by Haley Jenner
“Leave,” my dad grits out and she scurries away without even throwing a single insult.
“If Parker Shay says you’re in danger. He’d be right,” he closes the door, moving back toward the couch Camryn and I are sharing.
“But,” I take a breath to speak, but he holds up a single hand, silencing me.
“He would know, because he and his brother are the only two people on this planet that would want to cause you harm.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No.”
“If there is a threat on you, Codi. It’s from him. Directly,” he combats the panicked sound of my voice with a quiet sternness.
I stand, pacing around his office. “Doesn’t make any sense,” I turn back, looking between him and Camryn. “He loves me. He’s trying to protect me. He wouldn’t want to hurt me.”
“It’s a lie.”
“Dad, it’s not,” Camryn finally speaks, shifting forward in her seat. “I’ve seen the guy, met him multiple times. I saw the desperation in him this morning trying to get Codi out of harm’s way. He loves her.”
He massages his temples, sighing loudly. “Sit down, Codi.”
I do as he asks without argument, crossing my arms over my chest, hugging my arms. A shield. Against the words my father is about to give me.
“Parker tell you that his mother died when he was young?”
I nod, working to keep my brain from recalling the gruesome details of the way he lost his mother.
My father takes a breath to speak, stops, rubs his jaw, taking his seat along the arm of the chair once again.
“His family thinks our family killed her. You don’t need specifics but let’s just say we were competitors in certain markets. He was gaining traction, he—”
“Oh my God,” I cry, my hand covering my mouth, the stuttered breath shaking across my open palm. “You did it. You murdered his mom.”
“No.”
“Not you, but one of your minions. Oh my God,” I sob, folding down onto myself.
It all makes sense. Why he hates my family, why he refused to meet my dad, why he fights so heavily against the monsters in his mind. Holy crap. I can’t even blame him for seeking revenge. It still makes no sense why I’ve been dragged into it all. His hate his aimed at my dad, not me.
“I assure you, Codi,” my dad touches my arm, and I flinch at this touch, not having noticed him actually moving. “Our family had nothing to do with Lila Shay’s death,” he kneels in front of me, imploring to believe him. “I know Kane thought differently, but I had no reason to take that woman’s life.”
“You just said,” I stand again, moving away from him. “You just admitted that his business was crushing yours, that—”
“CODI,” he yells, calming his voice before speaking again. “Look at me. In the eyes,” he demands and I do as he says, needing to find truth in his declaration. “I. Did Not. Kill. Lila. Shay. Trust me. I had nothing, absolutely, fucking nothing to do with the murder of Parker’s mother.”
My eyes search his desperately, tears tracking down my cheeks, wetting my shirt. “Why blame you then?”
He shrugs. “I was the obvious answer. Clichéd as it is, rival crime families kill one another off to gain turf. Sounds so fucking juvenile. The police investigated me, my business, my associates, for months. Months, Codi. There was not one single shred of evidence to pin her murder on me, because I had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
I look to Camryn, my face pleading with her to tell me what to believe. Her eyes are fixated on our father, and I wait for her to turn to me. When she does, I know without her speaking a single word that she believes him.
“I don’t know what to believe,” I whisper. “It still doesn’t make any sense. Parker loves me, he would never hurt me. I’m confused.”
“His brother?” Dad questions and an uneasy feeling crawls painfully up the line of my spine.
“Rocco’s intense. I definitely got the vibe that he didn’t like me, didn’t ever sense he was having murderous thoughts though.”
“Information I’ve gathered over the years; Rocco Shay is unhinged. Dangerous. Fights for fun. Let’s his opponents get the upper hand to begin with, I assume because he enjoys the pain,” a distasteful grimace crosses his face. “Then he beats them within an inch of their life, smiling the entire time. Kane also had a few very dangerous men working alongside him, his second in particular, Marcus Dempsey.”
He moves toward his desk, his stride purposeful. “You’ve met Rocco?” he glances up waiting for my nod, before hitting keys along his laptop. “Did you meet Marcus? Anyone else in the family?”
I shake my head, but he doesn’t look up at me, his head focused on his screen. “No. Except his Aunt. Umm… Mira’s her name.”
He pauses his attack on the keyboard, his eyes meeting mine under the dark line of his lashes. “Mira is married to Marcus. I can’t imagine she was involved in this plan, whatever the fuck it is. She was Lila’s sister.”
Flicking his laptop around, I glance to the mugshot lighting his screen.
“This is Marcus Dempsey. Have you seen him before?”
I move closer, pulling the computer closer to me, shaking my head. I stare into deep blue eyes, so dark their color is almost indistinguishable, yet I see no soul. No feeling. Just nothing. His strong, angular cut jaw is dusted with a light shade of facial hair, his blond hair just close to his head, a dark beauty spot kissing an inch above his top lip.
He’s scary. He’s attractive. He’s empty.
“You’re gonna go upstairs to your old room. You will not leave this house until I have this sorted. Do you understand me?”
I stare into Marcus’ dead eyes, not listening to a word my dad spills. His smooth voice tickles my ears, but I can’t move past the soulless man staring into my eyes, like evil itself is being gifted a ticket to my inner psyche.
Slamming the screen shut, I push the laptop away, considering that he was charged with Rocco and Parker’s care after their dad died. They lived with the devil. I’m certain of it.
I stand abruptly, looking to dad and Camryn without meeting their eyes. “I need… I’m..”
“Codi, did you hear me?”
I nod. “Hmm. Yeah. Stay here. Don’t leave.”
“Baby,” he speaks again, standing to move toward me. “I won’t let anyone harm a single hair on your beautiful head. Do you understand me?”
I nod into his embrace, letting him offer me the reassurance he’s craving to. “You are safest here. I can protect you here. This’ll all be over before you know it.”
Over before you know it.
I hate to even think about what that means. Who gets hurt in the process? Marcus? Mira? Rocco? Parker?
I feel sick, bile rushing up my throat. I push back from my dad, running toward the small bathroom in his office, emptying the contents of my stomach.
Camryn rubs my back, whispering words of reassurance in my ear. I hate myself for wanting to tell her to go. To leave me.
“I’m fine,” I brush her off, standing and moving to the basin. I splash my face with water, palming my eyes sockets. I rinse the taste of vomit from my mouth, my father’s voice from his phone call echoing through the room, too soft to hear his words, but still causing anxiety to prickle at my skin.
I push past Camryn, past my dad. “Going to my room.”
I close the door behind me, listening as dads quietly soften, “give her some space,” filters through the wood.
I stand there, plastered against his office door for a minute or two, regulating my breathing. My eyes flick around the space, turning to find calm, but I can’t focus on it. Pulling my cell from my jeans I dial Parker’s number, before I remember it’s currently sitting in about a million pieces in my lounge room at present.
I look to the front door, my feet starting their movement before I can stop them. Mom’s car keys tease me from their discarded position on the entry table and I glance back to my dad’s office door before picking the
keys up as quietly as possible. Holding them in my hand, I pause, waiting to be caught, for my dad to barge from his office and yell at me to stay put, instead I’m met with silence, the sound stifling in such a large space.
I open the door as quietly as possible, closing it back over before legging it to my mother’s Audi. I’m pulling out of the driveway before I’ve let myself second guess what I’m doing.
My father would tell me I’m being careless. That I’m putting myself in danger.
Camryn would tell me I’m being impulsive. That I need to give myself time to think, to consider everything I’ve just been told.
My mother would tell me I’m stupid. That if I get hurt, it’d be my own fault.
Maybe she’s the only one with any sense. I know I’m being careless, impulsive. I know this could be the stupidest decision I’ve ever made. I’m already hurt, what’s a little more pain if it offers me closure.
Parker Shay was the first thing in life I’ve ever wanted. I need to know if it was all a lie. I need to know if his love was, is real. And even if it was all a game. A carefully crafted plan for revenge, I need to make sure he’s safe. Because whether he feels it back or not, I love him.
Twenty-Three
Parker
I pace the polished concrete floors of our loft, pausing at any small insignificant sound. My breathing is sharp, difficult. I can’t fill my lungs. I feel like a junkie waiting for his next score; scratching at my skin, tearing at my hair. I’m a fucking mess. My mind, my emotions, they’re a fuckin’ train wreck.
I don’t know who I’m trying to protect anymore. Who deserves it more.
Codi. Rocco. Mom
Mom. Rocco. Codi.
Me.
Fuck.
Rocco hasn’t been home since he bailed and I have no fucking idea where he is, what he’s doing. God, he could be at Codi’s place right now. That gives me pause and I shake the thought from my head. No. I saw the fear, the worry stamped along Camryn’s face, she would’ve made her sister do as I say. I have to trust that, that Camryn saw enough sense to seek out Dominic.
Dominic Rein.
I want to kill that motherfucker. If he hadn’t taken something so important from Rocco and I, maybe this story would’ve ended differently. Maybe Codi and I could’ve found love in an honest way, not a road paved with deceit and lies. It’s his fault. All his fucking fault. He’s taken everything from me, continues to do so.
The click of my front door sounds and I turn, watching it open, my feet stopping their incessant movement. Mira’s soft smile hits me and my heart seems to start the beat it forgot to manage only seconds prior.
I pull my first full breath of air.
And I cry.
I pull at my hair. I drop to my knees. And I cry.
My head falls into my hands as I beg her to help me. To fix it. To save Rocco. To protect Codi. To tell mom to forgive me.
Mira rushes to my side, her ass hitting the hard floor as she pulls me into her arms, my head falling to her lap as she holds me. I’ve been here before, in this moment. Broken and fragile.
Eighteen years ago, Mira held me in a similar way. Offering my comfort when I found out my mom had died. I laid in this position for hours. Crying on and off, Mira rubbing my back. Singing to me. Talking to me. Reassuring me that we’d survive.
Only difference now is I’m twice her size, not the other way around. I’m not a boy. I’m a grown ass man. Falling apart in a way that I never thought I’d experience again. I assured myself I’d never let anyone get close enough to cause me this type of pain. Heartbreak is worse a second-time round. You’d think it’d be easier. You’ve felt it before so the suffocating emptiness, the excruciating helplessness doesn’t catch you unaware. You expect to feel it. What you don’t account for is having your heart ripped to pieces when it’s was only just starting to heal. Having the raw scars pulled apart, inch by inch. Making you feel the pain you once upon a time thought would kill you, happen all over again. Worse, the cruelty of the realization that the person that had started to heal those shattered pieces of your heart, is the reason it’s been decimated once again.
Then imagine all of that was your fault. That the pain you’re living in right at this moment, while your heart is being ripped apart is nothing compared to knowing that the reason that heart felt anything good when you thought it hopeless could be taken away from you. Smashing the last damaged part of your heart into a million irredeemable pieces with it.
I feel like my lungs are collapsing. I feel as though everything inside of me is being ripped in two, torn to pieces, starting inside my chest.
This time I don’t believe Mira’s words of hope. Her reassurance sounds like fairy tales, all lies to my ears and this makes me cry harder. But I let her continue, I let her try because here in this single moment, she is all I have left. She’s the only person in my pathetic existence that still loves me.
I don’t know how long we sit there for. Long enough for my tears to run dry. For my rough sobs to morph into staggered breaths.
“Thank you for coming,” I finally speak my first coherent sentence and her hand pauses briefly on its glide along my back.
“Always. Whenever you need, Parker. You know that.”
I sit up, knees bent, elbows resting atop of them as I rub the remaining wetness from my eyes sockets. My eyes feel raw, my copious tears having cut like sandpaper. I drop my head, steadying my breathing before I can look Mira in the eyes.
“Plan was to kill her. To take her life. To steal away the good from Dominic like he did us.”
Her eyes close tightly, tears dropping along her cheeks. The gray in her eyes shines with her tears and I can see so much of mom in her in that moment. The beauty in her sadness. It gives me pause, because split seconds like this magnify the way I miss her and for a single, confused moment I consider I should’ve gone along with Rocco’s plan. Our original plot to seek revenge.
“I fell in love with her,” I laugh, the sound full of misery and heartache. “Fuck. It was so easy to do. The instant I met her and she smiled at me,” I recall her genuine grin, her dancing flirtation. “I was gone. Fuck, Mira. I never stood a chance.”
I crack my knuckles, looking away, considering the months that unravelled from that first encounter.
“I pretended for a while. I let myself believe I was just enjoyin’ her, that it was nothing more than me playin’ with her before…” I shrug, not wanting to say the words again. Kill her. Take her life.
“I don’t know who I was pretendin’ for in the end. Me or Rocco. Lying to Roc gave me more time with her, sure. But I think admitting the truth fired my self-hate, I failed her, Aunt Mira,” I drop my head, the shame I feel filtering through my words. “Mom. I failed her. The one last thing I could give her, vengeance and I couldn’t do that.”
I feel her in front of me and I lift my head to stare into the stormy gray eyes of my mother’s. “You did no such thing. Vengeance is not what Lila would’ve wanted, Parker. God, it’s the last thing she would want.”
“It’s what she deserves,” I argue.
“I don’t disagree. But not this way.”
She grabs hold of my hands, squeezing tight. “The last thing you could do for your mother, the one thing she would want for you, more than anything,” she waits for me to meet her eyes, hers searching mine, pleading with me to understand. “Is your happiness. She only ever wanted you and Rocco to have happiness, to feel loved.”
“Dominic Rein killed any chance of that when he took her life.” Rocco’s voice startles us both and I move quickly to stand.
Mira steps in front of me, working to protect me from the blistering anger radiating from Rocco. This woman, fuck. She’s tiny. Petite and fragile, but has never questioned putting herself in harm’s way for me or Rocco. It’s earned her a fair share of beatings, I have no doubt, she would never tell us outright. But I’ve seen the bruises. I’ve watch her nurse broken bones brought down on her from that psychopath our dad
trusted with his life.
Rocco notices the small movement, the seemingly insignificant step that placed her in front of me, his face twisting in hurt. She’s betrayed him. Made him feel the way her husband does. Unhinged.
“You don’t need to protect him from me,” he spits.
“Not what I was doing,” she moves toward him, unconcerned by his bristling anger. “You’re both messed up by whatever ill-directed plan you’ve created in your heads in search of peace. I’m protecting you from one another.”
He pulls her into his body, hugging her to his side, his eyes never leaving mine as he places a kiss on the top of her head.
“Nothin’ ill-directed about it, Mira. Their family stole something from us. We planned to do the same to them. An eye for an eye.”
Planned. That’s the word he used. Past tense.
Stepping from Mira’s embrace he moves closer to me. “You’re dead to me. You’re the one person who was supposed to have my back. Like I’ve had yours. You were supposed to be on my side. MY SIDE,” he yells, his finger crashing into his chest repeatedly.
“I needed this. I. Needed. This. I thought you had a fuckin’ heart, Park. I thought you had good inside you. How fuckin’ twisted is it that I’m the only one who family means something to, that is guided by loyalty.”
“Never questioned that, Roc. Always saw that in you.”
He barks out a laugh. “You can keep your bitch. I won’t touch her. I’ll do that. For you. But that’s it. We’re done. You couldn’t find it in yourself, you couldn’t love me enough to offer me peace, so fuck you.”
Panic rises, flooding my body and I step forward. “Roc. Please. You and Mira are all I got. I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so fuckin’ sorry. For being weak. For failing you.”
“Save your fuckin’ tears,” he gestures to the water coating my cheeks, the ones I didn’t notice falling. “Save your fuckin’ apologies, they don’t mean shit.”
His words are spiked with hurt, with disappointment, with regret. His eyes glisten with the tears he rejected from me. Every word he speaks feels like a stab to my gut.