by T. L Smith
Wrong.
So wrong.
All of the levels wrong.
“No.” I push his chest until he’s out the door then shut it. “Goodbye, Keir.” He chuckles as I lock the door, and just as I do, my father rounds the corner. While my mother doesn’t always make sense, my father does.
“You sure know how to pick them, Sailor.”
See, sense.
“I didn’t pick him,” I say. “It’s Dillan’s mess that now I’m stuck cleaning up.”
“You shouldn’t tease a man of his level of power. He’s in the mafia, correct? I did hear that right?”
I nod.
“Where do you want to go? I’ll book you a plane ticket tonight.”
“Will you come?” I ask him.
“No, you know your mother can’t fly.”
It’s the reason why they travel by camper van.
“Thank you, but I have to deal with this, or it will never go away.”
My father only nods before he comes over to kiss me. “I don’t have much money, but what I do have is yours.” He taps my head. “Stay away from him. I saw the way he watches you. It’s not just the money that man wants, remember that.”
“Who the hell is this dumb bitch?” My mother bursts around the corner with Ellie following her. “Telling me she was living in your home, got your ring?”
I roll my eyes at Ellie.
Really?
Time and place, dude.
These are not the people to tell your sob story to—there’s a new level of stupidity in town and her name is Ellie.
“Dillan and I ended it a week ago.”
“She said she’s been with him for months.”
I shrug. For all I know, she was.
“If he wasn’t dead, I would kill him myself,” my mother says, crossing her arms over her chest. It’s where I get that habit from and something I can’t seem to break myself from.
“Dillan was a good man,” Ellie pipes in and starts crying again.
“Yeah, sweetheart, so good he owed money to the mafia, cheated on his wife, and God knows what else. Did I get all that right?” my mother snaps at me.
“Yes.”
“Anything else?” my father asks.
“I have to sell this place within the next week to pay back the money Dillan owes to the mafia.”
“Where are you going to go?”
“Anywhere but here.”
It’s the only answer I have right now.
Keir didn’t come that night. I’m glad, but to say I didn’t stay up waiting for him to turn up would be a lie. I even had Ellie sleep next to me just in case.
My father is up and moving around in the kitchen, while my mother is still asleep in the living room on the pull-out couch.
“Coffee?” he asks. I shake my head and grab a bottle of water. “The real estate agent left a message. Seems you’ve got a buyer.” He nods to my phone. Picking it up, I see she tried calling a few times before my father must have answered it. “Now you can get that man out of your life for good.”
“I hope so.” I call the agent straight back.
“Sailor, we got an offer. It’s just below asking price, but they want a fast move-in date, which is what you were after, right? So let me know what you want to do.”
“Take it.”
“I thought you might say that. Come into my office today if you could. I can get all the paperwork started.”
I hang up, and when I raise my head, my father is watching me. “How did it go so wrong with Dillan?”
“How did it not, you mean?” I shake my head and glance down at my phone. My screen saver is a picture of Dillan and me when we looked happy. We weren’t. “Maybe after the first miscarriage I saw a different side of him.” I shrug. “I tried fixing it, but it just never worked. He wasn’t as invested in the marriage as I was.”
“Dillan never wanted you for you, it was the appearance he liked the most.” I fix my eyes on my father’s. “You are a beautiful young woman, and he was an average man. You were out of his league, and he liked the power he held by having you on his arm.”
“He was a fuckhead.” My mother enters the kitchen behind us. She leans in and kisses my head before going to my father. “Just don’t go back to where you were. You’ve done so well up to this point. Remember how bad it was and how far you have come since those days.”
“I won’t. I wouldn’t even recognize that person if I saw her today.” I shrug. I did love a part of the old me, the part that took no shit. And I suppose I haven’t with Keir, but with Dillan, I did. For some reason I let him walk all over me, and that’s never happening again.
“Real estate today?” my father asks.
“Yep! And applying for apartments. Fingers crossed I get one soon.”
“You can always stay in the camper van, if need be,” my father offers.
I shake my head at his words. “I’ll be okay.”
And I think I may be now.
Hopefully.
“I feel like you should put ‘stalker’ on your resume,” I say to Joey as I step off the train. He smirks and shakes his head but says nothing. “I’m clearly not going to run.” I sigh. “And hopefully soon the apartment will be sold, then we can be out of each other’s lives.” Joey shakes his head at me again. “What?” He says nothing. “What?” I ask him again.
“It’s funny you think you can just walk away. As if he will let you.”
His words make my face drop and I sigh.
Did he …
“Sailor.” I turn to see Keir standing out the front of the real estate office. He’s wearing sunglasses and a look that tells me he won’t leave me alone anytime soon. Out of the corner of my eye I see Joey walking away. I sigh again. I think I would prefer Joey over him. I don’t like what he does to me, who he turns me into when he touches me.
“Lollipop.”
Goddammit! It would be bad manners to smack him, right?
I choose to ignore him and walk straight to the office door. When I’m next to him, his hand wraps around my arm. It isn’t painful, just a slight grasp, then he leans in and whispers in my ear, “I’ve come to accompany you.”
“What a lucky girl I am.” His mouth moves at my words, but he chooses not to say anything else. “If you must, try to remember your manners.” His teeth scrape over his lip, but that’s all he gives me. Huh. Interesting. As soon as I walk in, the real estate agent who I’ve been dealing with spots and waves me through. I feel Keir’s closeness as he follows behind me, so close it feels like we are moving in unison. She pulls a tight smile, then looks over my shoulder at Keir.
“This is Keir, he’s been helping me deal with everything since Dillan,” I try to explain.
“Oh, yes.” She shakes her head. “Sorry again about your loss.”
“Thank you.” There isn’t much else you can say to someone who says that. You can’t dive in and tell them how it was magical at the beginning, but somehow in the middle and end it turned into a nightmare, a hell you couldn’t pull yourself from, yet for some strange reason you stayed. Was it just because it was familiar, or was it something deeper inside, something I knew I wanted to stay buried inside me?
“So, as I said on the phone, the buyer is ready to purchase and move in early, but he is offering less than the asking price and obviously requires you to be out in a week. I don’t know how doable that is for you, but I think it’s a good price since we needed the quick sale.”
“She’ll take it. She has somewhere to go, and she will be moved out by tomorrow.”
I turn to face him and try to keep my voice low as I speak to him, “Is it enough?” He never did tell me the amount, but I figured it must have been high since I have to sell my apartment to make up for his loss.
He nods, and that’s all I get. I wait for Keir to say something else, but he gives me nothing, so I turn back to my realtor and smile.
“Where do I sign?”
I didn’t realize that selling that apartment would affect m
e after everything that has happened, but something in the pit of my stomach feels sorry for giving up the one thing that I helped pick out and loved. That apartment was everything to me, meant so much. It was the place where I felt like I belonged—a real home. It was where I had my losses, where I discovered a new me, and the place that I created a home as a married woman.
I guess I’m not that anymore—a married woman.
I look down to the empty finger where my ring was once located, the one his fiancée is currently wearing around my home. That ring means more to her at the moment than it did to me in the end, so I don’t say anything about it. She can have the stupid ring. What I had of Dillan are different memories than the ones she has. I didn’t really ask if hers were good or bad, and to be honest, mine is a mixture of both. It’s the good ones that I try to remember at night as I lie in our bed where he no longer is.
“You’ll be gone after, right?” I ask Keir as we walk out of the office. The process took longer than expected, and he sat quietly next to me the whole time as I signed the necessary paperwork.
How can I stand to look at him?
How can I stand for him to be near me after what he did?
He killed my husband.
Shot him in front of me, and I stood there as the blood pooled at my feet.
Dead.
“Tonight?” He smiles, knowing full-well that is not what I meant.
“No. After you get the money, you’ll be gone, right?”
“That’s the deal.” He pulls his car door and holds it open as he eyes me. “Get in.”
“I don’t want to.” The last thing I want to do is get in a car with Keir. But I do as he says and slide into the passenger seat. I watch as he makes his way around to his side and slides into the driver’s seat. Not many people have cars here, but Keir lives outside the city, so I guess that’s why he has one. Or maybe it’s just because he can. Who really knows?
My phone rings as I’m about to ask him a question.
“Sailor, it’s Megan from the rental you visited.”
“Oh, yes, hi.”
“Hi. Look, unfortunately that property you toured has been rented. I know it happened quickly, but this is New York, so it’s to be expected. But I do have another one, and it’s only a little more than your budgeted price. It’s the first time they are offering this apartment for rent, and it’s better than what you saw last time by a long shot. They’re willing to let someone in who cannot afford what the usual tenants have for a year’s lease. This is highly unusual, and I figured you will be a great tenant. And they did leave it to my discretion to pick someone, as they want to do it more easily for them. But if you’ve found something else, that’s also fine. I do have someone else on the list as well.”
“I’ll take it.” I don’t even care what it looks like, I need to get out of our apartment. And if it’s better than the last place I looked at, I’m sure it's livable. I hope.
“Good. I’ll send the details through for you to go and check it out. Your name will be on the list so the doorman will let you in. I’ll call tomorrow to organize the signing of the paperwork. Congrats and enjoy the apartment, it’s beautiful.”
“I got an apartment,” I tell Keir.
“Want to fuck?” he asks me as he continues to drive.
“I really hate you,” I say, pocketing my phone.
“I take that as a yes.”
I don’t respond.
“That wasn’t a no.”
I hit him on the shoulder, and all he does is smile.
Asshole.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Keir
Sailor’s moved into a new apartment. One more central to the city.
Joey walks in after spending the day helping her and flops down next to me at the dinner table. “She asked for you.”
It’s been three days since I’ve seen her.
The settlement of Dillan’s debt is in a few days. I will get what he owed me, and she will get a new life away from him. Since I killed him, that is.
Joey picks up an apple, throws it up into the air, catches and bites into it. “Said you are an asshole, and she never wants to see you again after this.” Joey laughs. “You really pissed her off.” He takes another loud bite, and the crispness of the piece breaking off resounds around the room. “She made me lift everything. She’s a bossy bitch.” He bites into it again, obnoxiously.
Picking up the knife on the table, I throw it. It hits his apple in his hand, and Joey freezes, eyes wide.
“What the fuck was that? You nicked me.” He pulls the knife out of the fruit and on it is a small amount of blood. Not enough to cause damage, but enough that stops his chewing like a damn horse. He places the knife on the table and bites into his apple one last time, just to rub me the wrong way before he also sets that down. “You could have at least told me to stop chewing before throwing a knife at me.”
“It’s my house, shouldn’t have to fucking tell you.”
He waves me off before he stands. “I’m tired, I need to sleep. And you need to get laid. Call someone.” Joey strides out and shuts the door behind him.
Call someone?
I don’t want just someone.
I want a little honey-brunette with a fucking attitude and sweet-ass pussy to match. How can a woman get you so fucking twisted while only knowing her for such a short amount of time?
I mean, I could kill her.
It would be so fucking easy to end her damn life.
She has no one but her parents. No friends would rally for her either. If I went to her right now, I could slice open her throat and she would bleed out. I know how much she likes the fucking knife.
I could never shoot her, that would ruin that perfectly pretty fucking face. What a disaster that would be, to ruin something so beautiful. I have seen and fucked a lot of incredibly beautiful women in my time, but, for some reason, that little smart-ass mouth of hers makes her top them all.
I’ve been reared to be desensitized to love. To not care. My father raised me to be as ruthless as they come. Same as him and his father before him.
You can’t be soft in my line of work. Desperate men come to us because they have no other option. And we take full advantage of it. We’ve been around for generations, and our family name means something. If we marry, we marry to reproduce and to keep our line going, preferably with a son. We have women in our family, but they don’t play the same roles as the men. It may sound sexist, it may sound old school, but it works—and maybe it is sexist, but so fucking what. Women don’t belong in a mafia man’s world.
Growing up, I knew who I was. As a child going to school in New York City, other kids knew who I was, who my family was, and because of that, my only friends were my family.
I sometimes hate everything about my life, but it’s never something you’ll hear me say out loud.
It’s a lonely life, and despite all the bad, I enjoy it. Not many people could do what I do. Not many people understand what I do. I’m the one your family has nightmares about. We have no rivals and it’s simply because no one is dumb enough to go up against us—go up against me. And that’s the way I like it—keep them scared shitless. Not one of my men would ever betray me. If they did, they would end up in a fate worse than death. They would wish death would find them quickly by the time I’m finished with them for betraying me. And believe me, death would never find a betrayer quickly. It would be slow, long, torturous, and excruciatingly agonizing before death would claim them.
Sailor doesn’t quite understand who I am or where I come from, and maybe that’s where the attraction to her comes from for me.
“Okay, no, that’s unfair.” Joey comes back in. His arms are crossed over his chest and his brows pinched as he stares at me. “I’m doing this for you. We both know if she was just another woman, you would take your money and never see her again, or you would take your money and kill her.”
“My patience is at an all-time low, Joey. Get on with it.”
Joey gets me. With only a year difference in our ages, he could be in my position. He could kill me and take over, but we both know he doesn’t want it. He’d much rather play the role of henchman and carry out orders. And that’s the extent of what he does. He doesn’t have to worry about the logistics of getting shit right. I don’t have to worry too much anymore either, as I’ve learned to delegate, hire the right people, kill the right people to ensure my people keep loyal. His job is as simple as doing whatever the fuck I say to do.
“Why her?” he asks.
Why her? If I fucking knew the answer, I would tell him. Maybe. Then again, I don’t talk about me to anyone, it’s just not something I do. Our father left Joey out of a lot of the business dealings, assuming he was too slow, not smart enough to be the type of man that is required for the top job. My father told me that if I was smart, I would never let Joey join me. But the minute my father died, and I took over, Joey was my first choice as a right-hand man.
We are the mafia.
We aren’t drug lords.
We aren’t just killers.
When we do a job, we do it from start to finish.
We don’t hire out, everything is sourced by the family, stays in the family.
So, when he asks me why her, I’m not really sure what to tell him. Our partners—or I should say our baby mamas—are picked out for us when we are born. Not everyone gets this privilege, though. They make sure that the two top families will reproduce and carry on the family names. It’s one of the reasons we only fuck. Joey even has someone picked out for him.
“She interests me,” I tell him as he wipes his bleeding hand on his clothes.
“My dog interests me, doesn’t mean I want it in my bed,” he bites back.
Grinding my jaw, I glare at him.
He throws his hands in the air. “All I am saying is … she’s nice to look at and all, but are we done yet? You get the money in a few days. Debt is gone, wiped clean, and you chose not to kill her. So, let her go.”
“Should I let you go too?” I bite back.