by L.J. Shen
“Keep the suitcase somewhere safe until I’m back and get me a taxi. Now, please.”
A minute later I was sitting at the back of a bright yellow sedan, an elderly Cuban driver asking me where I was going.
“Wherever they’re going.” I pointed at Troy’s cab. The other yellow car was still buried deep inside a traffic jam. We’d have no trouble tailing them—they wouldn’t even notice.
Oh, yes. If Troy was going to treat me like a prop, I wanted to find out why. Why we were here, what was he up to and especially, why the hell I was his.
TROY
I WAS GOING TO make the most out what was left of Paddy Rowan.
I hated the man with a passion, and if there’s one thing I knew, it was that passion never fails. Passion always fucking delivers.
Back in the days when the Irish ruled Southie, Paddy shaved some serious commission money off of my dad. Protection money, mostly. He was in charge of the bookkeeping, just like Brock, and just like Brock, he was not to be trusted.
I didn’t discover the truth until after my father was dead. Rowan had skipped town months before. Of course, by then the Armenians were after him, too. That’s why I’d let Paddy alone when I set out to avenge my father’s death and chased down everyone who had wronged him over the years. Rowan’s theft was ancient history and he had reason to lay low after he fled. He was, therefore, pretty far down on my list.
Then Red told me about what Rowan did to her, and it reawakened all kinds of dark thoughts I had about this man and put him straight up on that list again. He may not have been responsible for the death of my father, but he still stole our money.
He touched a girl.
He touched my girl.
Of course, killing Rowan was pointless. The man was already half dead and I wasn’t dumb enough to be that impatient. All the same, I couldn’t wait to get to Miami, especially after the news Jensen – a private investigator who was on my payroll - had sent while we were waiting to take off. Red was in for a hell of a wedding gift.
I also wanted her around just to make sure my cock wasn’t doing anything overly stupid, like getting itself buried in other women. Even though I had no illusions about my icicle of a wife, taking her with me guaranteed I wouldn’t find myself getting up to any old bad habits. The emptiness of the aftermath was intolerable. Case in point, tapping Cat today was about as fun as doing my own taxes.
I was getting too old for this shit, and frankly, the only woman I was vaguely interested in screwing right now hated my guts and happened to be my wife.
Paddy Rowan lived in Little Havana. A Cuban neighborhood where nobody knew him or gave a shit about who he was, so I figured that’s exactly why he chose it in the first place. Laying low was easy in a place where no one had the slightest interest in you. In Little Havana, he was just another old dying senior with no history or future to speak of.
He lived in the nicer part of the neighborhood, though definitely a downgrade from his upscale house back home. It was a yellow, Spanish-style house with arches and all that jazz. The stucco was clean, the yard looked remarkably well tended, and there was a young Latino woman sweeping the floor of the walled front courtyard, humming to herself. She wore a cleaning company’s uniform and looked up at me when she heard my footfalls. Her smile faltered, and her humming and sweeping stopped. A gust of hot wind blew on her face and a strand of dark hair teased her forehead.
The innocence of her expression reminded me of Red. Then again, pretty much every fucking other thing in the world reminded me of my wife nowadays. Focus, asshole. Revenge first, pussy later.
“Can I help you?” she asked, cautious and scared. She flinched when I sauntered toward the door without acknowledging her. I didn’t have time for a chit-chat.
“Sir!” she objected behind me, leaning her broom against the yellow archway and stalking my footsteps.
The front door was locked, so I kicked it open. Most people don’t realize that kicking-in a door is a fucking walk in the park to anyone over 150 pounds. I didn’t even break a sweat. I marched into the house, the door behind me swinging on its hinges, not stopping to admire the Spanish artwork on the walls or the nice interior design Paddy has decided to go for in his retirement. He’d always liked pretty things.
Shame one of those things belonged to me.
“Where’s Paddy?” I growled in her direction. It was a two-story house, traditional, vast, with a shitload of doors. I wasn’t going to play hide and seek with the motherfucker.
“Who are you? I’m calling the police,” the maid announced, but she made no move to pull out a cell phone or lunge for the one on the table in the foyer.
I offered her an impatient smile. “Don’t be stupid. Tell me where he is and get outta here.” I reached into my pocket and jerked a stack of money from my wallet.
She jumped back, watching the hundred-dollar bills feather-float all the way to the Spanish tiles. She then looked back up to face me and silently stared up to the second floor, tilting her head toward its right wing. Her gaze was steady, but her body shook.
“That’s where he is?” I tipped my chin down, inspecting her.
Her full lips were pursed and her thick eyelashes fluttered. She was having a hard time giving him away, but knowing Rowan, he couldn’t have been nice to a maid. He was notorious for putting women through shit, especially powerless ones. The Irish mob was always into the pussy business (mainly strip clubs that offered some extra attention to their clients—it was too profitable to turn down), but most men weren’t particularly anxious to leave their mark on the girls. Paddy, however, liked them young and suffering. Preferably the latter, if he had a choice.
The girl nodded wordlessly.
“Are you giving him away because of the money or because he messed around with you?” I tucked my wallet back into my breast pocket, waiting with interest for the answer.
She gulped hard and studied the floor, knotting her fingers together. “Both.”
A brief, heavy silence fell between us.
“Get out of here and if anyone asks, he gave you half the day off because you caught a stomach bug. I was never here. Understood?”
She nodded again.
“Who am I?” I asked.
“No one,” she parroted. “I never saw you.”
“Good girl. Now off you go.”
When I walked into the darkened master bedroom, the stench almost knocked me over. So far the house looked nice and taken care of, but the thick and suffocating scent of illness crashed into me the minute I stepped into his room.
There was a tall king-size bed, and right in the middle of it, tucked inside dozens of fucking duvets and fluffy pillows lay the man I hated. Or, at least what was left of him.
He looked frail, skinny, the opposite from his old burly self. He used to be stocky, bald, short, ugly and healthy. Now blue veins traveled up and down his hands like vicious snakes and his skin was dotted yellow and brown. He was withering. An autumn leaf sticking out like a sore thumb in green Miami.
Paddy was wearing some kind of an oxygen mask, hooked into a silver and green tank that was sitting right next to him by the bed. The curtains were all drawn.
It smelled like death. Rotting, in-process death. I’d seen death before, but it was always quick and unripe. There was the rusty scent of blood, sour scent of fear and sweet scent of hot metal and gunpowder. It wasn’t an unpleasant combo, albeit one that would stick in your nose and throat for days. But that was the photogenic side of death. Rowan was on the other side.
He was a living, breathing corpse, decaying like the bad apple that he was—and it fucking reeked. We both knew men like him were better off dying somewhere on the job, hard and quick and in a blaze of glory, rather than the mess of being on death row, hooked to a fucking oxygen tank, looking like a shadow of your former self.
I walked inside the room and yanked a handkerchief out of my jacket. I usually kept one for when I needed to touch shit without leaving fingerprints. I u
sed it to cover my nose and breath through the stench of a body eating itself alive.
“Ah,” I heard him say or, rather, cough. I wasn’t sure if he was awake or asleep. In fact, the only thing that gave away the fact the bastard was still alive was his labored breathing. “I see the devil wants his pound of flesh. So the little bitch told you.”
I continued strolling in his direction wordlessly until my legs hit the edge of his bed. I kept the handkerchief over my nose and stared at him. He shifted uneasily but kept his eyes on mine.
“I believe congratulations are in order.” He attempted a chuckle. “I’m guessing you ain’t here for some fatherly advice. Rumor has it you know all about the birds and the bees.”
I stared down at my hands, fighting the urge to pick at the scabs on my knuckles. I wanted to touch something, to break something.
Of course Paddy knew about Sparrow and me. At this point, every single person in South Boston did.
“You should know by now, your sins always catch up with you at the end,” I said, my tone flat.
He tapped his oxygen mask, rolling his sunken eyes. “Remind yourself of that when little wifey realizes who you really are and what you did to her mother, will ya, boyo?”
His words hit me hard. How the fuck did he know? There were only two people other than me who knew about Robyn Raynes and about my promise to my father…and now there were three. Fucking Cat and her big mouth. She probably told him too, in one of her visits to his notorious coke parties in Boston.
I couldn’t let him see the surprise in my eyes, so I glared, trying to hide the hurricane swirling in the pit of my stomach.
“So, am I going to finally meet my maker today?” He tried to laugh, but it somehow rolled into a full-on cough. It sounded like he was going to throw up his lungs. The coughing got shallow and throatier, then died down.
“You don’t deserve to go like a mobster,” I answered. “No bullet to the head for you. I’d much rather know you’re decaying here like roadkill no one bothered to scrape off the pavement.”
“I like your touch, T-boyo. You remind me of your father.” Paddy turned his head to spit out some phlegm. Grayish-black fluid, a souvenir from his long years of smoking, landed in a bucket next to him on the duvet. “He always was a sick, violent bastard. Runs in your blood I guess.”
“How many young girls have you touched?” I asked, concealing the fury I felt with a condescending smirk. I wasn’t a prime example of how to treat women. I didn’t do love, fucked rough, never called the day after, but I always had their consent. And I never touched someone underage.
“If what you’re looking for is guilt, boyo, you better turn around and walk back the way you came. You ain’t no saint yourself. News travels, and from what I hear, you shame your family name on a regular basis. Being the errand boy for the rich and corrupt of Boston. At least we had pride. We put our lives in danger for our families, for our children, to bring food to the table. We weren’t the upper class’s hired help. Breaks my heart.” He chuckled. “Cillian’s son, a lap dog to the rich.”
I rolled my shoulders back, looking amused. Underneath the tailored suit and easy grin, though, my blood boiled, my veins bubbling with fury. Killing Rowan was an itch I was desperate to scratch.
“How many girls, asshole? Tell me now, how many children have you molested?”
Paddy threw his head back with whatever energy he had left in him and hooted loudly. When his head bounced back from the pillow, a flicker of insanity danced in his eyes. He almost looked well again. At the very least, it appeared he was he was vital enough to taunt me.
He ran his nearly white tongue over his upper teeth, then sucked in air. “Oh, how I loved your wife’s tight little pussy. Is it still as taut as it used to be?”
Don’t kill him, I reminded myself.
“You know I did it for a while. Almost a year, maybe, before her father got a little sober and got himself a girlfriend to babysit her when he was at work.” He laughed like a hyena.
I felt my fist tightening around the Glock inside my holster.
Clench, release. Clench, release.
Fuck, I wanted to end him so badly. But at the same time, I knew that’s exactly what he wanted me to do. He’d pushed all the buttons. Pressed the soft spots. Tried to get me to react.
He had nothing to lose.
Other than her.
I looked down, taking a deep breath. Calm washed over me. I was going to do right by Sparrow, by my dad, by all the little girls Patrick probably molested over the years. I pulled my brows together, raising my eyes to meet his gaze slowly and steadily.
“You’ve got a lot of assets and shit to leave behind once you drop dead, now don’t you, Captain McPervert? Got a few bucks saved in your offshore accounts. I know of at least three of’em in the Caymans and there are a couple in Belize, too, right?”
This melted his smile off faster than acid. A rookie’s mistake his former self never would have made.
Bingo, motherfucker.
I shook my head and took a step forward, so he could see just how much I was enjoying it. Paddy yanked off his oxygen mask and reached toward the nightstand, patting it while keeping his eyes fixed on me. His fingers landed on a soft cigarette pack. He tugged one out and lit it, taking a breath so labored I could actually hear his lungs squeak under the pressure.
“Ah, crap,” he said.
I nodded. Crap, indeed.
“So I was thinking, who’s gonna get all of this assfuck’s money and assets when he dies? You cheated on all your wives, collecting divorces at an impressive rate. Not one of ’em gives two shits you’re dying. No one to take care of you. Send letters. No one to inherit all the hard-earned money you stole from my old man. So I started snooping around, asking people, taking an interest.” I paused as I turned my back to him. “Nobody cared about Paddy, so I wondered if maybe there was someone he cared about.”
Pacing, I folded the handkerchief and tucked it back in my jacket. The scent of cigarette smoke was enough to dilute the reek of death. Besides, I’d gone nose-blind to the stench. I tipped my chin lower so that he could see the amusement flickering in my eyes. “And as you mentioned before, news travels fast. Wife number two had a few details to share about your cheating.”
Paddy’s face collapsed into a heap of wrinkles, like he was one of those shar-pei dogs, and he winced, a sure sign of his inner torture. I was glad I hadn’t pulled out my Glock after all. This was far more entertaining.
“How dare you! I was your father’s best friend. When your girl needed rehab, I hooked you up with the best place in the States.”
I almost laughed out loud. That had ended up being just another disaster.
“Paddy,” I warned.
“Don’t touch her.” His voice shook, after a stretched silence that spoke volumes of his love for her.
“Touch her?” I let the words roll off my tongue lazily, like I was weighing on this option. “I’m not going to stop at touching. This errand boy knows the fucking drill.” I walked over to a painting hanging on his wall, my arms folded behind my back, and scanned it with a playful smile. A cheap print of The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli. How ironic. A vision of a woman’s deepest fears.
The painting was covered in glass and reflected Paddy’s face. He bit his lower lip, releasing it slowly as he blinked away what was beginning to look like actual tears. Taking another drag and coughing it out, his eyes narrowed on my back.
“Leave her out of it.”
“You mean, just like you left Sparrow alone?” I rubbed my chin with my finger thoughtfully as I turned to face him.
“Get to the point, asshole. What is it that you want?”
“I want everything, Paddy. Every. Single. Fucking. Thing. You stole money from my father for years, fuck knows how much, and you molested the girl who is now my wife. I hate you way too much to just kill you. So here’s how it’s gonna play out. You sign over every damn penny you have in those accounts to Sparrow, and I spar
e your illegitimate daughter’s life. What’s her name? Oh, yes. Tara. Sweet fucking Tara. Only nineteen, isn’t she?”
“Eighteen.” He pursed his lips, stubbing the cigarette with force into a nearby ashtray.
“Even better.” I shrugged, spinning on my heel to face him and smiling good-naturedly.
“You can’t do this,” he mumbled to himself.
“I just did.”
“And what if I won’t?” He hesitated, pressing his hand to his neck, like he was choking.
“Then I swear to God, I will kill the little bitch. But before I do, I’ll make sure every single junkie in South Boston rides her ass six ways from Sunday. And trust me, I will hunt down the kinkiest motherfuckers the city has to offer. I do my research, as you can tell.”
Paddy’s jaw ticked, and I knew he was terrified. I’d definitely hit a nerve.
When I booked the flight to Miami, I was under the impression that it was going to be another joyless kill. But then Jensen followed the money trail to Paddy’s daughter. She was living outside of Boston with her ex-stripper mom. Paddy was sending them money every month, and according to Paddy’s wife #2, it didn’t stop there. He was in contact with Tara. Phone calls, Christmas cards and all the rest. Apparently Tara didn’t know her father was a world-class douche. She was just a college freshman looking to bond with her dying no-show of a dad. Looked like a sweet enough girl, if you ignored her problematic gene pool. I never would have touched her. But Paddy thought like a psychopath, so I knew he wouldn’t put it past me to do what he would have done if he still had a chance.
“How will I know you won’t hurt her anyway?” Paddy pressed his head to the headboard, closing his eyes in frustration. He was coming to terms with this arrangement.
I wanted Sparrow to have everything this fucker had to his name, like he took everything from her when she was just a little girl. An eye for an eye.
“Why, I’ll give you my word.” I opened my arms in a friendly manner.