Chapter 17
Once Elana falls asleep on the couch, I meet up with Seamus in his office. He’s lived in this place for over a decade. Alone in the woods, yet the technology he has in this little house rivals that of the CIA.
“What did you find?”
He turns around from his screen with an intense frown. “You left out the part about the DeAngelos being involved in this mess.”
“There are no more DeAngelos.” I hook my hands on my hips.
“She was fucking one of them.”
Red flashes in my vision. “Talk about her like that again, and I’ll rip out your fucking tongue.”
He puts up his hands. “Okay, okay. I’m just filling in the holes of your story. If you want my help—”
“Your help?” I snort. “I don’t need your help.”
“You needed it today.” He gives a pointed glance to my arm.
“I needed the medicine you have. You were close by, that’s all.”
He sighs deeply. “I know you hate me, and with good reason. I’m an old bastard who never put anyone other than myself first. But I can help here.”
He’s right about that, and I can’t dismiss his ties to the Irish. They’ve weakened since he went underground, but they’re still there.
“What can you do?” I gesture with my chin at the untraceable phone on his desk.
“Janis is small potatoes, but O’Brien makes a good chuck of change from him. Right now, he believes the Volkovs came into Boston to take some of that. Even if she was trying to broker a deal that brought him into Chicago, it doesn’t matter. He’d would want a cut there, too.”
“The O’Brien doesn’t have his fingers in Chicago. That’s the deal Alexander made with him years ago. They stay out of each other’s way, and peace stays in place.”
“Cole needs assurance that your bosses aren’t trying to move into his territory.”
“I gave him my word before the confrontation with Janis happened.”
“You spoke to him?”
“I needed intel fast, and he runs the city. I assured him the Volkovs are not making a play for anything in Boston.”
“And then your girlfriend did the exact opposite.” He points at me.
“That’s all this is then—a bruised ego. Cole isn’t trying to use this as a way to move west?”
He shakes his head. “No. He has enough of his own family problems at the moment. Declan was killed a few months back, and Killian, another cousin, has risen up from the ashes. Everyone’s afraid to turn around for fear of a knife getting shoved between their shoulder blades.
Having to deal with this mess isn’t exactly the largest of their priorities. ”
“And your connections are still good? No one’s gunning to drag you out into the light?”
He laughs. “I’m an old man, Artem.”
“You’re still in fighting shape far as I can tell.” True, his beard is closer to white than gray, and it’s too long and unruly now, but the rest of him remains in good shape. Broad shoulders, muscular build.
“I don’t have the patience for any of it anymore.
Grown men chasing each other around the world fighting for toys that aren’t theirs.
All the killing and bloodshed. What for?
” He lifts his shoulders and lets them drop.
“So they can hold onto a small bit of business until someone bigger and more powerful comes and snatches it away?”
“You haven’t answered me.”
He deadpans. “My connections are solid. I know you think I’m hiding up here, but I’m not. This place was my prize.” He spreads his arms out wide, a king standing in the middle of his kingdom.
“Prize for what? What did you do in order to deserve all of this?” I take a step toward him, my back tensing beneath the weight of the truth. What he threw away in order to have his bunker in the mountains. What he turned his back on so he could focus on the family that truly mattered to him.
“You think I gave up your mother for this?” He cocks his head. “Is that what you think? You idiot.”
He looks like he wants to smack me upside the head, the same way he did when I was a little boy. Before he walked out on us. Before he left my mother with the fallout of having been the woman of an Irish mobster.
“Then what? What did you do to earn all of this?” When I think of what it would take for me to turn my back on Elana, my stomach turns. The list is short, damn near empty.
Even when I knew I couldn’t have her, I stood in her shadow, protecting her. The gut twist every time I watched her climb into Tony’s car or walk into his house and then again when she reappeared in the morning is nothing compared to what it would be like to not have her in my life.
“If I had stayed, they would have used your mother and you against me. They were going to kill you and sell her.” He takes a step closer to me, his nostrils flaring.
“The shit you’ve seen the DeAngelo crew do is nothing compared to what that bastard would have done to your mother if I hadn’t left her and you behind. ”
“You’ve told me this before.” I grit my teeth. Our interactions have been limited over the years. He’d found me when word that I’d started working for the Volkov family reached him. It had been a brief and violent conversation.
“You don’t think you’d leave your woman behind if it meant she got to live in peace?”
“I wouldn’t just abandon her. I wouldn’t leave her with nothing.”
He stares at me a long moment. The air thickens between us.
“I didn’t leave her with nothing. Not at first.” He shoves his hand through his hair. It’s gray, but as thick as ever. “When I found out she’d taken up with another man—”
“You left her. You abandoned us after she’d given up everything to be with you. Her family turned their backs on her for being with an Irishman. And then you pick up and leave her with a small kid. Do you know what it was like for her?”
He puts up a hand to stop my argument.
“I did what I could from a distance to protect you both, but when she started with Christian, I backed away more. When she became pregnant with the girls, I cut her off completely.” His eyes meet mine, emotion swimming in them.
“I was a bastard to do it. I know it. The idea of another man touching her, having her in a way I couldn’t.
..” His voice trails off, as if he finishes what he’s saying it might burn him.
It’s the first time I understand him. Every time I had to sit back as a spectator while Elana was being loved by a man not me, it took everything in me not to burn the world to ashes. But the torture was mine to bear.
I would never have left her unprotected and uncared for.
“Was it you that killed him, then?” A question that’s burned in my brain for years.
He sighs then shakes his head. “No. I didn’t kill him. I hated him for having what I couldn’t, but he took good care of your mom and you. His death had nothing to do with me.”
“So, what then. What did you do to earn this peaceful little hideout deep in the woods?”
“Cole wanted the throne. I gave it to him. He let me walk away.”
My brow snaps together. “You gave it to him? You were the one who took out his older brother?”
“I played my part, took my prize, and left the game.” He rolls his shoulders back. “I vowed to stay out of their shit, and he promised to leave me in peace.”
“Except you don’t fully believe it. Otherwise you wouldn’t be buried in the woods living in a bunker with flash bomb booby traps.”
He shrugs, like a little kid who’s been caught stealing the last cookie. “The only person I trust is me. So far, they’ve never come after me for anything, but if the wrong person finds out the part I played, who knows. Better to be safe.”
“Why are you telling me this? I could use this information to get the Volkovs clear of Cole’s anger.”
He nods. “You could, yes.”
A lifetime of believing him the most selfish bastard that walked the earth, and he’s sacrificing his peace to get Elana’s freedom.
He sucks in a breath. “But I could also make a call and collect that bounty.”
He won’t.
There’s a wariness in his eyes. A man who has seen everything and wishes he hadn’t. How long before I wear the same expression? How long before the weight of my world crushes me, hurting Elana in the process?
“It’s going to get dark soon. When that sun sets, you won’t have an easy time of getting out of here.” He shuts down his computer and picks up a pen. He scribbles out a note on a card. “All I ask is a little warning.”
Taking the card, I glance at it. Two phone numbers. The first is a direct line to Cole O’Brien. The second is his own, a burner, most likely.
“Artem?” Elana’s voice carries from the top of the stairs. After her experience with the flash bang, she hesitates to come down here again.
I fold the card and tuck it into my back pocket. “There will be another way.”
He straightens, tightening his jaw. “If there isn’t, don’t hesitate.”
Elana stands at the top of the stairs watching us climb up to her. Her brow is pulled together. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I slide my hand around to her back and lead her into the living room. “We need to get going.”
She tilts her head, inspecting my expression. When she can’t find the answers she wants, she leans to check Seamus. “What did you do?”
He laughs, a deep guttural laugh that I remember from my childhood. Before the long disappearances started happening. Before my mother stayed up all night worrying when he didn’t come home. Before he turned his back on us and walked away.
“He didn’t do anything. Get your shoes. If the sun sets, we’re stuck here until morning.”
That gets her moving.
Seamus packs up the medicine for myself with extra syringes and a bottle of antibiotics.
Once I have her in the car, I turn to Seamus, holding out my hand to him.
His eyebrows lift.
“Take care of yourself,” I say.
He takes my hand. There was a time when his was like a paw wrapped around my tiny fist. I’d thought nothing could take down my father. Until it did. But my hand fits perfectly against his now. We’re equal in size.
“You do the same.” He eyes the car behind me. “What are you going to do if her brothers aren’t willing to allow the hired gun to have their sister?”
“Nothing will make me leave her,” I say with finality.
He gives a sharp nod. “I thought the same thing once.”
There’s emotion in his voice, small and soft, but it’s there.
“Go.” He clears his throat. “Once the sun starts going down, it’s fast.”
I leave him standing on the porch of his cabin, his hideaway from the rest of the world. Alone.
“What did you two do while I was asleep?” Elana questions as I take the SUV through the hidden roads of the woods.
“Nothing.”
“You looked tense when you came back up. Did he piss you off again?”
I smile. “No. He surprised me is all.”
“Surprised you? Since when is there a moment when you don’t know everything?” She teases, sliding off her shoes.
“It’s an hour drive back to the cabin; get some sleep.” I place my hand on her thigh, squeezing. “You won’t be getting much rest once we get there.”