by Shen, L. J.
The ice around my frozen heart cracked, just an inch.
Letters.
Two hours after finding the letters, I was still sitting on the floor, looking like Gulliver in a Barbie house—the junkie, whore edition—reading through them again and again and a-motherfucking-gain, digesting what I’d just learned.
Apparently, Catalina made Mrs. Masterson promise she’d make sure I’d find these letters, and she had a damn good reason for it.
My estranged mother wanted me to know her life story. At least a part of it. Question was—why?
Even as I read the letters for the hundredth time, I still couldn’t figure out if she wanted sympathy, revenge, or to give an explanation for her behavior.
All twenty-three letters were addressed to Gerald Fitzpatrick, then CEO of the oil company Royal Pipelines and the man I currently worked for on retainer as a fixer.
Coincidentally, he was also the father of Hunter Fitzpatrick, my sister Sailor’s husband, and Aisling Fitzpatrick, the woman I had fucked hours ago. I could still feel her sweet warmth wrapped around my cock whenever I thought about it. I pushed the memory away bitterly.
What I’d read in those letters changed the entire course of my life.
My dearest Gerald,
Thank you for bringing new hope into my life. For making me see that there is more than what I was left with after Brock passed away.
The word ‘mistress’ rings licentious and cheap, doesn’t it? It doesn’t do justice to what I am to you, my dear. To how I feel about you.
I know you’ll never leave Jane for me. I’m not stupid. I’ve learned to live with the burden of being the other woman. All I ask is for a part of your heart. It could be small. A fraction of what you gave to her.
Could you offer me a chunk of that organ that beats inside your chest?
Thank you for inspiring me to become a better person, a better mother, a better lover.
Yours forever,
—Cat.
My dearest Gerald,
We are having a baby! Can you believe it? I sure can’t.
I’m so excited. I know it wasn’t in your plan. Trust me when I say it wasn’t in mine, either. Not when Sam is practically a little boy. A pre-teen. Look, Gerald, I know you and I haven’t been together for very long, and here I thought the diaper-changing days were behind me, but I really think it’s a sign. I guess life has its way of showing us our paths.
I included our pregnancy test. Would you like to come with me to my first OB-GYN appointment? No pressure, but I would love that.
Oh, and by the way, I would absolutely adore it if you could bring me some prenatal vitamins from the store next time we see each other. Gotta keep the little one healthy and strong!
Yours forever,
—Cat.
Dear Gerald,
I did not appreciate it today when you breezed past me when I came to see you at your office. You may be done with me, that much you have made abundantly clear, but you are definitely NOT done with the baby growing inside of me. I am not getting rid of him (YES, HIM) for any price in the world, much less the amount you have offered me to have an abortion.
You can ignore me all you want. For weeks, for months, for eternity. At the end of the day, this baby is coming out of me, and it is yours. You are going to have to face this reality, one day or the other.
Call me back. You know my number.
Yours sometimes,
—Cat.
Gerald,
I want you to know I will never forgive you for what you did to me. To us.
You are a killer. A murderer. I had a son. Jacob. He was inside me. I was pregnant. He kicked and rolled and always moved in pleasure whenever he listened to his big bother’s voice.
He was your child.
I understand that this posed a complication to your perfect life. But it was still the one thing I looked forward to and made me push through my bleak life.
I also understand you own an oil company, that you already have heirs, that the battle over your will, when you die, is going to be a vicious one.
BUT HE WAS YOUR SON.
He was your son and you yanked him out of my body cruelly. You hit me. You threw me around. You pried him out of me. You beat me so badly, you left no room for doubt what was going to happen next.
I had a miscarriage after what went down between us yesterday. That was your plan, wasn’t it? To beat him out of me? Well, it worked.
I bled and bled and bled until I had to run to the hospital, where they told me I lost him.
I was five months pregnant, Gerald. Which meant I had to go through a still birth. Did you know I was three months sober? Had been since I found out we were pregnant.
I wanted to give this baby a new, fresh start. To raise Jacob and Samuel together, and give them the opportunity to fulfill their potential. To turn over a new leaf.
To atone for all my sins.
Now all of that is gone. I am back to square one, confused and lost as ever.
And you, of course, are still not answering. You got what you wanted. My complete destruction so I won’t be a threat to you anymore.
As I’m writing this to you, I’ve found the bag of crack you left at my doorstep. I know it was you who asked the drugs to be delivered. You always loved me more when I was high, even if it meant I wasn’t there for Sam.
Fuck Sam, right? If push comes to shove, we can always give him a little something to subdue him, too. That was your idea. To drug him so he would be quiet. So we could talk on the phone. Well, it stopped working once he was old enough to fight back, and we all know how that turned out. He’d almost bit my skin off the last time I tried to drug him.
Don’t worry, Gerald, I’ll take the drugs. I’ll fall down the rabbit hole. I’ll become a useless body, an empty container that’s only good for one thing—giving you pleasure.
And again, the cycle goes.
Drugs. Alcohol. Rehab. Rock bottom. Repeat.
This is all your fault, and if they ever take Sam away from me, I hope you know it’ll be on your conscience.
Forever not yours,
—Cat.
Gerald,
As I said on our phone call yesterday, I am not going to leave you alone until you pay me for my silence.
You made me miscarry our unborn son. The media is going to know who you really are and what you’re capable of unless you pay up.
And no, I am definitely not going to take your measly 50k and move away, especially as you and I both know that’ll mean having to leave Sam behind. No way am I going to be able to raise him on my own, and it’s not like Troy and Sparrow are going to let me take him away anyway.
300k will allow us a fresh start. A good rehab center. An apartment in a decent school district. Do the right thing, Gerald. I have people I know in California who could help me. Pay up and make this nightmare disappear.
With hate,
—Cat.
Gerald,
Fine. 150k it is.
When I pointed out 300k would mean I could take Sam with me, you laughed in my face and said the boy wasn’t your problem. It’s on you that I left my son behind, not me.
You have plans for him, don’t you? You said so yourself. Broken, impressionable men from the wrong side of the tracks make good soldiers. The rich thrive on the poor. Well, think again, because Troy Brennan took him under his wing, and if there is one person in Boston who is stronger than you, it’s Troy. I trust he would protect Sam from you, although I don’t entirely trust you not to get your claws on Sam anyway. Use him and drain him of anything good and worthy he possesses, like you did to me.
I don’t know how far 150k is going to get me, but I know it’s not going to be far enough away from you.
I will never forgive you.
For throwing me back into the arms of drugs.
For making me miscarry Jacob.
For making me leave Sam.
You are a monster, Gerald. And monsters are born to be slayed.
You tore my family apart, and one day, the same will be done to you.
Samuel has Troy now, and Troy is the one man you cannot push around.
For the last time,
—Cat.
I dropped the last of the letters on the floor, raking my fingers through my hair.
Apparently, Cat and Gerald had had an affair. Not only that, but that affair had resulted in a child. An unborn son named Jacob. Gerald objected to Jacob’s birth so badly that when he realized Cat was keeping him, he’d decided to beat him out of her.
He got her hooked back on drugs then paid her off to move away and leave me behind.
There were holes the size of the fucking White House in this story.
For one thing, the woman in the letters sounded nothing like Cat. Catalina was cynical, ill-tempered, and about as motherly as a studded dildo. Either she put on one hell of an Oscar-worthy act for Gerry Fitzpatrick or she really had been on the brink of changing. My bet was on the former.
I doubted he was the one who had told her to drug me. The timeline didn’t add up. There was no way they’d been lovers for that long.
Other than that, it seemed legit. The details lined up.
Cat did have a spell of sobriety a few months prior to skipping town, followed by a few, erratic weeks of binging on drugs and spiraling downhill.
I also had the misfortune of knowing Gerald personally, so I happened to be privy to the fact he was a notorious adulterer who’d yet to find one pussy he didn’t want to stick his cock in.
I didn’t know him to be violent, but I didn’t know him to be nonviolent either. The circumstantial evidence against him was substantial, and I didn’t put it past him to commit a crime of passion if he needed to save his own skin.
He and Jane Fitzpatrick were a match made in upper class hell. They both came from rich families, were of the same cultural background, and had a lot to gain by marrying one another. They also had another thing in common: they were both intolerable—to the point of not being able to stand each other.
Over the years, the old man had cheated on his wife more days than I could count. It wasn’t farfetched to believe that Cat, whose favorite flavor of dick was married, had managed to land herself a fat wallet for a lover in Gerald Fitzpatrick.
The letters were all addressed to Gerald’s then bachelor pad, another telltale sign that they were genuine. I knew all of the Fitzpatricks’ properties like the palm of my hand, and the address Catalina had sent the letters to before they bounced back was the same address Gerald had used to meet his mistresses, before gifting the property to Sailor and Hunter as a wedding gift.
There were also pictures attached to the letters.
Polaroids of Cat perched in Gerald’s lap, kissing his cheek. Pictures of them in exotic locations. On vacations. Birthdays. And a pregnancy test so old the two pink lines were faint and weak.
Not only did all the facts line up immaculately, but I remembered.
Remembered her brief period of soberness.
Remembered the day Cat came home looking like a train wreck, bleeding and bruised.
Her brokenness, so pathetic, so whole, even I couldn’t hate her in that moment.
How she crawled inside her bed, balling up and crying uncontrollably, shaking like a leaf, and I found myself helpless, torn between helping her and hating her for yet again failing to feed me.
How in the middle of the night she had skulked to my grandmother’s bedside—Grandma Maria and I had shared a room the size of a closet—and croaked, “Call an ambulance. I have to get to the hospital. Now.”
The betrayal was overwhelming.
Gerald knew I was Catalina’s biological son all along, and he still used my services.
According to her, he’d been distantly grooming me for the job I was doing today.
He had driven my mother to drugs and alcohol.
Impregnated her then beat her to a point of miscarriage.
Then made her leave me.
I could’ve had a different life.
A better life.
He deprived me of a fair, second chance and wasn’t even man enough to come clean about it when our paths crossed again.
Gerald Fitzpatrick robbed me out of a future, my family, my unborn brother.
For that, he was going to pay.
With his blood.
With his tears.
With his goddamn miserable fucking life.
I’d been Boston’s fixer my entire adult life. Since Troy had decided to retire from the gig when I turned twenty-two and turned to more lucrative and legal businesses. I’d always viewed it as his birthday gift to me. I took over the family business, tackling each problem the rich and influential people of Boston came to me with, no matter how wildly unorthodox it was.
By twenty-two, I’d broken enough bones and crushed enough skulls to be feared and respected everywhere I went, both by the criminals and the law.
Troy was playing house with Sparrow, running their restaurants and staying away from the heat by the time my name hit the FBI’s most wanted list. He knew I was different—a few shades darker with an appetite for blood—and had long given up on taming me.
My whole life, I’d fixed things for other people.
It was time to allow myself the luxury of one, uncalculated destruction.
Kill everything Gerald Fitzpatrick loved and cherished, just as he did to me.
Karma never lost an address.
And I was going to make sure his would arrive in a timely fucking manner.
Catalina Greystone’s tombstone was black.
Irony was a bitch, but it sure had a decent sense of humor.
I didn’t know how or why Cat had been buried in a cemetery in Atlanta but had an inkling my adoptive mother had everything to do with it.
Sparrow was a practical yet inconveniently sentimental person. Even though she wasn’t religious, the vein of Catholic virtue ran thick and full in her body.
She couldn’t bear knowing Catalina would get cremated then thrown into a trash can when no one claimed her ashes. Sparrow couldn’t chance the slight unlikely scenario in which I’d ever want to go visit her grave.
I spent the next couple days in my hotel room in Atlanta, ignoring phone calls, taking discreet meetings with local gang leaders and drug lords, and plotting my revenge on Gerald. On day three, I checked out and went to Catalina’s tombstone. Mrs. Masterson called to let me know they already put the stone up and asked if I wanted to go see it with her. I declined politely—there was only so much shitty apple pie and idle conversation a man could tolerate—but I still decided to make a pit stop at the cemetery before heading to the airport and back to Boston, mostly to ensure the bitch was six feet under and very much dead.
The mossy earth sank beneath my loafers as I buried my fists inside the pockets of my black pea coat, strolling toward the tombstone—smooth, fresh, and shiny, a memorial to my broken childhood.
I stopped when I reached it, smirking grimly when I noticed Sparrow had omitted the word ‘mother’ from Cat’s short list of titles. Guess it was petty o’clock when she placed the order for it.
The air was bitingly cold, unusually so for Georgia, the wind lashing against my face. I lit a cigarette between numb fingers, smirking around it as I used the tip of my loafer to smear a smudge of mud over the glossy stone, dirtying it up a little.
“Good riddance, sweetheart.”
I crouched down, touching the gravestone with the hand that held my cigarette, marveling at how brief human life was. One century at best was hardly enough time to enjoy what this planet had to offer.
“You know, Cat, I thought about killing you often enough. Every other month, maybe. There is something poetic in taking a life from the person who gave you one,” I tsked, surprised to discover I wasn’t as happy as I thought I’d be about her finally being gone. “But then it all boiled down to the same thing: killing a person is taking a risk. You were never worth the risk. That’s your life s
tory in a nutshell, isn’t it, Catalina? Never more than an afterthought. So many lovers, and fake friends, and fiancés, and even a husband, yet no one has ever visited your grave. Only an eighty-five-year-old neighbor who would find Stalin lovable. I guess it’s goodbye.” I stood up, taking one last drag from my cigarette, flicking it over the tombstone then spitting on the lit ember to snuff it out.
I turned around without looking back.
Another one bites the dust.
“Do not let this spin out of control,” Troy warned the following day while we were sitting in my office in Badlands, enjoying a hot toddy—heavy on the whiskey—and the blissful sound of my workers running around in the hallway, fulfilling my orders.
He rifled through the stack of call logs between Catalina and Gerald from decades ago that I handed him a few minutes before. His fingers were still tinted blue from the outdoor cold, his pale face tinged pink by Boston’s winter’s bite.
“How did you even find this prehistoric piece of evidence?”
“I’m a very resourceful man,” I drawled.
“No shit.”
The first thing I did when I got to Boston was dig deeper into the Cat/Gerald affair and find out more about their relationship. From the calls they’d made to each other, the two had begun bumping uglies when I was four years old and ended on the cusp of her leaving when I was nine.
It was unbelievable and yet completely logical that the first and only time Catalina had said the truth was also the time she confessed to something as appalling as an affair with the man who paid me thirty million dollars annually to make his problems go away—and to never touch his daughter.
Catalina was a fucking headache, even after her death, but Gerald was the real villain of the story because his drug wasn’t crack cocaine. It was pussy, and he should have known better.
“Remember your sister is married to Gerald’s son. We’re family.” Troy smoothed a hand over his blazer, his expression loaded with hostility. Everything about him was cocked and ready to detonate like a loaded pistol.