Chapter Twenty-Nine Tiernan
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
TIERNAN
“Callaghan, you dumb fuck.”
Tate Blackthorn rubbed at his eyes tiredly, hooked to lie detector wires in the Ferrantes’ dungeon.
Sam was sitting on the other end of the screen, monitoring his answers. He arched a smart-ass eyebrow. “No lies detected.”
“Ouch.” Enzo smiled ruefully, playing with his knife in the seat next to Brennan. “Blackthorn decided to club Tiernan with a truth stick. Someone get the first aid kit.”
“You’re just here to answer questions,” Luca informed Tate laconically, lighting up a cigarette.
“Nothing more. For now.”
Tate turned to face him, somehow looking both calm as fuck and angry as hell. “This is bullshit. Your brother-in-law just gave me two black eyes and a split lip.”
Guilty as charged. As soon as I saw his sorry face, I was reminded of Lila’s sketch and something compelled me to make his features just a little less symmetrical. It wasn’t like he was shopping for a wife. He already had one.
“We pulled him from you in time,” Luca reasoned. “He didn’t break your nose.”
“Night’s still young,” I pointed out. If Tate was Lila’s rapist, his nose was going to be the least of his problems. I was going to hang his balls on a meat hook from the ceiling and kill him over weeks, if not months.
I didn’t usually indulge in long, torturous killings—I lacked the time and patience. But something made me especially rabid for the rapist’s blood.
It was that stupid kiss at the shooting range last week. It undid my goddamn existence.
My whole life derailed from that moment forward.
My entire days were currently planned and arranged around kissing and dry-humping my wife like a bleeding teenager.
We spent every night practicing in bed. She didn’t realize it, but she was making loud, porn-worthy sounds.
I didn’t want to alert her, because she was self-conscious as it was about her lack of hearing, but it made for very awkward breakfasts with Imma.
My new maid thought I was screwing the little girl she had raised.
Only Lila was no longer a little girl. She was shaping up to be a woman. One that no longer found it scary or distressing when her panties got soaked.
We were working our way up to second base. Slowly. Not only did I not want to scare her off, but I had my own hang-ups to sort through. Giving up the way I sought pleasure meant giving up my armor.
“I didn’t rape your sister,” Tate snarled at Luca, pulling me out of my own thoughts.
Sam readjusted his tall frame in his seat, keystroking some commands on the polygraph.
“How about you shut the fuck up and wait for me to ask you questions?” he suggested pleasantly.
“You’re messing with my baseline diagram.”
Tate shot him a death glare.
“Don’t be so butthurt,” Enzo tutted. “If you did it, you deserve to die. You knew it could happen. Men in our line of work… We die while we’re still alive. Young and strong.”
“He’s not that young,” Sam said, staring at the screen.
“And not that strong,” I added.
Tate snarled. Swear to God, I was having an allergic reaction to him.
What did she even see in this bastard?
“What’s the accuracy rate on this shit, anyway?” Enzo flipped his knife shut, dismounting his feet from the desk and leaning to peer at the screen behind Sam’s shoulder.
“About eighty-seven percent, in the correct environment,” Sam grumbled.
“What constitutes a correct environment?”
“No chatty assholes bickering around me, messing with my interviewee,” Sam replied.
Luca and Enzo quieted down. I was glad Achilles was on Crimson Key. I didn’t need a full audience for what was about to unfold. Lila’s privacy mattered to me.
Sam rechecked that all the sensors were correctly applied on Tate and sat back. “Ready?”
Tate gave him another murderous glare. “Take a guess.”
“Is this about Tiernan hijacking your private plane and changing its course mid-flight to New York?” Enzo tapered his eyes. “Because I think we can all agree you’d have done the same for Gia.”
“Doubtful, since I’d had the fucking foresight to assign her security after I married her,” he bit out.
“Much good it did you.” I smirked.
A little over a year ago, I kidnapped his wife while she was under Camorra protection. But this wasn’t what interested me about the conversation. Tate was under the assumption Lila was raped after we got married. Alternatively, he was setting up the starting point for his elaborate lie.
Tate shook his head, staring at the ceiling. “How did you even find your way to my private plane?”
Easily. Almost everyone in every private airport around New York was in my pocket.
“If I tell you, I’d have to kill you,” I said wryly. “And I need some answers before I do that. Shall we?”
Sam began by asking him simple enough questions—his full name, address, childhood pet names, and so on.
It turned out that Tate had an unholy number of pets growing up.
None of them made it to maturity, though.
Sick little fuck. Sam proceeded by asking him if he attended Luca’s wedding (yes), who he came with (his wife), and where he stayed (at the La Casa Delle Rose, the Ferrantes’ six-star resort).
From there, he moved on to yes or no questions.
“Did you see Raffaella Ferrante at the wedding?” Sam watched the screen intently.
“Yes,” Tate answered.
“Did you speak to her?”
“No.”
“Did you interact with her in a nonverbal way?”
“No.”
“Did you follow her out of the ballroom at approximately ten thirty at night?”
“No.”
“Did you touch her during the entire duration of the night?”
“No.”
Tate’s tone was clipped, his posture and expression bored. I caught Sam’s gaze.
“Well?” I asked.
“He’s not bluffing.” Sam tilted the screen so I could see it. “The needle didn’t budge.”
“Psychopaths lie and pass polygraphs all the time,” I countered. “They will themselves to believe whatever comes out of their mouths.”
I wanted Tate to be the rapist. Angelo was a can of worms I wasn’t sure I wanted to open. And killing Luca’s brother-in-law was essentially starting a war with the Outfit.
“That’s generally true if the heart and respiratory rate are already jerky and inconsistent. Tate’s as calm as a cucumber. There are no discrepancies.” Sam shrugged. “I think he is telling the truth.”
I dragged my teeth along my lower lip, mulling this over. Lila said she forgot the face of her attacker—but did it really make sense that she’d draw Tate and his features wouldn’t bring back the memory if it were him?
Plus, as much as I hated him, he didn’t give me rapist vibes. Now, Angelo, on the other hand, was the kind of prick to take what’s not been offered. A Mafia brat who had the entire world handed to him.
I jerked my head in a nod, and Sam stood up, unhooking Tate from the lie detector. Tate remained completely still, his eyes flicking among the three of us.
“So, it happened during Luca’s wedding?” He crossed one leg over the other, grabbing Enzo’s soft cigarette pack from the table and helping himself to one.
“Yeah.” Luca reached to light his cigarette.
“How is she?” He blew a stream of smoke.
“She’s…” Brave. Smart. Resourceful. Talented. Witty. So nauseatingly beautiful I cannot wrench my goddamn eye from her face whenever we’re together. “None of your fucking concern,” I finished dryly.
Tate shrugged. Luca stood up to pour him a drink. Forever the diplomat. If Vello wanted half a chance to save his sinking empire, appointing Luca as the don was a no-brainer. Enzo was too nice, and Achilles too evil.
“So where were you between 10:33 and 11:04 that night, Tate?” I rotated my head toward the billionaire. “Because it sure as fuck wasn’t in the ballroom.”
“Gia didn’t feel well. She was nauseous and needed some medicine. I went to the nearest convenience store and got her ginger candy, a Sprite Zero, and an herbal inhaler.”
“They didn’t have Sprite Zero at the party?”
Tate returned my glare bluntly. “I can probably pull up the receipt through my online banking account, if you’d be so kind as to fucking give me my phone back.”
Luca shot me a look. I nodded.
Luca pulled Tate’s phone out of his pocket and handed it over.
Tate’s thumb flew over his screen while I traced my inner cheek with my tongue.
I could still taste my wife in my mouth.
She seemed to be resilient and tough as nails.
Most girls in her position would shy away from men, spiral farther down the dark hole they’d been sucked into, but not her.
Sure, she slept like shit, but she still got out of bed every morning. Made coffee for us and Imma. Tidied up our room. Cooked with Tierney. Hung out with Imma. Sketched. Filled my apartment with random shit as she caught up on eighteen years’ worth of online shopping.
“Here.” Tate stopped scrolling, placing his phone on the table and sliding it toward me. I caught it. The transaction showed Luca’s wedding date, at exactly ten forty-five at night.
Sam ran the distance between the manor to the convenience store and back on his laptop. “How did you get there?”
“I walked,” Tate said.
Sam turned to me. “Everything checks, Callaghan. Do with it what you will.”
I sat back in my chair, blowing air. A part of me was glad it wasn’t Blackthorn.
Killing someone so high-profile came with a shit ton of paperwork.
Plus, a demented, completely fucked-up part of me didn’t want Lila to be betrayed by one of the few men she actually liked, even if the fact she liked him in the first place made me want to feed him his own fucking cock.
This meant my suspect list had shrunk to the measly count of one person. Angelo Bandini.
We let Tate go, but not before he spent ten minutes showering us with a scathing rant about how we couldn’t hijack planes like we were in a B-grade video game.
He then finished it off by saying, “You know, Callaghan, I still can’t fucking stand your ass, but at least you’ve proven to be a better husband than you are a human. ”
He offered me his hand.
I stared at it.
“Aww,” Enzo cooed. “Mommy and Daddy aren’t breaking up, after all. Hug it out, bitches. I love feel-good moments.”
“You’re so fucking camp,” Sam grumbled.
Enzo’s cheeks flushed. “Oh, yeah? And you’re such a fucking homophobe.”
Sam tilted his head. “Is that an admission, pretty boy?”
Luca ribbed Sam. “Enough. Congrats on the baby, Tate. Boy or girl?”
“Boy,” he said, hand still outstretched to me.
“He has a name?” I asked.
“Astile.”
Of course, he and his wife were too fucking special to sire a Jake or a Peter.
With a sigh, I took Blackthorn’s hand and shook it.
Tate Blackthorn would never be my friend, but I guess he was no longer an enemy.