In the meantime, Brianna and I had to do all we could to prove that in court without making things worse for Pops.
We had a little more than twenty-four hours to figure out how to handle the arraignment. Even as exhaustion weighed heavy on me, I wanted to go to the law library and figure out exactly how we should handle this. We had to get him out. The sooner he was out from under the thumb of the feds, the better.
But I was so fucking tired!
“Hey,” Delaney said softly as she joined me in the shower. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You looked too peaceful,” I said, turning and pulling her gently against my chest. She pressed her lips to my throat, running her hand slowly up my bare chest.
“I missed you,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I got so mad.”
“I lied to you.”
“Yeah…”
“I should have told you the truth that night over dinner.”
She didn’t answer me. She just pressed her face against my chest, her lips brushing softly against my bare skin. My body instantly responded to her, my cock stiffening, my balls tightening. I lifted her chin and kissed her, tasting sleep and the vague hint of her toothpaste. She moved closer to me, pressing her breasts against me, her nipples hard and alive against my skin.
We stood there, in the center of the shower stall, kissing for the longest time. As much as I wanted more, I wanted to just stay like that for the rest of my life. She was so soft and perfect against me, her skin like silk and her kiss like the most incredible, creamiest dessert in the world. Her touch took the burden of my father’s arrest off my shoulders, helping me forget—for just a moment—all the things that needed to be done and all the things that were so far out of my control.
“I love you,” she whispered ever so softly against my lips.
I pulled back and cradled her jaw in my hand. “Don’t say it just because I did.”
Her eyes widened as she stared up at me. “I’m not. It’s the truth.”
“There are things—”
“Shh,” she whispered, pressing her finger to my lips. Then she replaced her finger with her lips.
How could I argue with that?
I lifted her up, my hands on her ass, my fingers wandering to places I was aching to touch. She wrapped her legs around me, tugging me closer to her. It was just natural, the way our bodies fit together. And then she was pinned against the wall and I was sliding inside of her, my head spinning as pleasure rushed through me. I’d thought I’d never be here again, that she would never allow me to touch her again. But here we were, back where we belonged. And we did belong here. I fully believed that Delaney was meant to be in my arms, that I was meant to know her.
My mom always said that there’s one person out there for everyone. Sometimes you find that one, sometimes you don’t. But if you’re patient enough, chances are good that your somebody will eventually find their way to you.
She believed Pops was her one and only. And I knew that Delaney was mine.
But what would she think when she learned the truth about me? Would she run for the hills when she realized I wasn’t the man she thought I was? Or would she stick it out and hope that I would change and become something better?
I wasn’t sure which I was hoping for. I just knew that being with Delaney made me a better man.
I didn’t want to lose that.
Chapter 15
Delaney
He had nightmare after nightmare. I was asleep the first time, but I couldn’t sleep after that. I just lay there and watched him fight his demons, his arms flailing wildly from time to time, words I couldn’t quite understand coming from between his beautiful lips. I listened closely, hoping to get a hint to whatever it was that was haunting him, but there was nothing. His words were jumbled, his voice hoarse and sad. I couldn’t…I didn’t know what was haunting him. But I knew his father’s arrest had just made it worse.
I saw the news on the internet and I was shocked. Men like Jack and Brian were untouchable. Neither had been arrested since they were young men—I knew because I’d looked it up when Jack came strolling back into my life. Jack had been arrested multiple times when he was in his late teens, early twenties. Most of his arrests were for assault, but there were arrests for drug possession and theft, too. There was even one arrest for domestic violence against his wife, Caroline. That one was dropped before it went anywhere, just as the drug and theft arrests had been, but it was still there, still telling a story. And Brian…there were multiple arrests for assault against other mob members, members of other gangs, but they stopped when he was twenty-two, after he had served a few years for beating up some Italian mob guy.
Brian Callahan’s arrest made me wonder if Jack was as above suspicion as he thought he was.
Could my father be arrested, too?
Sean wasn’t the only one having nightmares.
I slipped out of bed and dressed quietly, careful not to disturb Sean. It was Sunday, a day I normally spent indoors watching old movies, or at the office catching up on paperwork. Today, I was meeting Jack. I called him last night and asked him to meet me for breakfast at a local café. He never asked why.
He was sitting at the back of the diner, a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead. That in itself frightened me. I’d never seen Jack McGuire dressed in anything less than an expensive Italian suit. But today he was wearing jeans and a golf shirt.
“Hi,” he said, standing to greet me as I approached the table. He kissed my cheek, then settled back down, watching as I took a seat across from him.
“You okay?”
He shrugged. “Things have been quiet so far.”
“Brian’s arrest could be bad for you.”
“It could be devastating, depending on how happy Brian is with our relationship at the moment.”
“Do you think he would turn on you?”
Jack pushed out his lower lip, shaking his head slowly. “I don’t think so,” he said, but there was a little hesitation in his movements, his voice.
He was scared. And that scared me.
“How’s Caroline?”
He shook his head again. “Not good. She jumps every time someone comes to the door or the phone rings. She’s convinced that I’m next.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“What about you? How are you?”
I pressed my hands to the tabletop, thinking about Sean writhing in the bed as I snuck out the bedroom door. He cried out again just as I put my foot on the first step of the stairs. I wanted to go back, wake him, and assure him that whatever he was dreaming couldn’t be as bad as reality. But I knew if I did, I would not only miss my breakfast with Jack, but I might embarrass Sean—and that was the last thing I wanted to do.
“Brian’s family is struggling to get him out. Sean and Brianna were at the fed building downtown, but they only let them see him for a second.”
“You talked to them?”
There was such suspicion in his voice that my eyes came up quick enough to strain a small muscle in the side of my neck. I tilted my head slightly, realizing that Jack had no idea about my relationship with Sean.
What a time to tell him.
“Sean came over last night. He said that his father was beaten up, but that he didn’t think he would say anything.”
“They’re desperate…” Jack’s eyes suddenly lit up, and it was like the weight of the world suddenly shifted. He didn’t look quite as fearful, but the wheels were still spinning in his head.
“Did Sean say anything else?”
“Only that they’re going to arraign Brian on Monday, and he and Brianna hope to get him released then.”
Jack nodded. “That’s good news.”
“Is it? Sean’s worried about what the feds might do to Brian today. He’s not sure how much his dad can take. And then there’s Cassidy…she’s pretty upset about the whole thing.”
“I know. I’ll go over and talk to her after this.”
Before I
could say anything else—I wanted to go with him, but I wasn’t sure that was something Brian would be okay with—the waitress came and asked if we were ready to order.
Who could eat at a time like this? I ordered coffee and a sweet roll to justify taking up space in the diner.
Jack watched her walk away, more interest in his eyes than I was comfortable with. Then he focused on me again.
“Why was Sean at your house last night?”
I shrugged, the gesture belying the roller coaster that was flying in my belly.
“You asked him to watch over me.”
Jack’s eyebrow rose. “You know about that?”
“You shouldn’t have done it, Jack. I told you I had it under control.”
“Yeah, well, the guy was threatening to hurt you. I couldn’t just sit back and allow that to happen.”
“It’s over now. Sean and his brothers put the fear of God in Claude.”
“Good.”
“But Sean and I…we’ve been seeing each other for a few weeks now.”
I finally had Jack’s completely, undivided attention. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He sat back, his eyes moving slowly over me. “That’s not what I wanted. In fact, I told him to keep his hands to himself.”
“You never told me.”
He shook his head. “Sean is not the kind of man you should be involved with, Delaney. I never wanted any of my girls with members of my organization.”
“Well, I’m not one of your girls. And I have a mind of my own.”
“Sean’s not good for you.”
“He can’t be any worse than Claude.”
“Claude was an asshole. But Sean…you realize he works for me, right?”
“In a protective role. Not as a member of your organization.”
Jack leaned forward slightly. “That’s what he told you? Did he also tell you that he’s run some jobs for me that even his father doesn’t know about? That he’s been sneaking around behind Brian’s back for more than three years, doing things that Brian has no idea about? Has he told you that ever since his mother died, he’s been a little off his nut? It’s a fucking miracle he hasn’t gotten himself killed or arrested.”
“Sean?”
“Yeah, Sean. He’s not the clean-cut lawyer he wants you to think he is.”
I bit the inside of my lip, trying to balance the image of the Sean I knew with the image my father was creating for me. It wasn’t balancing out.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Jack’s eyebrows rose. “After all the gruff you gave me about being the head of the Irish mob, you’re going to let your boyfriend get away with his dangerous behavior?”
“Sean’s…he’s different.”
“Is he?”
The waitress returned with the coffee, asking all the requisite questions as Jack stared at me from across the table. As the waitress walked away, he mumbled, “Never should have asked him to protect you. I knew it was a bad idea.”
“If you hadn’t asked him, I would have met him some other way.”
“You think so?”
“We have a connection, Jack. We would have found each other.”
“Now you sound like your mother. She used to say that about us.”
“Did she?”
He shook his head again, as he wrapped his large hands around his coffee cup. He stared into its depths, lost in thought for a long moment.
“Sean’s always been a good kid, the best out of the rag tag band of children Brian has. But ever since his mother’s death…he’s been odd, you know? I think being alone with her when she died—to be the one to deal with the immediacy of it all—screwed up something in his head.”
“Sean was alone with her when she died?”
“Yeah,” Jack said, lifting his coffee to his lips. He took a long sip, then set it down, his eyes still on the mug rather than me. “She came down with stage four pancreatic cancer at the end of April. Three weeks later, Brian had to put her in the hospital because she couldn’t eat and she’d lost an insane amount of weight. She refused the chemo, but Brian believed she would live for another five or six months if she could just keep her weight up. The doctor agreed. So, without her consent, the two of them put her in the hospital to force feed her with a tube.”
“Why? If it wasn’t what she wanted…?”
Jack shrugged, his eyes finally moving up to mine. “Brian loved her. He couldn’t wrap his mind around a world without her in it.” He sat back a little, a look in his eyes as if he envied what Brian had with Abigail. “They were taking shifts. Brian spent all day with her no matter who else was there, but then the boys divided up the night shift. Killian was with her the first night, Ian the second, Kevin the third. Then it was Sean, and Kyle would have taken the last night before they released her—if she’d put on a little weight. But on Sean’s night, she died about two or three hours after Brian went home for the night.”
“How did she die?”
“They said it was the cancer. That it weakened her heart and she died of heart failure.”
It made sense. Maybe that was what haunted Sean so deeply. Maybe he felt guilty because his mother died on his watch.
What a horrible weight to carry around.
“Sean was supposed to be one of the pall bearers at the funeral, but he didn’t show. He skipped the funeral and the wake at the house. He wasn’t anywhere to be found for the first few days after her death. Then he went back to school as if nothing had happened, finishing law school at the top of his class before he came home again. Brian gave him a job and he did well. But then, a month or two after he came back, he stepped into my office one afternoon and told me that he needed some extra cash. He asked if I’d send some extra work his way. I thought he was hinting around for a loan—which I would have given him quite happily—but then I realized what he really wanted was to get out on the streets. He wanted the violence and the danger that came with my organization. The more dangerous the job, the happier he was to take it.”
“And you never told Brian?”
“Never had a reason to.”
I cocked my eyebrow as I studied Jack’s face. “It never occurred to you that he was crying out for help?”
Jack shrugged. “It’s not my place to raise Brian’s kids. I just did what he asked.”
And that was my father in a nutshell. He never cared about anyone beyond his own nose. And that was why there would always be this sense of distance between us.
I stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“To find Sean and tell him that I love him and I’m there for him.”
Jack grabbed my wrist. “Delaney, didn’t you hear a word I said? That boy has a death wish.”
“Maybe I can help him. Maybe I can give him a reason to live.”
“Guys like that”—he stood and pulled me close to him, almost as a lover would—“don’t want to be saved. Trust me. I’m one of them.”
“Maybe you would have wanted to be saved if you’d had someone who loved you enough to do it.”
“I did, Delaney. I’ve had a lot of women who thought they could save me. But none of them ever did.”
“But Sean’s not you.”
I pulled my arm free and walked away without a backward glance. Sean could be saved. He loved me and I loved him. There was nothing bigger than that to give a person a reason to live.
Chapter 16
Sean
“We’ll only have a few minutes to argue, so we have to have a solid argument.”
“I know,” Brianna said, pushing a book out of her way as she made notes on a pad of paper. “But we have to be smart about it.”
“We have to be fucking brilliant.”
She looked up. “That sort of language won’t fly in a courtroom. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
I dragged my fingers through my hair as I paced the small room. We were at Brianna’s law firm, working in one of the research ro
oms across the hall from their extensive library. Brianna snuck me in past the security guard a couple of hours ago when we realized we’d need more resources than what were available at MCorp.
I kept seeing the split lip my father had sported last night, imagining what they were doing to him now. We had to see what they had, but I hadn’t been able to get ahold of my friend in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office yet. I knew she would give us some of the material, but I had to get her on the phone first. If we just knew what it was they had on Pops, we might be able to fight it more efficiently in court.
“An arraignment isn’t really the place to make our case, anyway,” Brianna said. “The judge won’t have patience for anything beyond his plea.”
“I know.”
“We’re really stressing over something that we shouldn’t be. What we should be worrying about is what happens after the arraignment.”
“I know. I just don’t like the idea of walking in there unprepared.”
“Neither do I.”
“What could they have on him?”
“That’s something you’d be better at answering than I would. I’ve only known him a few months.”
I sat hard on one of the wooden chairs, my thoughts so random and insane that I could hardly grab on to them.
Take care of him.
I could hear my mom’s voice in my ear almost as if she were sitting right next to me. Six years and I hadn’t forgotten a single word she’d said to me that night, even the ones I wished I could forget.
I promised I would take care of him—and I would. I just had to know what the feds had on him.
Who would turn on my father? Who would be high enough up in the organization to know enough to get my father in trouble? He hardly touched any of the mob’s business dealings anymore. All he did was show up at the big deals and help out with protection. And sometimes, especially lately, he didn’t even do that. Cassidy kept him busy at home most nights, so he let Killian and Ian run the show most of the time now.
It was only Jack and his lieutenants who knew the extent of my father’s involvement in the organization anymore. And family—but no one in our family would turn on Pops. That chance had come and gone long ago. Everyone was involved in some way. In fact, whoever turned on Pops might have been better off turning on Killian or Ian; there would have been more they could spill and more for which they could have put them away.
SEAN: A Mafia Romance (The Callahans Book 3) Page 11