Lies & Lullabies

by Courtney Lane

  “Was it always about fucking power with you?” Anger found its way back into my mind and pushed out the sadness.

  “I wanted to head the Di Stefano family,” she explained, “but fucking Marcin got impatient and ruined it. He…was my boyfriend.” She rolled her eyes and swept her hands roughly across the moisture on her cheeks. “I needed a Trojan horse after Marcin did himself in, and Catch was the perfect man to become one. We had a deal. He’d give me the keys to what he started with the Di Stefano family after everyone who could oppose me in the Leone family was gone, and I’d take over both families.”

  “And why would he do that?” I glanced briefly at Catch.

  “For you,” she said, partially stupefied by my question as though I should’ve known. “You were my ace in the hole. The thing he wanted a year before he even met you.”

  Blinking between Catch and my sister, my words were lost to me.

  “None of it matters. We can be together, and you can work for me now. You only have to do one thing.” She slanted her eyes at Catch and I immediately knew her meaning.

  Her ruthlessness was revealed to me, and I wondered if despite her words, she planned this the whole time; she wanted me to kill Catch.

  “In case you were lost on the matter, your sister would spill blood before anyone ever attempted to kill me.” Catch raised his gun, pointing it at my sister. “You and I had a very bad habit of lying to each other.”

  “Jory,” my sister muttered, somehow understanding Catch’s hidden meaning. “So you know the truth about your daughter? So be it. Michael didn’t want the Di Stefanos gone. I lied to you. You wouldn’t work for Michael…whatever. I took your daughter to motivate you to work with me and Jory because you acted like you were too good for the money I offered you. Jory spilled her guts, and I guess you killed her, huh? I’m the last one on your list to kill and finish the job for whoever you really work for, right? ‘Cause I know you aren’t doing this on your own. Someone else wants to wipe the syndicate completely out. They’re idiots, because you can’t make us go away. Someone hungrier will rebuild it."

  "You severely underestimate my employer," Catch snarled. “I had an agenda before you schemed your way into my life. You may have skewed it, but you never changed it.”

  "You should’ve just worked with me," Deana countered. "Fuck it. Do your worst.”

  “No!” I screamed, trying to stand in front of Catch. “You promised me. You said you wouldn’t do this. I hate what she’s done, but she’s still family. My only family. Please, Catch. Let her rot in prison…don’t kill her.” I stepped forward, my hands in prayer position as I supplicated to him.

  He faltered, and I wasn’t sure if it was because my words meant something to him. Violet-blue eyes settled on me for only a second. “I’m your family.” Stretching his arm out in the midst of my sister raising her arm, he moved me away from him.

  They said that a bullet traveled faster than a sound. That you could hear the shot after the burn hit your chest. That for a second, even if it was a kill shot, you would’ve thought your life wasn’t in the balance. For my sister, it wasn’t true.

  Red quickly spread across her chest, staining her white button-up shirt. Her reaction was saturated in what she knew; she was going to die. The hand she kept busy was revealed; she had a gun and her fingers were laced around the trigger. She dropped it and fell to the ground.

  I ran to her, holding her to me, hoping it wasn’t too late.

  Deana wasn’t breathing. The life in her eyes was gone, her pupils turned into large beads.

  The moment barely resonated as though it was all a dream: She hadn’t tapped into her Leone blood and became an equally monstrous version of Michael. She was never killed by Catch’s dead-on aim at her heart, and I’d wake up to her smiling at me. We’d be the family I always wanted and dreamt about, and all the bad never existed in our world.

  When I opened my eyes, the scene hadn’t changed. My worst fears had come to fruition and I had lost the small glimmer of light, leading me toward the future of my daydreams.

  My chest caved. I couldn’t find enough air to breathe.

  * * * * * *

  “You fucking promised me!” I woke out of my nightmare, hardly taking in my surroundings. Catch was driving steadily in traffic, away from the scene we encountered. “You promised you wouldn’t kill her.” My shouts flooded the car and sent painful vibrations to my ears. My hand flew out to punch and scratch any piece of flesh I could get my hands on. “You promised!”

  He pulled off to the side of the road in a squeal of tires, wrangling my arms, restraining me in my seat.

  Touching his neck, he drew back blood from the place where I scratched him. “The cops are on their way. Do you want to get arrested?” His question was snarled.

  I calmed, closing my eyes. “I don’t know if you’re my heaven or hell, Catch. Maybe you’re both.” I bit my trembling lip. Tears expelled, expressing anguish over the gutting pain quickly spreading inside of me. “When will you stop breaking my fucking heart?” An innocent whisper immediately captured his attention.

  He took off his seatbelt and turned to me, holding my head. His gesture was full of a sweetness I couldn’t comprehend, and his eyes were the most perplexing features. He didn’t care, and I wished he’d stop looking at me and behaving as though he did.

  “You’re no longer denying yourself the privilege of feeling the emotions as they come to you.” Taking a deep breath, he spoke soft words in a tone he used to seduce me. “I know you feel like you’ll never overcome any of what you went through.” He slid his hands down and fit his fingers under my chin, angling my head up toward him. “I didn’t break your heart, Simone. I cracked it open and left a scar resembling my name.”

  “All I ever hear you talk about is what you think you do to me.” I slid my hands over his wrists as he held me. “What about you, Catch? Do you care even when the things you do make me think you don’t?”

  His dense eyelashes fluttered over his eyes for a moment. A small amount of rigidness was removed from his posture. “Words are meaningless when it comes to you. I can only show you what you mean to me.” His admission was so shocking, my jaw unhinged.

  Sirens resounded, speeding past us in the opposite direction, rocking the car with the speed at which they passed us.

  I blinked up at Catch, puzzled as to how they came so quickly when I never saw him call them. “W-when?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Releasing me, he placed his seatbelt over his body and turned back to the dash. Shifting the car out of park, he pulled back into traffic. “I burned the prior business down and phoned the cops to rescue the girls after I found Brenley. Does it look like it mattered?”

  I inhaled my pain and exhaled my sadness.

  It mattered when someone was able to hold their little girl again. It mattered that a dozen or so little girls would no longer have to wake up in a hell made by the woman I once called my everything.

  * * * * * *

  Catch stopped off to allow me to change out of my blood-stained clothes and freshen up in a truck stop bathroom.

  When I began to see civilization and an airport, I finally spoke. “Where are you taking me now?” It wasn’t that I had a choice in the matter. Catch was home—a filthy home located on an active fault line with furniture that sometimes disappeared and often had visitors who gave the devil a run for his money. He was the imperfect residence for my fractured and abused soul.

  He pulled into a parking space in the garage and got out of the car.

  I followed, stumbling in my steps to meet him at the trunk of the car as he removed the luggage, waiting for him to answer my question.

  He pulled the key to the car off the ring and reached under the underside of the car, leaving the keys there. Standing tall, he flexed his shoulders and faced me. “I need you to do one thing for me.”

  “You…want me to do something for you? After all you’ve done to me?”

  “I never broke my
promises. You wanted to see your sister, and I took you there.” He leaned against me, holding me, rekindling the sensation burning underneath my skin every time his hands were on me, or his eyes held me. His gaze hit my stomach for a moment, making me self-conscious enough to close my sweater. “I’m your family, and if you accept the inevitable, I’ll give you the family you deserve.”

  He clasped the back of my head, pulling me in deeper. “If I were a different man, I think I would’ve been debilitated by how much I loved you.”

  I’d never experienced a pain buried so deep. No matter how much I rubbed, extracted, or tried to cure it, it would never feel all right again. Everything had changed.

  “The fucked-up thing?” I asked, my voice soft as a whisper. “If you were a different man, I wouldn’t have loved you.”

  -21-

  WHO HE IS

  We touched down in Hartford, Connecticut, and the hours didn’t cure what was sick. A medley of emotions were so strong I couldn’t ignore them anymore. In spite of all the things Catch had done to me, I was at his side, wanting him to comfort me like he had before, and tell me it would all work out in the end.

  He pulled up and parked alongside the curb in front of a colonial with several other similar-looking classic colonials.

  His eyes were elsewhere, staring out the windshield down the road.

  The ring he gave me caught the light from the sun, peeking down onto the street. “Do you want me to take this off?”

  “Keep it on.” He took a deep breath as though he was preparing to go on stage for an epic performance and fixed a pair of sunglasses on his face.

  Halfway to the doorstep, while I was lost in wonder at the Christmas lights decorating the house and the nativity scene nestled in the snow not too far from the doorway, he turned to me. “Grady.”

  I looked at Catch with question. Realizing he couldn’t see my eyes through my sunglasses, I opened my mouth to clarify. “What?”

  Sliding his hand down my arm, he linked his fingers with mine. “You should know my name from me, and not them.”

  “Oh,” I said, my voice light as air as I tried to digest it. He said there was power in a name, and I couldn’t agree with him more. The name Catch held a terrifying amount of power. I didn’t need to know the man underneath it who played pretend for the world. “Them?”

  “The two people responsible for bringing me into the world.”

  I snapped my head back at the house in complete wonder. It was an average upper to upper-middle-class neighborhood, complete with lush green lawns, dense trees, neighbors who waved, and kids who played hockey in the streets. Men and women bundled up in winter coats walked along the plowed sidewalk with their dogs without a care.

  What was behind the door to the home had to give clues to the man beside me. I cared, despite wishing I didn’t. Every time I tried to stow away the feelings I had for him with memories of the time I spent with him, they wouldn’t stay sewn up inside me. My stitches were easily torn apart with one look or one touch, leaving me bleeding all over again.

  The door opened to reveal Mr. And Mrs. Perfect, a couple with great genetics.

  Mrs. Colson wore a white floral dress and kitten heels. Her thick, dark hair was perfectly curled. Her makeup looked professionally done. She seemed poised for the best dressed at the upper echelon society’s tea party.

  Mr. Colson, a spitting image of Catch many years from now, was dressed in a starched black plaid shirt and slacks. Their genuine smiles reached their eyes as they embraced Catch with little cackles of joy. In the way he held his parents, I could see it. The man was good at pretending—he really didn’t feel much of anything for the people who gave him life.

  They turned to me with sunny smiles and embraced me like we were old friends.

  “Simone,” they said in perfect unison, each of them taking one of my hands, pulling me inside. His mother hugged me again, squeezing me tightly. “I’m so happy to meet you, Simone.” She rocked while hugging me and laughed.

  Not used to such a warm greeting, it took me a minute to put my arms around her. As she withdrew, she held up my left hand.

  “Grady has told me so much about you,” she beamed, shooting a covert wink at Catch.

  I had no idea when or how he found the time to tell his parents about me.

  “Usually we have to twist his arm to see the women he’s dating,” his father muttered, his thick Italian accent bleeding into his words, calling for his wife to playfully nudge him. “Not with you. I suppose it’s because none of the women he brought here had that on their finger.” Mr. Colson’s eyes widened at the ring on my finger. “That is some ring. How much did it set you back?”

  I’d never stepped foot in a place with such normal purity. I felt disgustingly dirty and out of place. Catch obviously did as well; if he were any more rigid, he’d be a statue made of titanium.

  “Don’t scare her away, Father,” the mother said to him.

  “I’m just joshing, Mother,” said the father.

  “Oh he spent a pretty penny on this one.” She leaned forward, allowing the sun to catch the ring and send a prism of colors onto the vaulted ceiling of the foyer. “The ring is gorgeous.”

  “That’s probably because I let her pick the ring,” Catch said with a tame grin only I seemed to know was fake.

  “Smart man,” Mrs. Colson said, speaking out the corner of her mouth toward her son. “You get those smarts from your mother, of course.” Her blue eyes scanned over me. “I’m Juliette, but you can call me Juli for short and you can call my husband The Gun.” She cupped her hand partially over her mouth and said, “It’s his middle name, Gunner, but I like to josh him.”

  “Only she is allowed to call me that.” Mr. Colson playfully wagged a finger at me. “You, young lady, can call me Gio.”

  “Nice to meet you both,” I said, trying to smile; I couldn’t.

  Juli pulled me into the kitchen, chattering about the dish she had cooked and needed help with. She waited until Gio and Catch disappeared out the front door to get our luggage.

  She turned, pressing her back to the wall and covered her face. I would never have known she was crying until her chest began to heave and shake.

  I immediately embraced her.

  “Thank you,” she said, collecting herself and grabbing my hands for a moment. “We prayed on it and promised we would stay strong for Grady. I haven’t seen him since Brenley passed away about a year ago. A parent should never have to bury their own child.” With a nod to assure me she was better, she began to flit around a large kitchen that could’ve been any serious cook’s dream.

  “Forgive me, Lord, I know I’m not supposed to speak ill of the dead.” Her eyes shot up to the ceiling. “But I knew it. I knew it would happen when he married that girl because she became pregnant. She grew up around the corner from Grady, but everyone knew that house was full of sin. Her father wasn’t a nice man. I lost count of the times the police were called because he came home drunk and beat his wife. The sweet woman never left him.

  “Jenna had her baby while high on prescription drugs. She and Grady never got along. When he filed for divorce, she sold her parents a lie that got our grandchild taken out of Grady’s hands and provoked a custody battle.

  “We thought the judge would take our precious grandchild away from us. That woman made horrible claims; she said Grady was a sociopath who did horrible things to her. A boldfaced lie. You know it as well as I do.” She glanced at my ring. “Grady is a good man, always has been. He would break his back to carry a friend if he had to. I couldn’t have asked for a more incredible son. He was our miracle baby and outstanding at everything thrown at him. He deserved better than her.

  “Brenley was kidnapped in the middle of the court battle for custody. To this day, I know Jenna had something to do with it. She told Grady if he didn’t want her, he couldn’t have his child either. Evil. Just evil.”

  I slid off the stool, unable to look at her. “Do you mind if I freshe
n up?”

  “Where are my manners? You sure can.” She took a quick peek in the magnet mirror on the refrigerator, and moved with the grace of a queen toward the front of the home.

  The house was all yellow painted walls here, with bright floral borders, or bright blue paint there with a wallpapered accent wall.

  At the fifth door down in an upstairs hall she opened the bedroom door. “This was Grady’s old room. We redid it when he moved out after college because it…didn’t fit the house.” She pointed to the door beside a window at the north wall. “Bathroom is right over there.” Clutching my arm, she stroked it like a mother would a child. “I hope you feel better. I’ll send Grady up to check on you.”

  “Please don’t,” I blurted out, sending alarm to her face. I fought back the desire to shake her and tell her her son was a psychopath. If she and I were standing on the same island when it came to Catch, she would’ve said what I knew; the heart is louder than the head.

  “It was a long trip,” I told her, unsure if she knew I was pregnant. “I need some time alone.”

  She sat on the bed and folded her legs, indicating I had said the wrong thing. “Did you and Grady get into an argument? Oh, honey, he’s probably not feeling like himself. I think he’ll feel like himself again once you two start a family.”

  I immediately felt awful and I was sure it showed on my face. “I don’t mean to sound like a cold hearted bi—”

  Her eyebrows lifted and a curled lip indicated she didn’t approve.

  “Sorry,” I offered. “It’s complicated.” I glanced at the door. “Thank you for being so nice to me. Think I’m jet-lagged.”

  “Oh, honey, that’s all you had to say.” With a nod, she ejected off the bed. “Grady told us that you two flew in from the Caribbean—the romantic getaway that resulted in that beautiful diamond on your finger. I’m sure you two were busy. Get some rest before dinner.” With a grim smile and a firm tug of my hand, she was gone.