by Sam Burns
Liam’s smile said everything that needed saying. He knew exactly what Alex was thinking. He leaned back in and rubbed his lips against Alex’s one more time. “Another time, Alex Sage. I left my number with your clothes. You better use it.” Then he slid off the bed and headed into the bathroom, where Alex heard the shower start. Given the moratorium on morning sex, he supposed that following Liam wasn’t a good idea, no matter how tempting.
He dressed and put on his shoes, taking the slip of paper with Liam’s number and programming it into his phone before taking a single step toward the door. There were messages from Jenna in varying levels of concern asking what he meant by his text about getting laid, so he shot a quick response.
Everything is fine. Will be at your place in a bit. I’ll explain then.
Then he pulled up Liam’s newly programmed contact information and sent him a text as well.
Now you have my number too. But if you don’t call, I will. I expect you to keep your promises.
He smiled to himself. For a night that was supposed to signify the end of his childhood, it seemed that it had been more of a beginning than an ending.
2
Liam's Life in Color
The shower wasn’t the distraction Liam had been hoping for when he’d decided to escape his bedroom. He was pretty sure that Alex Sage was going to be the death of him.
When the kid had thrown his ‘freedom party’ at the bar the previous night, Liam had been worried about that. It was just the kind of thing that got his attention: being thrown into a crappy situation and deciding to go with it and be happy anyway.
So many people gave up in the face of adversity. Liam liked people who refused to let anything derail their lives. That was why he’d left his childhood home on his eighteenth birthday and never looked back. He’d wanted to be someone he could like.
It was ten years later, and he figured he was still a work in progress. He could look himself in the eye in a mirror most days.
He heard the front door of the apartment close as he was climbing out of the shower, and was disappointed. Despite having expected it, some part of him hadn’t wanted Alex to leave. Of course, awkward mornings-after weren’t something he had a lot of experience with, so he hadn’t known what to expect.
He could count on two hands the number of actual dates he’d been on in his life. He didn’t count the fake dates with his lesbian best friend in high school. After he left home he swore to himself that he wasn’t going to fake it again. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ was still in force for most of his time on active duty, so he’d avoided relationships of any kind. Anonymous hookups didn’t ask to stay the night, so there hadn’t really been any mornings.
He’d tried to date a few times after being discharged, but nothing had stuck for more than two attempts. So he’d spent most of his life alone, and usually he found that he enjoyed it. People were hard. Either they came with baggage they couldn’t get past, or they couldn’t deal with the fact that he had baggage of his own.
His depressing mental track wasn’t helping anything, so he decided he needed to refocus. Live in the now. That was what had always gotten him out of tough situations alive. The past was over and the future was a distraction that a Marine couldn’t afford.
Drying off as fast as possible, he only briefly considered shaving before deciding that today was not a good day for dealing with the face in the mirror. He tried to remind himself that he’d kept Alex from getting mugged last night, but his conscience wasn’t having any part of it. The mugging, or rather failed mugging, had been an anemic thing in comparison to everything else. Everything he was, and everything he was doing.
His cell phone was ringing when he came out of the bathroom. He picked it up and glanced at the screen. Mickey. Dammit. It was too early in the morning for Mickey.
“What?” he answered in the tersest voice he had. He was never going to be a drill sergeant, but it got the point across.
“Dunno what you did last night with Donny, bucko, but I think he’s gone and told on you.” Mickey sounded amused, but there was an undertone of tension.
Liam ran a hand through his hair and replayed the night in his head. He couldn’t think of anything important that he’d done. Well, nothing other than taking Alex back to his place. It was about that, then.
“Shit,” he said, ever the wordsmith.
Mickey sighed into the speaker. “That bad, eh?”
“I didn’t think so. But you’re calling for a reason.” Liam went to his closet and started pulling out his clothes for the day. He figured he was going to have to deal with last night sooner rather than later, and it was best to be dressed and ready. There was a knock at the door, and the sound echoed in his phone. He raised an eyebrow. “Are you actually at my door right now? Are you on orders not to let me make a run for it?”
He glanced toward his bed, where his gun and shoulder holster were stashed under the mattress. He’d put them there after getting Alex into his bed the previous night. The other man hadn’t even seemed to notice that Liam had a gun, which he thought was for the best.
Liam shook his head. He wasn’t going to shoot Mickey. At least, he wasn’t going to shoot Mickey unless Mickey tried to shoot him first. He liked the guy.
Meanwhile, Mickey was laughing on the other end of the line. “I don’t think it’s that bad. But I am at the door.” He hesitated. “And I’m under orders to take you to see the boss.”
The boss.
When Mickey said, ‘the boss’, what he had actually meant was The Boss. Brendan Quinn, infamous Chicago gangster and Liam’s employer, had demanded to see him because of whatever Donny had told him about the night before.
It hadn’t even been Liam’s assignment. It had been Donny’s, and the only thing Liam had known about it was that they were watching someone for Quinn. He hadn’t even known the guy’s name until Alex had introduced himself. So Liam was probably about to get in trouble for doing Donny’s job.
Liam had always hated Donny.
“I hate Donny,” he told Mickey in an offhand tone, figuring that if he were going to be murdered before breakfast, the least he could do was express the opinion. “If you don’t see me again after today, kill him for me.”
Mickey smacked him on the shoulder, even as he wove his car through traffic on their way north. At least they weren’t heading toward the city at six in the morning. “It can’t be that bad, Liam. If it were, he wouldn’t have demanded to see you, he’d have just sent Douglas.”
“That’s less reassuring than you think it is,” Liam answered. He tried not to look at the road. There was a reason he preferred taking the train. There were no IEDs, sure, but Chicago traffic was a damned war zone in its own right.
Squeezing the hand he’d left on Liam’s shoulder, Mickey smiled. “It could be a good thing, you know. Maybe he wants to give you a raise. A better job. A commendation for going to a bar last night and not having so much as a sip.” He glanced at Liam from the corner of his eye, so fast that Liam almost missed it.
He didn’t, though. “No, Mickey. I did not drink last night.”
“I didn’t ask!” Mickey threw his hands up in front of him as though in defense, and Liam cringed away from the front windshield. They were going to die in Mickey’s car. Damn, he hated cars. Rolling his eyes at Liam, Mickey put his hands back on the wheel. “You’re such a wimp about driving. A man would think you weren’t a big, strong Marine in another life.”
Still pointedly looking away from the road, Liam gave him the most salacious grin he could muster. “Why Mick, I didn’t know you were interested in big, strong Marines.”
That started a whole different, less stressful, chain of conversation about how Mickey was in a committed relationship with the girl he’d been dating since middle school. It seemed that there were threats in place involving his balls and a barbecue fork if he ever tried to cheat on her, and he understandably took it seriously. It was probably the least ‘no homo’ response to such a jok
e Liam had ever gotten from a straight guy.
It was just one of the many reasons they got along so well. Liam was pleased that he and Mickey had been put together as partners—partners being a kind term for putting an experienced member of the organization with an inexperienced one, to keep a close eye on the newbie. Any other partner would have been worse for Liam, and he hated the nights Mick was busy and he had to go with Donny. At least, he had until Alex had turned up the night before.
When they pulled off the highway, it was well north of Chicago proper. The unfamiliar neighborhood was populated by houses worth more than Liam’s entire block. What did a person do with a house that size? The boss didn’t even have a big family. A man with two adult sons and no daughters didn’t need a dozen bedrooms. Liam was probably already in trouble, though, so he opted to keep his mouth shut.
They were buzzed straight past security because the guy at the gate recognized Mickey. He pulled up the long drive and parked at the top next to three other cars. Mickey noticeably relaxed upon seeing them, so Liam figured that Douglas’ car wasn’t among them.
An older guy in a suit answered the door—Liam was thrown by the notion that people still had butlers—and led them through the house to the back patio. Again, it wasn’t what Liam had pictured. Patios in his experience were tiny squares of cement that could barely fit a kettle grill and a couple chairs. Brendan Quinn’s patio stretched the length of the house, and was broken up by artfully arranged terraces of trees and flowers. The whole place was like something from a BBC drama. Liam made a note, again, not to say that aloud.
Quinn himself was easy enough to recognize, but there was a young man next to him that Liam didn’t know. He lowered his newspaper long enough to look Liam and Mickey over, make a face like he’d just discovered what a hog farm smelled like, and lift the paper back up.
The boss stood, grinning, and stuck out his hand. He shook Mickey’s first, slapping him on the opposite arm. “Michael, nice to see you, boy.” He said in a voice that still managed to retain a hint of Irish brogue, despite the decades since he’d been in the country of his birth. He turned to look at Liam. “And this must be the new man. Kennedy, yes? William?”
The truth was pretty far from that, but given the circumstances, allowances had to be made.
Brendan Quinn was a man who had been in charge of people his whole life. He had the broad-shouldered stance of a bull. He played the benevolent dictator, but that still meant that his tiny empire was a dictatorship. It made Liam feel like he was back at boot camp.
“They call me Liam, sir.” He had to struggle with his instincts not to snap off a salute.
“Ah, of course, Liam.” Quinn waved his hand toward the remaining empty chairs at the table. “Come join us for breakfast. Oh, what’s happened to my manners? This is my son, Owen. He’s attending the University of Chicago.”
Mickey and Liam both inclined their heads and offered appropriate pleasantries, despite the fact that Owen didn’t even lower the paper again. Brendan gave his son a disappointed look, but didn’t say anything.
He turned back to them and motioned to the spread of food laid out on the table. Liam figured he’d known he was having company, since it looked like enough to feed a family of fourteen. “Please help yourselves gentlemen. I wouldn’t call you out so early without offering some kind of hospitality. Any earlier, and I suppose the offer would have had to be lodging, eh?”
“I don’t mind the hour, sir, I’m used to getting up early. It was the driving that concerned me.” Liam chuckled, and glanced at Mickey from the corner of his eye.
Mickey gave his shoulder a push as he grabbed a fork and started using it to shovel ham onto his plate. “You just have an unnatural fear of cars.”
“I think it’s perfectly natural, since you drive like you’re in The Fast and the Furious.” Liam answered before reaching out to pour a cup of coffee from the carafe on the table. “Thank you for the breakfast, sir.”
“Not at all, Liam, my boy.” Quinn reached for his own coffee cup and took a sip.
The butler returned carrying a tray of champagne flutes with what looked like orange juice in them. Mimosas, Liam thought. It seemed a strange thing to offer at a weekday breakfast for one’s employees, and it made Liam’s life a little harder. Working for the Quinn family seemed to come with a higher than average amount of alcohol, and Liam spent far too much time trying to manage his reaction to it.
The butler held the tray out, and Liam swallowed hard. “No thanks,” he said, drawing himself up in his seat and pulling the cup of coffee toward his chest like a shield. He looked up and found Quinn watching him.
After a moment of eye contact, Quinn nodded to Liam and waved the butler away. “So you were working that little side job with Donald last night, yes?”
Liam nodded, staring into his coffee cup. If he added enough cream and sugar to make it palatable Mickey would never let him hear the end of it, so he decided he’d have to drink it black. The things he did to retain appearances. He tried not to wince at the bitter taste as it spread across his tongue.
Some part of him was nervous about Quinn’s reaction to the situation with Alex, but there was no reason to jump to conclusions. It would just make him tense, and let Quinn know he thought he’d done something wrong.
“I got a call from Donald’s uncle Patty this morning,” Quinn went on in his casual tone. “He said you took the boy home last night.”
Mickey dropped his fork, ham still attached to it, and his mouth still open. Owen lowered his newspaper and stared at Liam.
There wasn’t much Liam could say to that, and he certainly wasn’t going to lie to Quinn. “I did, sir.”
Quinn didn’t seem surprised or bothered. “Shall I assume it was the usual reason, and not something exotic?”
“That depends on your definition of exotic,” Liam said with a laugh. The whole scene was surreal. He was discussing what was ostensibly a hook-up with a mob boss, who was also his boss. He decided to go for broke and just tell the truth. “Someone tried to mug him in the alley behind the bar. I stopped the mugging, and he was, um, grateful.”
Quinn seemed to consider that for a moment, nodding and staring into his own coffee cup. “I’m told he had quite a lot to drink.”
“He did. He was drunk.” Liam didn’t like the feeling it gave him, letting them think he’d taken advantage of a drunk man. It might have fit the mob thug image he was trying to cultivate, but he couldn’t live with it. “I took him back to my place and put him to bed.”
“Put him to bed,” Owen repeated, the words uncertain, but he sounded as disturbed as Liam felt about the topic.
Liam had the distinct impression that allaying Owen’s concerns was as important as making Quinn happy. They were probably related items, after all. “I hydrated him, gave him some aspirin, and let him sleep. Which he was practically already doing by the time we got to my place.”
“You took your mark home?” Mickey asked through a mouthful of breakfast meat. He seemed to have gotten over his astonishment quickly. “That’s a hell of a thing to happen.”
Quinn nodded in agreement with Mickey. “Unusual. I assume he left before you did this morning?”
“He did,” Liam agreed.
“And it was an amicable parting?” Quinn asked.
Liam couldn’t stop the blush that reddened his cheeks. “Yes.” His voice lowered in pitch and volume when he was embarrassed, and everyone leaned in a few inches to compensate. “We, um, exchanged numbers and agreed to be in contact.”
Mickey’s eyebrows shot up and Owen cocked his head, but the truly surprising reaction was Quinn. He threw back his head and laughed. “Well, if that isn’t just the damnedest thing!”
“Only you,” Mick muttered, shaking his head before focusing back on his food once again.
When Quinn had gotten his laughter under control, he wiped his eyes and gave Liam a bright smile. “That may be some of the best news I’ve gotten in a while, Liam Kenne
dy. The most fun, certainly.” He took a drink of coffee and leaned back in his chair. “I want you to do the job full-time.”
Liam just blinked for a moment, feeling like he had missed something important. “You—you want me to watch Alex full time?”
Owen raised a brow at Liam. “Alex? Isn’t he supposed to be ‘the mark’, or ‘the target’, or something sinister like that?”
Liam ignored the fact that Owen was Quinn’s son and glared at him. “He’s neither of those things, and we haven’t done anything sinister.” Except for a little creepy stalking of a complete stranger. He looked to Quinn. “Unless something in the circumstances have changed?”
Quinn shook his head matter-of-factly. “No. You’re to watch him, and make sure he’s safe. That’s all. And it isn’t going to change.”
Owen turned the quizzical look on his father. “Protect him? Who is this lucky sap, who rates his own personal thug?”
Quinn and Liam both gave him icy looks, but Quinn spoke before Liam could, which was probably for the best. “That’s a horrible thing to say about a perfectly nice pair of boys who work for your father, O. You should think before you open your mouth.”
Owen scowled and lifted the newspaper back up, but not before giving Liam an inscrutable look.
Dismissing the whole thing with a wave of his hand, Quinn returned his look to Liam. “I can count on you to take care of him, then?”
When Liam nodded, Quinn mirrored the gesture, and everyone returned to eating their breakfast. Liam had learned to eat your meals when you got them, and the awkwardness that remained at the table didn’t even phase him as he went back to his unsweetened coffee and toast. He’d eaten worse food under worse circumstances.
“Tell me about him,” Quinn asked after a moment, looking thoughtful.