It didn’t fit.
They would’ve come in guns blazing—in and out. And not around here. Too many potential witnesses around such a high-profile place. Which backed up my theory about the stick wielder wanting to stick me in the trunk. He wasn’t looking to cause a scene, or a mess.
My gut told me it was someone new. Someone unrelated—or not.
It wasn’t unusual to be tested and tried. There was always a man, or two, who thought he was more ruthless, more powerful, more cunning than whoever controlled what they wanted. But the timing was too perfect. The man knew exactly where I was going to be at the exact time.
It smelled worse than this dead guy. It smelled like a rat.
I stopped for a second in the middle of the woods, looking around. I’d stick him against a tree and be done with it. I wasn’t even going to bother hiding him. Though I’d leave that fucking stick with him. He might need it in hell.
23
Keely
Nothing was the same.
After the night I caught CeeCee covering Cash with the blanket, I started to hate his actions even more, though on the other side, I loved him even more. Especially when he came home bloody and needing stitches. I wanted to go to him, to take care of him, but the spiteful part of me wanted him to suffer—a physical representation of what he was putting me through emotionally.
Except.
The guilt tore me up inside when I felt that way.
There was no winning with Cash Kelly. I couldn’t just pick a side and stick to it. His “business” was a hard no for me. And even though I loved him, it wasn’t enough to cover his transgressions.
But what was I supposed to do about it now?
I had accepted him for who he was, without knowing what he did, but whenever I’d look at CeeCee or Ryan, the disappointment would run high. Then I’d remember how he made her laugh when she’d stuffed the pie in his mouth. How he had growled at her and she had growled back. Like a normal kid who had no problems. The world was her friend. A good place to be.
I was in a sticky fucking situation and didn’t know how to get out of it, or how to make it better. He still hadn’t said a word to me either way. And I refused to bring it up. If he straight-out admitted it to me, I wasn’t sure how I was going to cope with living with him—a man who distributed addictions to people who couldn’t say no to them, after he acted like his community was worth killing for.
So I kept my distance from him.
Even after The Blood Queen had run its course and was coming to a close, our contact was limited. Something was going on that made me anxious.
Cash started acting different. More paranoid. He sent me with Harrison on a regular basis, having me sleep at his place, or at one of the other houses—safe houses—he owned in the city. Maureen would come so I could stay close to the kids. They kept me busy for the most part, which helped, because sometimes I missed him so much I physically ached for him.
And when he didn’t show up for dinner some nights?
The grip I had on the television remote bit into my palm. I was watching some fucking sappy romantic movie that I was mad at myself for even putting on. I sighed, resting my head against the sofa, closing my eyes.
Maureen had taken the kids to the zoo. Harrison was at work, but I was going to meet him at home soon. And Raff? I wasn’t sure where he was, but I hadn’t seen him a lot lately. I assumed it was because his boss was in more trouble than ever and needed four eyes instead of two.
That left…me. And the thought of the marauding bastard.
I took out my cellphone and stared at it. What would I say if I called him? I hate what you do but I love you more. Which makes me want to hurt you like you’re hurting me?
My phone lit up, interrupting my thoughts, and my heart started to beat faster. Then it calmed some.
“Hey,” I said to Mari, resting my head against the sofa again.
“Come over,” she said. “I have some cake.”
“Cake?”
“The best. You have to try it.” She paused. “Thirty minutes?”
“I’ll be there.”
I had to get out. The silence in the “safe” house was starting to sound like a dripping faucet.
Just from the tone of Mari’s voice, I could tell something was going on with her, too. Knowing what I did about her husband and his business, it was no surprise that she was probably dealing with some shit, too.
I chirped the alarm on the car Cash had given me. He told me to consider it a wedding gift. He was sick of seeing my old car collecting rust on the street. It was a beautiful candy-colored green Corvette Stingray. It had tinted windows, and its black rims had matching green strips on the inside.
It was the most beautiful car I’d ever seen, apart from the family-safe car he bought for Maureen and me to use when we were transporting the kids around.
But in that moment, I needed fast. I needed free. Maybe I even needed to feel a little young.
Mari was waiting outside when I pulled up to her place. I shut the car off, but she waved her hands, signaling for me not to get out. She was racing to get in on the other side. Once she was, I took off, faster than she was expecting. Her head hit the seat. At least this time, though, we could take off. With my old car, we could’ve outrun it on foot.
“Okay.” I eyed my rearview mirror, making sure we were not being followed. “Why are we running from your house?”
“I...need a break. I don’t feel like being surrounded by men today.”
“Ooh. The honeymoon is over. Let the games begin!”
“It’s not a game, Keely. It’s marriage.” She waved a hand. “We just had a fight.”
I tried to throw something out there, a random problem, but she wasn’t taking the bait. I knew there was more going on than just a regular fight between her and Mac, but I didn’t dig. She could sense something going on with me, too, and I wasn’t ready to share. So being neutral for each other felt good.
“Answer one question,” I said, taking the conversation in a different direction. “Do we hate him or not?”
“Not.” She turned to face me. “Who’s Cashel Kelly?”
Shit! Just his name made me anxious. I lost the grip I had on the wheel for a second and it swerved. Mari glanced at the mirror, like she thought maybe someone had been following us.
“Cash,” I said underneath my breath. “Almost everyone calls him Cash. And Stone told you about him.”
“Not exactly. He was fishing for information the night we had dinner.”
We had dinner at her husband’s restaurant after she got back from Italy. It was a little strained between us, just because of the situation between her and Harrison, but it felt good being together again. Scott had been following me that day, though. He’d watched me walk into the restaurant. So when the waiter told Mari that Scott wanted to see her, I left. She didn’t need to be involved in my mess.
I nodded. “What did you tell him?”
“What could I tell him, Kee? I have no idea what’s going on!”
“Cash Kelly is Harrison’s new boss.” Simple. Easy. In a perfect world.
She waited a few minutes. “And…?”
“He’s not all he seems to be.”
“That seems to be a trend lately. Go on.”
I turned to her and narrowed my eyes, but since we were being neutral, I wanted to switch gears again. “Wait. Where are we going?”
She told me about these little figurines she wanted, but she asked if we could just pass by so she could get the name of the shop. I took a detour, heading in the right direction.
“Are you in love with Cash, Kee?”
It was hell when people truly knew you.
But love?
What I felt for Cash Kelly went past love. It was a gray area.
Maybe because my feelings had finally caught up to me, I threw back my head and exploded with laughter. “If New York was a wild cement forest, I’d be the archer and he’d be my target.”
&n
bsp; “I don’t like the picture you painted in my mind. I keep seeing him running away from you, a bullseye on his back.”
I grinned and then changed the subject, choosing to harp on the positive for a while. A few minutes later, I found a spot in front of the store. We had some time. I could run in and get them for her. The shop wasn’t far from Dolce, one of the most popular restaurants in the area. Maybe we could even have lunch.
Mari shook her head. “I only need the name, Kee! Let’s go. We’ll go shopping somewhere else.”
I studied her face. “Why is your face pale? You have bubble sweat over your lip, and it’s colder than a polar bear’s oonie outside. Did something happen to you here?”
She bit her lip, fiddling with her purse. “Yeah. I had some bad veal parmigiana. Just awful.”
My bullshit meter exploded. “Liar.” I squeezed her hand but decided we could do lunch another time. “You stay put. Keep the doors locked. I’ll just run in and see if they’re still there. They obviously mean a lot to you.”
I hustled across the street to get to the little shop before she could stop me. She had mentioned that the night she found them, they had been in the window. They were all gone. The shop owner was nice enough, but he said that someone had come in right before me and bought them. He gave me the number to a place in France that might have more. They were antiques.
Bracing myself for the cold, I left the warm shop, walking past a few men coming out of Dolce. I didn’t allow my eyes to linger, but I couldn’t help but notice the tattoos on all of their hands.
Wolves.
The same tattoo Mari’s husband had on his hand. Except Mac’s wolf was black with electric-blue eyes.
One of the guys, the one with the hardest eyes, watched me as I walked across the street and got into my car. He stood there, staring, like he owned the entire world.
“Keely.” Mari looked even paler. “Get us the fuck out of here!”
“You know them?” I looked in their direction while I started the car.
“Fucking go!” she shouted.
“All right! All right!” I swerved into traffic, barely missing a taxicab. He shot us the bird as he whizzed past. Then he got in front of us and kept tapping on his brakes. “Was that the Scarpones?”
“How do you know that?” She seemed truly scared—the kind of scared she’d avoided while on the street. But something else moved behind her eyes. Hate for them.
“Fucker!” I laid on the horn. The asshole was determined to make me slam into him from the back, or get sick from the constant stop-and-go. This car was smooth and fast, and I whipped around, giving him the bird as I passed him up. Then, because I was on the edge, I did the same thing to him. Cut him off and then tapped on my brakes. “I’ve heard things. I was curious so I looked them up online. I didn’t find anything too juicy, but those tattoos mean something, don’t they?”
Again, after I suspected Mac wasn’t an average man, I tried to do more research on him. I could never find anything that hinted to anything. Not a fucking clue. Until I asked an old gangster that lived in our neighborhood if he knew what the wolf tattoo meant.
“Yeah,” he’d said. “Bad news. Scarpones have them. Which means stay on the opposite side of the world from ’em if you can.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Mari waved off the tattoos, clearly trying to downplay the fact that her husband had one, too. “They kept staring. It scared me.”
“It should. They’re insane.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
She had her shit to deal with. So did I. Neither one of us wanted to go there. Maybe later, but the time wasn’t right. I knew my husband was in trouble, he was in the middle of a war, and even if her husband was in the same game as mine, it was best to keep our secrets for the time being.
“Bad news.” I blew out a breath. “No more figurines.”
“What happened to them?”
“Someone wiped them out.” I checked my outside mirror and then went a different way. “Maybe you can find another store that has them. They’re French, like you thought. Antiques. The seller said they’re rare. Expensive. He told me to try a place in Paris. He wrote down the name. I have it in my pocket.” I told her to ask her friend Scarlett if she knew of the place. Scarlett was married to Brando Fausti, who was Rocco Fausti’s brother. Scarlett had been a ballerina in France at one time.
After a few minutes, Mari looked around. “Where are we going, Kee?”
“Harrison’s. I told him I’d swing by later, but then you called. I’ve been meaning to give him his baseball glove from when he was little. When we moved out of Mam’s place, somehow it got mixed with my stuff and I kept telling him I forgot it at home whenever he asked me for it. I took it to Home Run without telling him and had Caspar frame it with his old jersey. I was hoping to surprise him. I never bought him a house-warming gift. And he got a new puppy. I’ve been dying to see it.”
The real reason I wanted to go was because I wanted Mari and Harrison to stop avoiding each other. Even though there was nothing romantic there, they could still be friends. I missed us all being together.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Kee. I should go home.”
“Come on, Mari. You can still be friends with him. We don’t have to stay long.”
She nodded, but she was quiet on the ride over, checking the mirror every once in a while. I did, too, because for some reason, after we’d pulled off, I got a very bad feeling in that sensitive spot on the back of my neck. Like some wild animal was about to take a bite out of it.
There was some awkwardness between Harrison and Mari when we first arrived at his house, but I knew after a little time, it would work itself out and things would be fine. We would establish a new normal, and maybe, with more time, Mac could even be welcomed into our group as family.
Harrison had been seeing Mac’s cousin, Gigi, ever since Mac and Mari’s wedding. Gigi was a big actress in Italy, and even though she made my brother smile more than I’d ever seen him smile—even though he refused to admit it—I didn’t like her. She had it in for Mari for some reason, and that didn’t sit well with me. It didn’t sit well with me that Harrison seemed to be using Gigi to make Mari jealous, either, but that was their problem, and for once, I was keeping my nose out of it.
Though for the sake of the relationship we once had—my brother, Mari, and me—I wanted them to work it out. I missed my brother. I missed my sister. The shit needed to end.
It felt like a good idea after I’d seen them together, but then Mac showed up after Mari excused herself to use the bathroom. It was like he had timed his arrival to the second Mari went into the house.
He strode across Harrison’s lawn, a look on his face I’d never forget—a fucking jealous husband out for revenge—and punched Harrison in the face.
My brother saw him coming and rose up to the challenge.
I’d lived with boys my entire life. I let them go at it for a while, because usually, after they punched each other, they were square.
It was a pretty good show, too, since the neighbors decided to bring out chairs and watch them pummel each other like two dogs who’d been released from a cage.
I wondered what Cash would think about it, but then stopped thinking about him when a car made a round or two. Something about it didn’t sit right with me.
Again. The tingle.
Maybe I was hanging out with gangsters too much, becoming paranoid, but something told me to keep my eyes open. I couldn’t do that with the two animals on the front lawn, rolling around on the grass, starting to draw more blood.
Casually, I took out the hose, set it on the sharpest spray, and then set it on my brother and Mac. It took them a moment to realize that I was blasting them with cold water. Harrison had had the hose on him over the years, but I doubted anyone ever had the balls to pull a hose on Mac.
I’d whip his ass, too, if he had anything to say. I wasn’t to be trifled with. I was on edge.
My b
rother shot up first, his hands in the surrender position. Blood ran from his mouth. Mac stood right after, and I hit him in the chest with the water again, because I could tell the lunacy still ran high in those cold blue eyes.
“That’s enough!” I yelled. “The both of you!”
“I—” My brother went to defend his actions, but I hit him with the spray again, cleaning his mouth out.
“Harrison.” I kept my voice low. “Knock it off. You know I won’t let up until you stop with the excuses. Now get your ass inside before you catch cold!”
“Sissy boy,” Mac muttered as Harrison walked off. Harrison shot him the bird.
I hit Mac with the hose again. “You! I’ll get you some dry clothes, but only if you shut it!”
He narrowed his eyes at me, and I narrowed back. He wasn’t going to intimidate me. If he was going to be a part of this family, he was going to get treated just like everyone else. There would be no tiptoeing around him because he was a badass. He could join the club.
Mac’s eyes moved from mine to my brother’s porch. Mari had come outside, the dog right behind her.
“What are you doing here, mio marito?” she said.
He didn’t answer, and I got the feeling he was waiting for me to give them some privacy.
I took the hose and started rolling it up, going to the side of the house. I still heard his answer, though. “I’ve come to collect my wife. She ran out on me.”
Yeah, it was something in the fucking water lately. I would’ve blamed it on a full moon, but crazy shit seemed to be happening night and day.
I rolled the hose up, standing against the house after, my back to it so I could watch the street. A few minutes had passed, and the same car started to creep toward us again. I couldn’t see past the windows because they were tinted.
“Have you seen that car before?” I said to them, rounding the house.
Mac and Mari looked in the same direction as I was. He was on his knees in front of her. After he noticed the car, he stood, keeping Mari behind him.
“No,” Mari said, moving her head around him to see better. “I haven’t.”
Marauder (Gangsters of New York Book 2) Page 24