Nightshade

by Molly McAdams

  His need for her mixed with mine and consumed me immediately.

  Need to devour her.

  Need to protect her.

  Need to love her.

  Pull her closer. Keep her safe, safe, safe.

  “Feel me. Hear me,” I demanded, my voice low and rough. “I’ve got you.”

  A shudder ripped through her and passed to me.

  “You’re mine.”

  “Took you long enough to realize that,” she breathed, her tone exhausted but amused.

  I lifted my head from her back to look at the smile lighting her face. Pressing my head to her back again, I gripped her possessively and waited for the darkness to leave and the jarring breaths to return before I pulled out of her.

  Hooking my arm around her waist, I tugged her to the bed with me and pulled her close.

  I brushed the hair from her face and stared into her dark eyes, wanting to say and ask a hundred things.

  Was she okay? Why the hell was she smiling?

  I’d failed. I hated that I’d had to bring out the monster to finish it.

  “Comfort and cure,” she whispered, bringing up our earlier conversation. “Stop looking at me like that.”

  “I didn’t make it go away.”

  Her eyebrows slowly lifted in amusement, her smile widening. “The other times with you, I struggled to remember where I was even though I knew you were there. That’s already something I’ve never been able to do. But you pulled me back like it was as easy as breathing.”

  I didn’t tell her it hadn’t felt or seemed that way. Or that, during those times, I’d felt no better than the man who’d created her demons.

  “But I do think your demon was easier to face.”

  My face fell. “Mine would’ve killed you.”

  A soft laughed bubbled up her throat. “We’ve proved that he won’t. He’s you. Just a version of you that never should’ve been and was forced onto you. You’ve tried to separate yourself from him for so long, because he means things you don’t like or want. But he has to want what you want. That’s how I knew you wouldn’t hurt me.”

  I’d never thought of the darkness that way. I’d never thought of it in any way other than a curse and monster.

  “But mine . . .” Her stare fell to a spot on my chest, the smile that had been lighting her face vanished. “I don’t think it will be as easy. They aren’t my own, and they don’t want to give me up.”

  Not a sound. Not a trace.

  Feed the blade. Watch the light fade.

  Pull her closer. Keep her safe, safe, safe.

  It was an echo, like the beast was pacing in the furthest corner of my mind until he could take over again.

  But we were in agreement.

  I tilted her head back but paused with my mouth above hers. “When they’re dead, they won’t have a choice.”

  I walked into Beck’s room a couple hours later and hurried to catch the burrito that was thrown at me.

  “For someone who always tells me to announce myself, I can’t remember you ever knocking.” He lifted his brows and pointed a burrito at me before taking a bite of it.

  “I’ll work on it,” I said as I shut the door behind me and entered his room. “What do you need to show me?”

  He stopped chewing for a few seconds before continuing. Nodding toward the bed, he said, “Just sit, man. You don’t have to be so on all the time.”

  I had a job to do. I wouldn’t relax until it was done. Couldn’t.

  “I don’t eat when I’m working, Beck.”

  “Don’t eat. Don’t sleep,” he murmured in a mocking tone. “Fucking robot.”

  I wasn’t going to apologize for something I’d been trained to do my entire life.

  “You know, it sucks,” he began, his vacant stare at a spot on the floor. “It sucks knowing the girl you love is getting paid to give herself to countless men. It destroys you when, after years of waiting for her to love you too, she falls for your best friend.”

  I would’ve preferred he’d shot me.

  Because this was slow and excruciating. And I couldn’t say sorry enough times for the pain in his voice when the girl he was talking about was a constant thrum in my veins.

  Jessica, Jessica, Jessica.

  Mine, mine, mine.

  “But you know what the killer is?” he asked, finally looking up at me. “Is seeing how she’s changed you.”

  I knew how she’d changed me. I’d just experienced it with her again. But I couldn’t think of what Beck had seen in the short time he’d been near us.

  He gestured to the unopened burrito in my hand. “I’ve known you forever. I know you don’t eat when you have a job.” He shrugged and huffed. “I know. Jessica’s struggling right now and needed you. Yeah?”

  I stared at him for a few seconds, wondering where he was going with this, then gave a faint nod.

  “And you were there for her.” He shifted forward in his seat and dropped his voice. “When the fuck were you ever there for Lily when she needed you?”

  I sucked in a breath, my mouth already curled in a sneer.

  But before I could respond with what he already knew, the words caught in my throat.

  I had a job.

  “Yeah.” Beck nodded and fell back into the chair. “You were working. And if the job called, it didn’t matter if she begged you to stay, you walked. Every time.”

  My jaw clenched as that old ache flared in my chest. As the reminder of how I’d failed was shoved in my face.

  “I got it. Lily got it. We knew that was how you were. Not that it helped when shit went bad for you two . . .” He shrugged. “I never thought I’d see the day you pushed the job aside for someone. Never thought a girl could make you drop a name from your list.” His eyes narrowed. “And what the fuck were you thinking putting Dare on a kill list? I about lost my shit when Jess said that.”

  “I know.”

  “That would’ve ruined Lily.”

  “Beck, I know.”

  “Ruin my best friend, and I’ll fucking kill you.”

  My mouth twitched. “You could try.”

  His glare hardened for a few seconds before his chest jerked with a deep laugh. “I want to be mad at you, you fuck, let me be mad.”

  I walked to the bed and sank down to it, and after a forced breath, opened the burrito and bit into it.

  “One of these days, I will succeed in hitting you though,” he said through his own bite. “You won’t be able to dodge me forever.”

  “Wait until I’m not looking.”

  His eyes widened. “Will that work?”

  I bit back a smirk and shook my head.

  He seemed to think hard about that as he took another bite. “You wait, man. It’s coming.”

  “I know, Beck. After everything”—I blew out a rough breath—“I know.”

  He finished his food quickly, the silence pressing in on us uncomfortably as he opened his mouth at least a dozen times to say something.

  I just waited.

  “I don’t blame you for Aric,” he finally said.

  I stilled. I hadn’t been prepared for the conversation to go in this direction. I’d been waiting for him to show me whatever I was here for, so I couldn’t see a connection to Aric.

  “I never have, and honestly, I hated that you did. You weren’t even here when it happened. You couldn’t have stopped it. Just like you couldn’t have stopped Johnny from trying to kill Conor.”

  I was on a job for Mickey both times. I was always on a job. All I ever did was work because we’d spent years trying to destroy him from the inside. And because I’d been trained to work. To never shift my focus.

  And so many were hurt in the process.

  “And Lily?” A breath of a laugh left him, and he rubbed at his jaw. “I was so damn mad at her when I found out she’d been seeing Dare. I’ve been mad at her this whole time for leaving.” He tilted his head and said, “But the other day, I felt like you’d stabbed me in the back. I wanted
to take everything you blamed yourself for and hit you with it.”

  “Couldn’t dodge that one,” I said numbly and tried to smirk, but it fell. “I understand. I’d even understand if you’d meant every word then.”

  “You’re the only one who blames yourself for all that shit,” he said on a weighted breath. Pushing up from his chair, he pulled his phone from his pocket and walked to where I sat. “I’d already known for years that Jess didn’t want me. That she wouldn’t. Think there was a part of me that was holding out for the day that she would, and I lashed out when that hope died.”

  Never expected an apology. His words then were more than I deserved.

  I didn’t know how to respond to them.

  “I—” I tensed when he shoved his phone in front of my face and cautiously looked from it to him. “What?”

  “Take it.”

  I set down the other half of my burrito as I took his phone. My eyes bounced over the screen, taking in names and numbers. “The hell is this?”

  We all had bank accounts with a secondary person on the account. Accounts that weren’t tied to O’Sullivan Financial in any way.

  It was just smart.

  We were in the mob. People died a lot and we wanted to make sure the money went where it was supposed to.

  Conor had one with Beck. Beck had one with me.

  I’d had one with Aric and had switched it to Lily after his death. When she left, it had changed over to Beck.

  But Beck had a spending problem. A bad one. So, what I was looking at didn’t add up. Because the account on the screen was in his name, with me as the secondary.

  And it had over two hundred grand.

  I knew he couldn’t hold on to that kind of money.

  “It’s all of it,” he said gruffly. “Everything Jess ever paid me.”

  I glanced at him then looked at the phone before slowly handing it over. “I don’t understand.”

  “I took the money because I knew if I didn’t, Mickey would find out that I was giving product for free. I was already letting her mom take it because I thought it would keep her only coming to me . . . but someone had to pay. But every dollar she has ever paid me is in that account. I used my own money when I turned over my cut to Mickey.”

  “And she doesn’t know about that?”

  He shook his head roughly.

  “Is any of that yours?”

  “No, man. That’s ten years of coke.”

  I dragged my hands over my face and rested my elbows on my knees. “Why didn’t you tell her?”

  “I wanted to. I mean, fuck, I planned to.” He let out a groan and started pacing the length of his room. “I was going to save it until she was older. I thought it would be a way to help her get a start on a life away from her mom, or some shit. And then before that time came, I fell for her. So I thought it would be something I could show her after . . .” A frustrated grunt sounded in his chest and he flung his hands out. “Doesn’t matter. She hated me, so I never told her.”

  “Tell her now,” I shouted, dropping my hands to look at him. “Damn it, Beck. You found out about AJ, and you didn’t tell her?”

  “You think I didn’t want to?” he asked, turning mid-pace to face me. “But if I did, she wouldn’t take it. Not from me.”

  Fuck if he wasn’t right.

  She’s too proud. She’d laugh in his face and walk away.

  “It’s been fucking with my head for years, how to make sure she gets it. But now . . . there’s you. I never had any reason to tell you about this. Jess wasn’t on your radar. But now that she is, I need you to know this is here. If she’s accepting your help, you can get her to take it.”

  I studied him for a second before nodding.

  “All I’ve ever wanted was to help her. And she’s right”—he backed up slowly until he hit the wall with a dull thud—“I’ve done nothing but hurt her.”

  “I know how you feel.”

  He nodded absentmindedly for long moments before a faint laugh came from him. “If we ever get out of this fucked-up life, maybe I’ll find someone. Someone who doesn’t know me as a mobster or drug dealer . . . yeah?”

  One of my brows rose. “I don’t know. You’re a scary-looking son of a bitch.”

  His next laugh was louder. “Says the assassin who can paralyze people with a look.”

  I lifted a shoulder in a shrug of indifference.

  “Well . . .” He drummed his hands on his legs and pushed from the wall. “Guess I should head out of here and get to my corner. If everything goes right, we’ll finally be done with all this shit by this time tomorrow.”

  I dipped my head. “It will.”

  It had to.

  After all this time. After everything we’d done. We needed to finish this, and we needed to do it right.

  “If not?” he asked with a smirk as he backed out of his room.

  “I’ll see you in hell.”

  “Fuck yeah, you will.”

  I waited by the door, even though every instinct told me I needed to go out the window.

  Doors were a sure way to be seen.

  Considering this door had a camera outside it, it was a definite way to be seen.

  But I needed to be seen. As I’d told myself one hundred times already. Not that it made it any easier.

  I glanced at the clock above the microwave in the kitchen, waiting for the eternity of minutes to pass.

  Kieran had told me to wait twenty.

  I hadn’t realized then that it would feel like years rather than minutes.

  As soon as the last minute turned over, I opened the door and walked onto the porch, holding out a torn piece of paper to a stunned Conor.

  “Did you need something?” he asked quickly.

  I looked pointedly at the paper. “Food would be nice.”

  He read the slip of paper, his brow furrowing and hand hastily fisting around the note. His eyes drifted to the side, as if to make sure the camera capturing our interaction wasn’t within viewing range of what he read.

  Conor’s eyes lifted to meet mine, his head nodding subtly. “All right. I’ll, uh . . . I’ll head out to get that. Anything else?”

  “My mom.”

  The sympathy on his face was so sincere it made me feel bad for doing this to him. “I wish I could.”

  I took a step toward the door and lifted a shoulder. “Then, no.”

  Conor swallowed thickly and hadn’t even taken a step away when I stormed in and slammed the door.

  The guy didn’t have a clue what was happening tonight. Beck’s orders.

  But I knew he hated Mickey as much as the others, so I was praying he didn’t say a word to him about what was on that list of things I’d asked him to get.

  Along with food . . . the morning after pill.

  There wasn’t a chance in hell I’d risk having Mickey O’Sullivan’s baby.

  I didn’t wait to watch Conor leave the porch. I rushed through the house to change into my old clothes. After taking a few minutes to put on some makeup and fluff my hair, I hurried to the front door.

  With a quick glance through the window next to the door to make sure he had left, I opened the door and walked outside like I had somewhere to be.

  Because as far as Mickey needed to know . . . I did.

  My street.

  Only I hadn’t expected to get there. I hadn’t expected to get far at all.

  I had thought I’d see a black SUV within minutes after stepping off the Holloway property.

  Or one of AJ’s men.

  But there was no one.

  And all I had on me was a knife Kieran had left me. No bag or money since Mickey had taken everything. Nothing to get me to Raleigh to keep up the pretense.

  I bit out a curse and turned in the direction of the city.

  It was a thirty-minute drive. I didn’t want to think about how long it would take to walk . . . and I was in heels. And now that I was staring at the distance, I had to wonder if Mickey would let me walk it jus
t to see how far I would get before I caved and begged to get into the SUV.

  With a frustrated huff, I started that way, cursing mobsters and silent, creepy men as I walked.

  At the last minute, I turned toward downtown Wake Forest, my mind set on conning some poor, unsuspecting idiot out of his drinking money so I could get a ride.

  My steps suddenly faltered before I was able to recover my steady gait.

  If I’m not found first . . .

  I tried to listen to everything surrounding me.

  I tried to look everywhere.

  But the nocturnal noises and distant sounds of downtown were messing with my senses.

  Because I’d been sure someone was to my right, but now I was hearing things to my left. And no one was there.

  Be nothing. Be nothing.

  The moment I thought it might be Kieran, unease crawled up my spine and twisted my stomach.

  Head up.

  Shoulders back.

  Lips twisted.

  Eyes laughing.

  Minutes passed as I walked without anyone making themselves known. Not one of the three vehicles that passed me was the one I was waiting for. But that feeling like I was surrounded never left.

  No one could be silent the way Kieran was . . . but this wasn’t about being silent. If there was someone following me, they had a world of noises to hide behind and were using it.

  Coward.

  The houses were thinning and turning into buildings, and the streets of downtown were in my sights.

  The roar of an engine sounded behind me, louder than the others and rapidly approaching, but I refused to turn as I waited for something to happen.

  My shoulders sagged when the muscle car flew past me, and I breathed out a low, “Asshole.”

  I stopped when the car suddenly turned around, wheels screeching, so it was headed toward me. I took an unsteady step back just as large hands snaked around me, covering my mouth and gripping my waist.

  The hold was firm and threatening, but familiar in a way that made my head light and the world spin beneath me.

  “Time’s up, Jess.”

  Fingers dug into my jaw, forcing my mouth open enough for something to dribble past my lips. I tried to cough it out, to stop from swallowing it just as the slight saltiness of the liquid settled on my tongue and hit the back of my throat.