Survival & Revenge (Boston Latte Book 3)

by Fiona Keane

  Charles Foley, Malcolm, Cedric, and Elliott were dead at the hands of Julian or Liam…for me. It was clear to me that they were soldiers, minions of malfunction, who failed their orders, with the haze of warfare lingering around us without liberty in sight.

  “If your grandfather doesn’t trust Regan,” I began, curling my legs at the knee atop Liam’s couch, “why does he keep him so close?”

  “Noelle and Julian.” Liam lifted his eyebrows in mockery. “Their union protects both Edward and our grandfather. How fucked up is that?” I considered his words, the deaths, and who remained.

  “Is the Foley girl a threat?”

  Liam spun, a scoffing laugh escaping his mouth. “No. She can’t be trusted, but she isn’t a threat.”

  I eyed him speculatively. “You thought you could trust people in your inner circle, Liam. Everyone is a threat now. Even your family.” He slid his documents over and sat on the tabletop, pressing his palms around my rattling knees.

  “Your sister asked me if I lived alone once,” I blurted. “Before your uncle’s party. She followed me home, asked if I lived alone. I didn’t think anything of it then because I thought it was Julian who wanted me.”

  “Oh,” Liam snickered, “it is and was Julian who wanted you. Take a look at this, if you want. It’s just what we found, you know, piecing together what we could…” Liam trailed off, lifting one hand to motion toward to the scattered papers and photographs. He left me after a while of us sitting quietly, learning pieces that solidified theories of what Julian or Liam expressed to me. It wasn’t as difficult to connect Elliott to it all when the proof glared at me through candid photographs to document his deceit. All their research, conducted on Julian’s determined path to find me again, to protect me, now seemed trivial, as though it took us to one enormous pool of limbo.

  The list of characters in our opera skimmed with each murder these beautiful demons committed, but with each bullet it felt we were getting further from the truth. Who was at the center? Who was still standing? Emma Daly. Edward and Noelle Regan. The Molloys. Me.

  I woke to a clamor of metal elsewhere in Liam’s home, struggling to open my tired eyes against the brilliant darkness where I slept. I was given the grace of sleeping in Liam’s bedroom, which I would have questioned in another life, even distrusted, but the charcoal walls, linens of black and gray, pulled me into a cocoon, and I was able to sleep.

  I rolled over in his bed, tapping on the brushed nickel lamp at his bedside. My gaze stopped against the small framed photograph next to the lamp. A wave of longing swept through me, desperate for a nostalgia I hadn’t experienced, while a tear fell from my eye as I studied the photograph of three young boys. They were in matching knit sweaters, nestled on a patch of grass before a flourishing rose garden. The oldest of the three stood behind a woman whose grin shattered my heart with its beauty, a grin handed down to each of her stunning children. She held the other two boys in her lap, with the middle son nuzzling against her shoulder, his arm locked affectionately around the neck of the youngest.

  The rattle of pots and pans continued, distracting me from the childhood photograph of Liam with his brothers and mother in another lifetime. I returned the frame to his bedside and set off for the kitchen, knowing that was my destination with his increased profanities and clanking.

  Liam, finally wearing a shirt and sweatpants, stepped between the fridge and stovetop when I entered. The room was petite and pristine, crisply decorated with white herringbone subway tiles and silver appliances around white marble countertops.

  “Care for some coffee?” I smiled at him, nervously biting my lip in empathy for the ache I knew festered in his head after all he drank once he brought me home in the middle of the night.

  “I made some. I’m sure it tastes like piss.” He laughed, handing me a mug. “Good morning, sleeping beauty.” My cheeks warmed. Julian called me sleeping beauty once. I remembered it, and he wasn’t there to share the memory. I tried to peek at what Liam was making, pleased to see the clamor which disturbed my dreamless sleep was his attempt at a meal.

  “Thank you,” I replied, accepting the cup. He scratched at the stubble forming along his jaw while watching me drink.

  “We need a plan, bird. You and me. Nobody else can know.”

  I lifted the coffee to my lips, recognizing the brew as my own and warming with its empowerment. “Nobody.”

  Liam’s smile didn’t stretch to the height of its usual arrogance. He had a mission that reached beyond the flirt, the humor, and I reveled in my role at Liam’s side to find my way back to the man I love.

  I was dragged through their hell for our love, and I refused to break my promise to Julian just like he dedicated his life to finding me. How easily it slipped from our fingers.

  Liam cleared his throat, the sound snapping me from my thought of Julian. “I’m going to see him this week.” I saw Julian each time I closed my eyes, I heard his dismissal of me each time a sound vibrated in my ears, and I despised that being the last moment we shared. I tried to focus on us, the couple tangled in each other’s arms in the comfort of his bed, his glorious smile that destroyed my existence with each line echoing around his chiseled face.

  “There’s a meeting we’ve been called to,” Liam announced. My heart thumped. The “we” he referred to wasn’t Liam and me. It was Julian. I closed my eyes to resist the sob threatening our conversation. Whoever stood in our way now was going to meet a miserable end. I thought back to his text message from weeks prior, aching without his security, in which he declared he would kill every single person who threatened me. In that moment, with a warm coffee in my hands and Julian’s brother talking politics, I knew I was preparing to do the same. Every. Single. One.

  “It’s about matters before our recent…events,” he continued, “but I wanted your opinion on something.”

  “What is it?” I inquired, backing up onto the surface of his counter, my legs dangling while I waited for Liam to continue. His gaze slowly climbed from my toes to my face at a pace by which his brother would have killed him.

  “There’s a Senate hearing on Friday,” Liam began, his steps deliberate as he approached me. “Our grandfather, Edward Regan, they’ll be there. Listening, debating…”

  “Waiting to die,” I interjected, swallowing my nerves with Liam nodding inches from my knees. He squinted with lethal humor above a smirk that could kill.

  “Casualties.” Liam shrugged, a grin twisting his lips. I blinked, accepting the concept of a calculated murder on our hands. I pressed my free palm along my thigh to straighten invisible lumps in the fabric, swirled my coffee around, anything to busy my nervous fingers.

  Liam’s fingers lifted to my face, his palms cupping my cheeks as his brother often did, pulling my anxious gaze to his. The pads of Liam’s thumbs stroked my reddening cheeks, the skin desperate for affection that wasn’t his. His smile wasn’t destroying me, and I knew that wasn’t his intention, but its similarity to Julian’s was what shattered me.

  “He’d be really proud of you,” Liam muttered, his blue eyes darkening with his stare. I fell into him, taking a deep breath to steady myself as I slipped from the counter to huddle against Liam’s warm, hard body. His arms tightened around me instinctively, without thought or delay. Tucked against him, Liam guided me from the kitchen back into his living room. The fireplace crackled its warmth into the small room, the city returned to its glow of twinkling gold and orange below the massive windows, and the contents of his revelations remained scattered on the coffee table.

  “Don’t talk about him like he’s dead, Liam.” I lifted my head from his chest and wiggled free of his hold. “He can’t know any of this.”

  “He doesn’t know…yet. But does it matter how he feels once they’re gone? Once this is over? Shit, bird, if I knew the love of my life held the smoking gun after killing my enemies when I’m the one meant to protect her…my bedposts would bore holes into the floor. Christ! Awww,” Liam paused to squeeze
my shoulders, “you’re blushing.”

  “I hate you.” I lifted my coffee to my lips, hiding from his obnoxious smile.

  Liam’s nose scrunched with his grin as his index finger tapped the end of my nose. “I hate you too.”

  I rolled my eyes as he chastely kissed my forehead. He left me to make another drink at the narrow cart adorned with alcohol and, while he stirred and ice clinked against crystal, I pondered how he could protect us with so much alcohol in his system. I walked to the coffee table, my fingerprints grazing the surface, pausing on a magazine clipping of the last headline I overheard the Molloys discuss. I wasn’t wearing pants, Julian loved me, and then we left. Don’t go there. Stay strong. It was harder than I ever knew. I lost him once, and this time he pushed me away to protect me. I didn’t know how we’d come through this…if we could. I just wanted him back, and I would do whatever it took.

  The headline read of Julian’s new queen, the orphan with a small business, the business shared with criminals, whom the public had no idea were as horrid as reality would show. And somehow, it all led back to those left standing…like her.

  “What are you going to do with Noelle?” I inquired, quietly sorting through the contents sprawled along the table. I heard him choke on his drink, and I looked up to watch his stilled body.

  “I’m not touching that train wreck.”

  I watched him from behind, always wishing it was Julian’s backside obstructing my view, and observed his rigid form. Liam had played all sides, inside and out, conducting the ultimate farce in which nobody actually knew his true role. I joined him at the window, following his fixed gaze to the horizon before studying his face. His jaw tensed, he blinked more rapidly, and I didn’t realize until then how empty he became. His eyes dimmed above darkening circles of deprivation, but I needed him.

  “Maybe you should, Liam. Who’s to say she’d stay loyal to a man who doesn’t love her? In the entire time she was supposed to be waiting for Julian’s proposal, she panted by the phone waiting for your booty call.”

  “Hardly,” he scoffed with a snicker, scratching his jaw. “What are you suggesting, bird?”

  I glanced back at the stolen images of our histories scattered along his coffee table and nudged Liam’s side, nodding to the crystal bottles when he peered down at me in acknowledgement.

  “Make me something strong,” I demanded. I felt his eyes on me before he quietly reached for a bottle of brandy and placed it in my hands.

  “Straw?” Liam laughed, lowering to softly kiss the top of my head. “I was reading an article in the paper while you slept, and I stumbled across show times. I thought before you and I dirty our hands, you might like to take in a show with…me…or someone who…looks like me…”

  Chapter Seventeen

  JULIAN

  I couldn’t return home. I wasn’t a sadist. The torture of smelling her on my sheets, seeing the indent of her head on my pillows, or the tossed blankets from her restless dreams, would all have broken the shield our distance provided. I knew they had eyes on my building, Liam’s building, and absolutely Aideen’s apartment. My world was determined to eviscerate her existence, but nobody could erase her from my heart. I’d proven that to them repeatedly, and I would never stop.

  From the sterile hotel room, I was preparing to see Liam for the first time in days. My heart was a pounding bastard, a conflicted mix of rage and desperation, while all I wanted was for him to divulge everything about Aideen to me and knowing he couldn’t speak of her when we met at the State House. Back to business, my grandfather demanded with the rising sun, and I couldn’t knot my tie. My fingers jammed, locking with rejection of our circumstances. Life was a display, an act, but the skills of my career hadn’t prepared me to pretend I didn’t love Aideen with every fucking piece of myself.

  I met the tortuous sunlight with a grimace upon exiting the hotel. The claws of early March air still clung to winter while battling the promise of spring. A fresh coat of rain covered the sidewalk, muffling my hurried footsteps as I crossed four blocks to the State House. I couldn’t have cared any less for the agenda, caring only for one citizen of Boston, but I needed to mask my feelings with indifference. Artificial loyalty, all the while, sharing a table with seedy shits who were days away from their deaths. I skipped breakfast, bypassed my regular visit to the police on the first floor, evading the young interns who gaped in passing, as I was determined to show my face and nothing more within the constricting walls of government. I had never been nervous to see my brother, but it was humbling to be beneath him for a change. Liam became the one to care for and solve my woes, a reversal I never expected, and one that the lack of control stifled my being.

  I climbed the marble steps, ignoring conversation around me, and entered the halls leading to the family legacy.

  “Good morning, Mr. Molloy.” I nodded to the beaming interns, politely smiling as I opened the door to Gordon Molloy’s office. He sat behind his desk, reviewing a massive pile of papers.

  “Seems you’ve been distracted,” I gloated while observing his workload. “You have staff to cover that while you’re otherwise occupied.”

  “We’re meeting with Hill and Blackstone in twenty minutes,” he ignored my disrespect, “and I doubt you’ve reviewed the latest legislation.”

  “That’s correct.” I scanned his office. “Are your interns free or would you excuse my absence while I get some coffee?” He grunted his response, satisfied enough that I wasn’t in bed with Aideen and was once more under his command. Fucking idiot. I was never under his command, never would be. I snuck through the door into the small galley kitchen, my stomach twisting with the familiar and comforting scent of Aideen’s coffee. I salivated with the memory like a hungry animal, desperate to drink a cup in hopes it would connect us somehow. The door opened, an intern silently collecting a pile of baked goods from the counter. I knew she was Hill’s by the inappropriate cut of her blouse, and I wanted to cover her with my suitcoat. She was in and out so quickly that I didn’t even have the chance to feel sorry for her.

  The door opened two more times, but I was focused on finding a mug for the liquid heaven beckoning me. A newspaper shuffled across the counter, stopping only when its folded corners met a bottle of brandy, the contents already burning the bellies of the beasts in our war.

  “Encore?” Liam mused, tapping the folded newspaper as I leaned to follow the sound of his finger. His watch scratched the granite countertop, clinking its soundtrack of excess into the stifling air around us. His first word to me in days, since he crassly called me Narcissus and protected Aideen from further torture, was the perfect demonstration of his loyalty. I looked once at his eyes, outlined with the wrinkles of a smirk which suggested the boy had been plotting…with my girl.

  The half-page advertisement for the theatre schedule screamed from the page as I studied the show-times. It was difficult to contain my rattling heart as it threatened escape from my ribs, my suit, latching onto the thought of Aideen.

  “I’ll take Noelle to the six-thirty showing tomorrow,” I announced, leaning back against the counter with my arms crossed.

  Liam moved from my side and reached for the coffee pot, pouring the dark roast into a mug. “You’ll find me in the box, sipping on my Riesling.”

  I let my gaze drift around, pausing my downcast eyes on the heeled feet entering the room. Liam’s throat cleared before he introduced himself to the intern with a grin that sickened me, worried about its impact on the woman he left at home. Alone.

  “Liam,” I interrupted his flirting. “Where?”

  He whispered something to the young woman and turned to me once she retreated. “Safe. Sound. Protected.”

  A wave of heat lifted from my neck, and I tugged on my tie to relieve the sense of suffocation. I promised her she would always be safe with me, and I felt my grip on reality slipping away at the thought of her being without one of us to protect her.

  “Hey.” I snapped from a haze to Liam knockin
g my arm. “Julian. If we act how we feel, your precious Riesling bottle is going to break in someone else’s hands. Come on.” He nodded to the door, coffee in hand, and led the way into the room where we would discuss further destruction of the city I adored…and I would be consumed by thoughts of the woman I love.

  The pristine mahogany table mocked me as I entered, its surface unmarred while welcoming the forearms and elbows of elitist shits. I felt my throat tighten, the trinity knot that I struggled to bind closing in on my neck. Naturally, Satan was posed at the head, gruffly motioning for Liam and me to join the cast of hell around the table. Yet as I inspected our demonic companions, I noticed crucial figures absent from the theatrics.

  “Senators Blackstone and Hill couldn’t make it?” I probed, adjusting my tie against my chest while sitting opposite Liam.

  “I’m meeting with them later and,” my grandfather snickered, “you don’t need to attend.”

  “No? Taking over and yet we’re excluded?” I inquired. I wiggled back into my seat, anticipating a long stay, and lifted my right ankle to my left knee. I glanced at Liam, catching his eyes on the screen of his phone. Edward gazed at my grandfather, giving me a second to consider his features. He was one disgusting bastard, and I couldn’t wait to wring my hands around that sweaty neck of his.

  “The truth is,” Liam’s voice alarmed me, quickly pulling my eyes from Edward, “we’re here to discuss my punishment.”

  My brows furrowed, and I stared out the window, catching Satan in my periphery while I focused on trying to find her apartment through the massive windows spanning the Common. How could they know he kept her alive for me? I’d done what they demanded. Liam played his part so damn well. My left elbow pressed into the armrest as I pinched my lips, hurting myself to keep composure.