Claiming Amelia

by Jessica Blake

  “I got it,” my brother said, surly as hell. I knew for a fact that he probably wanted to tell the guy to kick rocks or to get the hell out of his office, but the thug was violent, and JJ had already learned firsthand that he was no match for him.

  “Good,” the guy said, sounding like he slammed his fist on JJ’s desk. “Don’t make me find you, neither. You let me know where we stand every damn day this week or I swear I’ll break your fingers one by one until you learn how to be a good dog.”

  Ugh. I winced at the way my brother was being talked to. It was clear he was in way over his stupid head and that we were all now in a lot of danger because he’d gotten greedy.

  The slam of the door shook the walls of the bathroom, and I jumped, trying to keep from making any sound. I considered jumping out of the bathroom now, grabbing the pin hammer I knew Pop kept in the bottom drawer of his desk and beating the stupid out of JJ, but again, Brennan’s words came to me.

  I needed to keep what I knew hidden until the last possible moment. JJ, if given enough of a head start, would be long gone, leaving me with the problem to clean up if I wasn’t careful.

  And I knew for damn sure that I wasn’t cleaning this mess up for him and neither were our parents.

  It took JJ nearly five minutes before he decided to leave, and as soon as he locked the door behind him, I crept from the bathroom and punched in the call for a ride to Declan’s house.

  What the hell was I going to say to him? How could I explain that my brother had leaked information and was a conduit for drugs? That my family was the one causing the biggest heartburn in his development deal?

  That JJ was tasked with finding the information that would possibly lead to more violence and injuries in the near future?

  My stomach clenched into a giant knot as I made my way out to the Uber, and I leaned my head against the glass as the car started moving. It hurt. My life. My idiot brother. The truth. Declan’s likely reaction to it. It all hurt.

  And what about my father? What if word got around that our jobsites were basically storage bins for drug dealers all over Boston?

  The implications were staggering, and my mind couldn’t help but race to images of my sick father getting locked up on drug trafficking charges and my brother disappearing to Mexico like the coward he was if things fell apart.

  Thoughts raced too quickly for me to even hold a logical thread, and before I knew it, we’d arrived at Declan’s building. Letting myself out of the car, I walked through the door on wooden legs, giving the doorman a weak greeting as he held the door open for me.

  There was no other option but to tell Declan, and part of me had a sinking feeling that I was about to undo the fledgling relationship that I’d allowed myself to grow fond of, to rely on. And the worst part was that I couldn’t blame Declan if he threw me and my family to the curb. I could only hope that he wouldn’t renege on the deal he’d made for my dad’s surgery, only days away.

  Silent tears started streaming down my face as the elevator door closed, leaving me alone in mirrored space.

  “What the hell have you done, JJ?” My voice cracked as I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead and struggled to get myself under control. Inside Declan’s apartment, I leaned against the door as I closed it, my legs weak and heavy and my mind disoriented with what was happening.

  Knowing I had to do this as quickly as possible and not drag it out, I looked at my phone, unable to believe my brother could read everything I did. The thought made me angry.

  Being very careful with the wording, I sent a group text message to Declan and Brennan, letting them know that I was back at the condo and was ordering dinner, and they should both join me soon.

  Not twenty seconds after Declan read the thing did my phone ring with him on the other end.

  “Are you okay?” The concern and care was so evident in his voice that it nearly shattered my heart. I was almost certain it was going to be one of the last times I got to hear it once everything unraveled.

  “I’m fine,” I said, clearing my throat. I didn’t want Declan knowing that I’d been crying. “No need to rush. It’s okay. I can tell you when you’re done with the meetings.”

  “You’re sure?” he asked. “You’re okay? You’re not hurt?”

  Sweet, sweet man.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not hurt. I’ll see you two when you get here.”

  He reluctantly agreed to hang up, a little salty that I wouldn’t tell him over the phone what was going on. I had a little time on my hands, so I used it to shower and change and to start gathering my things in one of the suitcases I’d originally brought with me from my parent’s house.

  I had no idea where I was going next — whether I could return to my parents’ home at this point or if I’d have to find a more long-term option. The thought of leaving Declan’s bed gutted me.

  But I’d heard numerous times in my months with him that he didn’t tolerate disloyalty, and my brother had just shot a bullet through the very delicate fabric between the Casey and Byrne families.

  There was nothing to be done for it now, I’d convinced myself.

  It wasn’t long before I heard the key in the door. I’d poured myself a glass of wine and was sitting on the sofa, doing my best to breathe in and out. Baby steps. I would get out what I needed to say, and then I would deal with it.

  Declan walked through the door and immediately came over and knelt in front of me. He was searching my face for signs of something — anything. Harm. Emotions.

  “You’re okay?” he asked, his warm hands cradling my jaw. “You swear?”

  It made me smile. “I promise I’m okay,” I said, totally lying.

  “Okay,” he said with a nod, pushing to stand up. “Brennan’s on his way over here, and I’ll just run in the bedroom and change really quick.”

  He was moving down the hall before I realized my mistake. I’d left my suitcase open on the bed, packed half full of my things.

  I stood and turned toward the bedroom in time to see Declan stop short at the door and freeze as he took in the scene. He didn’t say anything as he turned around, and his eyes went straight for me, his expression hard to read.

  “What’s going on, Amelia?”

  The hurt in his voice was there — vulnerability. It cut me deep because I knew that Declan didn’t show this to just anyone.

  Opening my mouth to speak, I suddenly found I couldn’t and the stupid tears I’d worked so hard on holding back began to burn the corners of my eyes. All I could do was pitifully shake my head as they broke free and ran down my cheeks.

  Declan was in front of me again in less than three strides, his big, warm hands on my shoulders and his face inches from mine. “Why is your suitcase packed? What’s going on?”

  I sucked in a breath and tried to speak, but the emotions I’d been holding at bay all afternoon broke free all at once, and all I could do was let out a pitiful sob and bawl right there in his arms. For his part, he stopped trying to get me to speak coherent sentences and pulled me against him.

  “Baby,” he whispered. “Whatever it is, it’s okay. We can fix it. Please, Amelia, you’re scaring me. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

  Brennan chose that moment to walk through the door, and he stopped in his tracks when he saw us.

  “What happened?” As was his style, Brennan went straight into crisis mode, looking for ways to make it all better or to make it all disappear.

  Declan didn’t answer, perhaps shaking his head above me. I didn’t know. My eyes were squeezed shut and my face pressed against Declan’s chest.

  A few moments passed before I pulled free and wiped my face. I was better. I could talk. I could do this.

  Drawing in a deep, steadying breath, I told them everything I knew. I recounted to the best of my ability, each word I remembered from the conversation. Declan closed his eyes at one point and put his hand over his face. But Brennan was stoic as ever.

  “That explains a lot,” Declan sa
id, and Brennan merely nodded.

  “There’s more,” I added.

  A lot more.

  “JJ is supposed to use me and my relationship with you to get a list of potential clients for the Columbia Point project. He said he had an app on my phone, and I can only assume that he can listen to my calls and read my text messages. Maybe more.” I held my phone up, which I had powered off earlier, and handed it over to Brennan, who had his palm outstretched.

  For the life of me, while I waited for them to arrive, I couldn’t find the thing in any of my apps or recent purchases. When did JJ get so smart?

  It took Brennan a couple minutes to find, but he turned the phone back around and showed me the program that was running in the background, right under my nose.

  He powered the device off. “If he’s smart enough, he can activate your phone’s camera and microphone remotely to listen in if he wants to,” he said. “Do you know when he might have had a chance to get access to your phone?”

  I never left it lying around — it was always in my pocket. That, and I hardly spent time with JJ. The only time we were in the same place was at our father’s office.

  “Shit,” I swore as the answer hit me. “He had me run out to his truck last week to grab some folders off his front seat. Could he have gotten it that quickly? I have a lock on my phone.”

  “Let me guess,” Brennan asked. “Your birth month and birth date?”

  I frowned. Shit.

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head at me, letting me know rookie mistake.

  He turned the phone in his hand. “I’m leaving the app on so they don’t know we’re on to them. I’ll get you a new phone tomorrow and keep hold of this one. We might be able to use their app against them.”

  I nodded. Great idea.

  “You two talk much about The Capstone properties?”

  Declan frowned. “No specifics,” he said. “I try not to bore her with work. We generally talk about the vision and the goals, but no names, really. Especially not in the last week.”

  Brennan stood and excused himself to make a phone call in the hallway.

  Declan turned his attention to me. “It doesn’t explain the suitcase though,” he said, still frowning. “What’s going on? Where are you going?”

  I shifted uncomfortably.

  “My brother is actively trying to take you down, Declan,” I said quietly. “Why would you want me to stay? I could make things more complicated for you. You don’t deserve to be dragged into my family’s bullshit any more than you already are.”

  He chuckled. I couldn’t believe he actually chuckled.

  “How noble of you, Amelia. The first thing you should know is that the fact that JJ is wrapped up with the Duffys isn’t a surprise to us. We’ve guessed that for weeks now, and our plan was to keep an eye on both of them. We didn’t understand exactly how they were working together — kudos to you for figuring it out — but we knew something was happening.”

  I felt myself able to take a deeper breath as he spoke. He wasn’t blindsided by JJ’s duplicity — not like I had been.

  “The second thing you should know is that I never doubted your loyalty to your family or to me,” he said. “I knew you were trying to figure things out for yourself, and I wasn’t about to accuse JJ without any evidence. We knew this already.”

  I thought about being upset at him for not saying anything to me. I couldn’t. I had to swallow the bitter pill, knowing I’d suspected JJ from the day I saw him at the café with Bryan Duffy. I hadn’t mentioned that meeting with Declan or Brenna, despite knowing that the Duffys were actively trying to take Declan’s project down.

  “What I don’t know yet is how to approach it,” I said. “I don’t want to give my dad anymore heartache or stress as he’s headed into surgery any day now. But the consequences are serious if JJ gets caught in the meantime.”

  “I have a feeling JJ’s secret app is going to bite him in the ass,” Declan murmured, watching the closed door that Brennan just walked through. He turned to me. “And as for your father, it’s going to be okay. We’ve got one hell of a legal team that we’ll consult before we do anything. Jack will be okay — though I can’t say the same for JJ. He might end up in a little trouble.”

  I pursed my lips together, thinking about it. Of course, I hated thinking of JJ in trouble, but he was a grown-ass man acting like a spoiled brat. He’d put our father in serious danger with what he’d been up to and hadn’t considered anyone but himself. And who knew what drugs he was on thanks to the easy access they’d provided him. I had a feeling in my gut that JJ’s use of the products they were hiding might have been behind the beating I interrupted.

  “He needs it,” I finally said. “I think it’s the only way he’ll learn. He could have destroyed our parents, and I don’t think he’d even be that remorseful. He can hardly be bothered to care about Pop being sick right now.”

  The truth that my brother was acting like a scumbag hurt my heart, but it was JJ’s path to walk, not mine. All I could do was try my best to love him and not let him harm Pop or my mother. Or Declan, for that matter.

  There was a new game afoot, and JJ had just made himself an unwitting pawn — something he’d tried to do to me. And JJ had bet on the wrong team, sadly. A lesson he would have to learn the hard way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Declan

  “In our day, we’d beat the shit out of the assholes and make them think twice about stepping on a Casey’s toes.”

  Ahh, the glorious wisdom of Uncle Joseph.

  He and Jimmy were sitting across from me at their favorite neighborhood haunt, the Backroom. Aptly named, too, because it was decorated like some back storeroom that doubled as a gin joint.

  They’d called me there that evening as I’d been on my way home from the office. Amelia was still at the hotel, and Finn was going to get her a ride home as soon as her prep shift was over, as I was no longer taking chances with her using public transportation or even rideshare apps anymore.

  My uncles had gotten word of a few more dustups in the neighborhood and wanted to give me what they had — not really remembering, or choosing not to, the fact that I had Brennan as a fact-gatherer.

  “The same chunky bastard that was with the James kid,” Jimmy picked the story up where his brother had left off, “knocked the owner of the pizza joint over on Atkins around. Nothing serious, but did some damage to the windows and scared the hell out of the guy.”

  I sighed. It was Oregano’s, a family pizza joint that was operating out of my Caldwell Building. A nice family owned it and had spent the past five years building it up. I’d have to give Penny and her husband Butch a call to make sure they were okay. I also didn’t know why I hadn’t heard it sooner.

  “When was this?”

  “Last night,” Joseph supplied. “Right around closing. I talked to Butch, and he thought they were being robbed. But other than the assholes taking the tip jar off the counter, they just messed the joint up a little bit and talked some shit about you. Smacked Butch a couple times when he tried to scare them off too.”

  Soon. This would hopefully be over really soon if everything went according to Brennan and my plan.

  “Me and Jimmy would have gotten our old pipes from the basement if you needed us, you know,” Joseph said, shaking his fist in the air like some sort of commando. “You know we’re good for it. But you were pretty clear that you’re trying to be legitimate and that the old ways may not be what you want.”

  The distaste at the word legitimate was so obvious, it was funny.

  “Thanks, guys,” I said, taking a sip of the water in front of me. Both of them had made a huge fuss when I’d asked for that instead of a pint, but I wasn’t in the mood to drink. Not right now. Not when I needed my wits about me at all times.

  “Any time, Duke,” Joseph said, clapping me on the back and using my childhood nickname. Nobody called me that anymore, and it felt good — a little nostalgic. My father
had called me that from the time I was in diapers until his last words in the hospital.

  “Any idea what you’re gonna do about this?” Jimmy asked. I knew they were harmless and just curious about how I was going to handle such blatant disrespect, but I also knew they had giant mouths. My plans could possibly end up as gossip fodder during the Tuesday night poker game at the senior center.

  “I’m gonna nip it in the bud,” was all I said. It seemed to mollify them, as they nodded in approval. Knowing them, they were assuming that I was going to go home and find all the blunt objects in my condo and take to the streets with Brennan.

  But, like I’d tried to explain to these two knuckleheads one hundred times, that wasn’t me. When you didn’t take care of things like this the right way, they became zombies. Rising from the dead and coming back to bite you in the ass when you least expected it.

  “Sounds good, buddy boy,” Jimmy said. “You give us a ring if you need some muscle.”

  The sixty plus year old balding Irishman with a pot belly flexed his jiggly turkey skin arm in pride, and it was all I could do not to laugh. Damn, but these guys meant well, and I was lucky to have them still.

  “You two are the first ones I think of when I think of muscle, you know that right?” I was teasing them, but the two old codgers were practically beaming. It was like catching a glimpse of the young bruisers they’d been back in the day when helping my dad deal with rivalries from families like the Murphys and the Stewarts.

  Back when I was young, the two of them had been scrappers — known around the neighborhood as being a couple of the best fighters, despite the fact that they were both around five-eight and one hundred and sixty pounds soaking wet.

  Amelia had asked me a few times why I didn’t see them more often and the thought occurred to me that they were the last tie I had to the Casey line. I should do more to be part of their lives while I still had time.

  It was on my to-do list and part of the reason I’d humored them and stopped by the bar on my way home instead of just telling them to give Brennan a call and tell him everything they knew.