Chapter 18
ROWAN
We’re awake before sunrise; we have a two-hour drive to Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston and the service starts at nine thirty. I’m killing time waiting for Jules to finish up her routine, staring at myself in the wall-mounted gold antique mirror, and not recognizing my own reflection. The black “trench coat dress,” the long, pin-straight blonde wig, the oversized sixties Jackie Onassis sunglasses. I look like a taller, curvier version of Jules. I dig her style. On her. On me it’s ludicrous.
She comes out of the bathroom. I catch her behind me in the mirror. She’s dressed to the nines yet wolf whistles at me. It’s half sardonic, half legit. I lift the shades off my eyes and shoot her a glare.
“I mean, you’ve got legs for days.” She leers.
“This will be the first and last time you get to choose my outfit for me, so enjoy it while you can.”
She titters. “Oh, I am enjoying it. Kinda jealous that dress won’t fit me. I like it.”
“You could’ve bought one in your size.”
She approaches from behind and pulls me tight to her small frame. “I’m trying to train myself to rein in my spending. We might be poor soon if we go through with the whole pricey alter egos thing, remember?”
“I’m skeptical you have it in you.”
“I’ll have you know my favorite hoodie only cost me ninety dollars at J. Crew.”
I turn around in her embrace and laugh. “You get that ninety bucks is steep for a sweatshirt, right?”
She goes tsss but says, “Okay, yes.”
I lean in to kiss her. “We should head out.”
She inhales, exhales, agrees with a headshake, then grabs her car keys and her clutch from the nightstand.
This wig, compounded by the thickness of my own hair and the fact that I run hot, has me boiling. I’m sweating despite the BMW’s icy AC. Poor, Lilliputian Jules is suffering the reverse: She’s cold even though she has the passenger side vents closed. A shiver runs through her, and I envision us arguing over the ambient air temperature of an apartment we don’t have yet. It’s a dispute I’m stoked to get into someday. She’ll win because I’ll allow her to. I’ll sweat my ass off in rooms that are ninety degrees in the height of summer while she’s happy as a pig in shit, and I’ll be happy because she is. Once in a while, if I’m noticeably uncomfortable, she’ll blast the central air at sixty because, stubborn as she is, she’s caring and considerate. Small compromises like those are what happy relationships—platonic, romantic, and familial—are built on. Give and take. What a wild concept, made wilder that I had little experience with or comprehension of it until her.
“You’re thinking hard over there. Are you okay?” She tries to keep her teeth from chattering as she asks.
“Yeah. You aren’t, though.” Luckily, I had the insight to throw my leather jacket in the backseat. One-handed, I reach behind her, grab it, and drape it over her shoulders like a blanket. She cozies into it. I read her eyes as easily as I could a library book—she is completely in love with me. Good. Same.
Boston’s city limit is fast approaching. My chest gets tighter with every passing mile. It’s like I’m Giles Corey demanding more weight. If only being crushed to death by slabs of stone were a viable trade for a sick conscience in this day and age. Could shoot yourself in the head or jump off a bridge or drown yourself in the sea… No. That’s a coward’s move. I’m owning my shit until my natural end. I’m strong enough to carry the onus.
The Roxbury neighborhood where the cemetery is located is a place I’m very familiar with. Once a month I meet up with a man called Dante who purchases copious amounts of drugs from my dad and pays for them with a dollar-store backpack stuffed with twenty-dollar bills. Nice guy. He gave me a Christmas card last year, which was hella weird but thoughtful. I’d rather be here for an exchange with him.
I pull the car over in a public lot—the maps app tells me it’s three blocks from the cemetery. “This is my stop. I’ll walk the rest of the way and meet you back here when it’s done?”
“Sounds good.”
I move to hop out and Jules catches my bicep. “This is going to suck for both of us in different ways, and I hate that I can’t be standing next to you.”
“I hate it, too. But we’ll get through it. And then we’ll go back to Maine and take the rest of our weekend together, maybe have some more depressing sex?”
She lets out a sharp laugh. “We’re such lesbians.”
“Uh huh. Processing trauma as foreplay. Typical lesbo behavior.” I give her a peck on the cheek. “Alright, let’s get this shitshow on the road.”
She takes my place in the driver’s seat, then continues the journey to Forest Hills alone. I watch the Beamer as it zooms down the street past brownstones and high rises until it’s nothing but a white speck on the horizon.
The cemetery is sprawling. It would be out of place in Boston proper. The burial grounds sprinkled throughout the city are small plots of land that existed before the population exploded and men built paved roads and bridges and towering buildings. Those gardens of remains are historic, headstones dating all the way back to the 1600s. Forest Hills is full of the newly dead—twentieth century corpses or later.
The black iron gates show no signs of rust. The grounds are well-maintained, green grass manicured to perfection, rose bushes trimmed and tame. There are fresh bouquets of flowers laid at the foot of gravestones I walk past. This is a place people visit, not a relic. Unforgotten.
It’s a trek to get to Gino. There’s a line of Porsches, Mercedes—all the impressive German car brands rich people own—parked along the service road, which is how I know where to find him. Follow the gangsters.
The gathering around the newly dug grave is considerable. I guess because Gino was so young, and death came for him too soon. So many black suits and black dresses. An ocean of black. In China, white is the traditional color of mourning. I remember reading that somewhere. It doesn’t feel appropriate. White is hopeful, a blank slate full of promise. Black is emptiness, and what’s a lifeless body but an empty shell?
I stand at the very edge of the group, the last wolf in the pack. Nobody seems to take any notice of me, the tall fake blonde in the back and off to the side, strategically positioned to take in the full weight of everyone’s mourning. I’m just another funeral-goer dressed like the Void.
Up at the front facing the throngs are a middle-aged man and woman with dark hair and sad eyes. Their haunted expressions let me know they’re Gino’s parents. Next to them is a young woman, a teenager, who shares their coloring and their sorrow. Gino was a big brother. Discovering that hits me hard. The bond I stole from that girl is irreplaceable.
I notice there are many standing sprays surrounding the dark-stained mahogany casket. The flowers I sent are the prettiest, but that doesn’t make me feel better. Catching sight of Jules and her mom, Maria, standing beside Patrick Calloway makes me feel worse. Not sad, pissed. I put Gino in the ground, but Jules is right that it didn’t have to go down like that. And she’s probably right that Gino and I would’ve been friends in another life—she knows us both well enough to call it. I bite back the urge to give Patrick the very public fuck you he deserves. That’s the Monaghan training rearing its ugly head. I have to unlearn everything I was taught.
An elderly priest in a black and gold chasuble moves to the head of the casket and clears his throat. It’s very Irish Catholic, as I suspected it would be. “We’re here today to pay tribute to and remember the life of Eugene ‘Gino’ Murphy—son, brother, friend, and a man of God. He was called home to heaven much earlier than any of us would have liked, but we are grateful for the time we had with him. He had such a profound effect on his family, his community, and his church throughout his short life?—”
I tune him out; most of what he’s saying feels like utter bullshit. A man of God doesn’t live a life of crime. Gino may have had a good heart, but that is the life he lived. He robbed, sold drugs, he would have done violence were he commanded to, and I’m sure he followed orders of that nature once or twice. Why do we try to put a positive spin on people after they die, when we know what kind of shit they got up to while they were here? I’m not going to heaven. The metric ton of shit I got up to punched my ticket straight to hell. My dad’s gonna be driving the fucking bus that takes me there, and Patrick Calloway will meet us in the seventh circle. Juliet won’t be there. She’s unpolluted. I’m gonna make damn sure she stays that way.
Gino’s mother is sobbing and that’s more worthy of my attention than some clueless, pious old man’s words, anyhow. I should go up to her and offer my shoulder to cry on or some pathetic measure of comfort. Got some nerve even entertaining that idea. His father is not crying, but only just holding it together. He keeps bowing his head, concentrating on the lawn rather than the coffin in an effort to stave off tears. The sister has her bottom lip trapped between her teeth, trying her best to appear composed for her parents’ sake, as though her pain is somehow less significant than theirs.
Juliet’s brimming but refusing to let herself break down. Her mother’s severe and somber. Patrick has his hands folded, forearms resting on his thighs, as if in silent prayer. It’s a show of genuine contrition but fuck him all the same.
There’s a strange disquiet rising within me, a hot air balloon gradually inflating. I didn’t think this through. Being unable to control my emotions is so new to me—letting myself go beyond acknowledging that I have feelings and legit feeling them.
I have to stop watching these people, taking in their suffering. I allow my attention to flutter away from the funeral. From my peripheral vision I see movement on the winding service road beyond the sea of headstones: An enormous black SUV approaching, unhurried. It joins the line of vehicles parked for Gino’s service. Latecomers? That’s tactless. They must not have a modicum of decorum.
The SUV empties, three men the wrong side of forty wearing dark suits and darker sunglasses. As they approach, I see that the man in pinstripes is smiling. No, beaming. Wide-mouthed. Deranged. Insane.
Dad.
My pulse quickens as I watch him and his cronies reach beneath their suit coats and reveal their weapons of choice: A SIG Sauer, a Beretta and a Walther PPK.
It’s a subconscious decision to shout, “Everybody get down!” milliseconds before my dad and his men start shooting. It’s not my warning that sends everyone into a whirlwind, but the sound and the shockwave of those initial bullets. Someone is hit. I’m not sure who or where, but there’s an explosion of blood, misty in the air like red rain.
Panic. The crowd of mourners transforms into a herd of terrified human cattle. Some of them start running, and those are the ones ripe for picking. My dad feeds on fear and chaos. He loves it.
Jules. I don’t see her mother or father. Most of the crowd has disbanded, but she’s frozen in place; the only movement around her is from the breeze blowing through her loose blonde hair. Motionless, she is the perfect target for one of my dad’s minions. I haul ass to her, fighting against my instinct to drop to the ground and crawl. “Juliet!” I scream. It’s louder than I thought a human voice was capable of being, more thunderous than the gun blasts.
She sees me but, in her horror, doesn’t recognize me. I rip the sunglasses off my face and the wig from my head, throw them to the ground. Rowan, she mouths.
Shells are flying all around us, ricocheting off tombstones, tearing flesh from bone. People are screeching in agony. I don’t have the luxury of gentleness. I tackle her. She lands on the soft, springy soil with viciousness. I manage to cradle the back of her skull in my hand and absorb the worst of the blow. I examine her body for injury, for blood, for anything abnormal, any blemish to her perfect, beautiful skin.
“Are you okay?” I ask. She has the collar of my dress in her tiny fists. Her face is pale, and her blue irises are being swallowed by dilated black pupils. “Juliet, are you hurt?”
“No. No, I’m okay.”
“Thank God. Thank God.” I cling to her so firmly that I can feel her frenzied heart beating against my ribcage as if it were my own.
We’ve fallen behind a granite obelisk. We’re well-concealed. She’s safe enough for the moment, but the gunfire is getting louder. They’re closing in. They’ll find her. Or maybe the Calloways have started shooting back. I don’t know. I can’t see. I don’t give a fuck either way; all I care about is Jules. I have to get her out of this cemetery.
“Stay down.”
She cleaves to my forearm. “Please, don’t go. Don’t leave me. You’ll di?—”
I palm her cheeks. “I won’t, my love. I won’t die. Not today. We’re both getting out of here alive.”
My words are not a salve. I have to pry myself from her grip.
I peek around the corner of the tall grave marker to take a gander at the horror show unfolding. One of my father’s douchebags, William, is sprawled on the lawn twenty feet from my position. He’s bleeding from two holes in his chest. One down. Not too far from his position, my dad and Jeremy—the other fuckface he brought with him—are taking cover behind a mausoleum, now and again peering out and shooting wildly at nothing in particular.
To my immediate left, Patrick Calloway is on his haunches, stooped behind a marble headstone, returning fire in the intermittent silence. His wife is beside him covering her ears, hands soaked in the blood of a man splayed on the lawn just beyond her. Shot after shot after shot rings out from Calloway’s Glock. He has better aim than my dad, and I find myself hoping he clips him—just a graze, so he’ll stop fancying himself King Shit of Fuck Mountain and realize he’s not invincible.
Patrick’s magazine empties and he ducks down again. He reaches into his pocket for a spare clip but finds none. It was fortunate that he even had his gun on him. There’s an unspoken rule in the underground that days like today are automatic ceasefires. Funerals and memorial services are sacred; weapons are not needed. Naturally, in my father’s twisted brain, a young man’s funeral is the perfect place for an ambush, all his enemies lined up to pick off. That’s him, a true villain at heart.
Calloway glances over at Jules, crumpled in a ball on her knees, palms pressed against a giant gravestone. And then he clocks me. The fear on his face for his daughter’s wellbeing turns to rage as he registers who I am. If he had a single bullet left, I’d catch it right between the eyes.
“She’s fine!” I yell to him. “She’s safe with me, Calloway, I swear.”
Maria tugs his jacket sleeve. He turns to her, and she nods. It’s enough for him given the situation. “I’ll break your fucking neck if anything happens to her,” he bellows back at me.
That’s fair. “I’ll break it for you.”
More shots are fired from my right side. A Calloway guy. Is this ever going to end? When he runs empty, there’s prolonged silence. Dad and Jeremy are out of ammo, too. My father’s voice shatters the quiet. It ripples through the air, angry and accusing. Also, because I know him, I recognize the slight hint of alarm: He has never not known my whereabouts this long.
“Where’s my fucking daughter, Calloway? You put a hit out on her? I swear on every saint you know, if she’s dead?—”
I stand up and step out from my shelter, undisguised, in the full light of day. I could be shot by one of Calloway’s men if they have a fresh clip handy, but it’s a chance I have to take. Juliet reaches for me, pawing at the hem of my dress. I break away from her.
“Dad!” I holler across the cemetery, hands up to show I’m unarmed. “Dad, it’s Rowan!”
Jeremy’s is the face I see pop around the corner of the crypt. His eyes bulge. He says something to my father that I can’t make out. And then Callum Monaghan unveils himself, tall and lanky and as ferocious as he’s ever been.
“What the fuck are you doing here, kid?”
“Come on, Dad. You know why I’m here.”
A hand takes mine, entwines my fingers. Jules stands tall at my side. Her tears have caused her mascara to run. The thick black lines down her cheeks look like warpaint, heightened by the sheer determination on her face. It’s out now—us. We are the children of combating fiefdoms, daughters of defiance. The whole of Boston will know before the sun goes down. A lot of people will have opinions. The Rossi merger is off the table. There may be consequences for that. But the promises made weren’t made by me, so let them rain hell on Callum and watch me shrug about it.
My dad examines us. I read the disgust on his mien. It’s the same guise Teague wore in the tent, and every time he’d set sights on me before then. Love means nothing to men like them. They’ll never understand its value. All they value are dollars and cents.
He motions for me to come to him with his index and middle fingers. “Let’s go.”
There are police sirens ringing through the ether and fast approaching. This isn’t the Back Bay or Government Center or even Downtown—in this neighborhood gunshots are always gunshots, never firecrackers or cars backfiring. He turned this hallowed ground into a battlefield. If I had the physical strength to detain him, I’d make him stay to catch justice for it. If I had my piece, I might gun him down. I get it now: One way or another my father has to die, and his kingdom has to crumble alongside his brittle bones.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
I watch his ego deflate as he says, “Please.”
Didn’t think he had that word in his vocabulary. “No.”
He flinches at the understanding that he has unequivocally and forever lost me.
I take in the aftermath of the shootout. At least six people caught a slug or two and are bleeding out in the grass. “William’s dead or dying. I don’t know who else is about to join him, but if you don’t want to be dragged outta here in handcuffs, I suggest you leave. You don’t have time to clean up your mess and you don’t have the ammo to take care of all the witnesses.”
“Call me when you come to your senses,” he says, despite knowing that I already have. He turns back to the mausoleum and signals to Jeremy with a snap. Ever the dutiful soldier, Jeremy falls into step beside him. They saunter, nonchalant, to the SUV, then floor it out of the cemetery, leaving William by the wayside to rot like trash. A peon casualty. Predictable. He expects loyalty but has none to give.
Once the detritus from the SUV settles, the handfuls of mourners who scattered to the wind regroup. Some rush to help the fallen, others—the mobsters—rush to leave before the police arrive to ask questions.
Jules’s hand is still in mine. Even as her parents approach us, she keeps holding on. I’m grateful Patrick Calloway can’t shoot lasers from his eyes—neither Jules nor I would have hands left if he could.
“Of all the women in this city you went for the only one off-limits.” I can’t tell if he’s talking to Jules or me. Maybe it’s both. There’s no question his follow-up is directed toward me. “You protected my daughter and for that I’ll let you live. Go. Now. Back to wherever it is you’ve been hiding like a coward.”
“Dad—”
“She killed one of my men and nearly killed your cousin.” Jules and her mother both gasp in unison. Patrick nails Jules with a scowl. “You think I didn’t know there was something going on between you? I figured it out the day she shot Gino, and you blamed your family for it instead of her. Teague’s a blockhead and even he figured it out. I suspected you’d be with her, so I gave him permission to find you and exact his revenge on her. I got a call from the hospital this morning. He failed; that’s his fault. He won’t fail next time. So run, Monaghan.”
This son of a bitch. He knowingly put Jules in danger. I can’t unlearn how to hate him while he keeps earning my hatred. “Take a good look at your daughter’s face. That gouge in her forehead isn’t from me—Teague did that. Your family, not mine. Keep him away from Juliet or the next time I see him I’ll deliver his fucking head to your doorstep.”
His maw curls like he’s about to snarl. And on that note, he’s done with me. “Juliet, you’re leaving with us this minute, or I’ll kill her where she stands.”
She’s torn. The battle she’s fighting in her mind is written all over her body, from her green, grass-stained knees to her big blue eyes.
The cop cars are in view now. We all have to leave. “Go with them. It’s okay.” I pull my hand away from her.
“It’s not.”
No, it’s not. But I have to believe that it will be. I want to kiss her goodbye and reassure her that we’ll figure it out. I don’t dare, under her father’s scrutiny. He quickly ushers Jules and his wife toward the line of cars. He allows Jules to get into her BMW. She starts down the road first and he and Maria follow in their Mercedes. They exit through the gate on the far side of the cemetery as two cop cars pull through the main entrance.
I don’t run. I make the rounds checking on the wounded. Two men and two women, no kids, thank fuck. Gino’s family is unscathed. As far as I can tell, the only person critically injured is William. I have no empathy for him. Death at a funeral, how fitting.
The police arrive and it turns out that I’m acquainted with two of them. Partners. They belong to my father. Officer Byrne, the younger of the two, makes a beeline for me. “You can’t be here.”
“But—”
“Walk away. I didn’t fucking see you.” And then he’s off to the scene of the crime to “do his job.”
It’s like I couldn’t confess my sins if I tried to. Nobody wants to listen. The perks and the curse of being the sovereign of corruption’s heir.
I wander the city aimlessly for a few hours, processing. The first thing I need to do is get back to Maine. I left a hundred thousand dollars in the safe in our suite, and I don’t have anywhere else to be, anyway. And all my clothes are there. I’m dying to get out of this fucking dress. There’s a car rental place in South Boston, about half a mile up Tremont Street from where I’m currently shuffling my sorry self. That’s my destination.
I’m waiting at a surface road T stop for the Green Line train to pass, so I can cross the damn street, when a blaring car horn catches my attention. Someone’s laying hard on that thing. A two-toned silver-black Nissan Z keels to a halt at the curbside a few feet in front of me. I know that car. I’ve sat my ass in the passenger seat many times. I approach it and find its blackout windows rolled down. Peering inside, a flood of relief washes over me.
“You’re the messiest bitch alive, Row,” Merrick says from the driver’s seat.
“You’re telling me, bro.”
“You look wicked hot in a dress though.” He whistles.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Get in.” Once I’m in the car, seatbelt securely fastened per his request, he gets back on the road. The inquisition begins at the first red light we encounter. “Why didn’t you ask me to come get you?”
“I told you, I want you to stay out of it.”
“I am staying out of it. I’m picking you up after the stupid shit happened.”
“How’d you know I was in Boston? Or where to find me?”
“Um, hello? Rose, my cousin, is your girlfriend’s best friend. And news travels fast. Literally, the shootout was on the News at Noon. I just cruised the main streets around Forest Hill hoping to find you.”
“Goddamn it.”
“Yeah. What are you gonna do?”
“I don’t know, Mer. I really don’t.” Everything is in the worst state of chaotic upheaval that I’ve had to deal with, like, ever. My life is unrecognizable. The status quo was never calm, but there was routine—objectives to achieve and directives to get me there. I’m good at critical thinking when there’s a clear goal to reach. All this uncertainty… I’m a rudderless ship at the mercy of a tempestuous current.
“Well, I’m in. Wherever you’re going, I’m going.”
“What about your job?”
“I’ll call out with COVID. I work at a print shop in the twenty-first century; how busy do you think it gets?”
I don’t know why I laugh so hard but it’s exactly what I need. “Wanna spend a weekend in Maine?”
He scoffs. “Nope. Ticks. But okay.”
As he heads for the Zakim bridge to Route 93, I think about how much I love him, and how lucky I am to have him as a best friend.