”
“I’m tired, Melia,” I said, keeping my voice flat. Taking her wrist in my hand, I nudged it away. “Can you move, please?”
“Want me to come up and rub your back?” She took a puff off the cigarette. “I can help you relax.”
“No, thanks. Can you move?”
She stood her ground. “Maybe you’re in the mood for something else then.”
She wasn’t getting the point. And I wasn’t in the mood to dance around the subject either. Bending my head, I put my lips to her ear. She shivered, but as I started to speak, she went rigid.
“I’m not interested in having another go, Melia. We done been there, and I’m not interested in a repeat. Not now. Not tomorrow, not next week or next year…not ever.”
She jerked back, face flushed and angry, “You bastard.”
I straightened and met her eyes. “I tried to be halfway nice about it, but you wouldn’t get a fuckin’ clue. So I’m done being nice. It’s not going to happen. Now…would you get out of my way?”
She took one step to the side, and as I opened the door, she said, “You think I’m really that hard up I’d be begging somebody like you? You’re a prick, Cormac. That’s all you are. A self-centered prick.”
Well, that was one thing we could agree on.
Seventeen
Briar
I’d never been a morning person, but on this particular morning, the first time I opened my eyes a mere slit, I simply pulled my blanket back up over my head and snuggled back down under its protective shelter.
Something out on the street had woken me up, but I was able to slide back into the warm blackness of oblivion.
The second time something jarred me awake, I wasn’t so lucky.
It was either because the delivery person wouldn’t quit pushing the damn doorbell, or because my bladder was doing some damn insistent pushing of its own. It didn’t matter which, because I was awake and miserable, and when I went to stretch, muscles I’d forgotten I had protested, making me even more miserable.
My neck muscles were the worst. I reached up to rub the back of my neck, and my fingers grazed the goose egg back there. The pain that movement caused had me groaning in agony, and memory slammed back into me.
The doorbell jangled again. “Just a damn minute!” I shouted hoarsely. I immediately grabbed my throat as another memory surfaced. Me, crying into my pillow for what felt like a lifetime. Not just over the fight with Cormac, but for the truth I’d been forced to confront. I couldn’t hide from it any longer. I didn’t know what I was going to do about it, but somehow, I had to come to grips with whatever it was my family did—and that started with actually knowing what they did.
My belly went tight at the very thought. I shoved up off the couch, grateful that, for now at least, I had something else to occupy my mind.
I trudged over to the front door and opened it, peering out into the bright sunlight with all the joy of a vampire greeting the dawn.
A uniformed delivery driver stood there, impatiently tapping a pen on a digital pad he carried. He opened his mouth to speak, but one looked at me had him snapping his mouth shut on whatever he’d been about to say. I opened the door and held out my hand to sign. He shoved it at me, and after a few awkward starts, he asked, “Are you okay, ma’am?”
“Just peachy,” I grumbled as I scrawled my name.
I took the envelope, not bothering to glance at the sender. I had no idea what it was, nor did I care, as long as I could shut the door now and cut off that miserable light.
That goal achieved, I trudged through the house, turning off lights as I went and avoiding any kind of reflective surface. I had no idea how bad I looked, and I didn’t want to know. I’d do a damage inspection later after I’d gotten something for my parched throat and taken some more ibuprofen.
And a shower. I really, really needed a shower.
* * *
It took some careful mental gymnastics, but I managed to get through my morning without thinking about a certain dark-eyed man with a sexy Irish accent. I told myself I was gearing myself up to face some hard truths about my family, and that I’d have to start making some choices too, so I didn’t have time to focus on any other problems.
But I’d been lying to myself for a long time, and I was doing it now too.
I just didn’t want to think about the fight between us last night. It hurt too much.
Since I suspected I was already in for a sucker punch, I decided to hold off on any other blows if I could.
The shower and a cup of strong tea, along with a few more over-the-counter painkillers, had gotten my headache and body aches under control by the time I settled down in my reading chair with my tablet, ready to face the ghosts I’d been hiding from.
At least, I thought I was ready.
At first, I didn’t find anything negative about my family on the first couple pages of Google, and for a moment, I thought all my worries had been for nothing. But, as I continued to click through page after page, my stomach sank down to my shoe
s. I’d heard of some companies paying PR firms to hide their less than stellar articles deep in the search engines, and I began to wonder if that was something my father had paid some reputation management company to do.
The first eight or so pages only offered positive articles about my family, but beginning on page nine, the information took a nasty turn.
Some of the headlines jumped out at me.
Is Philly Businessman Seamus Downing the New Irish Mob Boss?
Hypocritical Downings Make Money Through Drug Dealing and Arms Dealing by Night and Donate to Homeless Shelter by Day!
Heirs to a Bloodstained Fortune!
The headlines all had a tabloid-esque style to them, and when I clicked on each of them, they opened to what looked like self-run blogs. But the information was out there. And in my gut, I knew these weren’t rumors. It was the truth…and my dad’s money had simply given the family the tools needed to escape being caught, so far.
Drug-dealing.
Weapons-smuggling.
There were references to some people who’d crossed either my father or my brothers and had simply dropped off the map.
A few mentions of cops who were supposedly linked to Dad, although the wording was almost deliberately vague, as if the writer didn’t want to risk having anybody discover which cops he—or maybe she—could be talking about.
The second blog talked about the trial of a somewhat well-known drug-dealer. I knew the name. He’d been arrested after a sting operation and had been offered a number of deals but had refused them all.
There was talk of a ‘surprise’ witness who’d approached the prosecution a week into the trial.
I stopped reading and did some research on the drug dealer and felt even more sick to my stomach. He’d been found dead in his apartment a few days after the prosecution requested to add a new witness to the trial. And there were ‘suggestions’ that the dealer ‘might’ have been willing to discuss a plea.
