Cruel Paradise (Beautifully Cruel Book 2)

by J. T. Geissinger

  No. It has to be hunger. I’ve never been envious of anyone in my entire life.

  Then I realize there was one man I was envious of once. A man who had something that looked beautiful from the outside, the same way that what my brother has with Tru looks beautiful from the outside.

  I’ll never have that. That beautiful thing will never be mine. I made a life for myself built on revenge and dead bodies, and beautiful things such as that are not meant for men such as me.

  The anguish I feel is so crushing I have to force myself to breathe through it so I don’t smash the phone to pieces in my hand.

  “Killian?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Don’t hate me for saying this, but whatever is meant to be will be. Fate will take care of it.”

  I scoff. “Belief in fate is for children and fools. I’m neither.”

  “You don’t have to believe in something for it to be true. Just because you have an opinion doesn’t mean it’s right.”

  “Of course it does. I’m always right.”

  I hear the smile in Liam’s voice when he speaks. “There he is. I was beginning to think you’d been possessed.” He stifles a chuckle. “By the ghost of Romeo Montague.”

  “Speaking of which, you’ll enjoy this: her name is Juliet.”

  He laughs. “Now that’s funny.”

  “It’s not a joke. Guess what else?”

  “She thinks the Republic of Ireland is in the UK.”

  “Worse. She’s Antonio Moretti’s daughter.”

  My brother doesn’t gasp. It’s simply not a thing he does. But from across the phone line comes the distinctive sound of a hard breath being dragged in from shock.

  Then he starts coughing. Hacking, like a big piece of meat is lodged in his throat.

  “Aye,” I say drily. “Now you know how I feel.”

  “Antonio—Moretti’s—daughter?”

  The words are garbled, choked out between strangled coughs. In the background, Tru’s voice is a worried murmur.

  Shit. I’ve woken her up. “I’m sorry for calling so late. I’ll let you get back to your wife.”

  “No! Hold on!” An elephantine trumpeting nearly deafens me. He’s clearing his throat. Then he comes back on the line and thunders, “What the hell do you mean she’s Antonio Moretti’s daughter?”

  “I mean exactly that. Her name is Juliet Moretti. Daddy Dearest is our good friend, Antonio. Welcome to my life.”

  He wheezes. I imagine him, bug-eyed, sitting up in bed with the phone clenched so hard in his hand his knuckles are white, his pretty young wife hovering over him in hand-wringing worry as he tries not to topple over from the stroke he’s having.

  The image is strangely satisfying.

  “No more pithy platitudes about fate for me, brother? No sage advice about how not to fall hard for our mortal enemy’s only child?”

  He barks, “Does she know who you are?”

  “Aye.”

  “No wonder she can’t stand you! They’re the Capulets and we’re the Montagues! It’s the family business to hate us!”

  “She and her father are estranged. They haven’t had contact in years.”

  “Oh.”

  “She’s also a thief who steals from bad guys like her father and donates everything to charity. It’s how we met.”

  “At a charity event?”

  “No, when she broke into one of my warehouses and stole two thousand diapers from me.”

  After a moment, Liam says, “That can’t be true.”

  “Hand to god, brother.”

  “Huh. No wonder you’re in such a state.”

  I groan in frustration. “This is what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  After a slight pause, he says, “When was the last time you were serious about a woman?”

  “Thirty years ago.”

  “I’m not fucking around.”

  “Neither am I. The last time I felt like this, I was ten years old. Her name was Katie Dunham. She lived down the street from us. Black hair. Green eyes. Big gap between her front teeth.”

  He thinks for a moment. “The one who was always eating handfuls of dirt?”

  “That was her sister, Lizzie.”

  “So all these years—as an adult—you’ve never been in—”

  “No,” I say curtly before he can continue. I couldn’t bear it if he said it out loud. “I came close once. But she belonged to someone else. This one…”

  I drag a hand through my hair, struggling for the words to describe it. “This one is different. I feel like I’ve been electrocuted. Like I’ve been set on fire. Like I’ve got cancer and only have a few weeks left to live. I’m terminal. I’m fucking desperate. It’s the worst.”

  “It sounds like the worst,” says Liam, chuckling.

  “And I haven’t even kissed her yet.”

  In a conversation made up of many different types of pauses and silences, this one is the longest. It’s long and loud and echoes with incredulity. Then Liam says, “Have you recently had a fall? Hit your head on a sharp object?”

  “No,” I say through gritted teeth. I turn around and pace in the other direction, savagely kicking a rock out of my path as I go.

  “Because I’m concerned about your brain. It doesn’t seem to be working right.”

  “It isn’t! Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?”

  “This isn’t like you.”

  “Jesus Christ on a crutch, I know!”

  “You’re this worked up over a woman who stole from you, who doesn’t like you, and whom you’ve never even kissed?”

  I say flatly, “This from the man who stalked his wife for a year before he mustered the courage to speak to her. And then kidnapped her, because that’s high on every woman’s list of most romantic gestures.”

  “At least her father hasn’t tried to kill me six times.”

  “He’s only tried to kill me twice.”

  “I was talking about me. I ran things before you got there, remember?”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry.”

  “So between the two of us, Antonio Moretti has racked up eight assassination attempts.” Liam pauses. “Guess you won’t be inviting him to the wedding.”

  He’s laughing at me. I can hear it in his voice. “Remind me to punch you in the nose the next time we see each other.”

  “Oh, don’t sound so depressed. This is good for you!”

  “How is it good for me?”

  He stifles a laugh. “Pain builds character.”

  I growl, “Piss off, wanker.”

  “Don’t hang up on me yet, I have something helpful to tell you.”

  Finally. “I’m listening.”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about women since meeting Tru, it’s that they hate—and I mean hate—to feel controlled.”

  I furrow my brow in confusion. “How is that helpful?”

  He muses, “How do I put this delicately?” After a beat: “You’re the most controlling arsehole who’s ever lived.”

  “I’m commanding, not controlling. Like the captain of a ship.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but women aren’t sailors. They don’t enjoy having orders barked at them while they’re swabbing the deck.”

  I think of how many times since meeting Juliet that I’ve demanded this or that from her, and feel a faint flush of dismay.

  “They also hate it when you’re overly dominating. Strong and confident is one thing, but caveman-like domination is another. Except in bed. Dominance is allowed in bed. Outside the bedroom, it’s a no-no. Oh, and don’t be condescending. That will make a woman want to set fire to your face and put it out with a hammer. Let’s see, what else?”

  “It doesn’t matter what else. I’m already doomed.”

  He ignores me and continues. “Don’t explain something to her unless she specifically asks for an explanation.”

  “Like what, for instance?”

  “Like anything. Economics. Parallel parking. H
ow to correctly load the dishwasher.”

  “Why is an explanation bad?”

  “Who knows? It just is. They even have a word for it: mansplaining. It drives them crazy.”

  I mutter, “This is why blowup dolls were invented.”

  “I’m only getting started. We could be on the phone all night.” He pauses. “Maybe I should just email you a list.”

  “What I’m hearing you say is, in a nutshell, don’t be me.”

  “Exactly. Be anyone else but you. Be…Ryan Reynolds. Women seem to like him. He’s funny, charming, and self-deprecating.” Snicker. “I know those words are unfamiliar to you, but you can Google them to see what they mean.”

  I stop pacing long enough to drag a hand over my face and sigh. “I’m so glad I called.”

  “Me, too. I thought I’d never see the day when my hardass brother exposed his soft underbelly.”

  I say flatly, “I don’t have a soft fucking underbelly. Good night.”

  As I’m disconnecting, he’s saying loudly, “Remember—Ryan Reynolds!”

  It must be so nice to be an only child.

  15

  Jules

  I wake when it’s still dark out. My first instinct is to go to the window, but I take a shower and eat breakfast instead.

  Then I sit at the kitchen table and do something I rarely allow myself to do.

  I think about my father.

  My mother was twenty-five when she married him. The same age I am now. He was already notorious, the youngest of four sons and by far the most ambitious. And the most violent. According to the stories, when my grandfather wanted to send a message to a rival family that wouldn’t be ignored, it was Antonio he’d send to do the job.

  My grandfather was a mafioso, too. Capo dei capi, boss of all bosses. Just like my father.

  This shit runs in my veins.

  When the bomb meant for my father took my mother instead, I was twelve years old. I had just gotten my first period. I had no friends outside of the family, no female I could talk to who wasn’t a cousin or aunt. My grandmother was still alive—my father’s mother—but she was a dour old woman, frighteningly religious, always dressed in black even in the deadening heat of summer. The only two pleasures in her life were cooking and god.

  Intensely introverted, I lived my life inside the safety of books. The trifecta of homeschooling, security training, and the closed circle of my family made me extraordinarily distrustful of strangers and awkward to the extreme. I had no idea how to operate in the “real” world.

  Then my mother was killed, and the real world came knocking on my door. I was sent away to a boarding school in another state.

  At the time, my father explained that it was for my own safety. Now, I think that with my mother gone, he simply didn’t know what to do with me. His only child. A pre-teen girl.

  So off I went to a private school for rich kids in Vermont.

  It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I met Fin and Max and had friends for the first time in my life.

  My mother didn’t have any friends. She wasn’t allowed to have them. Originally from California, she met my father during a vacation to Manhattan. After knowing him only a week, she gave up her entire life to go live in New York with him. That’s how in love she was.

  Or how lonely.

  If she didn’t know what he was before she moved there, she certainly found out fast.

  He was a king. Wealthy. Proud. Charismatic. Both feared and respected, and known by all for his commitment to his honor but especially for his thirst for violence.

  Exactly like Liam Black.

  “Killian,” I say aloud, correcting myself.

  Killian. Not a nickname, not a middle name, not a name he’s called by anyone else. It makes no sense that he would demand I call him that. It irks me.

  What irks me more is that I haven’t told Fin and Max about it. I’ve always been good at keeping secrets, but not from them. This name thing, though…I’m still working it out. There’s something important there. A clue. But to what, I don’t know.

  The last time I spoke to my father was seven years ago. I’d been arrested for shoplifting. It was the only time I’d seen the inside of a police station, before or since. The bail was only five hundred dollars, but I had no money of my own. I didn’t have a job. My father paid for everything. It was the day after graduation, and I was scheduled to return to New York within the week.

  But that phone call with my father changed everything.

  In the mafia, a thief is the lowest form of garbage aside from a snitch. Made men will happily profit from the spoils of stolen goods, but they would never themselves stoop to the actual procuring of it. Their “honor” won’t allow it. They have associates who do that sort of thing instead—people not allowed in the mafia ranks. Non-Italians, those of poor reputation, etcetera. So when I had to call my father to wire bail money, and he discovered that I’d dishonored the family name by stealing, he flew into a rage. He screamed at me. He called me names.

  He said I was stupid, my mother’s daughter to the core.

  And something inside me snapped.

  I was done. Done with all of it. Especially done with him.

  I hung up the phone in the middle of his tirade.

  I told the arresting officer I’d stay in jail until the arraignment. He looked at me strangely, then said he’d talk to the judge. I seemed like a nice girl, he said. And it was my first offense. He had a daughter about my age, and it didn’t make much sense to have me in jail with the sex offenders and drug dealers for stealing a ten-dollar lipstick from a department store.

  The judge decided to be lenient. I was released after twelve hours sitting alone in a cell, thinking. It was the first time I’d truly been alone in my life.

  I loved it. There were bars on the door and window, but I’d never felt as free.

  I knew my father would come for me, even though he was furious. I belonged to the family. I was chattel. I had value as a bride for a favored ally or payment for a debt: it was unthinkable to simply let me go.

  I disappeared instead.

  I moved to Boston with Fin and Max. Fin knew someone who knew someone who got me a fake ID. I got a job working in the mailroom of a local paper.

  I was terrible at it, but I learned.

  From the mailroom, I was quickly promoted to the advertising department, and from there to an assistant position for one of the staff writers in the features department. Hank had aspirations to grandeur: he wanted to win a Pulitzer for reporting. He was dogged in his pursuit of “real news” and taught me how to do data mining on the internet for research, how to piece together seemingly unrelated tidbits of information, and, most importantly, how to verify facts.

  I became adept at all those things. In my spare time, I used those skills to find our marks.

  Criminals—the “good” ones, at least—are also skilled, especially at hiding their criminal activities. When I saw the news report about Liam Black’s arrest and almost immediate release, I decided to find out more about him.

  But for a man with such a huge reputation, there was curiously little to find. No verifiable address, no history of arrest before the recent one, no social media presence, no photographs. It was as if he existed by word of mouth alone. As if he were a ghost, a Bogeyman parents used to frighten their misbehaving kids.

  My interest grew.

  I kept digging until I found something: in the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s corporate licensing database, there was a listing for Black Irish Enterprises, Inc. The name jumped out at me. The corporate headquarters address was a post office box. All the officer positions were listed under the name Mail Kcalb.

  A name that made absolutely no sense, until you spelled it backward.

  After more digging, I discovered that Mr. Kcalb was the owner of ninety-five other companies, most of them in foreign countries and operating under DBAs. The majority of them were shell corporations. Meaning they had no employees,
no active business operations, and no significant assets.

  Suggesting they were formed only for the purposes of money laundering and tax evasion.

  I played the clip of Liam Black being led into the federal building by FBI agents over and over again, memorizing his face, making note of the tattoos on the knuckles of his left hand. He left an indelible impression on me. I’d never seen a criminal as beautiful as that one, or half as smug.

  The combination was infuriating.

  By that time, I’d lived in Boston for over a decade. It was long enough to have heard the stories about the Irish mafia and its ruthless leader. Remembering how my father had screamed that I was stupid, I decided there was another arrogant mobster who needed to be shown he wasn’t actually king of the universe. That there was someone out there who wasn’t afraid of him.

  That being a girl—younger, smaller, powerless—didn’t mean I couldn’t beat him at his own game.

  Max was right, though. I did stew about it for months. Months and months and still more months, until almost a year had gone by before I finally pulled the trigger on the job.

  In all that time, I never once asked myself why I was stalling.

  Now, sitting here at my kitchen table, grappling with the past, I have to admit Max was right about something else. I knew from the moment I laid eyes on him that the formidable Mr. Black was lightning, and I was a lightning rod.

  Made to attract his strike.

  I say darkly to the empty kitchen, “Okay, gangster. You want to play this game? Let’s play.”

  But I’m in it to win.

  The coffee steams in the cool morning air, sending up perfect white whorls like in a commercial. Approaching the SUV with a mug in each hand, I’m careful not to spill any on the front of my pretty white dress.

  When I’m twenty steps away, Killian bursts from the passenger seat as if the car spat him out.

  He stands stock still as I approach. Staring at me. Eating me up with his eyes.

  I stop in front of him and look up into his burning gaze. Holding out one of the mugs, I say pleasantly, “Good morning.”