by Shen, L. J.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, putting Xander in his stroller by the door, following her.
I heard Sailor muttering, “A-hole,” behind my back.
“I heard that.”
“You were meant to!” She tugged at Rooney’s ponytail out of frustration.
I leaned against the kitchen island, watching Sparrow taking out bottles of cabernet from the wine fridge to go with the roast, pouring the sky-high Yorkshire pudding, mashed sweet potatoes, and balsamic mushrooms into fancy serving bowls.
“There’s something different about you,” Sparrow observed, studying me through her sharp green eyes.
“Different how?” I took a pull of my beer.
“Different … pensive.” She shoved the Yorkshire pudding tray into my hands. “Put this on the table.”
I did as she said. I may have been a murderer, an underground mob boss, and a savage with no morals to speak of, but I was also whipped to the bone where my adoptive mother was concerned.
“I’m the same usual shade of fucked-up as I’ve always been,” I drawled, reappearing in the kitchen. She wasn’t wrong, though. I had a lot of shit on my plate with a side of diarrhea and an appetizer of stale manure.
The Russians in Brookline were running amok, desperately trying to unshackle themselves from my claws. Operation Ruin Gerald was in full swing, and then there was his little monster of a daughter, who despite everything ran circles in my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about Thanksgiving. The mystery surrounding Aisling.
Sure, I could get all the answers in the world if I just put surveillance on her, as I did on so many other people in the city, but that was admitting defeat and succumbing to the idea that I gave a fuck, and I didn’t give a fuck.
Fuck, I gave a fuck.
Well, half a fuck.
Definitely not enough of a fuck to fuck up my entire working relationship with the Brennans, that was for sure.
Sparrow pushed Dijon-covered Brussels sprouts and a pile of sweet mashed potatoes into my hands. I went back to the dining room to unload the food. When I came back, she cornered me between the fridge and the kitchen island.
“Are you sure it’s not about Cat?”
“Positive. And by the way, buying her a tombstone? Dumb move. Grow a fucking spine, Spar.”
“I have a spine. I also have a son who is so deeply in denial about his feelings, he can’t see straight. Have you ever heard of Selichot?” She tried—and failed—to tuck her crazy ginger curls behind her ear.
“No.” I reached to the loose tendril, helping her.
“Every year, practicing Jews recite penitential poems and prayers leading to the High Holidays. The thirteen attributes of mercy are a central theme throughout these prayers. Instead of going to a Catholic confession, the Jews go to the people they have wronged individually and ask for their forgiveness. It’s soul cleansing, they say. I have a feeling one day you’ll wake up and realize you need to atone—to receive forgiveness—for your sins. I think this day is fast approaching, and having a tombstone to go visit will serve you well.”
“Ask for forgiveness from Cat?” I stroked my chin, pretending to mull this over. “Forgiveness for what? Being the fastest sperm who was unfortunate enough to bump into her egg … or expecting her to perform her motherly duties for the half second she raised me?”
“For hating her,” Sparrow said, her voice steady, her chin high. “A son cannot hate his mother.”
“This one can and does. Actually, it’s not even hate. I’m indifferent, which is so much more humiliating.”
“Neutral men are the Devil’s allies.” She snatched my hand from her face, squeezing, refusing to let me go.
“The Devil and I get along fine.” I smirked, amused by her display of emotions, arching one eyebrow. “Anything else?”
“What are you not indifferent about?” she demanded.
“Nothing. Nothing matters to me.”
“Bull, meet shit,” she hissed. “Something is bothering you.”
“It’s none of your concern.”
“And it’s not yours either, right? Big Sam Brennan doesn’t care about things. He is above emotions,” Sparrow poked. I saw what she was trying to do. Make me take action, pursue what I wanted, blah blah fucking blah.
The only thing that bugged me, remotely, was the Nix thing, and I wasn’t going to pursue it.
Knowing what Aisling did for a living wasn’t going to make any difference. The more I knew about her, the more I wanted to get to know her, and there was no point in that because soon enough, I was going to kill her father.
“Mom!” Sailor called from the dining room. “Hurry up, Roon Loon is starving.”
Sparrow brushed past me but not before pinning me with a look.
Dinner was uneventful. Hunter talked shop, Troy talked basketball and football, and Rooney tried to sneak scraps of food under the table for her imaginary, friendly monster. Afterward, Sailor and Troy served dessert while I crawled around on all fours. Rooney rode me, using my hair as reins, her laughter rolling down my back.
Three hours later, I was on my way to the door after completing my familial duties for the week. Sparrow grabbed my arm on my way out—because why the fuck not?—and flashed me an I’m-about-to-give-you-a-mouthful-and-there’s-jack-shit-you-can-do-about-it look.
“Remember our conversation the night of?”
“Night of?” I asked sardonically.
“The night you moved in with us permanently.”
The night Cat finally threw me to the curb.
“What about it?” I tensed, even after all these years.
“I told you one day a woman was going to change your mind about all women.”
I cocked my head, flashing her a pitiful look.
“You were wrong.”
“I’m about to be right. I have a feeling. A mother always has a feeling about her children. I was watching you today and…” she stopped, squeezing my arm tighter “…I don’t know how to explain this, but it is close. I could feel it. But you are fighting this. I can tell. You can’t reject fate, Sam. Whatever it is, go to her.”
Petting her head, I said, “She better fucking hope I don’t go to her because everything I touch, I ruin.”
With that, I gave her a peck on the cheek, leaving with a playful smile on my face.
Nothing could stop me from getting what I wanted, and what I wanted was to destroy Gerald.
Not even a like-minded monster with eyes like jewels.
It was a short distance from Sparrow and Troy’s place to my apartment block.
So short, in fact, after ten minutes of driving, I was starting to wonder why the fuck I wasn’t home yet. I looked around and realized I was heading straight to the clinic where Aisling had operated on my soldiers a little over a week ago.
God-fucking-dammit.
This wasn’t in my plan, but I was already halfway through Boston, heading toward Dorchester, so there was no point turning around now. Besides, it had nothing to do with Aisling. I wasn’t in the habit of not knowing things about my clients and their families. If Aisling was up to something stupid, I had to stop her.
I parked in front of the Victorian building, surveying it.
It was Sunday evening, so it was most likely empty. Then again, it was an underground clinic, so visiting hours may vary. When I was sure the place was deserted, I got out of the car and proceeded to break in. The front door was embarrassingly easy to tamper with, and when I descended the stairs to the actual clinic, there was a second flimsy door I only needed to shake a little to pry open.
I went for the third door—the door leading to the surgical room, where Nix treated Becker and Angus. This one was a breeze, too. Once inside her office, I started throwing drawers open and took note of the medicine they kept there, typing the long names of them on my phone so I could conduct a deeper research once I got home.
I checked every piece of furniture, examined every nook and corner until I hit the jackpot.
&
nbsp; The patients’ files.
The first telltale sign something was wrong was the fact there was only one folder. Yellow and razor thin. What kind of clinic only took six to seven patients?
The kind that has very specific requirements to accept people in the first place.
I began flipping through the files, reading the patients’ records, their test results, their consultation recommendations.
Something didn’t add up. The drugs. The number of patients. The setting. I knew a scheme when I saw one, and this was so fucking fishy it gave the Atlantic a run for its money. One thing was for sure—whatever Aisling did, there was a good reason why she wanted to keep it a secret from her family and friends.
It wasn’t kosher.
It wasn’t good, or innocent, or fitting for the angelic Fitzpatrick. The Mother Teresa everyone knew and loved.
I tucked the folder back into the cabinet.
I was right.
She was a monster.
A terrible monster.
A sweet, beautiful Nix.
Now I just had to find out what her sins were.
I made a pit stop at Badlands and slipped into one of the card rooms, downing three stiff drinks to take the edge off what I saw at the clinic. Nix was a doctor, all right, but she didn’t work at the hospital or any of the registered clinics around town. Whatever she did, it was secretive, illegal, and had nothing to do with people without insurance.
Stop thinking about Nix. She is just collateral.
Collateral and an inconvenience at best and a complication at worse.
I needed to get my head out of my ass and be ridden by someone who wasn’t my niece. It was time for a diversion. A reminder there were other pussies out there. Just as good and warm and tight as Aisling’s and not half as troublesome.
Pent-up lust.
That was all it was.
I was a busy man ruling the underworld of one of the seediest, dirtiest places in the country. It’d been a long-ass time since I drowned myself in a woman. Aisling was the last, and the woman before her happened so long ago I forgot her name, her hair color, and the setting.
A good fuck would make all of this go away.
I moseyed out of the card room and into the club, ignoring the enthusiastic claps on my back and conversation starters, and scanned the mass of sweaty, dancing figures melding together. I pressed the tumbler of whiskey to my lips.
Humans appalled me.
Despite my reputation, I didn’t just fuck anything with a pulse. I had dry spells of the self-inflicted kind since fucking ultimately required talking to people, and talking to people was a punishment even a good pussy wasn’t worth sometimes.
There were always whores, who didn’t demand meaningful conversation, but I wasn’t a fan of shoving my dick where so many others had been.
I immediately decided which woman I wanted to spend the night with. She had bleached blonde hair, a fake tan, long legs, and a pink mini-dress so tacky removing it from her would be my Christian duty.
Most of all, she looked nothing like Nix.
I snapped my fingers in the bouncers’ direction, pointing at her.
“I’ll have that one,” I clipped then proceeded to turn around and go up the stairs to my office, past the card rooms.
In my office, I busied myself by flipping through the betting books, tugging at my hair and not thinking about Nix.
A knock on the door made me drop the fat book on my desk.
“Open.” I sat back, sprawling out in my executive chair.
The blonde pushed the door open, giggling excitedly as she shut it behind her, and pressed her back against the bullet-chipped wood.
“Hi! I’m Dani,” she squeaked, tossing her hair to one shoulder. “Your bouncer showed me up. It’s my first time at Badlands. Honestly, my friends are, like, kind of freaking out about all this. You calling me here, I mean. We heard about you a lot, obvs. But we didn’t even know you came to this place, like often …”
I tuned her out, focusing on how her lips moved, fast and eager. Everything about her was wrong from her juicy, probably enhanced lips to her definitely penciled-in eyebrows. Her fake eyelashes looked like a shredded semitrailer tire. Her heavy makeup and dry hair full of split ends grated on my nerves in a way that felt personal. Nothing about her felt right.
Or good.
Or delectable.
Complex, dangerous, maddening.
I wanted Aisling. Aisling’s demureness. Her sharp little nose and aristocratic, well-proportioned lips. Her natural hair and skin and teeth. She didn’t succumb to modern beauty standards, and there was something irresistible about it. Aisling had that blue-blooded look of a woman you couldn’t imagine on all fours, getting fucked rough and dirty from behind. Men were simple creatures, so that meant it was precisely what I wanted to do—plow into her Royal Highness, rough and dirty, from behind while she chanted my name.
The girl in front of me continued blabbing. Hell if I knew about what. It occurred to me, now that I looked at her up-close, that she was young. Legal, yes, but much younger than me.
“… kind of down for anything, really. And, like, I know you only do casual, so that’s totally okay—”
“How old are you?” I cut into her stream of words, already in need of two fucking Advils and one bullet to put me out of my misery.
“What?” She looked startled, her brown eyes widening in panic. “What do you mean?”
“Your age,” I jeered, irritated with myself for apparently growing a fucking conscience somewhere between Aisling’s clinic and Badlands. “What is it?”
“Twenty … five?”
“Is that a fucking question?”
“No …?”
“Then why do you keep putting question marks after your answers?”
Her generation was going to run this country one day. No fucking wonder I had a fake Swedish passport, just in case. Say hello to Ludvig fucking Nilsson.
She blinked slowly, like this was a test. I was half sure she was illiterate.
“Show me your ID.” I opened my palm, stretching my arm in her direction.
“This is ridiculous.” She laughed, her neck and ears turning pink. “I’m legal! Everyone gets carded here.”
Not everyone. Aisling didn’t on Halloween, and now my dick wanted a subscription card to her pussy.
Never mind that I fired the bastard who let Aisling in the following day.
“You have five seconds before I blacklist you,” I said dryly.
“From the club?” She sucked in a breath.
“From the city,” I corrected. “Your ID, Dani.”
She rummaged through her knockoff Chanel purse with a huff, producing her driver’s license and slapping it over my palm. I lit a cigarette and sat back, rubbing my forehead as I studied it.
Twenty-two.
Danielle Rondiski was twenty-two.
A practical baby in comparison to me.
Still, legal enough to drink, to fuck, and to be here.
She was also a natural brunette with pasty white skin when that photo was taken but had since graduated from the Bimbo Academy and morphed into what was standing in front of me right now, an inflatable version of Charlotte McKinney.
I whipped the card back at her. “Get out.”
“Mr. Brennan …”
“Out.”
“Age is just a number.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” I tried—and failed—to find the conversation frustrating. Truth was, I was bored. So far from the realms of any other emotion, I couldn’t muster it if I tried.
I wasn’t annoyed. I was horny for something I couldn’t get my hands on, and the boring words coming out of her mouth were killing my erection.
“If age is just a number, then temperature is just a number, too. And money. And cancerous cells. And war casualties. Numbers are everything. Numbers are what separates life from death. Numbers run this world. There’s no just about them. Now get the fuc
k out.”
After sending Dani on her way with my Rain Man speech, and coming to terms with the fact my dick and I were both going to bed lonely tonight, I got into my car and drove to my apartment. My instincts told me the clusterfuck of today was in full swing and to expect the worst.
My instincts were never wrong.
Because Aisling fucking Fitzpatrick was waiting at my door.
A reward—or a punishment—from Karma?
Her back was pressed against the wood, sitting cross-legged, head bent down, the cool glow of her phone illuminating the planes of her face. She looked up as soon as I stepped out of the elevator, scrambling to her feet, smoothing her black, conservative dress over her curves. Her coat was folded and rested on her forearm neatly.
“I ought to kill you.” I pushed past her callously, punching the code to my door and opening it without making a move inside.
“That wouldn’t be out of character for you,” she murmured from behind me. “What didn’t I do this time?”
“You cockblocked me.”
“I wasn’t even anywhere near you all day!” she protested, the delight in her voice giving her a cheery lilt.
“You didn’t have to be. The PTSD of fucking you put me off the whole concept for life. Congratulations.”
“That’s why you had to finger me again, right? Just to make sure it really was that horrible the first time,” she sassed back.
“I fingered you to deny you an orgasm, not because I wanted you,” I replied drily.
“You really know how to woo a girl. No wonder I was obsessed with you.”
“Was?” I turned around to shoot her a dark smile, my hand on the door handle. “Last I checked, you are still running after me like a puppy and even took it to the next level and are now showing up at my place, creeper-style.”
“You show up at my place all the time, too. I don’t call you a creeper.”
“That’s different. I work with your father. I cannot escape the sight of you, no matter how much I want to.”
I was really on a roll tonight. All I needed was red-tipped horns and to sacrifice a baby or two to complete my transformation into Lucifer.