by Rose, Emery
I clinked my glass against his and took a sip of whiskey, wondering why Anthony had chosen it to celebrate. It seemed like an odd choice. Maybe I was reading too much into it. I pushed it to the back of my mind.
We carried our drinks and the bottle into the living room, and he glanced around my apartment, taking in every detail. He studied the photos of Eden and Killian’s wedding and the painting of my brothers above the sofa before he took a seat, eying the bowl of sea glass on my coffee table. I sat on the other end of the sofa, leaving a seat cushion between us, my body angled toward him.
His gaze lingered on my face. A flush crept up my neck and heated my cheeks. He’d never looked at me like this before. Like he was seeing me for the first time. Like I was a woman and not just my father’s daughter. I took another sip of whiskey to hide my discomfort and tried to shake off the weird vibes I was getting.
“Tell me about your life. What have you been doing since you left Miami?” he asked.
I’d forgotten how intently Anthony listened. How closely he studied my face while I talked. I tried not to fidget under his gaze as I talked. I told him about my job and the muscle cars we restored. I told him that my brothers were both married and that they were happy. And I told him about my pride and joy, the Dodge Charger. “She’s a beauty. You’d love her.”
He smiled. “You and your cars.”
“You’re the one who taught me to drive. You’re the one who made me fall in love with cars.”
“What about a boyfriend? Do you have one of those?” His tone was casual, but he was watching my face closely.
I shrugged. “Nobody special.” The words felt like acid on my tongue. Deacon was special. But something had stopped me from telling Anthony about him. While Deacon was undercover, I would keep his secret safe. I would never want to do anything to jeopardize his assignment. Maybe that’s why I felt the need to expand on my answer. Or maybe it was the way Anthony studied my face, like he didn’t quite believe me. “I didn’t come to Brooklyn to find a boyfriend.”
“That’s good to hear.” Was it? “I’ve missed you.”
“Missed you too. So, what have you been doing since I last saw you?”
“A little bit of this and a little bit of that.”
I laughed. “Thanks for clearing that up.” I wanted to ask where he’d been all this time, but I knew he wouldn’t answer that question, any more than he would give me an honest answer as to what he’d been doing for the past ten months.
He refilled his glass and topped up mine, even though I’d barely touched it. Two sips had been enough to remind me of things I’d rather forget. My father had poured me a glass of this whiskey the night I found out that Sasha was dead. We were sitting on the private terrace of the luxury hotel built on the cliffs of Positano, with a view of the Mediterranean. I hadn’t shed a single tear. Something inside me died that day, right along with Sasha.
“How long will you be here?” I asked Anthony, although the real question on my lips was: Where were you when Sasha died? You didn’t come to Italy with us.
Why was I thinking like this?
“I have some business here. Depends how long it takes to wrap things up.”
Again, that wasn’t an answer. I wondered what his business was. It could be anything. Drugs, guns, money laundering. He could be a hit man for all I knew. Which was probably why I hadn’t divulged any information about Deacon. Unless Anthony had gone straight, which I doubted, he and Deacon needed to stay away from each other. That shouldn’t be too difficult. Anthony probably wouldn’t be in town for long and Deacon was MIA.
We talked a while longer, small talk really, something to fill in the space and the silence until he checked his watch for the time—a Cartier tank watch on a black leather band, a birthday present from my father a few years ago. I used to have the female version, another item I had sold at the pawn shop. Anthony stood to go, tugging down the cuffs of his dress shirt and brushing non-existent lint off the shoulders of his suit jacket, the gesture so familiar to me that I stared. Slack-jawed. Had Anthony always done that without my noticing? Was it even a big deal?
“I have some business to take care of.”
My gaze snapped to his face, taking me out of my reverie as the words sunk in. Of course, he did. Because everyone had business to take care of at eleven o’clock at night. I laughed under my breath.
“What’s so funny?”
I shook my head. Anthony had never liked being laughed at. He took himself too seriously for that. “Nothing. I’m just happy to see you.” But it wasn’t true. There was a time I would have been ecstatic to see him, but my time away from Miami had changed me. Made me look at everything differently, including Anthony.
“You too, Babygirl.”
I snorted. “That’s a stupid nickname.”
He gave me a mock pout. “It’s cute.”
“I’m not cute.”
“I know. You’re beautiful. You always have been.”
I swallowed, not sure what to do with his words. This night felt off. I felt like I was cheating on Deacon. Which was ridiculous. Anthony was an old friend. A big part of my life growing up. He’d always been there for me. I owed him for everything he’d done for me over the years and I needed to remember the good things, not feed the doubts.
“I’d like to take you to dinner tomorrow night.”
I smiled. “I’d like that.”
He returned my smile. “Good. I’ll pick you up at eight. And Keira…it’s probably for the best that you don’t tell anyone I’m here.”
Another secret. His tone was casual, but I heard the underlying warning. Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone. “I won’t say a word.”
“You were always good at keeping secrets.”
Because I had no choice.
After he left, I poured the rest of my whiskey down the drain and loaded our glasses in the dishwasher. Then I stared at the bottle of whiskey on my kitchen counter. The label taunted me. It reminded me of my father so I stowed the bottle in the cupboard where I wouldn’t have to see it. Killian liked whiskey and I would give it to him, but then I’d have to explain where I got it. So yeah, it was relegated to the cupboard, along with my secrets.
As I brushed my teeth, I wondered why I wasn’t overjoyed at the prospect of having dinner with Anthony tomorrow night. I would have thought I’d be thrilled to see him again, but I felt the opposite, partly because it felt like a dirty secret. Partly because of something I couldn’t fully identify. Just a bad feeling that had taken hold of me and I couldn’t shake off. I wrapped my hand around the cross on my neck and closed my eyes. I saw Sasha’s face so clearly. His blue eyes and unruly sun-bleached blond hair, his bronzed skin covered in ink. He wasn’t religious but most of his tattoos were. When he gave me his cross, he had it tattooed on his chest.
“Why did you always have to act like such an asshole, Sasha?” I whispered. “I hate you for leaving me. Were you right about Anthony?”
“He’s just another one of your father’s goons,” Sasha said. We were floating in his marble swimming pool, the frenetic beat of “The Vortex” by Hadoueken! thumping from the surround sound speakers. Sasha was lounging on an inflatable sofa, smoking a blunt. I was on the inflatable that looked like Mick Jagger’s lips, sans the blunt, trailing my hand through the crystal-clear blue water. “There’s nothing special about Anthony. He’s unoriginal and he doesn’t have the brains or the backbone to rise above his current station. Which is lower than the dirt on my boots. He’s a cockroach. One of these days I’m going to squash him.” Sasha sang the chorus of “La Cucaracha” and laughed maniacally like the madman he was.
“He’s not like the others,” I insisted. I was always defending Anthony to Sasha. I didn’t know why I bothered. “My father trusts him. And he’s good to me.”
“Your father trusts no one. He tolerates Anthony. There’s a difference, grasshopper.”
I rolled my eyes. Sasha was in one of his superior moods. He slid his
aviators down his nose and eyed me over the rims. “Don’t mistake him for a friend. I’m your only true friend and I’m an asshole so where does that leave you?”
Having delivered his message, the Prince of Miami leaned back against the arm of his inflatable sofa and smoked his blunt. I got out of the pool and slipped a cotton tank dress over my wet bikini, stuffed my feet in my flip flops, and walked away without saying goodbye. Sasha and I never said goodbye or hello. We never apologized for anything either. Not even when we should have.
“Come back later for a fuck.”
I gave him the finger. He laughed. “You hate it when I’m right. Too bad for you I’m always right.”
21
Keira
“Miss Shaughnessy, package for you. Hang on a sec,” the guy on the desk said as I walked into the lobby after work.
Gus returned from the storage closet where they stowed the packages and handed me a hanging bag and a shoebox. My stomach churned as I took them from him and saw the Versace logo on the bag and Louboutin on the shoebox. There was only one person who would have had these delivered to me. “Thanks, Gus.”
“No problem.”
When I got inside my apartment, I set the shoebox on the coffee table and unzipped the hanger bag. I stared at the Versace dress. Midnight blue silk trimmed in black. I didn’t have to check the size on the label to know it would fit me perfectly. I lowered myself to the sofa and pulled the shoebox into my lap. Taking off the lid, I read the note nestled in the tissue paper: Looking forward to seeing you in this dress tonight. A. xx
I read the note five times, searching for a clue as to why he had felt the need to buy me a designer dress and shoes. Anthony used to know everything about me. My favorite color. My dress and shoe size. My favorite food. He knew I used to be scared of the dark. That I wore braces from the age of twelve to fourteen. When I sideswiped a concrete pillar in a parking garage, scratching the paint on my dad’s Jaguar, he’d taken care of it for me, and my father was none the wiser.
Anthony was my father’s ‘fixer.’ He could make anything go away. Dead bodies never got found. Cars were restored to factory condition. And now he was sending me designer clothes and taking me to dinner.
I tossed the box onto the coffee table and slunk down on the sofa, dread pooling in the pit of my stomach. Maybe I had never looked at Anthony as a man. Only as my father’s loyal soldier. My bodyguard. The man who fixed all my screw-ups and never breathed a word of it.
When he had handed me that flash drive, I had asked him why he would do that.
“You want your freedom and I want to be the man to give it to you.”
At the time, I thought his gesture was noble. That he would risk his own neck to give me something I had always wanted. My freedom. My independence. The key to unlock the gilded cage my father kept me in. Now, I got the feeling that it was time to pay the piper.
Was Anthony trying to be like my father? The whiskey he brought over last night, the expensive tailored suit and white dress shirt he wore, the designer goods delivered to my door with the expectation that I would jump to do his bidding.
“Wear the dress I bought you for your birthday, Maggie. With the sapphire earrings.”
I am not my mother.
I am not my mother.
I am not my mother.
Maybe Anthony had just wanted to do something nice for me. Maybe he thought I’d appreciate a designer dress and shoes. But that sinking feeling in my stomach wouldn’t go away. He knew I’d never cared about those things. Had never wanted the gifts my father lavished on me. Maybe that made me sound like a spoiled princess, but after I had found out where the money came from to buy those gifts, I had wanted no part of it.
Anthony had an ulterior motive. I just wasn’t sure what that was yet or what part he expected me to play.
* * *
Anthony knocked on my door promptly at eight. I answered it in ripped jeans and an Arctic Monkeys T-shirt with no makeup. It was a test. His reaction would give me a better idea of what I was dealing with.
“You’re not ready,” he said flatly. He entered the apartment and closed the door behind him.
“I’m ready. We can keep it casual.” Although his suit and tie suggested that this evening’s dinner was anything but casual. “Maybe grab some tacos or something.” I flashed him a smile. The set of his jaw told me he wasn’t amused.
“Go put on the dress and shoes. Do your makeup and wear your hair up.” His tone offered no room for disagreement. He was trying to dictate what I should wear and how I should look.
I crossed my arms over my chest. I wanted answers, not orders. Trust and loyalty, as Deacon had said, were to be earned, not demanded. “Why did you send me a designer dress and shoes?”
His eyes scanned my outfit, his disdain obvious. Anthony was handsome, but his face was hard and unyielding, and his dark eyes held no warmth. I didn’t know why I’d never noticed it before. I felt like I’d missed a lot. Had only seen what I wanted to. I swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump in my throat. Another childhood memory tarnished. Anthony had been the only one in my father’s world that I trusted and now I was getting the distinct feeling that my trust had been misplaced.
“It’s time for the princess to become a queen,” he said cryptically.
“What does that mean?”
“You were always mine. I claimed you before Sasha ever met you. I was waiting for you to grow up.” He twisted a strand of my hair around his finger, his eyes flitting over my face, from my eyes to my lips. “You loved to taunt me in your skimpy bikinis and tiny shorts, didn’t you, Babygirl?”
Who was this man? The Anthony I had known had never talked to me like this. I shook my head, trying to make sense of his words. “Taunt you? I never—”
“You flaunted your relationship with Sasha in my face. You let him take your virginity.”
Oh my God. It shouldn’t surprise me that Anthony knew that. But when I was with Sasha, I was just a teenager and Anthony was a grown man, in his thirties. Hearing those words coming out of his mouth sounded so wrong.
“Look but don’t touch,” he said. “Those were your father’s words. You were always off-limits. But I wanted you. I always wanted you.”
“You never looked at me that way.”
“Only because I couldn’t. You had sex with Sasha to make me jealous.”
It wasn’t true. Back when I thought I loved Anthony, I loved him in the purest form. I’d never entertained sexual fantasies about him. Never thought of him in a romantic way. I had relied on him to be my ally. My port in the storm. I used to believe that Anthony would do anything to protect me. That he would never hurt me. But now I didn’t know what to think.
“I was with Sasha because I wanted to be. It was my choice.”
He laughed like I’d just told him a good joke. “It was never your choice. Your father and his father arranged for you two to be together.”
Was he insinuating that my own father had whored me out? Pushed me and Sasha together for his own selfish gain? Would Sasha have gone along with that if he knew? “Why would he do that?”
“You’re a clever girl. I’m sure you can figure it out.”
Maybe my father and Ivan had been planning a merger, aligning forces to grow their empires. Or maybe they had been enemies who wanted to keep close tabs on each other. Did it matter anymore? Sasha was dead, his father had disappeared. My father was in prison. The world I’d been raised in was dead and gone. Yet here was Anthony in my apartment, in my space, reminding me of all the reasons I’d fled my old life.
He lowered his face to mine. Oh my God, he was going to kiss me. I tried to take a step back, to put some distance between us, but his arm encircled my waist, a steel band holding me in place. His lips crashed against mine and he kissed me hard, forcing his tongue into my mouth. It was all wrong. So, so wrong. I didn’t want to kiss him. I didn’t want it to be like this between us. I just wanted it to go back to the way it used to be, but th
at wasn’t possible.
He released me and I took a step back, my chest heaving. I wanted to wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, remove all traces of that kiss. A smile curled his lips, making me shudder. I had no idea that a kiss and a smile could be so revolting.
“You know what? I’m not feeling all that great. I’ll take a raincheck. Maybe we can try this another—”
He grabbed my arm in a vise-like grip. His voice was even, controlled, but dangerous. “After everything I did for you, do you really think I’d just let you go so easily?”
“Anthony…why are you acting like this? I feel like I don’t even know you anymore.” A voice in the back of my head asked, Did you ever really know him?
“You made your choices. Don’t pretend to be the innocent victim. It doesn’t suit you.”
I felt like he was talking in riddles, which made me feel stupid for not figuring out what he was trying to say. “I don’t want that life…I don’t want to live like my mother. I don’t want to be left in the dark…”
“And yet you are living like that.”
My breath hitched. He didn’t know. He couldn’t know. “What are you talking about?”
Anthony reached into his suit jacket and came out with a stack of photos that he forced into my hand. My hands shook, giving me away, as I sifted through the photos. They were grainy like they’d been taken from a distance and maximized on a computer before printing them, but it was unmistakable who was in these photos. I kept my head down, a curtain of hair obscuring the expression on my face as I flipped through the photos, my heart squeezing.
They were taken the night Deacon and I were in Chinatown. Two weeks ago. What struck me most about the photos was that we looked like we belonged together. I stopped at one where he was saying something in my ear, my face lit up with a smile. Deacon made me happy.
But I couldn’t let Anthony see how much the photos affected me, or how sick it made me feel inside that he had them in his possession. So I handed back the photos like they meant nothing to me, even though I wanted to keep them for myself and tuck them in a drawer, safe from his prying eyes.