by Amber Bardan
He runs his hands over me as though checking I’m whole. The hands inspecting me shake. I can’t believe he’s shaking.
“Oh my God.” He touches his forehead against mine.
I feel that weight, his head against mine, the tangible way his love wraps around me, and it’s more crushing than the pain in my arm. Maybe this dauntless man’s fear is me.
A small defeated sound leaves my lips, and Julius flinches, then leans back and dials his phone.
“Pa, she’s hurt.”
* * *
Pa finishes bandaging my arm outside at the table where I’ve insisted on being—close to Julius. Leo and Dan line up the groaning, and semiconscious, men against the wall of the house.
“She’ll be fine.” Pa clamps his hand over Julius’s shoulder.
Julius stares at me, then nods.
Pa moves with his first-aid bag to the men against the wall. He inspects them one by one, tugging off masks, checking injuries and shining his little torch in their eyes. Not quite what I expected, tending the wounded. I watch the faces revealed. Everything in me braces for the sight of Ash.
I can’t let him suffer for trying to save me. He will, though, and what do I have left to bargain with?
I swallow as Pa reaches the last of the men.
Julius stares too.
“Baby,” I say and reach my uninjured hand to Julius. He glances to me and takes my fingers, squeezing tight.
The last mask comes off.
A gasp drags into my lungs. The bleeding face of Neil Connelly emerges. Julius’s fingers crush mine. I don’t understand.
Where’s Ash?
“Take the rest of them to the back loading dock,” Julius says.
It doesn’t sound so bad, the back loading dock. But that’s where all the nasty business is done. Where weapons and drugs get delivered. Never at the nice big dock.
Leo and Dan drag up the others, and lead them down the path toward the rear of the island.
Pa trails at a slower pace, leaving just me, Julius and Neil behind.
Julius tucks the handgun he’s been gripping almost as fiercely as my hand into the holster at his waist. I stare at the holster. He doesn’t usually wear one. My fingers slip from his hand. He approaches Neil.
“Get up,” he says.
Foreboding grips me and it’s the strangest feeling—my being recognizing intangible knowledge.
Bad things about to begin.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Neil Connelly stands and wipes his bloody mouth. I take in his size, his length and his girth.
He’s the one who entered our bedroom.
The man who came for me. The man I struck down. By the looks of him, right in his face.
“Did you really think I’d let you take her?” Julius paces in front of Neil.
Their chests both puff out. Julius looms half a foot over the other man but Neil has never been like the others—he never knew when to back down.
Neil lifts his jaw, and his features flush red. He doesn’t take his attention off Julius. “Who says we needed to take her, when we could eliminate the problem.”
A primal sound bursts from Julius, then his hand is wrapped around Neil’s throat. He backs Neil up until the back of his knees knock against a chair. He sits the other man down. Neil’s face turns from red to beet.
“Never.” Julius speaks low into Neil’s face, then lets him go.
“Never again, don’t you mean.” A dark look flashes across Neil’s eyes. “Julius.”
Something snaps through Julius’s body like electricity. He straightens, elongates. “What are you doing here, Neil?”
“You should be careful with me, King. I know everything.” Neil wipes at his split lip. The flash on his finger catches my eye—catches because it’s familiar.
I’ve seen that ring before on another hand. It’s half white gold, half rose.
“Julius—his ring,” I shout.
Julius’s gaze flicks to Neil’s hand, and his eyes flare. “You found the kid.”
Neil’s smile reminds me of a comic-book smile, all manic and exaggerated. “That I did.”
My chest hollows and concaves. I hunch forward in the chair.
The Connellys found Ash?
Neil has his ring. There’s no part of me that believes that ring came off easy.
There’s very little in me that thinks he’s still alive.
Grief chokes my throat. Tears pool in my eyes.
“Talk about keeping your enemies close.” Neil says. “Did you know who he was?”
“Of course I did.” Julius’s voice is thick.
I glance at him. A sliver of my own grief shines back at me when Julius looks at me. My brain throbs. Julius knew who Ash really is and he let him close?
Let him near me?
“Aren’t you going to thank me?” Neil says and spits a wad of crimson saliva from his mouth onto the ground.
Julius doesn’t look like he’s about to do any thanking. His top lip draws up a little on the left.
Shouldn’t he be thrilled to have Fury out of the way?
“Now the last Carlisle is taken care of, your path has practically been swept clean.” Neil rubs the knuckles of his ringed hand.
My eyes flare wide.
The last Carlisle?
Julius’s attention snaps back to Neil. “You should stop speaking now.”
“Except the thing is, the kid isn’t all I found,” Neil says.
My attention shifts between Neil and Julius. Ash. I press my palm to my cheek. Ash’s face flicks through my mind, and other memories swarm around it—they force their way up, and up, and up.
“Oh my God,” I say, as sense finally emerges. “You’re—”
Ash clamps a hand over my mouth, leans in until our eyes are level. “Don’t say it. Don’t ever speak it.”
I’m being drawn out of the moment—about to fall through time.
Julius shoots me a glance. “Go inside, baby.”
The memories slam to a halt. Air wheezes back into my chest. “That never even worked when my father said it.”
Julius gives me something halfway between a smile and a frown. He never expected me to listen—he never expected me to behave.
Maybe he just hoped that I would.
“It’s too late to stop me,” he says.
“I thought you might say that, so I brought you a present.” Neil reaches toward his pants pocket.
Julius shifts abruptly. His fingers close over the gun in the holster, easing it swiftly free and directed at Neil.
“Easy, boy, it’s only an itty-bit of paper.” Neil’s blood-smeared teeth flash. He slides a thin folded scrap of paper from his pocket.
Julius stares at Neil, gun unwavering, not even glancing at the offering.
“I know what you’re doing,” Neil says.
The night gets quieter, yet the ocean roars. All the memories and all the revelations in the world can’t distract me from this pause.
Secrets shudder the air.
Julius lowers the weapon and takes the paper. There’s an almost imperceptible flattening of his expression as the paper unfolds. You could almost miss it but I know his movements. I’ve seen him this way once before, and it wasn’t half this chilling.
He stares at the paper, his eyes aren’t right, though. I swallow. He’s not actually looking. Julius is pretending to look—pretending he can look.
“I want to make a deal.” The last part of Neil’s sentence wavers.
Julius breaks from his trance with a twitch, then slowly steps aside, folds the paper and sets it on the table.
I lean in despite myself. Crane my neck and try to see what’s on that paper.
“Why would I make a deal with you?”
I scoot my chair forward.
“Because if you don’t, everyone learns the truth and it all starts again.” Neil’s chair creaks under shifting weight. “Do you think I’d come here without a contingency?”
I lift my chin for a better look. The scrap is a newspaper clipping. I can’t make out the words or the picture.
“I think this is your contingency.” Julius’s blunt tone captures my attention, and I glance at him. “What I think is that you’ve had all the chances your brothers will give and you came here in a failed attempt at redemption.”
Neil’s smile flicks down at the corner. “If anything happens to me, everything I’ve found will be forwarded to my brothers.”
I scoot my chair just a little closer to the table.
“I don’t think so. If your family knew the knowledge you’ve kept from them, they wouldn’t just kill you—” Julius moves in the corner of my vision, but I strain forward. I need to see that picture. “—they’d burn everyone you’ve ever loved alive.”
A chill scrapes over my skin like nails. My vision fixes on the paper and I see. Tragic Accident.
The headline hovers over a family portrait, but all I can see is the man.
There’s something about him...
Neil’s and Julius’s voices drone in the background of my hearing. The image throbs in my vision. There’s almost nothing familiar in the young man pictured. His clipped beard and hair that falls to his shoulders.
He has the relaxed confidence of a rock star. The world shrinks to that single image—sinks into my memory forever.
Those eyes...so pale, yet ringed so dark not even black and white can disguise them.
Julius.
His neck smooth and unmarked. His face fresh and open. Not my Julius, not this Julius, yet it’s him.
I scan the image, and find the woman. Her. She’s only a shoulder and an arm the way the image is folded, but still real. The person I’ve kept boxed up as other. Someone from the past. I never let myself think of her.
He loved her.
The love shines from the image. I’ve never seen him beam quite that way. Not that freely.
My muscles tighten one by one. You could hit me on the forehead with a spoon and shatter me. I told myself no. Told myself their marriage must be something more faux than the one he plans for us.
He didn’t want her the way he wants me.
Told myself there are explanations I still don’t know. My lungs seize. A squeaking sound comes from my chest.
“Sarah...” It’s only the sound of my name that pulls me back into the charged moment. Julius’s features have slackened.
I glance to the speaker—Neil.
Something happened without me.
What didn’t I hear?
“Don’t you think it’s a little strange?”
“What?” I clutch the elbow of my throbbing arm, and stare at the man who came to kill me.
“About his wife.”
I turn to my Julius and squint. “What is he talking about?”
Julius takes up all of my vision, but Neil’s voice amplifies in my ears.
“Do you ever wonder about Sarah?”
Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.
My own name echoes inside my head.
Julius’s weapon hangs limply.
Broken memories rush.
“I don’t think I’ll call you that.”
“What does he mean?” I fix my blurring gaze on Julius.
Julius’s chest moves fast. He turns his back to Neil. “Baby, don’t listen to him.”
But I can’t help listening. This person is telling me things, and I never get to know anything. I glance past Julius. Neil glides to his feet, a blade concealed snugly against his wrist catches in the light.
“Julius,” I cry.
Julius spins, gun swinging in time with Neil’s plunging arm. A boom rattles my bones. My teeth clench.
I grab the sides of the chair. Wetness sprays my cheek. I close my eyes and swipe my face. It’s not slippery the way it should be. My eyes open. Neil lies on the floor. Little red droplets coat the table, soaking into the stone in a way I know will never wash off. My hands come away from my face clean. There’s no blood on me.
Yet I felt the spray, just like I’ve felt so many things that can’t be real.
Julius backs away from the body, then faces me. “Baby, you okay?”
Depends if I’m supposed to be able to breathe?
Each breath gets caught against the pain in my chest. Julius’s shirt is spattered with red graffiti. It’s only the way it spreads that tells me some is his—that Neil’s blade must’ve nicked him.
My pulse hammers so hard I might be dying.
He kneels in front of me, and pushes the hair back from my face. “Are you okay?”
I want to run my hands over his chest and find his wound, but everything besides my heart is frozen.
I care about him.
How did that happen?
He’s pulled me into the vortex of his feelings, but I arrived here kicking and screaming.
I’m living in limbo. There’s so much I need to know.
“What was her name?”
Him
“What was her name?”
Her words bore into my chest more sharply than the graze of Neil’s knife. I could tear my eyes out for the things I’ve seen.
And I’ve seen wretched things.
Worse than the body on the floor, or this Sarah’s shaking form. I’ve heard the screams of my family as I lay useless. I’ve woken to my own flesh charred and scarred.
I’ve been broken but never defeated.
“What was her name?” Her voice rises.
Hurt spreads through my stomach. The kind of hurt that’s mustered only from the inside, far more brutal than physical scars.
I stare into her lovely face. Her soft lips and big shining eyes. I’ve let myself be comforted. Let myself dream that what was once could be again.
Neil’s presence here, the newspaper clipping on the table, both remind me how futile hope is. I clamp down on the pain—this agony is who I am.
We won’t be free until I’m done.
“Tell me her name, Julius.” Her words turn hissing.
There’s a snake on my skin, but the only one I’ve feared is between this woman’s lips. I’m splitting open, my secrets bleeding loose.
There’s still so much to lose.
The poisonous truth, at least part of it, drips free from between my grinding teeth. “Sarah.”
Her mouth falls into a grimace of horror that needs no conversation. She gulps, her lips and mouth moving in time with her swallows. “How did you lose her?”
I tuck her hair behind her ear, and soak in the sight of her, and pray for the millionth time that maybe now will be the day she understands. “The same way you lost your father.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Bloody Birthday
3:05 p.m.
“See, I knew we could get along.”
I rest the cup back on the saucer with matching painted flowers.
He speaks like a friend.
That’s the worst part.
He smiles at me as though he’s any other guest at my eighteenth birthday party. As though we’re not having tea amongst corpses.
As though the ground’s not littered with bodies.
As though on the other side of the table, my father’s not bound and gagged. I glance at Dad.
His eyes strain wide.
Not me, though. I’m not bound or gagged or hurt or dead. I’m the guest of honor. The birthday girl.
I’m special.
He slides his own teacup aside.
So civilized.
“You do want to get along with me, don’t you?”
He acts civilized in his beautiful gray suit, and expensive watch with its bold numerals.
I nod.
“Pardon?” He cocks his head. The open mouth of the snake tattoo on the base of his neck points to me, fangs flashing.
He’s horrific.
“Yes—I want to get along with you.”
“Good.” He smiles again.
With dimples, no less.
Good teeth and dimples on a monster.
He’s no less frightening. There’s something too brutal about his features for any kind of smile, even a devastatingly dimpled one, to make him look kind.
There’s no suit on earth expensive enough to hide what he is. He’s built like a fighter. Two knuckles on the hand resting on the table, sunken in. They’ve been broken, most likely on some sorry bastard’s face.
“Then do one last thing for me, will you, baby?”
I shiver. He’s called me baby since he got here. Baby. Makes me want to gag. Even if in that one first moment he arrived—before the blood—I’d found him attractive.
Now endearments from his lips just make my insides crawl.
“What?”
He places his fingers over the silver handgun resting next to his buttered scone.
“Don’t scream.”
My chest freezes.
Not frozen immobile—frozen and shattering.
He raises the gun.
My pulse bursts back into function. I watch the barrel, heart thudding out of its cavity as though it can reject the bullet coming by beating it out.
The gun swings—doesn’t fix on me—keeps moving.
The barrel veers toward Dad.
My eyes close.
Sound resonates through the garden and vibrates all the way to my teeth.
I don’t scream.
My eyes squeeze as tight as my jaw, but I force them open to see. My father remains in his chair, eyes strained wide. Julius’s arm stretches straight out, gun focused over Dad’s shoulder.
“Dammit,” Julius says, body shifting into a low slinking posture. I follow his gaze to the tree in the driveway.
