Mr. Dangerous (The Dangerous Delaney Brothers Book 1)

by July Dawson

  "How can you say that about your grandson?"

  "I can say that and still love him because I've learned that you can't depend on a man for much, and you certainly can't depend on them for your happiness." Rebecca sat down on the step, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. "God knows my husband, and my sons, and my grandsons have proven that to me. Here's hoping for a great-grand-daughter, one of these days."

  I wanted to defend Rob, and at the same time, he had done an incredibly stupid thing. "I have to get back to the party. It will look strange that I'm not there."

  "I'm sorry for what I did to you. I do hope you find your happiness, Naomi."

  "Yeah," I said. I felt a dull, aching throb in my chest, as if the pain in my heart was manifesting physically. "Me too."

  32

  Rob

  I couldn't get Naomi to stay near me for more than a few seconds. Every time I found her, she moved on before I could say more than a few words to her. The charming smile she had for everyone else didn't look quite the same when she turned it on me. It didn't reach her eyes.

  "Naomi," I said, catching her hand with mine. "What's going on?"

  "Nothing," she said. "I need to socialize. Thank all these kind people for coming. Work them over for future donations."

  "Naomi--" I began, but her fingers slid through mine and she walked away. I crossed my arms, frustrated, and watched her go.

  But when the party was fading, the musicians playing one last song, the wait staff in the kitchen beginning to pack up the tubs again, I walked through the foyer looking for her. I glimpsed her running down the steps in front of the house towards the valet.

  Running. Away from me. Like Cinderella, in her silver dress and heels.

  I took off after her. "Naomi! Wait!"

  She glanced over her shoulder at me, and her cool eyes chilled me. Then she was turning back, speaking to the valet, and there was an urgency in her posture. Like she had to get away.

  I felt a cold weight of dread in my stomach. Somehow she knew. But how could she know about that kiss with Kate? It had been a mistake. Something that should be forgotten, meaningless as it was.

  I started down the steps after her. Suddenly Alice was in between us, looking absolutely fierce for someone wearing a peach cocktail dress.

  "Oh no," she said, shaking her finger in my face. "She needs some space."

  "Why?" I took a step forward and to the right, ready to dart around her.

  Alice side-stepped with me, but I was able to duck around her after a moment's dance. She sighed in frustration and hurried after me.

  The valet pulled up in Naomi's Jeep. She hurried around the side. I followed her, catching up as she swung into the driver's door. On the opposite side of the car, Alice clambered in and slammed her door shut.

  "Talk to me," I said impatiently.

  "There's nothing to say," Naomi said. Even though I'd caught her door and still held it open, she turned the key in the ignition anyway. "You are just like your father, aren't you?"

  I stared at her. She had said the most hurtful thing she possibly could.

  She jerked the door out of my hand and slammed it shut. "Goodbye, Rob."

  The mud-splattered Jeep pulled away down the circle, headlights washing over the twinkling-lit trees that lined the path back to the road.

  I went inside, said goodbye quickly to the last guests that I passed on the stairs as they headed to their cars, and made my way into the lonely quiet of the study.

  I'd known things with Naomi were going to end. I was an asshole for being upset that she had been the one to end things.

  It was no big deal. It was always going to end like this. I just hated that she had looked at me with so much disappointment in her eyes.

  I collapsed into the chair behind my father's desk with a sigh. I should have brought my Scotch in here. I could have been the picture-perfect second version of Mitch.

  But then, maybe Mitch wasn't all bad. That was the thrust of what Kate and my grandmother had tried to get across. Maybe there was more to Mitch than what had appeared to be.

  That hope seemed remote right now.

  There was a tap on the door, and then Joe pushed it open, stuck his head in

  "What are you doing here?" I asked. "I didn't know that you were a cat enthusiast."

  "Not so much," Joe said. "I've been around the perimeter, just making sure the security was good. But also? Rook brought us news."

  I leaned forward. "What kind of news?"

  "They have a lead on the men that the one neighbor saw in the condo building that night. A mug shot that finally rang some bells."

  "Let's go," I said, eager to lose myself in something that wasn't a sense of regret over Naomi.

  "They're going to go bring them in--"

  "Nah," I said. "I'd love to talk to them. Get Liam for me, would you?"

  The three of us were slamming the doors of the car shut a few minutes later, the noise resounding in the night.

  Liam drove and for once I was glad my brother was a speed demon. The highway in front of us was empty and we were making ungodly good time when Joe said quietly from the front seat, “It’s going to be all right, Rob.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe. Bust some heads. Get some answers.”

  "There's no amount of busting heads that's going to work out your feelings."

  Liam asked, "Can we table this conversation, ladies? Feelings are not exactly pertinent at the moment."

  Joe shot him a dark look that reminded me of our childhood. "I'm older and wiser than you, so just trust me that talking through things isn't just for the ladies."

  Liam rolled his eyes.

  "I swear, you're the only one who can get him to shut up," I said to Joe, trying to lighten the mood in the car even though my own mood felt pretty dire.

  "Yeah, just like when you guys were kids. He won't shut up and you won't talk."

  "There's nothing to say. Mitch's in bad shape, we’ve got enemies everywhere and my girl – my girl who hates my fucking guts –could be in danger."

  "Naomi's not in any danger," Liam said, his tone taut. "She's not a Delaney."

  "Fuck you, we don’t know that.”

  "She wants you to think she's in danger, so you'll keep her close," Liam said. "Nothing but theatrics."

  "What are you saying?" My voice came out low and dangerous.

  "Please, you believe that stupid story? Someone attacked me on the elevator?"

  "Yeah, I do," I said.

  "Well, I don't," Liam said bluntly. "And I don't want to hear about your problems with her when we have real, family problems."

  "Liam,” Joe chided, “Your brother's problems are family problems."

  Liam held up a hand. "I want to take care of things so we can get back to normal. I can't handle talking about our feels."

  "I can't handle you sabotaging your brother's relationship," Joe snapped. "And your grandmother, doing it too. You Delaneys..."

  "I'm not sabotaging it. She's a gold digger. Trust me, I would know one when I see one.” Liam snapped.

  I leaned forward in my seat. If I couldn't bust bad guys' heads, my brother's head was looking awfully tempting. "Don't say that about her."

  "Believe what you want," Liam said.

  "There's something really wrong with you," I said.

  "Okay," Joe cut in. “Shut it. Nothing you guys will regret later.”

  I settled back in my seat, willing to drop it if Liam would. Although knowing Liam, he wouldn't drop it for long.

  Liam slouched down in his seat and closed his eyes. That was one way to avoid an argument. Where the hell had that come from, anyway? I thought Liam liked the Popadopolous girls. How could anyone not like Naomi?

  When Liam's breathing had dropped to a soft, even snore, I asked Joe, "What do you mean about my grandmother?"

  I couldn't stop thinking about the way I'd let Kate kiss me. The way I'd maybe kissed her back. And even though I knew I should see my own fault, ev
en though I know I’d handled everything with Kate like a moron, I also wanted to know how Naomi had found out.

  "You know she referred a lot of people to the Papadop's over the years," Joe said. "Well, she un-referred them when she decided Naomi was making eyes at you."

  "That's ridiculous," I said.

  "Yep."

  I thought of how I'd promised Naomi that I would get her some new clients, and I felt a wave of fresh guilt. "Ugh. I've made life about eight times harder for her in a week."

  "And you feel guilty?"

  "Yeah, I feel guilty." I had sex with her, told her not to fall in love with me, and kissed someone else, all while my family single-handedly destroyed her family business.

  "Well, she doesn't need that," Joe said. "She just needs you to be the man she thought you were."

  I stared out the window at the dark night. Maybe I could be someone else. After all, maybe even my father, the villain of my story, was a decent man at his core. That was something I’d have to find out.

  But even so, there was no reason for Naomi to give me another chance. I had blown things between us, big time.

  An hour later, I got out of the Suburban and latched the door quietly shut. The night around us was deeply quiet.

  Rook, and one of her guys who she introduced as Victor, got out of the car parked behind us. We were on a side street in a dingy neighborhood in Worcester, Mass. Behind us was an elementary school with a low metal fence. Apartment buildings in rough condition and old Victorians, turned ramshackle, were crowded together.

  "You should let us handle this," Rook said.

  "This is what I do for a living," I said.

  "Not on U.S. soil, it isn't," Rook said. She stared me down, but I was unmoved. In the end, she shrugged. "Well, let's go talk to him."

  The front door to the apartment building was broken. We filed into a long, dingy hallway and Rook led us up the stairs to the second floor, where there were six doors. At the end of the hall, Victor tinkered quietly with the lock. I thought of Naomi. She’d glanced up at me through a screen of her hair for a second as she picked the lock at that house to rescue the cat, and I felt a jolt of missing her. Already.

  There was just one guy in here, asleep on a mattress in a back room, and I felt a sense of relief. It was hard when there were families around, innocents. It didn't matter what a guy had done, taking him down in front of his kids still felt evil. It was the stuff that kept me up at night sometimes.

  The guy woke up suddenly, sitting up and seeing us, scrambling for something on the bed. I tried to get around Rook in a hurry since she'd insisted on leading the way. Victor launched himself towards the mattress and had him pinned in a second. Rook held her drawn pistol on him, her hands steady.

  I found myself directing a hard-eyed, appraising look at Victor, but there was no time to worry about who Victor was and where he had come from. I'd shelve that curiosity for later.

  Rook stepped forward, taking the gun from the bed with a gloved hand. She popped out the clip and then drew back the bolt. A shiny brass round flew out and rolled across the gritty carpet.

  "Hey, friend," Victor said. His casual voice belayed his posture, kneeling almost on this man's throat. "We have a few questions for you."

  “Who are you?” The guy under his knee looked near tears, and I glanced away, fighting a rise of revulsion that was as thick as nausea. This guy was one of the fools who had beaten my father, perhaps to death? This coward? The flow of violence on this planet staggered me sometimes, even though I dealt in violence as my trade myself. But never without honor.

  Knowing that for once, I was on the verge of losing my temper, I wandered to the window and looked out at the pre-dawn light while Victor conducted a short interrogation. It took a while to get any clarity from him because he wouldn’t stop crying. Begging. The man eventually confessed that he had been the getaway driver for the team that went after my father. But they were supposed to bring my father with them if they didn’t find what they were sent to recover, and since they’d been scared off by the police, their team had been dropped from the operation.

  Blubbering, he held up a hand wrapped in a bloody bandage. Apparently, the price for failure had been steep.

  Rook met me at the window. She rested a hand on my forearm, speaking to me in a low voice, and she reminded me of my second-grade teacher for a minute even though she dealt in violence herself. Or maybe she reminded me of a mom. Her eyes were worried and kind on mine as she told me that he had all the signs of drug addiction.

  “I think he was on Slow S,” she said. “I’ve only seen pictures, I haven’t seen it in real life before. But there are broken blood vessels around his eyes, white nail beds. Physical symptoms associated with Slow S.”

  “I don’t know what the hell is going on, Rook,” I said softly. It was those eyes of her that pulled out a confession I wouldn’t normally have. “I get that my dad had this connection with Slow S, that he could have made enemies. But why now?”

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  Victor rolled the guy over, slapping cuffs on him as he wailed aloud.

  “You got any last questions for him?” Victor called over to me. “I think it’s time to call the police in.”

  “Don’t call the police,” he begged. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  “You’ll do that anyway,” Victor promised him. He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Listen. I’m the good cop. You might want to spill—”

  “There was supposed to be another job.” The guy nodded animatedly. “I got fired first. They wouldn’t tell us much about it—”

  “Who wouldn’t tell you?” Victor cut in.

  “I don’t know who. I met them through my dealer. They never told us names, just that there was a job that could get me out of my debt with my dealer.”

  “I’ll take his name,” Victor said.

  When we had that information, I asked, “They didn’t tell you anything about the job?”

  “Well, one thing,” he said. “My girlfriend was stealing from me. See, I use this Slow S stuff for work, but she was skimming it from me. Reselling it. And I found out, and—”

  “I’m not writing a book about the personal lives of addicts,” Victor said. “Cut to the point.”

  “The guy who organized us. He said oh, you’ll enjoy this job then. We’re going to take this pretty little thing—and he also said, pack a bag for overnight, we’re going all the way to Newport—”

  I ran for the car.

  “I’ll call you with anything else we get,” Rook called just before I left the gritty Worcester apartment.

  Joe and Liam were watching the door, and I clapped Joe on the shoulder as I ran past.

  “Naomi’s in danger,” I said shortly.

  Dawn was breaking on the horizon as we sped back home, washing the dark sky with soft watercolors in yellows and peaches. The sunrise was a reminder of how tired I was after a long, brutal night, with no end in sight.

  "I’ll interrogate him when they’re done,” I said, my voice cold. “Once I know Naomi is safe.”

  I’d called her phone four times. She hadn’t even picked up from Joe’s number. I was fucking furious. And scared for her, too.

  “We’ll get there,” Joe said. “The police are en route, looking for her too. It’ll be okay.”

  Liam didn’t say a word. He sure as hell wasn’t apologizing, no matter how wrong he’d been.

  But he pushed his foot a little harder down on the pedal. The three of us raced back towards Newport.

  33

  Naomi

  "How do you think Rob will feel that you’re back to life outside of Castle Delaney?” Alice's voice was in my ear, as intimate as my own internal voice, since I had my Bluetooth in while I went through the client list in my home office. I was copying down the names of everyone who had mysteriously decided they no longer needed our services. I was going to put things to rights, that morning; they could look me in the face and deny
that Rebecca was behind this. I wondered who would tell me the truth.

  I glanced at the clock again. It was just after sunrise. I hadn’t been able to sleep. It would be a while before I could start my rounds.

  "He doesn't have to like it," I said. I scratched the cat in my lap behind the ears, until a furry head smooched my chin. "I have work to do."

  "How are you doing?" Alice asked.

  "Should I do my chin-up-buttercup routine with you too or do you want the ugly truth?"

  "I hope you know I'm not going to scold you for having complicated feelings about the complicated boy."

  "I miss him," I said. Saying the words out loud, flatly, made them feel both real and more manageable. "Isn't that ridiculous? We barely spent any time together, really. And I already feel lonelier without him."

  "Aw," Alice said. "You have me. And the cats."

  “You’re right, I know that. I deserve better.”

  “Yeah, you do,” Alice said. “But hearts can be made out of idiot sometimes.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense, Alice.” But she had made me smile faintly anyway. My sister always knew how to brighten my mood. When she wasn’t making me crazy. “I have a bunch of errands to run this morning. And then I’m having lunch with Mom and Dad. If you want to provide back-up…”

  "Are you going to tell them about what's going on?"

  "Which part? The part where I had sex with an inappropriate man without being appropriately married? Or the part where my sex life led to the destruction of a business they spent thirty plus years building?"

  "You're being dramatic."

  "Well, I get my dramatic from Dad, so..."

  "It'll be fine," Alice promised. "They love you, no matter what a swathe of destruction you carve through Rhode Island."

  "You aren't making me feel better."

  "I'll try again later. I have meetings through lunch, but call me after three if you need to talk."

  "Okay. Love you."

  "Love you too."

  I hung up with Alice, took a deep breath and squared my shoulders. Conflict of any kind gave me a squishy feeling in my stomach. That was why I’d spent the morning avoiding Rob’s calls; I knew he’d be imperious as always, telling me what I needed to do. I bit down on my lip as my phone rang yet again. But this was a different caller. A former client.