by Fiona Keane
Liam’s words were a lie. Free. I would never be free, independent…satiated. What does that even mean? Free. Liberated from threat of his family? Free from threat of Noelle? Free from Malcolm only because I killed him. I killed him.
“Liam,” I uttered, covering my mouth to repel the emotions threatening to spill. He rushed to my side, and I only caught a glimpse of his worried eyes before I tightly closed mine.
“It was a matter of days,” Liam replied, my knees beneath his tightening grasp. “Julian was going to slit Malcolm’s throat and let him rot for what he did to you.”
“J…” His name, which so recently flowed from my lips like air, resisted syllables in my throat. Liam stood from kneeling beneath me at my car door, quickly clearing his throat and glancing around the parking garage. I struggled to stifle the tears threatening with my inability to speak Julian’s name. Liam sighed heavily, breaking my scattered gaze, and took my hands into his while pulling me away from the car. I followed his silent retreat, accompanying him into a secure elevator that quickly took us even further away from Julian.
Liam lived on the top floor of his building, just like Julian, but everything inside lacked the antiquated history of Julian’s home, and instead paid homage to modern monochromatic. Julian’s home was the vintage bottle of cabernet, the crackled barrel of scotch that you saved for a celebration or that would comfort your soul on a broken night. Liam’s felt like a cold, minimalist retreat into a suite with character only provided by a hired interior designer. It wasn’t a home, but that was really because it wasn’t Julian’s. It wasn’t my home.
I was comforted by Liam’s fingers stretching along the curve of my hip, securing me to him as I stumbled further from the past. He carried us through the small foyer and left my side once we were in his living room, which appeared to my blurry eyes as a gaping mouth to his side of the Boston skyline. An entire wall of windows dominated our view, shimmering lights dancing against the warm glow of the rising sun. It was a new day, another day without him.
“He didn’t mean any of it,” Liam stated with his approach in my shadow. I was departed from the world below, my world or Julian’s world, now at the hands of the unfamiliar.
“It’s hard to believe you. You’ve spun me around too many times to count, and I don’t even know which way I’m pointing.”
Liam took my hand in his and folded my fingers, leaving my index finger out as he softly jabbed it into my chest. “Here.”
I dared absorb myself in the wide irises expectantly staring at me, waiting for a breakdown or anticipating silence. They were enamoring, just like his brother, and I saw him without squinting my eyes. I saw a man whose soul tattered in the waves within him, challenged between fate and loyalty, a man with compassion that left my beating heart weak. I studied Liam’s expression, torn between the furrowed brow that met with concern for my scrutiny and the soft, parted mouth just open enough to breathe beneath the tentative touch of my palm against his cheek.
The warmth of our matching skin pulled my gaze as I lacked urgency to move. I felt his breath against mine in a slow, deliberate exhale required to stabilize his nerves, the warm flavor of coffee and alcohol fanning my throat as I lifted my chin to meet Liam’s penetrating stare. He wasn’t the person I thought he was; he wasn’t the same to me anymore. In another life, our fate not sealed with vying affections…stop, Aideen. I couldn’t. Liam protected me with primal necessity, disregarding life to keep mine intact. For Julian. He kept me alive. For Julian. Liam showed a tenderness I knew was there, beneath the façade, a piece of his affection when he bathed me. For me.
“I do love you,” I finally expressed with a trembling breath. Liam turned his head away, eyes darting out the expanse of Boston as he considered my words. “It just isn’t the way you want me to.”
“I’ll bring you some clothes,” he informed, keeping his head down as he left me alone in the living room. What did I just do? I protected Liam. There would be no lies, no secrets between Liam and me. I hurt him while he was saving me, and I wouldn’t do that to him again.
I wrapped my arms around me, approaching the expanse of windows as I stared out at a city I would never know. I understood the streets, eye level, but I would never comprehend the kingdom the Molloys viewed from their towers of excess. Liam’s reflection appeared in the window, his chest and shoulders glowing with the pendant light as he entered the room with folded clothes in his left arm. He dropped the pile on a metal table on his route to the small liquor cart tucked in the opposite corner of where I stood, his toned body in full view as I turned to watch him. I greedily examined the tattoos which taunted me in another lifetime, now their intrigue lost to me entirely. The canvas of his abdomen sent my aching mind to Julian; my tattoo, their mother’s, his cross. The cross.
“I know who tried to kill me,” I declared. The swirling of amber in his tumbler ceased once he looked across the room at me. I walked to meet him, feeling the heat of his bare skin radiating into me.
“Who hasn’t?” Liam scoffed, shaking his head.
I slapped his bicep, watching his eyebrows furrow in irritation. “A man with a tattoo. I drew it for Julian, he told me it was someone in power, a warrior, but we didn’t get far enough to discuss it. Or maybe he couldn’t believe it yet, because whose grandfather actually wants to and can kill their girlfriend?”
“What did you just say?”
I looked once to the floor, flashing back to Julian’s arms when he held me and I had the chance to divulge and prevent this torture. Liam was rigid, his muscles stiffly tightened in a stance of dominance that terrified me when I realized how contorted his face was.
“In the hospital.” I paused to breathe, thinking once more of my stolen memories, wanting to cry in reflection of Julian’s loyalty. “Someone tried to kill me, Liam. They tried to suffocate me, and I was just lucky enough that they were interrupted. I saw their tattoo. It looked just like Julian’s, but it wasn’t him.”
“He would never.” Liam’s voice was ice, lethal and chilling, while he snapped at me in a growl that could have killed.
“His tattoo brought it back to me, though. And then I saw it, that night at Julian’s house, the last time we saw you. It was him, Liam. I remembered it all. He tried to suffocate me at the hospital; he tried to kill me with his own hands. If I had told Julian while we were all there, none of this would have happened.”
“You’re right, bird,” Liam snarled. “My brother and I would have strangled him ourselves. Edward Regan too. Our tallies are meant for one thing, but I’m starting to question if we need some for how many times we had a chance and didn’t take it.”
Liam swallowed the last of his glass before it rattled against the cart, and he began refilling it. I moved closer, placing my left hand around the massive warmth of his bicep, nearly melting with contact as his attention returned to my eyes.
“Liam,” I murmured, my voice trembling. “Tell me there’s still a chance…”
I waited as his eyes peered down at me thoughtfully, his gaze considering my hold of his arm, before his left arm wrapped around my back and adhered me to his bare chest. His cologne was euphoric, a blind wave of musk washing over me with one deep breath. I welcomed it, the warmth and scent, letting my body fall into Liam.
He spoke to me with his chin pressed on top of my head. “Tell me about the tattoo.” I described it, just as I had drawn for Julian, memorizing with detail the markings of a man determined to kill me. His hold around me stiffened while I spoke, and Liam didn’t shift balance or move. I blinked against his chest, listening to the deathly calm beat beneath his pecs.
“Our grandfather doesn’t have that tattoo.” Liam’s words oozed from his mouth with a lethal potency, precisely echoing the tone of his brother when the goal of death dangled before him. His hands lifted to press my head further into his chest as Liam’s lips chastely met my head. Pulling my head back from him, his eyes narrow and dark, Liam impassively stared at me.
�
��It wasn’t our grandfather who tried to kill you, Aideen.”
“What?” I couldn’t feel my toes. Everything numbed when it should have melted in his embrace. But his defense explained to me why Julian hadn’t jumped at the chance to murder his grandfather once I sketched the tattoo for him, why he was enraged with my memory but lacked an urgency I expected from him.
“I’m not saying he’s innocent,” Liam groaned, finally releasing me in a cold wave of his physical absence, “but it wasn’t him in the hospital. It was someone else. Malcolm didn’t have the markings of a warrior. Charles Foley didn’t. Edward Regan doesn’t. You’re sure that’s what you saw? I don’t doubt you, of course, bird. It’s pretty damn close to our grandfather’s cross, so I’ll give the bastard credit if that’s what he’s aiming for.”
“He?”
Liam snickered, a sinister sound that twisted my stomach. “Whoever the hell is trying to copy a tattoo and frame the boss, babby.”
I let his realization swirl through the fog of his words, the distraction of his cologne, and leaned against the window. The cool glass penetrated my shirt, cooling the heat threatening my skin. The night, our memories of hours before, were losing their battle against the sun as a new day dawned over the bay. A subtle glow poured in through the windows, sparkling through the bottles of liquor, reflecting the shadows around Liam’s muscles as he swallowed one more gulp.
“Stop drinking,” I snapped. He peered at me through slits while he lowered a glass to the table and turned from me. I watched from the window as he stubbornly crashed against his couch. Put on a damn shirt, baby Molloy.
“Julian took your ring to Southie,” he spoke while staring at the ceiling. I knew that; Julian told me he destroyed it. Liam’s head turned to face me, blinded by the incoming sunlight while his eyes met mine. “It was obvious right away, but I guess love blurs a lot. You see, despite our training, our keen eye, we too were unaware. Imagine discovering your own sibling, somehow, was associated with your death wish.”
“You?” I trembled, my throat tight with the throbbing ache of my heart, as Liam rolled from the couch. He approached me with deliberately slow footsteps, eyes dark and hooded, grin beautifully destructive. His posture mirrored mine, leaning against the window while his forehead pressed into the glass and he squinted despondently at the expanse below us.
“Never,” he uttered. “Our older brother died years ago. You’re Julian’s girl. I’m loyal to both of you. So that, bird,” Liam’s eyes slowly flicked to mine, “leaves just one sibling.”
Chapter Sixteen
His thumb and fingers pinched his lips while in thought, Liam’s eyes glazing right through me. I remembered eavesdropping on their argument at Julian’s after the car bomb, when someone complained about Julian not being originally entitled to heir and Liam being who he was. What other sibling? I was closing my eyes in denial as Liam let out an overwhelming sigh and peeled himself from the window.
“Wait,” I called for him. “You said your death wish. Do you mean yours, his, or…mine?”
“I think it’s safe to assume someone wants both of you out of the picture.” Liam’s words lacked tact, but there wasn’t time for offense. I tried to think of anything Maureen would gain from somehow trying to hurt Julian or me, or us.
“I don’t know enough about your family, your business, to even begin wondering why your sister would want to hurt us.” My head was beginning to ache, so I pressed my palms into my eyes while trying to focus. The room was quiet once more, the silence interrupted by Liam’s footsteps and sporadic thuds against his narrow coffee table. I peered across the room at him, standing above the table with his left hand bracing the elbow of his right arm as it stretched across his chest.
“Your boyfriend,” Liam began, his lips twisting with the term, “and I have been watching everyone, so I’m not putting all my gold in anyone just yet. We wake up and what we thought was the solution to your puzzle seems to have fallen apart overnight and it’s now his puzzle. There’s just no answer to how it’s all connected or whom we should blame and kill.”
“It’s no secret your grandfather hates me.”
“True.” He dropped his arm and motioned for me to join him. “You need to see something.” I was slow to move but followed Liam to the center of his living room where he towered over his coffee table.
I hovered over the table, glancing at the scattered documents, catching a photograph of several men standing in front of a car. I reached for it, pinching it between my fingers as I pulled it toward my face.
“Go ahead,” Liam encouraged. He inched closer to me, his eyes also peering over my hands to study the photograph with me.
“Why have I never seen this?” I demanded, glaring at Liam. My initial instinct was to be mad at Julian, almost expecting him to stand from the couch behind Liam and defend his history.
“That’s not the point,” he growled. “This isn’t about what you think you were owed, Aideen. This is about what we know, now. Get out of the past.”
“Oh.” I stepped back, killing him with my glare. “Are you kidding me?” The photograph wiggled in my hand as I waved my arms around us. “This is all because of my past, our past, Liam. I’m in a goddamned limbo because of the past. Don’t you dare tell me to get out of it…when it is all I have of Julian!”
Liam’s head hung, shaking with a deep exhale before his eyes lifted to meet mine. “Bird,” he began, “I didn’t say you need to forget a future with my brother.”
It was eerie when Liam stopped speaking, when his tone stiffened or the jovial nature of his personality vanished. Having seen it firsthand, the victim of his lineage while bound because of who I loved and who loved me, I was even more terrified of its consequences.
I returned to the photograph, my heart pounding as I studied the five men captured without their knowledge, suspended in the midst of criminal behavior. I recognized Malcolm immediately, trembling with the clean memory of his murder, the thought of Julian’s pride washing over me. Malcolm stood next to Elliott, a death from which I slowly detached, and one other person.
“Who’s with Elliott and Malcolm?”
Liam’s chin lifted as he glanced over my shoulder at the photograph. “Cedric Young.”
“He—”
“Yes,” Liam acknowledged. “He’s the bastard they sent to kill you. The one Julian killed. Seems like yesterday we had our lunch date. Doesn’t it? Are you hungry?”
“No.” I thought back to the events beginning the night Cedric broke in, earning Julian another tally. Christ! I wanted to scream, to break something, to destroy anything. The pain of losing him, of missing Julian, was devastating. It was like a bullet tore through my heart, carrying all emotion and promise as it left my body.
Liam padded away the tears streaming along my cheeks, silence persisting between us. After Julian saved me, Elliott found me, I wore that damn ring to the theatre…I was falling ill with tears, too weak to stand as I fell against Liam’s chest.
“Bird,” he shushed me, one hand caressing my back in slow circles. “The other men in the photograph, the suits behind the three spawns of shit, are Charles Foley and Edward Regan.”
Elliott had been in on it all along, just like Julian and Liam told me. I trusted them now, I knew it was a truth, but seeing the photograph of our worlds colliding like that struck me. It legitimized their deaths, tied the loose ends on our bag of scattered puzzle pieces. Elliott was in on it, with Malcolm and…Edward Regan, the man who believed Julian would actually wed his daughter. Then I felt it, the rage boiling beneath my skin, scouring my blood in a heated rush that threatened like a volcano. Julian is mine…and nobody is going to stand in our way.
“Julian’s been watching Malcolm for over a year, originally for reasons separate from you. He started messing up his drug deals, borrowing money, all sorts of things left in disarray after Cedric disappeared. Cedric knocked up Sheehan’s daughter, dropped her in the river with no question.” Liam released his ho
ld of my shoulders once I found the strength in my legs again, continuing his instruction.
“Before Julian slipped into the love puddle,” Liam winked at me, “he spent a lot of time with an FBI agent whose office is in the State House.”
“A criminal meeting with the FBI?”
“Remember, bird, it’s our grandfather paying off the police in this city. You’d be sickened to learn just how little bribery and blackmail it takes to get your way once you’re on top,” Liam scoffed, shaking his head. “When you get that high in the tower, your eyes are keen on monitoring who wants to battle their way up there with you.” He reached for another photograph, the dark harbor dimly lit by the glow of streetlights, and continued. “Our grandfather had guns coming in, covering them in the luggage of refugees, paying off customs agents to allow them in. That’s a big task for someone who is also spending his days growing ancient and despising his grandsons, so his right hand was put to task. Some shipments went missing, though.”
“Who stole them?” I dropped the photograph back on the table. Liam’s ability to be forthcoming was intoxicating in its own and, while I knew the consequences of this story’s path, I devoured his details.
“That’s the interesting piece. Julian’s FBI guy had us leaning toward the Youngs stealing them, but our grandfather learned it was Regan. He and Julian went to Belfast shortly before Julian was in the hospital just to send Regan’s men a message. They killed some people, came home, Julian met you. That’s essentially the story.”
“E-essentially.”
The sun was blazing into Liam’s living room, and I willed it to stay. I didn’t want time to pass between Julian and me.
“Julian thought it was curious how shipments Regan supervised for our grandfather would go missing, conveniently at the hands of a Young. Charles Foley’s just a defective sperm, slurping up whatever he can from whoever. Was. I’m still waiting for my punishment for killing him to protect you, but hopefully they see it as me simply dropping a fly on the wall of the Molloy kingdom and nothing more.” He spoke casually, chilling me with the ease with which he took a life.
