by Kasey Krane
“Because I need to see her!” I growled.
“But she gets to decide if she wants to see you. And maybe she just wants to be left alone. Maybe she’s got a sense of who you…who we are, and she doesn’t want to be a part of this world. She has a right to choose.”
I clenched my jaws in anger and frustration—mostly because I knew she was right.
Maybe this was exactly what needed to happen.
Marley had to go away so I could move on with my life, and so that she could live her life in peace. Safe and away from the world I lived in.
I didn’t want her to meet the same fate Tina and my mother did.
“You’re right,” I replied to Isabelle and ended the call.
Then I sat down on my couch and finished the rest of the beer.
Maybe it was time to call off the search on Marley.
Half an hour had passed since my phone call with Isabelle and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I couldn’t make the calls I needed to make to stop my guys from looking for her. Even though I knew my sister was right. Marley had the right to choose to get away from me if she wanted to. Maybe that was why she had woken up this morning asking me all those questions about the annulment. She had finally decided she couldn’t be involved with me anymore.
She knew she didn’t want to live on this side of the tracks.
Then my phone rang.
I answered quickly, assuming it was someone calling about Marley. But it wasn’t. It was Aldo Baron.
A phone call I wasn’t expecting, because he had no business calling me.
“I hear you’re pretty distressed today,” he said. I could hear the glee in his voice and it made me want to punch the wall.
The man knew something I didn’t.
He obviously kept track of all of us and had a close ear to the ground. So he knew about Marley and the fact that I was looking for.
In all this—I’d forgotten about him and the danger he posed to her. While the rest of the family was operating on amped up security, it was my fault that I hadn’t put Marley under the same protective shield as the rest of the women in the family.
I should have known he would target her as the weak link.
“What the fuck do you want from me, Aldo?” I growled.
For some reason, that made him laugh.
“I just want what is owed to me, Doherty, and unfortunately, you can’t give it to me.”
“Why don’t you stop hiding from us, show us your face and we can discuss this in person?”
“I would love to, in the meantime, I’m going to wait for your wife to turn up.”
“You’ll leave her alone if you don’t want your balls cut off.” I smashed my fist on the coffee table, which he heard and it made him laugh harder.
“Tell me this, does it hurt less when she twists the knife in your back because she isn’t your real wife?”
“What the fuck are you talking about you sick motherfucker?” I shouted.
“I’m talking about how hilarious it is that neither of you know the first thing about each other. Thanks for the laughs.” He ended the call before I could ask him any more questions.
But it wasn’t like he was actually going to tell me anything. The whole purpose of his phone call was to talk to me in fuckin’ riddles.
But the one thing I knew was that I absolutely needed to find Marley. Before Aldo Baron did.
Two hours—I had been driving around for two hours looking for Marley. Nobody had seen her anywhere around town that day. She hadn’t taken a train, a bus or even a fuckin’ cab.
Nobody had even seen her walking around.
It was like she had magically disappeared into thin air.
The more time went by, the more I was convinced that something had happened to her. That she had been hurt somehow and Aldo Baron was responsible for it.
It was dark by now and as I drove, the only images I saw were of Marley lying in the dark somewhere. In the woods. Her face in the mud. Aldo standing over her with a bleeding gun.
He was capable of doing whatever he needed to do to get to us, even if it meant taking the life of an innocent woman who practically had nothing to do with my family.
And if something happened to Marley—I would be directly responsible for it.
Just like I had been responsible for my mother and Tina’s deaths too. I didn’t know how, but there had to be a connection. The lives of none of these women would have been in danger if they weren’t connected to me.
And now Marley was gone.
Nobody had seen her. Nobody knew where she was. And the only explanation was that she was dead.
I growled wildly as I drove.
I drove erratically, racing down the highway as I got further out of town.
The tires screeched on the tarmac.
I lit cigarette after cigarette and barely smoked them. I needed a drink. I needed several drinks, but I didn’t have any.
The wedding ring on my finger shone every time a headlight fell from oncoming cars. A constant reminder of Marley and what I may have lost.
She didn’t deserve to be hurt.
She didn’t deserve to be dead.
I shouldn’t have brought her to New York. I should have left her in Vegas where she was safe.
I cursed myself aloud.
I was the one who didn’t deserve to live.
How many lives could have been saved if it wasn’t for me?
And just then, as that thought entered my head, my headlights fell on a figure on the side of the road.
It was Marley. She had her bag on her back and her thumb sticking out. She was hitchhiking.
Or at least trying to.
My car nearly spun out of control as I tried to screech to a stop on the side of the road.
She jumped backwards, narrowing her eyes to look. She saw me as I threw myself out of the door. And instead of running towards me, she turned and started running away from me.
“Marley! Stop!” I shouted and the wind carried my voice to her.
She stopped in her tracks and slowly turned back around to me.
The headlights of my car illuminated her. And even in that blinding yellow light, I knew nobody had ever looked as beautiful as she did right then.
Twenty-Seven
Marley
I didn’t want to be found—and least of all, by Colin.
My hope was that somehow I would get to sneak out of town, all out of New York and nobody from the Doherty family would find me again. Aldo Baron included.
I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to plot against him or his family. I didn’t want to work with Aldo, despite what he told me Colin had done. And creeping out of town was my only escape.
I took every care and precaution I could to sneak away. Every training in stealth I had was put to use that day in trying to get out of town unseen.
And it seemed like I was going to be successful.
I had been walking for ages, and the darker it got, the more certain I was of not being found. I hoped Colin would have lost interest too.
After our fight that morning, it didn’t seem like he would come looking for me.
But he did—and he was standing right there in front of me. The headlights of his car blinded me but still I stared at him.
At his tall strong frame. His shoulders heaved. His green eyes were narrowed at me and dark. He didn’t look pleased. In fact, he looked like a man I ought to have been scared of.
What did he know?
Maybe he came after me because he found out the truth. Maybe Aldo told him everything. Maybe Colin was there because he wanted to make me pay for all the ways I had deceived him.
“Please, let me go, Colin,” I said when he drew closer to me.
I felt like I lost all the air in my lungs. My hands shook.
In all the time we had spent together—I had never actually been afraid of Colin before. I had trusted him. I had felt safe with him.
But now I
was sure the tables had turned. He was the one who knew more about me than I did about him. I could see it in his eyes. He wasn’t there because he wanted me back. Because he wanted me to be his wife. He was there because he wanted me to pay my dues.
“You thought you’d just leave without saying goodbye?” he asked in a deep voice.
A shudder ran down my spine. I tried to keep still but I was shaking all over. What did he mean by that?
“I just wanted to leave you alone. Let you get on with your life. I promise…I won’t…I won’t tell anyone anything,” I said.
His eyes narrowed. For a moment it seemed like he didn’t know what I was talking about, and then he drew in a deep breath.
“Get in the car, you have some explaining to do,” he said.
I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.
If I had my weapon, would I have used it on him at that moment?
Probably not.
No matter what Colin was about to do to me next, I wouldn’t have been able to bring myself to harm him. It was only now that I was facing him that I began to realize how much I actually cared about him.
It was ridiculous.
“Marley, just get in the fuckin’ car, I’m not going to tell you again,” he commanded.
He waited, glaring at me with his deep bloodshot eyes.
I knew I had to do what I was told. There was no way out of this now.
I went to the car. He’d left the door open and I got in, scooting over to the passenger side.
Through the windscreen I watched him rake a hand through his hair in frustration before he joined me in the car.
My first instinct was to throw myself at him. It was like my body was desperate for his touch. I needed to feel his warmth.
But I figured he probably hated me now, and I had no choice but to hold back.
The engine was turned off, but he gripped the steering wheel like he was about to drive off. He switched off the headlights and we were shrouded in darkness.
“Where did you think you were going to go? Whose car were you planning on getting into in the middle of the night? Were you really that desperate to get away from me?”
“I just wanted to leave. I didn’t want you to find me.”
“Why the fuck not?” he shouted. It felt like the car shook just from the force of his voice.
I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t get a single word out.
“Because of the shit we said to each other in the morning? Because I hurt your feelings? I was fuckin’ mad. What do you want me to say? I’m sorry?”
What was going on?
I expected him to rip into me by now. Didn’t he know what I’d done? Hadn’t Aldo told him who I was? Wasn’t he there to punish me?
I stared at him in surprise and Colin looked even more confused now. He searched my eyes, waiting for me to say something while I tried my best to figure it out.
“I was convinced you were dead by now. Aldo Baron…he called me. You don’t know him. He’s a fuckin’ asshole, an enemy of the family, and he made me think he had something to do with your disappearance.”
“I know him…” I squeaked, interrupting him.
Colin’s brows furrowed.
“Aldo Baron. I know who he is.”
“Did he touch you? Did he hurt you? What did he do to you?”
I shook my head.
Of course I had felt threatened by Aldo, but not in the way that Colin thought.
“He didn’t hurt me. He…”
“What did he want from you then?”
“He wanted to work with me.”
Colin fell silent. He didn’t know what question to ask next because he had no idea what I was about to tell him.
“I’m a police detective, Colin. And I know exactly who you are.”
As the words came out of my mouth, I was completely aware of the mistake I made by confessing to him. By revealing my true identity—telling him exactly what I was doing in New York.
Whatever chance I had of getting away with it and coming out of this in one piece was gone.
But I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I couldn’t lie to him.
A part of me sincerely believed I was married to him. That those legal papers we signed meant something. That the rings on our fingers were somehow magical.
It was that part of me which was stupid.
“You’re a detective?”
“In Las Vegas. And I lied to you when I said I used to be a data analyst. I’m not.”
“So you haven’t lost your job?”
I shook my head.
“At least not yet, but I’m guessing I’m not too far from it. The people I work with…I’m the only female in the precinct. And the youngest. So they have automatically assumed I’m shit at my job, so I spend all day and night trying to prove myself to them. And I don’t think they’re going to want to keep me around for too long.”
Colin was speechless, and I was desperate to fill the silence. My nerves were killing me and it seemed like I had no control over my thoughts or my tongue any more.
“That’s exactly the reason why I’m here right now. Trying to prove myself to them. My chief. Nobody knows about us. Or that I’m even in New York. I thought I would single handedly…” At this point my voice trailed off. I couldn’t say the actual words.
“You thought you would single handedly bring me and my family down.”
I was burning hot all over. I had to force myself to look him in the eyes. If he didn’t hate me before, I knew he had to hate me now.
“And Aldo Baron found you,” he added. He figured it all out himself now.
“He found out everything about me. He knew exactly who I was and what I was trying to do here. He threatened me to work for him. He said we both had the same interests and that he would help me build the case.”
“And you went along with it.”
I shook my head.
“I agreed so that he would let me go. But I never…I didn’t want to work with him. Colin, I changed my mind…about everything.”
He smirked sadistically and shook his head.
“You changed your mind,” he stated.
“I did. After I…got to know you and your family…after I spent time around you guys, I realized I was not going to achieve anything. I didn’t want to do it anymore. That is the reason I was leaving today.”
“You were leaving so you could get back to Las Vegas and to your precinct with all the information you collected.”
“Search me now,” I said, throwing my phone at him. “Look through my phone. I’ve deleted everything. I didn’t want to keep anything. Search my bags, I haven’t stolen anything. I don’t want to do this. I’m not going to. No matter what you may have done in your past…” I had to look away.
“In my past? What do you think I’ve done in my past, Marley?”
“Aldo told me how you lost your girlfriend, and now I know why you can’t get close to another girl. Why you didn’t want to be married to me.”
I told him what Aldo told me.
I stared at him while the words left my mouth, looking out for every twitch on his face—the way he sat with his fingers clenched on the steering wheel still. I watched out for any sign that it was real. That what Aldo told me had actually happened.
Colin waited several moments in silence after I finished telling him the story about the murder.
Then he slowly turned to face me again.
“You think I murdered my girlfriend?” he asked.
“I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know who to believe. I knew Aldo was dangerous, and someone I couldn’t trust. And you…”
“You don’t know me enough to decide whether you could trust me either.”
I said nothing.
There was silence in the car. He had been silent for far too long. I’d been suffering under the heavy burden of this story Aldo told me and I needed to know if it was true.
“Did you do it?” I asked in a low voice.
&nbs
p; Colin said nothing again.
“Damn it, Colin, why can’t you just answer the question? I’m not asking for any other information on your family business. If you think I’m going to implicate you and use this against you somehow, you’re mistaken. Search me and see if you can find a recording device. I just want to know if…”
“If the man you’ve been sleeping with, you husband, if he is capable of killing his own girlfriend on a whim.” Colin’s green eyes bore a hole into me. He breathed fire as he glared.
“Can you blame me for wanting to know?” I asked.
“I blame you for even having to ask. I didn’t realize that was how little you thought of me. And if you have to ask me that question, why would you even believe me if I said no?”
Tears filled my eyes. The one thing I told myself I wouldn’t do—cry in front of him, I did exactly that.
“I never thought you did it, Colin. I didn’t believe Aldo for a minute. I just told myself I couldn’t trust you to make it easier for me to leave you,” I said through my sobs.
“So don’t leave,” he said, and those words silenced me, even though I knew it would never work.
I had to leave.
Twenty-Eight
Colin
“Tina died in a car crash, pretty much the same way your parents did. When you told me about their accident that night at the restaurant, I thought it had to be some kinda cruel joke,” I said.
Marley sat beside me, maintaining a perfectly respectable distance between our bodies.
It was dark all around us, except for the headlights of cars that flashed us every time one passed by. I didn’t know how long we’d been sitting like that. All I knew was I had to tell her everything.
Anyone else—I wouldn’t have given a fuck what they thought of me or how much they knew. For some reason, I wanted Marley to know the truth.
“I remember seeing the change in the expression on your face. I didn’t know why you suddenly looked agitated when I told you about their accident. Like you knew them or something,” she replied.