I turned my eyes ahead and called for Meatball.
****
When I got into my bedroom, I yanked my curtain shut and sank to my floor.
What just happened? This was the question that was circling my brain as I stroked Meatball’s meaty head. His normal horrid dog breath now had a bouquet of peanut butter added to it.
I hadn’t expected Griff’s reaction. To me, it was crystal clear. Victor and Spider had to die. Though I suppose I couldn’t really fault Griff for refusing to help me, especially when he didn’t have all the information. The fact that I was pregnant, I knew that I couldn’t divulge this. But I was still unclear on whether I was keeping this secret because I didn’t trust him or because I was afraid that he would leave. The best of humans were only equipped to handle a certain degree of mess. I was a walking disaster. A calamity.
When Griff had insisted on keeping me safe, Cameron’s face had popped into my head because he had said the same thing to me. I had always suspected that Griff had feelings for me. How deep those feelings ran, I wasn’t sure. To me, he was more than a friend. His arrival had brought me the air that I needed. Was there something in between friendship and love?
One thing was clear: when it came to Spider and Victor, I was on my own. If Griff held his promise of never leaving my side, my decision to try to enlist Griff’s help had just made my life a living hell.
I just wished Griff had had enough faith in me to help me, or at least, let me be. Even if he didn’t know everything.
Even though it was the middle of the night, I grabbed my phone and dialed my mother’s number.
“It’s urgent,” I told the maid who picked up my mother’s line.
****
“Emily, why on earth are you calling me this late?” she asked me, her voice groggy and irritated.
Most mothers would have been worried if they had received a call in the middle of the night from their daughters. But Isabelle Sheppard wasn’t like most mothers.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded. “Dad gets arrested, and I have to find this out from the newspaper. Why didn’t anyone call me to tell me what was happening?”
My mother tittered. “Oh, dear. It’s nothing to worry about at all. These things happen all the time. It will all blow over soon.”
I took a moment and sighed. “Okay. Can you just call me if something else like this happens? I really don’t want to have to read the paper to find out what’s going on with my father.”
“Yes, of course,” she agreed, her voice a little tighter. “Now let me get some sleep.”
I hung up. My mother was being overly nice. And she had actually laughed. I knew that this wasn’t about to blow over. And I knew that my father was guilty.
I heard Griff walk up the stairs and stop in front of my door. Then he kept going into his room, leaving the door open.
I laid my head on my pillow and closed my eyes, only to open them again. There was no way I was going to be able to sleep.
I grabbed my stack of mail and started shuffling through.
It wasn’t until I got to an envelope the size of a greeting card that I realized that today had been my birthday. Happy birthday to me.
CHAPTER SIX: CAMERON
SIXTEEN CANDLES
Today was Emmy’s birthday.
Today she got to reach the age of twenty. This was the best gift I could have ever offered her.
It was four years ago to the day that I realized I was in love with Emmy.
I would always find a way to check on her as often as possible, but especially on holidays and her birthday. Initially, because I had promised this to Bill. But eventually, this became more of a ritual, something that I needed. It made those days seem a little less lonely to me.
When I drove by her parents’ East Hampton mansion that evening on Emmy’s birthday, cars were lined up for miles down the adjoining streets, parked neatly by the hired help. It was Emmy’s sweet sixteen party, and it was the social event of the year. I was a little surprised by this—Emmy had never seemed like the type, though I supposed I didn’t know her that well after all, even if I thought I did.
I didn’t have an invitation, but luckily I was driving a Maserati. No one ever questioned that I didn’t belong there when I drove up to the valets and tossed my keys over to them.
I had always watched Emmy from the outside, at school mostly, because it was easier—I could do it without attracting too much attention. Actually getting onto the Sheppard acres, this was a definite first. The drive through the iron gates and the parklike grounds had been impressive enough. But inside, it was excessive. The foyer itself was bigger than my high school gym, with a marble staircase that split in two halfway before leading to a mezzanine. It reminded me of a two-headed snake.
Everyone was dressed like they were going to an over-the-hill prom. I was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, but that didn’t scare me off. I grabbed a glass of champagne from the first paid penguin I could find and immediately blended in, searching for Bill’s little sister.
That year, we had finally established the Canadian pipeline, and I hadn’t had time to check on Emmy. But I would never dream of missing seeing her on her birthday.
I hiked through the crowds, walking through rooms with ceilings as high as a movie theater and the ugliest paintings I had ever seen. The orchestra was so loud I could barely hear myself drink. The expensive perfume, the cigars, the feigning of interest in someone else’s topic of conversation … When I finally found the outdoors, I barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief before I realized there was another damn orchestra playing outside. These people were obsessed with violins.
I was looking for an escape route out of this luxurious madness when the inside and the outside orchestras finally stopped playing and a voice over a microphone directed the crowd poolside.
“The outside pool,” the voice specified after a few seconds of chaos.
I managed to politely nudge my way through the crowd to the edge of the outside water. And as the last of the gray heads parted, I saw her, and something inside me shifted.
Emmy.
She was standing on the other side of the lake-sized pool, hidden only by her mother’s shadow. She was wearing a white eyelet lace dress that went down to her knees. Her red hair fell over her shoulders in long thick locks. The white of her dress made every freckle, every strand of red stand out and made the green of her eyes entirely magnetic. White immediately became my new favorite color. I could just stand there and watch her forever.
Emmy kept her eyes on the back of her mother’s head and tucked her hair behind her ear. Then she waited for her mother to pick up the microphone before tucking the other side behind her other ear.
Emmy’s mother was a beautiful woman, and on any other day, I would not have been able to take my eyes off of her. Her dress alone was obviously meant to be a showstopper—a silver spaghetti-strap number that hugged all of her tight curves. Her red hair pulled up with strands falling perfectly around her face. But even she was no match for her daughter’s beauty.
Emmy’s mother took center stage, but my eyes stayed on Emmy. She was no longer just a cute kid; she had blossomed into an entirely different species.
Emmy’s mother said her words of welcome, as well as a bunch of other stuff rich people say to each other when they’re forced to be nice. During her mother’s speech, I watched as Emmy’s eyes momentarily veered to her left to a gray-haired man who was deep in business talk with some other joke in a tux. Burt Sheppard—Emmy’s father.
A birthday cake that looked like it could hide at least two strippers was brought out. Emmy stood by her cake while the crowd sang “Happy Birthday,” led by the damn orchestra. As Emmy blew out the sixteen candles, her mother looked onto the crowd, a smile pasted on her face. And Emmy’s father never broke away from his conversation.
As soon as the candles were blown out and the orchestra changed its tune, Emmy was off the stage and disappeared into the crowd.
I searched the grounds, then went back inside and searched for her there. The partygoers were getting drunker by the second, making it difficult for me to weave around them. When some frisky old lady grabbed my ass as I walked by, I left the hub of the party and stuck to the sides, my eyes continuously scanning faces, hoping Emmy’s would pop up again.
But once I stood on the outskirts of the party, I was exposed. It didn’t take long for my tux-less self to get spotted by one of the Sheppard guards. An older fellow who, by the extra-crisp and extra-white short-sleeved shirt, seemed like he was running security on the property.
I ducked back into the crowd before he had taken one step in my direction and headed out back, sticking close to the house so that I wouldn’t get lost in the Sheppard parklands on my way to my car. I got to the help quarters unscathed and ran into a bunch of waiters who were smoking pot outside the kitchen. When they spotted me, they stood still, took one look at my T-shirt and jeans, and offered me a smoke. I civilly refused, not having the heart to tell these poor slobs that what they were smoking was rolled-up shit.
Then I heard it—Emmy’s laugh. It had echoed out of the kitchen through the screen door. I inched over a step and immediately saw Emmy. She was sitting on a bar stool, with two other women at her side. From the uniforms, I gathered that one was a maid, and the other was a cook. They were congregated around the stainless steel countertop, eating cake, while the rest of the help bustled around them. Emmy’s hair was back into a ponytail, and her sandals were kicked off under her. She had her legs crossed up on her seat.
The maid kept adding more and more whipped cream to Emmy’s plate until the piece of cake disappeared under the whipped mountain. Every time Emmy took a bite, more whipped cream was sprayed on, and this made my Emmy laugh from her core. And I found myself standing outside, chuckling with her. I had never heard her laugh before. To be honest, I never saw her smile much either. She was serious most of the time; the rest, she would find a way to put on a fake smile when the occasion called for it.
I didn’t know what love was until the moment when I heard her laugh, and I felt joy and freedom and more alive than I had ever been before.
I knew I loved her.
I knew that I wanted to be with her and that I needed this more than air.
I also knew I could never be with her. And I felt pain, like a limb had just been cut off.
As realization set in, I took a step back. Horrified by what all of this meant for her and for me. I would learn to know everything about her, but she would never know me and I would have to make sure of that.
By the time the old security guard had located me again, I was already getting the keys to my car back from the valet. I drove away from the Sheppards’, dreaming of the next time I would be able to see my Emmy while she remained completely oblivious to me.
Today was Emmy’s birthday … and I wasn’t there to celebrate it with her. She would have many more birthdays because I wasn’t there. And I had to be thankful for this.
****
Spider threw a newspaper on the desk in front of me, sending my coffee flying into the graph charts that Carly had put together. We were holed up in one of our safe houses in Callister.
I did a once-over of the front page. A picture of Shield cuddling up to the drugs he had confiscated from a ship.
I used the paper to soak up my coffee.
Spider ripped the front page from my hands before my coffee took it over. “Shield just made the front page seizing our drug shipment in Los Angeles, and you have nothing to say?”
Tiny came through the door and gave me a signal. I nodded and got up. “It’s not ours,” I said to Spider.
“What do you mean it’s not ours? I was there when we arranged for the shipment. Are you trying to tell me that a drug cargo came in on the same day, same port that ours was supposed to come in, and yet this cargo got seized and not ours?”
“Ours is actually coming in tomorrow in San Francisco.”
I could tell that Spider was trying to make sense of all this.
“While the feds are congratulating themselves with this seizure and spending their precious government dollars on the investigation and determining who’s going to get promoted, our cargo will be quietly coming into the port of San Francisco,” I explained, even though I didn’t have to.
“You set up a dummy shipment just to throw off the feds?” There was a sharp edge to his voice.
I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. I could tell that this hurt Spider, as I knew it would, but it had to happen this way.
“Look at how much was seized, Cameron. How can we even afford this?”
I took another look at the article. The amount that was declared seized wasn’t even half of what I had actually shipped. Someone was keeping a commission for himself or herself. Shield was so predictable.
I slapped Spider’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.”
I met Tiny at the door, and we headed outside to the waiting vehicle.
“Our guy got arrested,” Spider said, keeping pace with us.
“And he’ll be handsomely rewarded for his service and his confidentiality. We have a new guy now.”
I shut the door, and we drove away, leaving Spider in the parking lot of our Callister apartment.
“I couldn’t find Norestrom,” Tiny immediately confessed to me. “Nobody knows where he is. Shield kicked him out of his clan.”
“Jesus Christ!”
I wanted to get Norestrom so bad I could taste it … almost as much as I wanted Shield dead. Though I wasn’t surprised. I hadn’t hidden my desire to torture and kill the man who ordered the kill on my little brother, and Shield wouldn’t want to keep a liability like that around him. I had to remind myself that smashing my fist through the window would not have changed anything.
“So, where are we going?” I asked, trying to disguise my disappointment. Tiny had been putting in a lot of hours trying to get me intel on Shield’s men while keeping everything hidden from Spider and the rest of the underworld. I didn’t want Spider involved in any of this because he wouldn’t approve of me doing all this dirty work with my own hands. And because things could go wrong very quickly, and I didn’t want him to get caught up in my mess—the sort of mess one doesn’t walk away from alive. Spider was one of my only two best friends He and Carly were like family. I needed to know that they would survive me. The shit I was getting myself involved in had to stay hidden from them for their own protection.
Spider didn’t know that I had met with Shield a few weeks ago and told him about a shipment that I had coming in to Los Angeles. I had offered to split it with him in exchange for truce—letting bygones be bygones. Or so he thought. He had had my brother killed, he had kidnapped, almost killed Emmy, but what the underworld saw was that I was the loose cannon. Victor knew this, and he was using this to plot against me. But when he saw the amount of dope that he would be stealing from me, he was blinded by the possibilities, temporarily forgetting his scheming, not realizing how badly I wanted to rip the esophagus out of his throat. He had lost a big chunk of his own money when I stole it from him and pinned it on Breland. He was desperate to make up the lost funds.
I knew full well that he would betray me and use some of the shipment to position himself in the media, though I hadn’t expected him to sock away such a large chunk of the shipment for himself. He was becoming more brazen—or stupid.
All this money and media attention, I hoped, would keep him distracted and away from Emmy. While we had taken every step possible to ensure that everyone in the underworld believed that I had left her and didn’t care what happened to her, I needed to keep Shield away, even if it cost me everything I had.
We had to enlist a new shipment guy anyway. The other one was getting sloppy and reckless with his money.
On the day I headed
to the port of San Francisco, I had already done research on one of the cargo supervisors, but I needed to see him for myself before I approached him with an offer he couldn’t refuse. He wasn’t the type of inside guy we normally worked with. He was a family man, married twenty-five years, with two daughters in high school and two more away at college. Expensive.
I had followed him in his beat-up minivan. We drove for almost two hours in traffic until we came to a quiet little town. Nice place to raise four daughters.
As soon as he got out of the van, one of his teenage girls skipped out of the house, kissed him, and drove off in the minivan.
He spent the next few hours cutting the grass and doing chores around the house, after he had just gotten off a night shift at the shipyard.
This was definitely my guy—one who needed the money and had everything to lose if he got caught or tried to go to the cops when I started blackmailing him.
My era of dark and deadly deeds was continuing to pile up as Tiny stopped in front of a decrepit duplex apartment building that was in the same neighborhood as my mother’s. This was not what I had been expecting, but if Tiny said this was the place, then this was the place.
I had known Tiny for a long time. His uncle, Henry Grimes, was our accountant. A few years back, Henry had begged us to give Tiny some work, get him off the streets and out of trouble. It turned out that he did us a favor more than we did him. Tiny was a great addition. He wasn’t much of a talker, but I trusted him.
I climbed up the holey carpeted stairs and let myself into the upstairs apartment, which was pretty easy given that the door was practically falling off its hinges.
I checked out the one-bedroom apartment. It was empty and cold, except for an old mattress that had been thrown on the living-room floor, with a phone next to it. The windows shook in the wind, and the heat was on just enough to keep the pipes from freezing. It wasn’t what I had expected a guy making extra cash on the side to be living in.
I found myself a spot against a wall and sank down to the floor, expecting a long wait. Before I had time to even fully stretch my legs out, I heard someone coming in through the fire escape. I got my gun out and waited in the hallway that led through the kitchen. A figure came around the wall, and I jammed my gun against his skull.
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