by M. O’Keefe
“What if…what if some people aren’t made to feel love, Poppy? Or what if it’s been taken out of them? What if…”
I heard the question she was really asking and it broke my heart.
“I don’t think it’s love that gets taken out of someone. I think it’s trust. Some people have been hurt so badly the only way to get better was to only trust themselves.” I thought of Ronan and Caroline. I thought of Ronan’s mother.
“I love you, Zilla,” I said. “I hope you find some happiness with your murder accountant.”
“And I hope you find some with Ronan.”
Me too. I couldn’t tell her how fragile my happiness was. How loving Ronan felt like an act of recklessness and at the same time the safest thing I’d ever done. Maybe, I realized, that’s what love was.
It was being terrified of the leap but being sure of being caught.
We hung up and I tossed my phone on the couch and then bent down to pick up the plastic bag with its guts of gemstones.
I picked up the necklaces and set them on the coffee table. My foot nudged the jeweler’s case for Jim’s pearls and I reached down and grabbed it by the lid. These fucking things. Jim said they were heirlooms, a gift from his grandfather to his grandmother and passed down to his mother and then to me. Every time I wore them, he made it clear that I was somehow a disappointment to him, unable to live up to his mother’s memory. She’d apparently been a strong woman, stronger, he thought, than me, because I allowed him to break my finger and punch me in the stomach.
I hated these pearls. They were chains to the past. And ugly as fuck.
I picked it up by the lid but the ancient clasp on it was unpredictable and opened, while the box was upside down and the pearls with the velvet insert the pearls rested on fell out. And with them a small chrome thumb drive.
* * *
Poppy
I looked down at that little thumb drive and nailed my hopes to the ground. There was no way the senator would store whatever information he was gathering for Bryant Morelli in a thumb drive hidden in my jewelry.
Ludicrous. But…still. I picked up the thumb drive. It was the kind that you twisted part of it and the USB came out. Part of me wanted to wake Ronan immediately, but he needed sleep and there could be anything stored on this thing.
Maybe he was writing a terrible spy novel.
Or he had child pornography.
Maybe it was pictures of me sleeping.
In Ronan’s guest room there was a desktop computer and a laptop on the edge of the bed. The laptop was brand new and didn’t have a USB port, but the desktop was older and I slipped the USB in the port. I wiggled the mouse and the screen came to life.
Password protected, of course.
He had a password on his laptop and I’d watched him type it in and I made a guess that Ronan wasn’t the type to have more than one.
I typed in StBrigid and the computer opened up. How like Ronan to keep his pain as sharp as he could. I clicked open files.
It took a second to realize what it was. Dollar amounts paid to other senators and representatives. Bribes, I thought. I recognized some of the names. Men and women on committees and Bryant was influencing their political votes. Which made sense and to some extent I’d expected. Not laid out like this. Lord, the senator was a stupid man.
But there were also hundreds of photographs. Audio recordings of phone calls. Video surveillance. Private jet log book entries. Bank account balances.
All of Caroline Constantine.
* * *
The bedroom was still dark, Ronan still sleeping. He had his head buried in the pillows, the blanket down around his waist revealing the slope of his back. The tender skin under his arms. The room smelled like him, his skin and a little bit like sex.
Before Bryant put his hands on me, there’d been a chance for us. A door opening to a different kind of life. But then Bryant shut that door. And the ferry boat captain was a killer again.
Could I use this to open the window back up?
He’d saved my life. Could I save his? He would not appreciate this. At least not at first. But I knew if there was going to be a life for us. It started with this.
I wanted to be pregnant. I wanted Ronan’s baby.
I wanted Ronan to know something good and sweet about his mother. I wanted what I saw in Ronan’s eyes last night.
A chance.
There’d been a whole lot of doing things Ronan’s way in the short period of time we’d been together. And his way was bloody and confrontational and constantly walking a tightrope of kill or be killed. It was destroying him. Which was fine if you were a killer who didn’t care about living or dying. It was another thing entirely for a man who was loved. Who would be missed. Who, if given a chance, might have a life.
A family.
I was going to do this my way. Operating on faith that it might be better. That for once I could take care of him. He wouldn’t like it. At all. But I could do it.
For us, though he wouldn’t see it that way. Or maybe he would after last night. I had to believe something I said made a difference to him. That in giving him every part of myself to him, he saw his own value.
If he didn’t, I would do it again tonight. And the next night. I would take his pain and his doubt and I would give him back my faith. My love. My surrender would make him clean.
I went back into the other room and grabbed a piece of paper and black marker. I wrote a note for Ronan and left it quietly on my pillow. My whole life people had been calling the shots and I was always one step behind. Being led and cleaning up as I went. This was going to be different.
For Ronan, it had to be different.
I sent a message I hoped would be received in the manner it had been sent.
Outside the apartment door was Raj, who after getting knocked unconscious last night was back at his post. I wondered if Ronan saw that loyalty. If he even knew how to see it. Raj practically jumped at attention when I stepped out.
“Raj,” I said. “Are you all right?”
“Nothing some aspirin couldn’t fix.” He rubbed at the back of his head and gave me a cheeky grin. “Did you need something?”
“A favor.”
“Oh no,” he said, shaking his head. “We’re not doing this again. Last time I let you leave without him, I thought Ronan was going to kill me, like.”
“Different kind of favor.” The phone in my hand buzzed.
An incoming message from Caroline.
I’ll be there in a half hour.
“Someone’s coming to the apartment, but don’t bring them here. Take them up to the roof. Ronan can not know.”
“I don’t like this, Poppy,” he said.
“I know.” But that didn’t change anything. I took the thumb drive and everything I’d printed off of it. Ronan’s laptop and I went upstairs to wait.
To fight.
* * *
Caroline was nothing if not punctual and thirty-five minutes later the door to the rooftop garden was thrown open and Caroline stepped out into the sunlight. She wore a cream dress and nude stilettos. She came dressed for battle and I was wearing yoga pants and one of Ronan’s shirts.
The way we did battle was so different. I used to think power looked like her. But there were so many different versions of power. So many different versions of control.
Of love.
Family.
“The roof? Really?” she asked and wrenched her elbow away from Raj. “I’m fine from here.”
The door clanged shut behind her and it was just us in the early sunshine. Bees working their way from flower to flower.
“Your message was compelling, Poppy, I hope you weren’t lying.”
“No. I have information on Bryant Morelli that you’re going to be interested in.” I lifted the file and the thumb drive.
She held out her hands, her face set in an expression of “so?”
“Apparently Bryant Morelli was paying the Senator to keep very close t
abs on you. There are photographs, video surveillance. Your phones were bugged.”
“What?” She honestly looked stunned. And at this point I had enough faith in my ability to read Caroline that I believed she was telling the truth. Caroline did not know what Bryant was doing.
“For years. At least as long as we were married. Probably long before.”
“That fucking weasel, it’s why he approached me at that god damn luncheon. I should have known.” She turned, facing the skyline, gathering her composure. “No one is what they seem, Poppy. I thought I’d learned that lesson.”
For a second I felt pity for her. And then I remembered all the ways she’d fucked with me over the years.
“How deep does the surveillance go? All the way into Halcyon? Into my family?” I heard the question she wasn’t asking. Who else betrayed me?
“Honestly, Caroline, it just seemed like Bryant was interested in you. It looks like he skipped opportunities to spy on your family and on the business. He could have really done some damage. But he didn’t.”
Caroline blinked. Again and then again and I realized, all at once, that she seemed to be blinking back tears.
“Are you all right?” I asked her.
“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” Caroline said and then took a deep breath. “That man has been a part of my life for so long. For, and I’m not kidding, Poppy, as long as I can remember, my life has been tied to Bryant’s. And it wasn’t always a war.”
I held my breath. Every part of this was unexpected. I’d gone into this ready to fight and now I was on the verge of comforting her?
“What are you saying, Caroline?”
“I’m saying he wasn’t always like this. So…hard. So full of violence. He was always intense, but it wasn’t so unhinged.”
“Did you have a relationship with him?”
“I did. But I met Lane not too long after that…” She shrugged. “Bryant does not accept losing.”
“You’re saying he has spent billions of dollars to watch you. From afar?”
“It’s almost romantic, isn’t it?” Caroline said.
This is what passed for romance in Caroline’s life? It was sad, that’s what it was. I thought of Ronan downstairs and how he could turn me inside out with a touch. How I would walk to the ends of the earth to keep him safe.
No. I’d take Ronan’s romance forever.
“So, why did you bring me here?” Caroline said.
I explained Bryant’s demands that Ronan come and work for him and this information might be the only thing that could keep Ronan safe, but only if I returned it to him.
Caroline shook her head. “Bryant will never keep his word.”
“I know,” I said.
“He’ll tell you you’re safe and then when he wants to pull the chain—”
“I know, Caroline,” I said wondering how deep their relationship went. How dangerous it had gotten. “That’s why I’m giving you the file.”
Caroline’s eyes went wide, the grief that had clung to her on this roof vanished. “You’ll give me that?” she asked.
“I want Ronan free of both of you,” I said. “You’re the only one who can manage Bryant.” And now that I knew the origins of their relationship, I saw why she had that power. Because he gave it to her.
Obsession.
Love?
I held out the documents and she took them. Though when she pulled them I didn’t let go. “I’ve made copies,” I said. “And there’s enough information in here that could damage your legacy for a long time. Fuck me on this Caroline and I will ruin you.”
I let go of the files and she clutched them to her chest.
“I’ll keep you safe, Poppy,” Caroline said. “The way I promised your mother I would.”
“Don’t bring my mother into this,” I said.
“Fine. I’ll protect you the way I always should have.”
Again, I felt that longing to believe her. To let her promise mean something to me. But that was a child’s dream and Caroline had shown me her true colors enough times that I knew not to believe her. It was why I’d made copies, after all.
I’d learned my lessons from this woman.
Good and bad.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ronan
I could count on my hands the number of times I’d slept a full night’s sleep and almost all of them were before St. Brigid’s. There were a few times, alone on the jet, traveling from Ireland to New York, I was exhausted enough to trust I was safe. I fell asleep so deep the attendants had to wake me when we landed.
But no, most of those blissful nights of sleep happened when I was a kid. Before I realized Da was leaving the house after he kicked me up to bed.
But after all that with Poppy, after letting down every guard I had left against her, I slept like a babe.
It was disorienting, waking up without fear or panic. I reached for her, expecting to find her soft and warm, her hair a tangle over her face, her body a breath away from ready for me.
But instead I hit cold air and a piece of paper. I was well used to dread and it filled me as I blinked my eyes open and turned the paper over so I could read it.
Trust me. I love you.
I crumpled it up in my fist and hurled myself from the bed. She was gone, the daft girl. The stupid lass. The apartment was empty. The jewels tossed over the couch like they meant nothing. The bankers box spilled onto the floor where I’d shoved it.
She’d been looking through the box again. And she must have found something, otherwise why would she leave?
Trust me. I love you.
Or she’d gone to strike some new deal with either Bryant or Caroline. I held myself still against the hurricane-force fear. I clenched my fists and I tried. I did. I tried to find whatever part of myself hadn’t been scoured by my life. I wanted Poppy to be right. For there to be, inside of me, what she saw.
A garden fallow and waiting but still a garden.
I could trust her.
And I could trust she loved me, and this raging, burning desire and fear I felt for her—I could trust that, too. And I could stand there and put down all my weapons. I could believe in her. In her good strength and her sound mind.
She would not hurt me. Or betray me.
But what if she’s pregnant?
Walking around with my child in her belly and it wasn’t her I didn’t trust. It was the world. The world that would hurt her if I wasn’t standing between it and her. My whole life, I realized, from one breath to the next, the only life I wanted, the only one with meaning was to be standing between her and what would hurt her.
“Poppy!” I roared. I roared it again, throwing open the door to my apartment only to find Raj.
“The fuck, Ronan?” he said. “Get some fucking pants on you.”
“Have you seen Poppy? She’s—”
“Upstairs. She’s had a meeting—” I pushed past Raj and ran up the stairs, hitting the door onto the rooftop patio.
“Ronan?” Poppy said, smiling at me over her teacup, even though she was confused. Smiling at me because she was just so happy to see me.
Me.
And at the sight of her I was…I was complete. I’d never thought to call this feeling love. Because love, from what I’d seen, was ever-changing and mercurial. It was a thin motive and after-the-fact excuses. This feeling in my body for her, this reckoning in my soul—it was so much bigger. It was fundamental. I fell to my knees in front of her, thinking of that wedding ceremony, those ancient words I’d spoken from the whole of my chest.
“Ronan?” She looked at me, worried. “Are you all right? Did something happen?”
“You,” I said. I was distantly aware that Niamh was there too, not approving of any of this, I imagined. But this girl with the eyes and the smile. This girl was all that mattered.
“You happened, Poppy.”
She stroked my lips, and in her eyes I could see that she understood the power of what was happening in my chest. Thi
s silent-communication thing we had between us was working. But she deserved to hear the words. And I needed to say them.
“I’m yours, Poppy,” I said to her face. All that I am. Every part of me. My violence and my bloodstained hands. Like I was a knight and she was a queen, I would defend her to my death. “I love you and I’m yours.”
She set down the teacup and touched my bare shoulders, my face. She pressed her hand over my heart and I put mine over hers. “You are mine,” I said to her. “You were mine the minute I saw you.”
I wasn’t born with poetry, or if I had, it was quickly beaten out of me, but I was fucking Irish. And in my Irish soul I knew she’d been mine forever. This life and the next until the world ended.
“I am yours and you are mine,” she whispered and then smiled at me with her beautiful smile. Full of grace and wonder and strength. Poppy Byrne was just getting started and I was the luckiest man on earth to be by her side.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ronan
We took everything downstairs so I could put on some pants.
At my dining room table Poppy explained to me what she found.
“He’s been following her?” I asked.
“More than followed. He’s been…watching her. For years.”
“And they had a relationship?” I tried to imagine something more terrifying than Bryant and Caroline in love, but I was hard pressed to see it.
Poppy nodded, eyes twinkling as she sipped her coffee. The girl loved gossip. “It’s actually a little sad. He lost her to Lane and he never got over her.”
“Or maybe he never got over losing,” I said.
“I like my version better,” she said with a pout.
“And all of this happened while I was sleeping?” I asked.
“Well, we’re not done yet,” Poppy said. “You need to talk to Bryant.”
This part was difficult. I was a man who got assurances with blood. The deals I made were with violence. This… blackmail? Trusting Caroline. I didn’t know how to trust it. If I could.
“Trust me,” Poppy said. “I know it’s hard, but trust me. This is how we get out from under Bryant.”