The Monster: A Mafia Romance (Boston Belles Book 3)
The Monster: A Mafia Romance: Chapter 7

I made a pit stop at Badlands and slipped into one of the card rooms, downing three stiff drinks to take the edge off what I saw at the clinic. Nix was a doctor, all right, but she didn’t work at the hospital or any of the registered clinics around town. Whatever she did, it was secretive, illegal, and had nothing to do with people without insurance.

Stop thinking about Nix. She is just collateral.

Collateral and an inconvenience at best and a complication at worse.

I needed to get my head out of my ass and be ridden by someone who wasn’t my niece. It was time for a diversion. A reminder there were other pussies out there. Just as good and warm and tight as Aisling’s and not half as troublesome.

Pent-up lust.

That was all it was.

I was a busy man ruling the underworld of one of the seediest, dirtiest places in the country. It’d been a long-ass time since I drowned myself in a woman. Aisling was the last, and the woman before her happened so long ago I forgot her name, her hair color, and the setting.

A good fuck would make all of this go away.

I moseyed out of the card room and into the club, ignoring the enthusiastic claps on my back and conversation starters, and scanned the mass of sweaty, dancing figures melding together. I pressed the tumbler of whiskey to my lips.

Humans appalled me.

Despite my reputation, I didn’t just fuck anything with a pulse. I had dry spells of the self-inflicted kind since fucking ultimately required talking to people, and talking to people was a punishment even a good pussy wasn’t worth sometimes.

There were always whores, who didn’t demand meaningful conversation, but I wasn’t a fan of shoving my dick where so many others had been.

I immediately decided which woman I wanted to spend the night with. She had bleached blonde hair, a fake tan, long legs, and a pink mini-dress so tacky removing it from her would be my Christian duty.

Most of all, she looked nothing like Nix.

I snapped my fingers in the bouncers’ direction, pointing at her.

“I’ll have that one,” I clipped then proceeded to turn around and go up the stairs to my office, past the card rooms.

In my office, I busied myself by flipping through the betting books, tugging at my hair and not thinking about Nix.

A knock on the door made me drop the fat book on my desk.

“Open.” I sat back, sprawling out in my executive chair.

The blonde pushed the door open, giggling excitedly as she shut it behind her, and pressed her back against the bullet-chipped wood.

“Hi! I’m Dani,” she squeaked, tossing her hair to one shoulder. “Your bouncer showed me up. It’s my first time at Badlands. Honestly, my friends are, like, kind of freaking out about all this. You calling me here, I mean. We heard about you a lot, obvs. But we didn’t even know you came to this place, like often …”

I tuned her out, focusing on how her lips moved, fast and eager. Everything about her was wrong from her juicy, probably enhanced lips to her definitely penciled-in eyebrows. Her fake eyelashes looked like a shredded semitrailer tire. Her heavy makeup and dry hair full of split ends grated on my nerves in a way that felt personal. Nothing about her felt right.

Or good.

Or delectable.

Complex, dangerous, maddening.

I wanted Aisling. Aisling’s demureness. Her sharp little nose and aristocratic, well-proportioned lips. Her natural hair and skin and teeth. She didn’t succumb to modern beauty standards, and there was something irresistible about it. Aisling had that blue-blooded look of a woman you couldn’t imagine on all fours, getting fucked rough and dirty from behind. Men were simple creatures, so that meant it was precisely what I wanted to do—plow into her Royal Highness, rough and dirty, from behind while she chanted my name.

The girl in front of me continued blabbing. Hell if I knew about what. It occurred to me, now that I looked at her up-close, that she was young. Legal, yes, but much younger than me.

“… kind of down for anything, really. And, like, I know you only do casual, so that’s totally okay—”

“How old are you?” I cut into her stream of words, already in need of two fucking Advils and one bullet to put me out of my misery.

“What?” She looked startled, her brown eyes widening in panic. “What do you mean?”

“Your age,” I jeered, irritated with myself for apparently growing a fucking conscience somewhere between Aisling’s clinic and Badlands. “What is it?”

“Twenty … five?”

“Is that a fucking question?”

“No …?”

“Then why do you keep putting question marks after your answers?”

Her generation was going to run this country one day. No fucking wonder I had a fake Swedish passport, just in case. Say hello to Ludvig fucking Nilsson.

She blinked slowly, like this was a test. I was half sure she was illiterate.

“Show me your ID.” I opened my palm, stretching my arm in her direction.

“This is ridiculous.” She laughed, her neck and ears turning pink. “I’m legal! Everyone gets carded here.”

Not everyone. Aisling didn’t on Halloween, and now my dick wanted a subscription card to her pussy.

Never mind that I fired the bastard who let Aisling in the following day.

“You have five seconds before I blacklist you,” I said dryly.

“From the club?” She sucked in a breath.

“From the city,” I corrected. “Your ID, Dani.”

She rummaged through her knockoff Chanel purse with a huff, producing her driver’s license and slapping it over my palm. I lit a cigarette and sat back, rubbing my forehead as I studied it.

Twenty-two.

Danielle Rondiski was twenty-two.

A practical baby in comparison to me.

Still, legal enough to drink, to fuck, and to be here.

She was also a natural brunette with pasty white skin when that photo was taken but had since graduated from the Bimbo Academy and morphed into what was standing in front of me right now, an inflatable version of Charlotte McKinney.

I whipped the card back at her. “Get out.”

“Mr. Brennan …”

“Out.”

“Age is just a number.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” I tried—and failed—to replace the conversation frustrating. Truth was, I was bored. So far from the realms of any other emotion, I couldn’t muster it if I tried.

I wasn’t annoyed. I was horny for something I couldn’t get my hands on, and the boring words coming out of her mouth were killing my erection.

“If age is just a number, then temperature is just a number, too. And money. And cancerous cells. And war casualties. Numbers are everything. Numbers are what separates life from death. Numbers run this world. There’s no just about them. Now get the fuck out.”

After sending Dani on her way with my Rain Man speech, and coming to terms with the fact my dick and I were both going to bed lonely tonight, I got into my car and drove to my apartment. My instincts told me the clusterfuck of today was in full swing and to expect the worst.

My instincts were never wrong.

Because Aisling fucking Fitzpatrick was waiting at my door.

A reward—or a punishment—from Karma?

Her back was pressed against the wood, sitting cross-legged, head bent down, the cool glow of her phone illuminating the planes of her face. She looked up as soon as I stepped out of the elevator, scrambling to her feet, smoothing her black, conservative dress over her curves. Her coat was folded and rested on her forearm neatly.

“I ought to kill you.” I pushed past her callously, punching the code to my door and opening it without making a move inside.

“That wouldn’t be out of character for you,” she murmured from behind me. “What didn’t I do this time?”

“You cockblocked me.”

“I wasn’t even anywhere near you all day!” she protested, the delight in her voice giving her a cheery lilt.

“You didn’t have to be. The PTSD of fucking you put me off the whole concept for life. Congratulations.”

“That’s why you had to finger me again, right? Just to make sure it really was that horrible the first time,” she sassed back.

“I fingered you to deny you an orgasm, not because I wanted you,” I replied drily.

“You really know how to woo a girl. No wonder I was obsessed with you.”

“Was?” I turned around to shoot her a dark smile, my hand on the door handle. “Last I checked, you are still running after me like a puppy and even took it to the next level and are now showing up at my place, creeper-style.”

“You show up at my place all the time, too. I don’t call you a creeper.”

“That’s different. I work with your father. I cannot escape the sight of you, no matter how much I want to.”

I was really on a roll tonight. All I needed was red-tipped horns and to sacrifice a baby or two to complete my transformation into Lucifer.

“Where have you been?” She changed the subject, refusing to be offended and or leave my fucking building.

Now I did feel something.

I felt ready to strangle her.

“Allow me to answer you with your favorite goddamn expression: none of your business. How did you replace my address? Do not say none of your business,” I warned.

“Google.”

“Don’t lie to me.” I turned to face her, curling my fingers over her delicate neck and giving it a soft squeeze just to scare her. Her throat bobbed with a swallow, but she didn’t back down.

I misjudged her all those years and hated myself for judging a book by its cover. Inside that lacey and elegant spine teemed chaos.

“Don’t ask tough questions,” she snapped back.

“My address is untraceable.”

“Well, Batman, I think both of us know that isn’t true.” She rolled her eyes. “Can you remove your fingers from my neck? I’d hate to traumatize you further with skin-to-skin contact.”

Only a handful of people knew where I lived, and not even Cillian, Devon, or my soldiers were among them. I was a notoriously private person. Came with the territory of doing what I did for a living. The only people who had my address were Troy, Sparrow, and Sailor.

Sailor.

My traistor (traitor sister) must’ve talked to Sparrow after I left, put two and two together, and spontaneously decided to butt into my shit.

My cat and mouse game with Aisling was starting to become a multiplayer game, spinning out of control, and it was time to put a stop to it once and for all.

I could confront her about what I’d found out today, tell her I broke into the clinic, press for more answers, but it would be useless. She looked distraught, her onyx hair plastered to her temples, her eyes shiny with tears. She would only go on the defense, and I hated fucking liars. They reminded me of my biological mother.

I removed my hand from her throat.

“Look, can I come in?” She rubbed at the column of her neck, her posture slackening all of a sudden, like a deflated balloon. It dawned on me my not wanting to fuck Dani had nothing to do with her age or ability to bore me to the point of a clinical coma and everything to do with Nix.

God-fucking-dammit.

“No,” I said flatly.

“I really need to talk to someone.”

“I suggest you turn to a person who cares.”

“You don’t care about me?” she asked, surprise and hurt marring her voice. Was she asleep the last fucking decade? Did I care about anyone, myself included? No. Troy, Sparrow, and bigmouthed Sailor were the exception. I supposed I could toss in Rooney and Xander now, too. Obviously, they had the advantage of not being able to talk fluently and therefore were in low danger of pissing me off.

“Not even a little. Go away.”

She licked her lips. “I need to vent. It’s about my parents. Everyone else has a horse in this race. My brothers, Mother, and Da … even my best friends are married to my siblings, so they can’t be clearheaded about it,” she explained.

She had a point.

Furthermore, if she had important information about Gerald, she could help me bring him to his knees and get a confession. So while it was true that I never, under any circumstances, brought a woman over to my apartment, it was time to make an exception. For her.

For the first time since I moved in by myself at eighteen, I opened the door and let another person who wasn’t Sparrow or Troy into my domain. Even my cleaning lady only had the vaguest idea where I’d lived. She was driven back and forth from my place in tinted-windowed cars.

“Fine. But I’m not gonna fuck you again,” I warned.

I could always count on my pride to win over, and Aisling was a constant reminder of the fact the Fitzpatricks saw fit to do business with me but not allow me to date their daughter.

“Well, that’s a relief.” She smiled politely, her chin barely quivering as she tried to contain her emotions. “And I promise not to try to seduce you again. Now, shall we?”

Aisling took a seat on the plush black leather couch, spine erect, her hands demurely resting in her lap.

“May I have some coffee?” she asked shakily.

“Would you like a fucking full English breakfast along with it?” I cocked an eyebrow, still standing up. “No, you can’t have coffee.”

“I think we both need a few moments to gather ourselves before this conversation.”

“The only part of me in need of gathering is getting my cock into someone’s mouth, and since I don’t want you anywhere near it, I suggest you cut to the chase.”

We held each other’s eyes for a few seconds. She didn’t waver.

“You’re not going to talk until I get you a coffee, are you?” I suppressed a groan.

She shook her head. “’Fraid not.”

Reluctantly, I went into the kitchen to make it. It occurred to me midway the journey to the counter that:

One, I didn’t know how to operate the coffee machine; I always grabbed Starbucks on my way out in the morning then spent the rest of the day loathing myself for consuming burnt coffee that tasted like an overflowing sewer water, and—

Two, my house, my rules, my drink of choice.

I grabbed a Macallan 18, poured two fingers into two tumblers, and made my way back to the living room.

My apartment was neatly and minimally designed. Bare concrete walls, black leather everything, high barstools, and chrome appliances. Notably missing from my apartment were any paintings or pieces of unneeded furniture.

Also currently missing from my apartment right now was Nix.

I frowned at the coffee table, confused.

I looked at the massive glass jar in the center of it.

One of the bullets I kept inside was rolling on the floor. It bumped into one of the table’s legs.

Shit.

I dropped the whiskey, bolting out the door, catching Aisling punching the elevator’s button hysterically, her eyes wildly scanning her surroundings. Her cheeks were wet, and she was shaking all over. I grabbed her by the wrist and tugged her toward me.

What the fuck happened? Why was she so scared?

“Let me go!” she yelled, trying to shake me off. “Coming here was a huge mistake.”

“Couldn’t agree with you more. Yet you’re here, so you’re sure as hell going to see this through. I know the Fitzpatrick clan is used to other people finishing shit for them, but this time you’ll have to pull through.” I hoisted her over my shoulder, stomping back into my apartment, my fingers digging into the back of her thighs with possessiveness that surprised and disgusted me.

She is not yours to keep.

She is the enemy’s spawn.

She is the woman you are paid to never touch.

And she is not worth the fucking headache.

“Let me guess, there is a perfectly good explanation for the bullets, right?” She chuckled bitterly, and I was glad she at least didn’t do the whole let-me-down routine women were so fond of.

“There is,” I clipped, “but you are not going to like it.”

“I’m all ears,” she said.

I slammed the door shut with my foot behind us, planting her back on the couch and squatting between her legs, snatching her gaze and hands.

“You calm?”

“Don’t treat me like a baby,” she snapped.

“Don’t act like one,” I deadpanned.

“Why do you have bullets in a jar? Dozens of them, no less.”

“Why do you think I don’t want people to get into my apartment?” I answered her with a question, my newfound technique courtesy of Deidra or whoever the fuck I almost had sex with at Badlands tonight.

“Evidence.” Her teeth chattered, and she hugged herself.

“I take the bullets out of the people I kill and keep them.”

Sam, you fucking idiot. An admission to the woman whose father you are about to slaughter like a sacrificial lamb.

She stared at me in terror mixed with … fascination? Of course. I kept forgetting that she, too, was a monster. I picked up the bullet she dropped on the floor, ignoring the scent of the whiskey as it soaked its way through the carpet.

I flipped the bullet, tapping it with my finger.

“See this? M.V.? Mervin Vitelli. I engrave their initials, so I don’t forget.”

“Why don’t you want to forget?” She frowned.

Because if I start forgetting all the people I kill, nothing will separate me from an animal, and I will become a real monster.

Soon enough there would be a bullet with G.F. engraved on it, a fact that reminded me I should put some distance between Aisling and me. I stood up and walked back to the kitchen, returning with the Macallan bottle—sans tumblers this time. I took a swig straight from the bottle, passing it to Aisling. I lowered myself into a recliner opposite her, the coffee table serving as a barrier between us.

She took a small sip and winced, handing it back to me.

“I knew you killed people, but it’s very different to actually see proof of how many lives you’ve taken.”

“The first one is the most meaningful one. After that, taking lives feels the same. Like a second or third bite of an ice cream cone. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to know the people I kill are pieces of shit,” I replied.

“I’m not so sure,” she said, and by the way her forehead creased, I could swear she was talking from experience.

“You came here to talk. Talk,” I ordered, knocking the side of her sensible boot with my loafer.

She blinked as she took in the apartment, its bare walls and cold nothingness I surrounded myself with. I liked it that way. The less I had, the less I became attached to things. It was an expensive brownstone, at three million dollars, but different from Avebury Court Manor, which was laden with paintings, statues, and other luxurious symbols of wealth.

There was nowhere to hide here. It was just us and the walls and the unspoken truth sitting between us like a ticking time bomb, waiting to explode.

“My mother wants to file for divorce.” Her voice cracked. She looked downward, her neck like a broken flower stem.

“I know it sounds ridiculous to you,” she rushed to add. “After all, it’s a well-known fact my parents have never been faithful to one another. Their marriage is considered a sham in most social circles of New England. But for me, it means something. It means a lot, actually. Growing up, I knew I had the stability of Avebury Court Manor. Even though Mother and Da weren’t a functional couple, they were still a couple in their own strange way. Believe it or not, Sam, they worked. I know I’m not an impressionable teenager anymore and worse things happen to twenty-seven-year-olds. Some people lose their parents, their partners, even their children, but I just don’t understand…” she shook her head, tears hanging on her lower lashes for dear life, refusing to fall “…how everything escalated so quickly. One moment we were leading a normal life—as normal as life could be for us—and the next everything exploded. The provocative pictures of Da and that … that woman materializing out of nowhere, the poisoning. Someone is trying to ruin my father, and Athair thinks it’s my mother.”

I stared at her, offering no words of explanation or encouragement. What could I say?

Actually, now that you mention it, I’m behind the operation. Jane is merely collateral damage. Be thankful it’s not you I’m throwing under the bus. And by the way, this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg, so buckle up, sweetheart, because I’m about to make him remortgage your childhood house and bleed him dry of his billions.

“Do you really have no lead?” she asked, signaling me with her hand to pass the bottle.

I did, shaking my head.

She sipped the brown liquid like it was tea, returning the bottle to me. “That’s weird. You are usually so resourceful. I can’t recall the last time you couldn’t help my family when we got ourselves into trouble.”

I was marginally amused by her attempt to trick me into working harder on the case. A case that I’d created all by myself.

“Patience, Nix.”

“Are you a patient man?”

“I don’t hold myself to the same standards I hold you to.”

“That’s convenient.”

“I lead a convenient life.” I saluted her with the bottle, taking a sip. “Anyway, look at the bright side. Two houses. Two parents. Two Christmas trees. Two sets of presents and so fucking forth.”

“I’m not a kid.” Her eyes flared with rage.

I elevated a brow. “You sure act like one where your parents are involved.”

“What would you do if you were in my position?” Her eyes zeroed in on mine, sharp all of a sudden.

Lower myself to my knees and have you take my balls in your mouth again.

“Let them sort this shit out by themselves. They are grown-ups, and you are not the parent. You’re the kid.”

Perhaps because I was more focused on Aisling recently, especially during Thanksgiving dinner, I couldn’t help but notice how her mother had asked Aisling to pour her drinks for her and join her in the bathroom to help her with her zipper. Jane didn’t treat Aisling much better than a maid. I couldn’t remember when that dynamic had started, and now I wondered whether I chose to turn a blind eye to it all along or I didn’t want the facts to get in my way of seeing Aisling as a spoiled brat.

“I am sort of my mother’s parent,” she admitted. “She relies on me … mentally.”

“That, to use the technical term, is fucked-up.”

“Maybe, but it’s the truth. My life is … not as pretty as it seems from the outside.” She scrunched her nose, reaching to pluck one of the bullets from the jar and rolled it between her fingers, examining its initials. She put it back. Took out another one. I resisted the urge to lash out at her, tell her I was now going to have to wipe her fingerprints from each of them individually, in case someone ever found them. I could tell she was close to tears and wanted to avoid becoming a wailing woman at all costs.

I grew up with Sparrow and Sailor, two women who weren’t prone to dramatics. In fact, I could not recall them crying at all. I was sure a tear or two was shed at family funerals and such, but they had always carried themselves with the quiet strength of women who knew the underworld inside and out and ruled it as their unchallenged goddesses.

Usually when I heard women cry, it was in bed and for all the right reasons.

“Boo-fucking-hoo, sweetheart. You’re young, beautiful, and rich enough to buy happiness. So your parents are about to get a divorce and hate each other’s guts. Welcome to the twenty-first century. You are officially joining fifty percent of people in the U.S.”

I really was a bottomless source of fucking sunshine, wasn’t I? But there was nothing I could do to help her. I wasn’t going to change my plans to spare her feelings.

Nix’s eyes narrowed at me, but surprisingly, she didn’t look like she was about to bawl.

“My life is not as charmed as you think,” she insisted, whispering hotly. “For one thing, growing up I never saw real love. A healthy relationship between a man and a woman. At least you had Sparrow and Troy. My childhood was an endless stream of arguments, object tossing, and my parents disappearing to Europe for months at a time, together or alone, leaving me with the nannies.”

I stared at her blankly, showing her she hardly mustered enough pity in me to inspire me to get up and grab her a Kleenex.

“Then I lost someone I really cared about when I was seventeen, in a pretty … brutal way.” Her throat bobbed with a swallow, and she looked around, uncomfortable all of a sudden. I didn’t ask whom it was.

Rule number one was to not get attached. It clouded your judgment.

“What else have you got for me?” I yawned, leaning back, making a show of checking the time on my phone.

“My first time …” She hesitated, biting down on her lower lip. My interest piqued, and I found myself sitting upright. “I lost my virginity to my professor.”

“How old was he?”

“Forty-one.”

“And you?”

“Nineteen.”

“That’s—”

“Disgusting?” She smiled sadly, her eyes shimmering with tears again. I was going to say hot as fuck, but of course that was out the window now. “Yeah, I know. Wanna know the disgusting part?”

“I thought I already knew. He was forty-one.”

She shot me a tired smile.

“I found out three weeks after we started sleeping together that he was married with a kid. See, he didn’t wear a wedding band and lived in an apartment complex on campus, alone. He looked young and stylish and hung out with the students so often…” she picked a cuticle around her fingernail, tugging on it nervously “…I wanted to lose my virginity to someone with experience, and I knew he had it. We continued seeing each other after we had sex. Until one day he just disappeared into thin air. Stopped answering my calls. Just got up and left. He didn’t even complete the academic year. I needed some sort of closure, so I found him. And, well, I found out why he left. Because of me. Because his wife, who taught at another university two states away, had found out and dragged him back home by the ear. When I found his new address, I made the mistake of driving down there and knocking on his door.”

Bad call. But I had plenty of life experience, and Aisling lived in a protective bubble. Of course she wanted answers, closure, and all the other mumbo jumbo you read about.

“She opened the door and threw the phone he’d used to call me. She started screaming at me in front of the entire neighborhood, calling me a whore, a homewrecker, a spoiled bitch. She said my mother is a slut, that everyone in America knows one of us doesn’t belong to Fitzpatrick, then promised she would let all the hospitals in Boston know what I did. It was humiliating. Especially since I never knew this man was married.”

“Is that why you never tried for a hospital here?” I asked.

She bit down on her lower lip, pulling more and more dead skin from the side of her fingernail. “Partly. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s not the entire reason, anyway. Since then, I limited my interaction with men even more.”

“Good,” I deadpanned. “We’re all fuckers.”

Silence hung in the air. I wanted her to leave. She wasn’t going to tell me anything about her parents’ relationship, about Gerald. This was pointless.

“Tell me something personal.” She rested her cheek on her shoulder. “Just one thing, Sam. It will make me feel better. Please.”

“Aisling, it’s time for you to go.”

“Why?”

“Because this is going nowhere fast. We fucked. It was a mistake. It’s time you move on. Whatever you think is going to happen, I can assure you it won’t happen. I don’t have a soul, or a heart, or a conscience. We had fun, yes, but women are all the same to me. I will never choose you above all others. If you think life with Gerry is a nightmare for your mother, imagine your father at his worst and keep going. That would be me.”

That was when it finally happened.

She finally cried in front of me.

It was just one tear. It rolled down her cheek, flying off her chin like a cliff, landing with a splash on her knee.

“Goddammit, woman,” I hissed, looking away, feeling … feeling. It wasn’t a big feeling, just a little discomfort, but I did not want to see her cry.

One time.

This would be the one and only time I was going to humor this infuriating woman. No more.

I stood up, snatching the whiskey bottle by its neck and taking a swig as I began pacing the room.

“When I was a kid, before Troy and Sparrow took me in, back when I lived with Cat and my grandmother, we had a painting in our house. Just the one. It was a very cheap painting. A faded old thing of a cabin on a lake—basic and not very good. Anyway, the painting was in front of the bed in the master bedroom. It had the tendency to fall from its nail onto the floor every time the door creaked or someone breathed in the house. Cat was the only person with a key to the master bedroom, and she hadn’t figured out I’d learned how to pick a lock.”

I stopped. Took another swig. Realized I was halfway drunk and put the bottle down on the coffee table, noticing Nix was fingering and touching more of the bullets in the jar, breathing the initials out with her lips. Like she was mourning those people or something.

“When I was a kid, Cat used to punish me by starving me. In order to do that, she made the spot under her bed a makeshift pantry. That’s where she kept all the food. Condiments, chips, pretzels, ready-made meals. Grams wasn’t strong enough to fight her on this. As you know, I was a shitty kid, so I was virtually in a constant state of punishment. That made me very hungry and very small for my age.”

She pinched her lips together, and I could tell she was about to sob again. It made me feel like fucking Bambi. I didn’t need anyone’s pity. I rushed through the next part.

“At some point, I figured I could just break into the room and grab Ramen or a bag of chips or something. And I did. Often. But Cat had the tendency to come in at the most inconvenient time. When I didn’t have time to run away from her room, I had to hide under the bed, buried beneath the junk food.”

I smiled bitterly at the bare concrete wall in front of me, feeling Aisling’s eyes clinging to my profile, eager to hear more.

“Cat was a whore, so more often than not, when she came home, she wasn’t alone. I stopped counting after the fourth time I had to sneak under her bed and felt the springs of the mattress digging into my back as someone fucked her above me.”

Aisling looked away, hissing, like my pain bled into her body.

“No,” she croaked.

“Yes.” I changed direction, walking toward her. “I felt the weight of my mother’s sins, figuratively and literally. They fucked her over my back. Again and again and again. While I shivered, dizzy with hunger, every muscle in my body strained so I wouldn’t make a sudden move and make myself known. My most distinct childhood memory is that stupid painting. Every time the headboard hit the opposite wall, it would drop, but not facedown, so I could always see the cabin and the lake staring right back at me, as if they caught me red-handed. We had a relationship, this painting and I. I felt like it was taunting me. Reminding me of my shitty life, and every time I looked at it, I could feel the blue and purple dents on my back from the rusty bedsprings digging into my skin.”

“You don’t have any paintings,” she said slowly, looking around the room.

I tapped the bottom of my cigarette pack over my bicep, and one cigarette popped out.

I fished it between my teeth. “Nope.”

“My house must be very triggering for you.”

I chuckled, lighting up the cigarette. I sprawled beside her on the couch, careful not to touch her, exhaling a trail of smoke to the ceiling.

“I don’t have triggers.”

“Everyone has triggers,” she argued.

“Not me. I let hate fester and redirect it into ambition. I welcome my weaknesses and don’t shy away from them.”

She leaned her head against my shoulder, pressing her palm to my heart. I froze.

This was new.

And unsolicited.

Still, I didn’t move. Her hand on me felt good. Right.

“Is this why you hate women?” she whispered. “Because Cat wronged you so much?”

“I don’t hate them. I just don’t want much to do with them,” I groaned.

“Well, I want something to do with you.” She looked up, blinking at me with owlish eyes. Our gazes met. The thick humming of our pulses filled the air. I drew away from her, pressing my thumb to her lip.

“No.” I smiled viciously, standing up. “Here. You got it off of your chest, and even got a little bonus with my sob story. Now get the fuck out, Nix. And don’t come back.”

“But I—”

She started, but I turned away, taking a drag from my cigarette and looking in the other direction.

Through the floor-to-ceiling window, I could see her standing up, dignified. She made her way to the door, her chin held high, her back straight. The minute she closed the door behind her, I let out a breath, dropping the cigarette into the half-empty whiskey bottle.

Charging to the bathroom, I all but kicked my slacks down my knees, turning on the shower spray and stumbling inside before the water turned from cold to hot.

I braced one arm over the tiles, let the water pound over my body, and started jerking off—with my dress shirt still on.

“Shit …” I hissed as I rubbed my cock mercilessly, pumping fast. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

Her mere presence in my apartment made my balls tighten.

I came and I came and I came inside my fist. Liquid, white gel coated my fingers, and I wondered when was the last time I masturbated.

Probably when I was sixteen.

No, maybe fifteen.

Fuck you, Aisling.

I plastered my forehead against the tiles, groaning as the red-hot needles of water kept lashing my face and hair. I wasn’t her savior, I was her monster. These late-night calls, me following her, her seeking me out … they had to stop.

Before I did to her what I did to that painting.

Because I didn’t tell her the whole story.

Years after I’d moved out of Cat’s apartment, I came back. Paid the owner a large sum of money to get a tour around the place. I found the painting. The new tenants hadn’t gotten rid of it. I stole it, burned it, and tossed the ashes in the Charles River.

I didn’t know how to keep things.

I only knew how to break them.

It was time to break Aisling once and for all and ensure she would never, ever seek me out again.

Aisling

Stop choosing what isn’t choosing you, mon cheri, Ms. B’s voice rang between my ears as I burst out of the door of Sam’s building on wobbly legs, the harsh whip of the wind slapping my cheeks.

I gasped for air, but no amount of air could satisfy my lungs.

Sam, Sam, Sam.

Broken, scarred, marred, imperfect Sam. Molded in the hands of an abusive mother, a mobster adoptive father, and a ghost of a biological dad he knew tried to kill his adoptive mother.

I wrapped my coat around my waist and jogged to the Aston Martin waiting around the corner from Sam’s building, slipping into the passenger seat. The minute I slid in, I grabbed the thermos waiting for me there and took a greedy gulp of coffee.

“Well?” Cillian asked from the driver’s seat, raising a skeptic eyebrow.

He didn’t believe Sam had anything to do with Athair. Neither did Hunter. I could tell Cillian was now looking at me, trying to see if I had sex with Sam. Any telltale sign to replace out if we did something sordid. Puffy lips. Flushed cheeks.

My brother didn’t trust me not to throw myself at Sam.

I shook my head. “Couldn’t replace anything, and he didn’t volunteer any information.”

“Of course you couldn’t. Because Sam has better things to do with his time than to mess with Athair for no apparent reason.”

“He was the only person at the table capable of poisoning one of the guests.”

“Athair had an oopsie visit to the hospital. Give that pretty head of yours a rest, Ash. Sam is innocent—in this case, of course. In general, he is probably responsible for every other bad thing that happened in Massachusetts since 1998. Case closed.”

When I said nothing, he groaned, lowering his head on his headrest, closing his eyes.

“Tell me you’ll drop it. I have enough on my plate as it is. I don’t need to extinguish another fire.”

“Fine,” I bit out. “I won’t sniff around him anymore.”

“Promise?” he asked.

“Promise.”

It was stupid. Childish, really, but old habits died hard, and I found myself crossing my fingers in my lap like a kid, between the creases and folds of my dress.

It was far from over.

Sam might be playing me, but now I was playing him, too.

I was going to replace out the truth about what happened with my parents.

If it was the last thing I did.