by P Mulholland
Chicago is 2 hours ahead of San Diego, so it was only 7am there, but I rang Brydes anyway to tell her the news.
She shrieked in excitement. “We can go to lots of places in six weeks.”
“Steady, Chucky. I gotta finish my degree first.”
“This will motivate you,” she said breathlessly. True.
“Are you in bed?”
“No, I just got back from a surf.”
“I’m imagining you in a bikini right now.”
“You mean wetsuit.”
“Whatever.”
Our travel plans gave me a new focus, a new determination. From that point onwards I spent my evenings studying and writing assignments. I still partook in a couple of tumblers of Old Rip while Newman slept on my lap. I studied from 7pm to 9.30pm weekdays, then spent the majority of the weekend studying as well. In between food shopping, walking Newman, and sexting Brydes. We did a lot of sexting and phone sex over that period. Not as good as the real thing by a long shot, but it was all we had.
I missed her so much. All those little things that I had forgotten about resurfaced when we reconnected. The little things that I got used to when were living together, the sum of many parts that made up the whole picture, the complete being.
Like when she was in the throes of chatting to me, she’d mindlessly run her finger along the hairs of my forearm, back and forth. Unfortunately, the finger movement came to a halt when the talking stopped. Or when she’d whisper the word ‘sex’ even when there’s no one around, yet she had no problem saying ‘fuck’ out loud.
Or the fact she rarely saw the end of any movie we watched together, because she always fell asleep. Or the rebellious blonde ringlet that refused to be tied up or neatly put away behind her left ear.
Then there were the tattoos that blew my mind when I first met her. I became familiar with every single tattoo, I knew where she got it from, when she got it and why. The maps of tattoos were so imprinted on my brain that I could recreate the exact same map on myself without seeing hers in the flesh.
Two weeks out from my next visit to San Diego, I received a phone call that made me take a step back. Brydie got offered a job, taking divers on tours in the waters surrounding the Cayman Islands. She was to replace someone who had a family emergency so they needed her ASAP. Her argument was she needed the job as she’d been out of work for weeks. I guess that’s a fair argument, but there I was playing second fiddle to a bunch of sharks again. And why couldn’t a local person take their place?
I guess it was always going to be this way. If I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Brydie O’Neal, I had to swallow my pride and man up. I promised myself that I would never cage her, so this was me cutting the chains and letting her go.
I postponed the flight until the following month, wondering if that plan was going to be destroyed as well. Who knew?
Chapter Forty Three
Brydie
I lied to Jake.
If I told him the truth I knew he’d freak out, so I made up a story about me being needed in the Cayman Islands. The truth was I got a phone call from Farrah that shook me to my core. She said Leon’s apartment had been hit, the entire place smashed up and a crude warning written across the walls that the Malones will be taken down, one by one.
She warned me that if I refused to stay under the canopy of Isaac’s protection in Chicago, I needed to get out of San Diego until everything cooled down.
“They know where you live.” Her words lingered in the air for a few seconds before the jagged edge sunk in.
“How do you know?”
“They left an envelope with photographs of you in San Diego surfing and buying a coffee at that café you love. Baby girl, I’m not saying this to scare you, but you need to leave.”
“Are they the same people?”
She sighed. “They’re New York based thugs, but we’ve recently discovered that they’re interlinked with the Lucianos here in Chicago.”
“The Lucianos?”
“Luciano Security, our biggest competitor.”
“Is everyone else okay?”
“We’re fine. It’s you I’m worried about. There’s no one to look after you there.”
My body went so numb, I had to tighten my grip on the phone to stop it slipping from my hand.
“Baby girl?” Farrah called through the phone in a panic.
“I’m here.”
“Don’t go silent on me,” she scolded. “Whatever you do, wherever you go, stay in contact. Do you understand?”
“Yes. Farrah, please don’t tell Jake.”
“Why not? He’s your boyfriend, he has every right to be told.”
“I don’t want him to know. He’ll get upset and do something stupid.”
“Like what? Run to your rescue?”
“He doesn’t know the depth of the Malone faction and the full extent of their business activities. I’d rather keep it that way.”
“He’ll find out about Leon’s apartment, you know how close Red and Isaac are. But the part about you being tracked we’ll keep to ourselves.”
When I clicked off, I scrolled through flights with the objective of traveling to somewhere warm, surrounded by the ocean. The Caribbean? Perfect. I booked the flight on a whim. It wasn’t the first time I’d closed my eyes and pointed to a spot on an atlas, and it won’t be last. I didn’t know a soul in the Cayman Islands and there was no job I was going to. But I booked a reasonably priced hotel room and searched the tourism websites for good diving spots then went from there.
Fears of being attacked were still fresh in my mind. I convinced myself that the danger lived only in Chicago, the rest of the world was fine and free for me to explore. I compartmentalized my fear, not just to survive, but to keep living my life as the adventurer I was. Fear would only keep me confined and depressed, which meant the assholes won and I lost. I cannot lose, I’m far too stubborn to lose.
I didn’t tell Jake the full extent of my fear when I was living with him. There were times when I was afraid to the leave the apartment, but swallowed my fear and left anyway. I’d flinch at every moving shadow and startle with every scuff of a shoe on the pavement. This was not me. This was not Brydie O’Neal.
I’d always been quick to shirk the Malone blood that ran thickly through my veins, but without a doubt it was the Malone pig-headedness and fury that brought me out of my shell quickly. I had no time to be afraid. I had too much to see, too much to do. They had no right to clip the wings of an eagle that longed to fly. And to defy them, I’d take to the skies anyway and shit on their heads as I soar over. Just watch me.
Jake: Where are you?
Me: I told you the Cayman Islands
Jake: Leon’s apartment got smashed up
Me: I know.
Jake: When am I going to see you again?
Me: I don’t know
Jake:
Chapter Forty Four
Jake
I was losing my cool.
What the fuck was going on? Just when I thought she was mine, she vanished. Corey was right, Brydie O’Neal was elusive and unobtainable, like trying to catch smoke in your hands. But something didn’t sit right in my gut. Was it a mere coincidence that Brydes left for the Cayman Islands, shortly after Leon’s apartment got hit?
She seemed her normal happy self when we talked over Skype, buzzing about all the coral and fish she saw and how clear the water was. I asked again when she was coming home. I had seen fear in her eyes only a handful of times. I saw it when she was lying in a pool of her own blood. I saw it when she was too afraid to share the elevator with a stranger and I saw it when she was too chicken to tell me she loved me.
And I saw fear again at the moment when she couldn’t answer my question. Those emerald eyes couldn’t hide the truth from me. I knew her too well.
“Brydie, what’s going on? I feel like you’re lying to me.”
She licked her lips and dropped her head down.
“Do you want to
break up with me?”
“No,” she answered swiftly.
“Then what’s going on?”
She kept her beautiful head down, avoiding my eye.
“Brydes, are you…afraid?” I asked.
She covered her eyes with her hand, her mouth turned downward like she was on the edge of sobbing. Then she nodded.
That was it. That’s all the information I needed.
I’d visited their house only a handful of times. It was a place I preferred to avoid, even though my father, for some unknown reason, liked to keep company with them. I often wondered if the Ice Man had something over my father. I guess that was the only explanation I could come up as to why my father would want to hang out with the fucking mafia. Perhaps he was like Soph, and reveled in the dark side.
I pushed the doorbell, then sunk my hands into my jeans pockets. It was freezing outside, sleet started to fall, turning my black car white. It was a nice house in a nice neighborhood, a spacious two stories, pool in the back, five bedrooms – the neighbors none the wiser as to their devious methods of making money. But who was I to judge?
A graceful dark-haired beauty with long black curly hair, freckles across the nose and cheeks answered the door. I did a double take. “Abbie?” She was all grown up. Abbie was my age, but I always thought of her as a little kid in her pink ballet shoes and tutu.
She grinned.
“Jake Austin? I haven’t seen you for a while. What are you doing here?”
“I’m hoping to speak to your mom. About Brydie.”
“She’s not here. Out shopping.”
“What about Isaac?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure where he is.” I could actually see Brydie in her features, the warm smile and the shape of her face and lips. I guess she inherited some of the Malone characteristics after all.
My heart sank. “When will Farrah be back?”
“I’m not sure. I can call her, if you want.”
“No, it’s okay.” I stepped away to head back to my car. I didn’t fancy standing around doing small talk in the miserable cold. “Thanks anyway.”
“Wait!” she called out. “Do you want to come inside for a hot chocolate?”
I hesitated. “Love to.”
A scruffy little white dog came to my feet when I stepped inside and I patted his head, thinking he’s make a good friend for Newman. Newman needed to get out more and meet some of his own type, rather than hanging out with a depressed human in love with an older woman who was currently a million miles away.
Abbie led me into the kitchen where she took out a saucepan from a drawer, then two large mugs from the cupboard. She started making small talk about college, and I politely went along with the conversation.
“So, Brydie,” she finally said, getting to the crux of why I was there. “Who would’ve thought.”
“You don’t think we’re a good match?”
“She always said she would never get involved with another Chicagoan.”
“Trust me, I’d never worked so hard in my life for a woman. I was determined to convince her that I wasn’t a jackass, loser alcoholic.”
“Why so determined?”
“Because she’s hot.” I could’ve said that she was amazing and fantastic and used many other adjectives to describe her, but what attracted me to her in the first place was her exquisite beauty.
She laughed.
“I guess it always comes back to attraction.”
“I guess it does.”
“So, what do you need to know?” she asked, pouring milk into a saucepan and turning the element on.
“What was the real reason she went to the Cayman Islands?”
“Was there more than one reason?” she asked, screwing up her face in confusion, which made her look really cute.
“What reason were you given?”
“The photographs.”
My heart thudded against my ribcage. “What photographs?”
She stumbled. “Oh, I thought she’d…maybe I shouldn’t say any more.”
“Abbie, tell me. What photographs?”
The milk came to the boil and she poured it into the mugs, with heaped teaspoons of powdered chocolate. She placed the mug in front of me, then remembered the marshmallows in a bag in the cupboard. “The men who hurt her had been tracking her. They knew where she lived.”
“Fuck!”
“We hope it’s an empty threat, but mom rang her and told her to get out of town, so I she heeded that warning.” She placed several marshmallows on my hot chocolate and I picked a pink one and ate it before it had a chance to dissolve.
“These were the same guys who messed up Leon’s apartment?”
She nodded. “They left a calling card, threats to knock all of us off.”
Weirdly, Abbie didn’t seem too concerned about the threat. In fact she was almost humored by it. Maybe she felt protected, or maybe she was just used to threats from folk who hate the Malones. There’s bound to be a few.
“So, they’re the shitheads hired by the Costa Rican minister?” I wrapped my cold hands around the mug and took a sip. Immediately it hit the spot with its warmth and sweet chocolate flavor. I needed to buy some of this for myself.
“I think it’s gone beyond that, now.” She drew a circle in the air. “Came back around to the original problem, the Lucianos.” She shrugged, like it was no big deal. The conversation with Mac rang in my mind. That shifty dude Peacock, worked for the Lucianos, I’m glad I didn’t call him.
“Can I ask you something else?”
“Sure,” she shrugged.
“Leon made a deal with one of the fuckwits to leave Brydie alone. Do you know what that deal was?”
She paused to take a sip of her hot chocolate, then wiped the froth from her top lip. “I haven’t actually been told to my face, but I think I know what it is.”
“You think you know?”
She nodded. “Purely through observing.”
“Observing what?”
“Leon has a classic motorbike that he’s fussed over for years. It’s like a rare breed of bike, a Indian of some sort, if that’s the correct terminology. Anyway, he bought it from a guy who had it buried in his garage. It was in two parts, missing wheels and other bits. He spent years hunting down parts and doing it up. It was his hobby outside of knocking people off.”
I gave her startled look.
“Joking,” she said, grinning. “Anyway, one day the bike was there, the next day it wasn’t. He’d never sell that bike in a million years, I know that much.”
“And this occurred…?” I didn’t need to finish the sentence, she was nodding.
“The bike was gone the following day. When I asked him about it he said it was in the shop waiting for parts. But it’s been in the shop for months now.”
I wasn’t sure what to think about it. The guy traded his rare classic motorbike with some asshole to stop him from raping Brydie. It raised all sorts of ugly and unwanted feelings within me.
“He loves her, you know.”
“Leon?”
“Yeah.”
“In what sort of way?”
She hummed, while pondering on her answer. “He…Leon is different. When Brydie moved in with us after her mother died, Leon took a liking to her straight away, followed her around like a lost puppy. She was very tolerant of him, because he’s not an easy person to like, even as a kid. But she saw something in him, and played with him a lot, and eventually he started coming out of his shell.” She took another sip of her hot chocolate. “They even invented their own secret language. It was kid’s stuff, adding ‘sch’ to every word. Schould schwa schro schops? Basic stuff.” She paused again to laugh.
“To answer your question, he was heartbroken when Brydie left at age seventeen. But a heartbroken Leon is not the same as a heartbroken normal person. He went back into his shell where it’s dark and cold and didn’t speak for months. I was nine when she left, Leon was fourteen. I remember how quiet the hous
e was without her in it. She’d gotten really close to mom as well as me and Leon, and I think mom really suffered without her best friend around. Also Brydie occupying Leon’s time, it took the pressure off mom. Brydie was a ray of sunshine to our shady family.”
She stuffed a marshmallow into her mouth. “I think Leon was in love with her,” she said, gazing off into the distance.
“Like romantic love?”
She nodded. “In case you hadn’t noticed, most people who meet Brydie O’Neal fall in love with her. But it’s only a privileged few who she loves back. I’m guessing you, Jake Austin are one of the privileged few.”
“I guess I am.”
“What happened to Leon to make him…different?”
She wagged her finger at me. “That’s not for me to say.”
“It is a little creepy that he’d fall in love with his aunt,” I added.
“Half-aunt. And is it really that unusual? If your dad’s half-sister came to stay, who was only three years older than you and was beautiful and paid you lots attention. you’d fall in love with her too.”
“When you put it like that, I guess I would have a massive crush on my aunt.” It seemed weird saying it out loud.
We got off the subject of Leon and talked some more about college, dogs and Brydie. Then Farrah came home and asked if I’d like to stay for dinner. I said no at first, as I didn’t want to share the table with that fucker Isaac Malone. But I changed my mind when she said she was making a chicken pasta pesto dish. It was awkward sitting at the table with the Ice man, the man I’ve come to hate. He said little, instead his intimidating dark eyes stared at me across the table, drilling holes in my skull. The last time I saw the Ice man, I shoved him out of my apartment. I suspect that he hadn’t forgotten that little moment. Just like I hadn’t forgotten the skin peeling off Brydie’s body, her eyes swollen to the size of saucers and her blood splattered across the bathroom floor.