Forbidden Girl

Chapter 19

JULES

House arrest is coming. I’m aware of that reality the second I step through the threshold into the foyer. Under no circumstances will I be allowed past the rose bushes at the end of the driveway until I leave for Washington. We live in a historic house on Joy Street that’s so grand it rivals estates in the English countryside, but it’s no better than an elegant penitentiary. I wonder if Dad has an ankle monitor ready for me.

“Your cousin is coming home tomorrow,” is all my father says as he enters the house on my heels. He’s fuming and exhausted. There are still blades of grass strewn about his suit, the green aggressively bright in contrast to the matte black material.

“Oh, good. Will you be allowing him to smack me around again?”

He’s struck by that. It’s twisting the knife of his failure as a father—his greatest fear is being unable to protect me—but it’s the only trump card I have to play.

He takes me by the shoulders as if to comfort me, but it’s cold and I have no use for it. “Of course not. We’ll be reevaluating his position in this family and this business.”

“Good. Because Rowan meant it. If Teague ever touches me again, she’ll lay him in his grave.”

His jaw clenches. It’s an automated physical response: He can’t stand the mention of her or the fact that she’s taken better care of me than he has. “And I would let her.”

Thanks for setting up my argument for me. “Then how can you be so opposed to me being with her? She loves me, Dad. So much that she’s risked her life for me twice. You saw that with your own eyes today.”

“I also saw her father show up to a funeral service and start shooting people! Callum Monaghan raised her in a house without a mother to keep her soft. She is all him, a hundred precent his daughter.”

“She’s not! That’s what you don’t get. Somehow, in spite of him, she’s better than him! And better than you.”

“That’s enough, both of you!” My mother makes herself heard. She’s ashen-faced from the morning’s trauma. A screaming match between my father and me is the last thing she needs. In true Italian fashion she talks with her hands, gesturing at the front door, then all around the hallway. “The world outside that door is chaotic enough. I want peace in this house. I want peace within my family. If you cannot speak to each other like calm, rational adults, do not speak to each other at all.” She starts for the stairs. “I’m going to clean myself up and then take to my bed. If I hear either of you raise your voice?—”

“I’m sorry, Mom. You won’t.”

“Good. Juliet Amelia, we need to have a conversation later, too.”

I hate it when she calls me by my full name. She only does that when I’m in trouble. “Okay.” You know where to find me, since Dad’s going to hold me captive.

My mother disappears upstairs. My father steps out of his dress shoes, kicks them toward the timber shoe rack, and loosens his tie as he ambles to the living room. He sinks into his favorite reclining chair. It’s not often I see him defeated, but he’s rubbing his forehead, his face, as if he’s unsure what else to do with himself. He’s been living this perilous life for thirty years. Has he finally grown tired of his own hellacious creation? What will be the last straw for him? Losing my mother? Losing me? After today he must know he’s on the precipice of both.

I collapse onto the couch opposite him, focusing on the whooshing of water through pipes as my mother turns on the shower upstairs. I don’t want to talk to him about Rowan, but I don’t want my love for her to be marred by guilt anymore, either. It has been, at least a little bit, from the start—that very first kiss. How something could feel so wrong and so perfectly right all the same is still beyond me.

My exhalation is a gale-force wind. “You know this has nothing to do with you, right, Dad? I didn’t choose the daughter of your enemy to spite or hurt you. Love just happens. It’s uncontrollable. If anything, I tried to fight it. But I lost.”

He straightens himself in his chair. “I understand that. Your grandparents wanted to send your mother to Italy when she told them she was with me.”

“Really? I had no idea.”

“Yeah. They owned a bakery in the Bronx, and had a simple, happy life. I was twenty-two and already had a rap sheet. They saw me for who I was before I saw it myself.”

I knew my parents met in New York on what my dad calls “a business trip,” and that my mother is estranged from her parents. I met them once when I was very young. They were kind to me. I remember my grandfather was the first person to call me topolina and my grandmother cried when she hugged me goodbye. All this time, I didn’t comprehend why my mom had shut them out. It was part of the choice she had to make.

“So, you left together?”

“Yes. Over the years, Maria tried to reconnect. But they stood firm in their opinion of me. They were right all along, but she’s a very proud woman. I’m lucky to be loved by her.”

He’s got to be fucking kidding me. “Don’t you get that you’re doing the same thing they did? You’re pushing me out of our family.”

“This is different. Back then I was a low-level nobody. Rowan is not. I have good reason to worry about you. You saw that today with your own eyes. It’s clear you see a side of her I can’t, all the things about her that have earned her your love. And yes, she does love you, deeply, I witnessed it—but she isn’t safe for you.”

“I’m aware. Although, to be fair, being your daughter means I’m unsafe by default.”

“Which is the main reason I let you go to school on the other side of the country. You’re a very smart young woman; you’ve probably known that from the beginning.”

“I have.”

“The difference is you will always be my daughter. To put it in terms your big math brain is more comfortable with, your mother and I are constants. Rowan is the only part of this equation that is a variable.”

That’s where he’s wrong. Genetically, on a cellular level, he is my father, and that is unalterable. But Rowan discovered a way—albeit pricey and impractical—to make his presence in my life a mutable variable. I’m leaning more and more toward wanting him to be. I played the ace up my sleeve too early. Or perhaps I didn’t have one to begin with. I can try to reason with an unreasonable man, I can bat my lashes at him all I like, but he’s going to dig his heels in.

“There’s nothing I can say to change your mind, is there?” I ask. “You’re really not going to let me be happy, are you?”

“I can’t, sweetheart. I’m sorry. I have to do what I think is right for you, and that’s keeping you away from her.”

“And you’re willing to… do whatever it takes?” I can’t say it aloud. I don’t have to.

His brow furrows. “If it comes to that, yes. You think I’m as bad as Callum Monaghan. You’re right, I can be. But I understand now how much it would hurt you if she died, so please don’t make me make it come to that. If you truly love her, let her go.”

Unacceptable. I gave him a chance to be sensible and he blew it. This calculation needs recomputing with new parameters. Elimination method: Subtract a coefficient to nullify a variable. If that’s how it has to be, that’s how it’ll be.

“I guess there’s nothing left to discuss.”

He shakes his head. “No, there isn’t.”

“What about Callum and the Monaghan crew? You have reprisals in mind, I’m sure.”

“Yes. He’s going to pay for today.”

He should. Although doling out justice isn’t my father’s job any more than it is Teague’s or Callum’s—that’s what police are supposed to be for. But I don’t have a care in the world about any of them anymore. Let them all kill each other.

I hear the shower in the upstairs bathroom go silent. Mom must be finished. It’s the out I need to excuse myself from the conversation. I point to the ceiling, then at my chlorophyl-stained knees. “My turn to go get cleaned up.”

“Good. Try to relax if you can.”

Relax. Lol. “Sure.”

“One more thing,” he says to my back.

“Yes?”

“Give me your phone.”

“I’m sorry, what?” My mouth falls agape out of reflex. Even when I was an actual teenager, he never took my phone away—because he could use it to keep tabs on me at all times. It’s not an ankle monitor, though it may as well be. He doesn’t need it to act as one while he has me sequestered. What a power move. I could pitch a tantrum like a petulant child. However, the man is tech incompetent and doesn’t realize my iPad and iPhone share the same communication capabilities. I should play it up like I’m upset.

“This is a whole new level of tyrannical and it’s not a good look for you. I hate it.”

“I know you do, but?—”

“It’s for my own good, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. I’m not giving you the passcode.”

“I don’t need it.” He’s not interested in the content of my conversations, only in keeping me from responding to or initiating contact with Rowan. He’s smart. I’m smarter.

“Fine.” I turn the phone off, then toss it at him with more ferocity than I mean to. He fumbles and it hits the chair’s armrest. He shakes his head but doesn’t say anything more.

I think best in the shower. Maybe it’s the heat loosening my muscles, or the absolute solitude that centers me. I appreciate the tranquility of nothing and no one requiring my attention or help, or of having to scheme, to avoid, or to twist someone to my will.

I scrub shampoo into my scalp, rinse it out, repeat the process with conditioner.

This is the part where I often imagine myself a droplet of water in the cascade. Unfeeling, unknowing, unaffected by manmade turmoil, with one singular purpose: To wash away dirt and stress. I envision soap suds dissolving as I make contact with them, then trickling down the drain enveloped by me. Of course, I end up in a sewer and the grossness of that visual always ruins my serenity. Funny how everything under the sun, living or inanimate, has the same cycle—clean to dirty, fresh to decaying, useful to useless. It’s all connected.

Connected. A connected man is brought in for odd jobs and vouched for by a made man, a recognized member of the organization. A made man reports to his captains, his captains report to their boss. My dad is their boss. That’s the structure of the Irish mob, regardless of the family. Gino was connected. Teague is made, and a captain, though I don’t know that he’ll be a captain come tomorrow.

Made man. The phrasing is archaic. Not gender neutral, because historically women weren’t included in the hierarchy, but Rowan’s father only has one child, a daughter, and he molded her in his image because he recognized her talent and strength. She’s made, and a captain. Alistair was also a captain under Monaghan… What is he to my father? Connected or made? Certainly not a captain, he’s too green. But my father trusts him enough to have let him play both sides.

How any of this is useful information, I’m not sure. They’re facts, not necessarily relevant to fixing the mess I’m in. It’s a rare occasion that I struggle to find clarity; however, the hole I’ve dug is too deep to climb out of and I’m spiraling.

The truth is, buying myself a new identity isn’t the answer to the dilemma. It could work for Rowan, but for me it’s complex in a way that creates a different set of problems. Say I were to finish my degree. I couldn’t use it. The credentials would be Juliet Calloway’s, not Whoever Whatever’s. I’d have the knowledge but not the hundred-thousand-dollar piece of parchment paper with my name on it as a testament to that. I’m not walking onto Wall Street or into an accounting firm without it. And if I can’t work, I can’t live. The point of getting an education was to get out from under my father’s thumb and make my own way in the world.

We have to scrap that idea and start from scratch.

Right now, I don’t even know where Rowan is, or what her immediate plans are. That’s stressing me out above all else. I turn the chrome shower handle to the left and the waterfall above me transforms to dewdrops.

I forgo drying my hair or getting dressed in favor of quelling my anxiety; I need to see Rowan’s face. I’m loosely wrapped in my fluffy pink bathrobe, sitting on my bed with my iPad in hand, EarPods in, waiting for her to answer my FaceTime call. On the fourth ring, she picks up.

I’m greeted by a backward baseball cap atop short, dirty-blonde hair, brown eyes, and chin stubble. “Hello, Juliet, nice robe.”

I pull the robe tighter around my cleavage. “Merrick? What are you doing with Rowan’s phone? Is she okay?”

He flips the camera toward Rowan, who’s behind the steering wheel of what must be his car. She takes her eyes off the road for a second and locks them on me. “Chill, Jules. I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Are you okay?”

“Physically, yes. Mentally, not really. I was in my first shootout this morning, my father wants revenge, and when we got home from the cemetery, he forbade me to see or speak to you ever again. He even went so far as to take my phone away.”

She laughs. Fully laughs. It’s the least expected and most inappropriate reaction to me expressing my agitation. “And yet, here you are, seeing and speaking to me. He can forbid you all he wants. We’ve got our hearts set on each other—he’s fucked. At this point it’s just a matter of how we deal with our fathers, that’s all. Hell, let them hash it out and see who’s left standing afterward, if it’s either of them.”

She hasn’t seen me in a tailspin before, yet somehow manages to effortlessly pull me out of it. If there was ever any doubt that she’s the one, it’s squashed now. She knows how to handle me, while my own family doesn’t.

“There’s something else…” I tell her about my skepticism over becoming someone else, how it’s even more impractical than a Calloway and a Monaghan falling for each other to begin with. She listens, patient yet intense. Strange how a person can be both of those things at the same time, but that’s quintessential Rowan.

“Okay, so we scrap the idea. It was desperate and convoluted anyway. You’ve never broken a law and I’ve never been caught breaking one. Our names might carry guilt by association, but that’s not a big deal. Maybe operating within the law, using it to our advantage, is the way to go.”

“Something’s cooking in that brilliant brain?”

“The first draft of something, yeah. But there are plot holes to fill in. We’re on our way back to Chandler House. We’re gonna call it home base for a while, I think. And I’ll make sure to get your luggage and all your stuff back to you. Merrick can give it to Rose or something.”

We’re knee-deep in turmoil, yet she’s still so thoughtful. “Thank you, you’re sweet. And yeah, there are plot holes here, too. My mom has something she wants to talk to me about. I should get that out of the way.”

“Good. We need to take stock of our assets and allies. Talk to her and get back to me, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Good. Bye. Love you.”

“Bye. Love you, too.”

Merrick clears his throat as if to remind us that he’s there. Rowan goes, “Hang up the phone, you ass,” and I giggle as he does. I have to admit I’m glad Rowan’s not alone. Strong as she is, this is too much for anyone to shoulder on their own. I have my mom.

Suddenly, I’m curious how Rowan would have turned out if her mom had been around to raise her. My dad was correct about one thing: She’d probably be softer. The lack of balance affected her—no one taught her that softness isn’t weakness. If she’d had a mother figure in her life, Callum wouldn’t have been able to refine her steeliness without intervention. He’s stone cold. It’s sort of a miracle she maintained any kindness at all. My mother planted that seed in me and watered it as best she could, violent surroundings be damned. It might have been Alistair’s doing for Rowan. I don’t know him well, but the few times he’s come around he was courteous. Rowan said she learned manners from him rather than her father. If he nurtured the bright spot in her heart, I’m thankful for him.

I toss my iPad onto my desk, slide my earphones into their case, then shimmy into a pair of joggers and the only Gonzaga t-shirt I own. It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m dressed like I’m ready for bed. I feel like I’m ready for bed, like I could sleep for days. That happens when I get anxious. My body isn’t used to the influx of adrenalin and eventually needs to crash hard. I’m inclined to let it, once I’ve had my tête-à-tête with my mother.

I pad down the hallway to my parents’ bedroom, noticing how cold the tile floor is against the soles of my bare feet. I hate being cold. I shouldn’t be, summertime in Boston is hot as Hades, but my dad likes the damn central air set to the temperature of Snow Miser’s lair, and gets pissed if I turn it up more than a degree. It’s just another little thing about him that annoys me. Little things like that used to be easy to overlook; as I’ve gotten older, they’ve added up. I finally see the whole of him—he’s the epitome of controlling.

I knock on the door. My mother answers, bedraggled. It’s unlike her. She is the picture of composure. It’s as if Italian women are preternaturally strong; there isn’t anything that catches them by surprise or breaks their spirits. Anything besides being shot at and/or watching people being shot.

“Mom?”

She rests her temple against the doorframe and flashes me a smile. It’s small and wounded, but all she can gather. “What a day, hmm?”

“Understatement of the century.”

She leads me inside, closes and locks the door behind me. Locked doors are not allowed in this house. My dad flipped out once when I was in high school and accidentally hit the push-button lock on my bedroom door. He damn-near broke it down, banging on it like a zombie who smelled brains. I couldn’t hear him because I had headphones on. He thought I had a boy in my room. He didn’t even apologize once I’d opened the door and he realized I’d made a simple mistake and was alone. “Never lock this door,” is all he said. Since that day, I haven’t. It makes uninterruptable privacy impossible. I never had any until I moved into my single room at school, but it quickly became my favorite thing about living so far away from my parents. God, I miss being able to masturbate without worrying about getting caught.

“Dad’s not going to be thrilled about that.” I gesture at the doorknob.

“Dad doesn’t have a leg to stand on with me, at present.”

Oof. Icy. I like it.

“I take it your father made his feelings about you and Rowan known.”

“Loud and clear. He’s not having it. I can’t be around her or talk to her. If he had his way, he’d keep me from thinking about her.”

“That’s no surprise.”

“No, but it’s infuriating. Especially because he told me what happened between you and your parents.”

“He thinks he has more power over you than they had over me.”

“Doesn’t he? The money. It all belongs to him. He pays for my education; I can’t go back to school without him. And the reach of his influence… That’s what scares me the most. What he knows and what he can find out and who will take his orders and who he can bribe. Imagine how much worse it would be if his operation was as prominent as Monaghan’s? He’d be untouchable.”

“The money isn’t all his.”

“What do you mean the money isn’t all his?” It must be. My mother doesn’t purchase groceries without running it past my dad first.

“Oh, topolina.” She motions me toward the bed, taps the mattress. “Sit.” She grabs her phone from her vanity, situates herself beside me, and unlocks it via Face ID. I watch her tap info and then toggle between the phone number everyone knows and one I don’t recognize. What… the actual fuck? Who is this woman and what is she hiding? How did she hide it?

She clicks on a thumbnail of a sky-blue and yellow lion with the letters RIBB below it. Another screen pops open. It’s a banking app. The Royal International Bank of the Bahamas. This app is advanced. She logs in using facial recognition. A few more taps and she’s on another screen that reads Allow Secondary Authorized User.

She holds up the phone to me. “Look at the camera.”

I’m so shocked that I look insane in the photo, eyes wide and mouth slack. A red warning flashes across the screen: USER NOT AUTHORIZED.

“Juliet Amelia Calloway, close your mouth and let’s try it again.”

My jaw snaps closed. The second picture grants me access to the account.

“One point six million dollars! Holy shit, Mom! You have an offshore account that Dad has no clue about?”

“Correct. I opened it a few days after I found out I was pregnant with you, and have been making weekly deposits ever since. Do you remember when I asked you a few years ago for a copy of your driver’s license?”

I think back. It was right around my eighteenth birthday. “Yes. You said it was for a life insurance policy or something.”

“It was. This is the insurance policy, in the event of the worst-case scenario. I was putting you on this account as a secondary user and needed a government ID to corroborate your birth certificate.”

I feel like I swallowed a boulder. “Tell me you haven’t been skimming from Dad all this time. He’ll kill you if he finds out.”

He could never forgive betrayal of that nature, irrespective of who the betrayer might be. He’s too prideful and power hungry—examples must be made.

“Skimming,” she scoffs. “He’s so out of touch with reality, he’s been handing me five thousand dollars a week for twenty-five years to run the house. I didn’t need that much money. But he never asked for receipts, and I never offered any. After our bills were paid and the kitchen was stocked, whatever was left over went into this account.”

“You’re brilliant. And terrifying.”

“I told you, you didn’t get your brains from your father. Didn’t I? I knew in the back of my mind this day or one like it would come. You don’t need to worry about how to pay for school, or anything else for that matter.”

I know what she means. “That isn’t going to work out. The logistics of it… they don’t exist for me. I know that I want my degree. I know that I want a career. Everything I’ve done up to this point, even my internship at Equity Financial, was done under my name. I can’t give up Juliet Calloway, as much as I want to. And I really want to.”

“So, we won’t be arranging an elopement and faking your death, then?”

I give her an eyeroll. “This isn’t Romeo and Juliet, Mother.”

“I was kidding, sweetie.” She pats my shoulder in the most sardonic way possible. “Give me your phone; I’ll set up the app for you, so you can access the funds whenever you need to.”

“Uh, that’s going to be a problem. Dad confiscated it.”

She sighs. “Of course he did.” She flips through her phone wallet case, to a discreet compartment tucked behind the main cardholder slots, and pulls out a debit card. “Take this.”

I examine it, turn it over in my hands. It’s the strangest card, a black metal slate with no name or numbers stamped into it, one of those ‘Tap to Pay’ RFID icons in the bottom left corner, and a silver magnetic strip on the back. It makes sense that it would be unremarkable, given the large sum in the account, yet its inconspicuousness only serves to draw attention to its user. That’s such a prototypical Rich Person Thing—ostentatious but sneaky, “I’m a VIP, be aware of my presence but don’t make a scene.” It hadn’t occurred to me how crude that is until now. I’ve perpetuated it myself. Bougie is one thing, showy is another. I don’t want to be that flashy girl anymore. A modest life is enough.

“Thank you. But this doesn’t solve everything.”

“How about we take away his money and influence? Let’s burn down his stash house so he has to start from scratch.”

“You got jokes today, huh, Mom?” I know my dad has a warehouse somewhere jam-packed with illegal goodies; however, I wouldn’t know how to find it to burn it down. He guards its location with his life. He’s smarter than Callum Monaghan in that way: Everyone knows where to find him, but few people dare to fuck with him.

“I’m only half joking about that.”

“Do you actually know where the place is?”

She nods. “I do. My name was on the deed until I transferred ownership to him.”

All these secrets I wasn’t privy to. What else don’t I know about my mom? “You transferred it to him? Why? Oh… Because you didn’t want to be implicated in his crimes.”

“Bingo.” She reaches out to smooth my damp locks. “Once you came into the world, I couldn’t afford to be involved with his business anymore. It was too dangerous. If anything should happen to him, I needed to be here for you. We both agreed on that.”

“I could never do anything like that to him. I hate that he deals in drugs and guns, but to be the one who robs him of his life’s work feels wrong.”

“Because you’re loyal. And you love him.”

Yes, and yes. “You, too.”

“Indeed.”

Knowing the whereabouts of his stash house could prove useful to Rowan, though. Whatever she’s plotting, it’s more nefariously ingenious than any plan I could hatch. Best to leave the masterminding up to her and take a supporting role. “Where is it?”

“On Constellation Wharf in Charlestown.”

Charlestown. That’s unexpected. When I think Charlestown, I think Bunker Hill Monument, retired naval warships converted to museums, a town rich with American history, not piles of cocaine and crates of handguns squirreled away in an Irish gangster’s hidey-hole. It’s a good location, right where the Mystic and Charles Rivers meet, easy to get to from the water. I’m filled with a perverse curiosity. I want to see it and all the merchandise it stores, gauge its size. Maybe then the true scope of my father’s influence on this city will become clearer. I’m hoping he’s more small-time than I’ve assumed.

“What’s the address?” I ask.

“Sixty-five. The last building on the pier, closest to the water.”

“And what’s the security like? Cameras, an alarm system?”

“You know your father doesn’t trust technology. He prefers good old-fashioned manpower. He has two men on guard duty at all times.”

“Hmm.” Two isn’t bad. Men are dumb. I can manage two with a short skirt, a hair flip, and the Clueless Young Woman in Need of Assistance schtick.

“Why the piqued curiosity? You’re not going to do anything foolish, are you?”

I most definitely am. I trust my mother implicitly. Still, if she can keep secrets under the guise of protecting me, I can do the same for her. “It’s a lot to piece together, that’s all. I’m having trouble digesting everything. I think it would help if I could see this place.”

“That’s reasonable.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s not like Dad’s going to let me go anywhere anytime soon.”

“Not unsupervised.” She’s wearing a conniving expression I know well. She and I share it. How my father remains ignorant to it is unbelievable. “We are going shopping tomorrow. There must be a handful of things you need before going back to school.”

Will my father buy that? We haven’t done back-to-school shopping since freshman year, when they both flew across the country to help me move into the dorms, and then proceeded to buy me an entirely superfluous living room set. “I doubt Dad would let either of us out alone after today.”

“He knows I can handle myself. And I always carry a snub nose revolver in my purse.”

She WHAT? She’s always despised guns as much as I do. My parents have had endless arguments about keeping any in their bedroom. The compromise was a biometric gun safe unlockable by either of them, and only them.

“Okay, I cannot handle any more revelations today.” Actually, there is one more thing I must know. “Is it pink?”

“Absolutely not. It’s Tiffany blue.”

I don’t know why I find that so hilarious, but I’m crowing. “Gives a whole new meaning to Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I wonder how Audrey Hepburn would feel about it.”

“Disapprovingly, I suspect.”

“Okay. ‘Shopping’ tomorrow.”

“Oh no, dear, we will be doing some shopping. We can’t come home without a few big bags or Dad will be suspicious.”

“Fair enough.” And once I’ve staked out the warehouse, I’ll give Rowan a full report. Great. A plan is in motion. That’s something. But without an endgame to focus on, I’m getting slammed with shockwaves from, um, being fucking shot at. I am not okay. How can I be? My mom and Rowan could have died this morning. I could have died this morning. The full weight of that is starting to sink in.

“Can I stay here with you for a bit? I don’t want to be alone.”

She paws at the corner of the duvet and folds it down. “In with you,” she says like she used to when I was young, and she’d tuck me into bed at night. I stuff the debit card into my robe pocket and climb under the covers. She creases them tight around my body, then lies down next to me. She combs her fingers through my hair and starts singing, “Ninna nanna, ninna oh, questo bimbo a chi lo do?”

Memories surge to the forefront of my cognizance: Me at seven, spiking a fever, cranky as a hornet. Me at twelve, cut from the middle-school gymnastics team for being less coordinated than everyone else, and disappointed in myself. Me at sixteen, still closeted and heartbroken over a girl who broke up with me for a football player. This is how my mother calmed me every time.

I close my eyes and lose myself in her airy, ethereal voice.

I wake up alone. Alone alone—I scan the room; my mother is nowhere to be found. I check the time on the analog clock mounted on the wall across from the foot of the bed. It reads 8:15. The soft golden rays of sunlight peeking through the curtains momentarily confuse me. Oh, 8:15 a.m. It’s Sunday morning. I slept for more than sixteen hours. I guess surviving the trauma of gun violence makes one sleepy. Better than the alternative of not surviving it. I wonder how many of my father’s associates, or their innocent bystander family members, were casualties yesterday. Monaghan lost at least one man, I’m certain of it. I had a good view of him as we left the cemetery. Blood seeping from three holes—one in his sternum, two in his abdomen—zero movement, including signs of breathing.

My brain is foggy, zombified from too much rest. I need to chug a carafe of coffee in order to feel remotely human again. I check my robe pocket to ensure my “insurance policy” hasn’t fallen out, then push myself up. My muscles scream at me and I don’t know why they’re as sore as they are. It has to be psychological, there’s no other explanation. It’s not like I ran a marathon. I didn’t even have to run for my life. I was petrified, as in literally scared stiff. And I think Rowan knocked me to the ground? Whatever.

The hallway is quiet. I debate trudging to my room to throw on some clothes, but the way my feet are dragging that isn’t going to happen. Caffeinate first, function like a person later.

I’m halfway down to the first floor when the front door opens. My dad enters and I hold to my steady descent but stop dead upon seeing Teague. His face is monstrous, purple-black and puffy. The left side is worse than the right. My dad told me he needed surgery to repair his broken cheekbone. I wasn’t anticipating this result, however. It’s as though there’s a tiny, angry creature gestating inside the bruised, bulging bag under his eye. Just a few more weeks ’til that baby’s ready to pop out. He’s walking unsteadily, his gait favoring his right leg. Jesus, Rowan legit… Fucked. Him. Up.

I should say something to him. “You look like shit.” That was not the right “something.”

“I feel like shit.” He groans.

Oh, poor baby. Have you chosen violence at every opportunity and those choices have finally caught up with you? “You earned it.”

“I did.”

Shocking admission. “Are you done now, or should I have let Rowan finish what she started?” I glance over at my father. He usually treats us like siblings, lets us hash out our issues without interfering. He’s biting his tongue this time.

Teague shudders at the thought. “I’m done.”

“Good.” I point to my busted eyebrow. “Thanks for this, by the way.” I can tell despite the ghastliness of his flesh that he’s shamefaced. He should be. It’s unprecedented that he raged out on someone he claims to care about.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters, unable to make eye contact with me.

“Save it. ‘Sorry’ is for accidents. You meant to hurt me. And you would’ve done worse if Rowan hadn’t stopped you.”

“I—”

“Hello, Teague. Welcome home,” my mother says from the space between the foyer and the dining room. Perfect timing. I didn’t want to listen to the typical white-guy avoidance of accountability my cousin was about to feed me.

“Hi, Aunt M. Thanks.”

“The three of you look like you could use a hearty breakfast. Everyone in the kitchen.” And then she addresses my father pointedly. “Afterward, Juliet and I will be having some quality mother–daughter time at the Pru. Perhaps Newbury Street, too?”

“I do love Newbury Street.” I give her a wink.

My father removes his phone from his pocket and stammers, “Alright, I’ll send for Henry to accompany you.”

“You will not. I said mother–daughter time and that is what I meant.” The way my mom issues commandments is breathtaking to behold. She leaves no room for protest.

My dad doesn’t try to make one. “I’d feel better if you’d let a bodyguard go with you, but understood.”

“Very good. Come get some coffee, Jules, you look like death warmed up.”

“Gee, thanks, Ma.”

She throws her arm around my shoulder and escorts me into the kitchen.

Breakfast is awkward. Because of the silence, and also because Quasimodo sits across the table from me, mashing solid foods to paste so that he can masticate with minimal pain.

I’m all too glad to get the hell out of that house and away from the men. It’s been so long since I’ve sat inside my mother’s Maserati SUV that I forgot how simplistic it is in comparison to my BMW. There aren’t enough buttons to press on the console. Rowan hates Maseratis. Lamborghinis and Ferraris, too. She calls them Italian trash. “I want my clothes made by Italians and my cars engineered by Germans or get the fuck out.” My mom would not appreciate that. She swears by the superiority of Italian luxury across the board.

Any high-end vehicle in this part of Charlestown would stand out like a pink tutu at a Goth party. The closer to the wharf we get, the more dilapidated the buildings around us become. I know, intellectually, it’s due to corrosion from the concentrated water vapor in the air, but that doesn’t put me at ease. There’s something creepy about manmade structures left to decay at Mother Nature’s will. Maybe it’s coming face to face with a force that’s bigger and stronger than humanity, one that can’t be reasoned with.

We approach a yellow road sign that reads DEAD END. No shit. From here it’s a short drive off a long pier. My mother lurches the car onward until she reaches the faded outline of a parking space.

“It’s that one.” She gestures out my window to a building with peeling blue paint and a rusting metal roof. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. It resembles a private jet hangar more than a storehouse. There are two enormous steel doors rather than a handful of smaller loading bays, with a line of squat windows on either side. To the right of the doors is a pop-up canopy, and a man in a folding chair seated beneath it. The second chair beside him is empty. Two men on duty at all times. Where’s the other one?

A knock on my mother’s window answers my question. “You can’t be here,” a man with a scruffy white beard says as Mom rolls down her window.

“Can’t I really?”

“Mrs. Calloway!” The man gasps. “I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you. These eyes are getting old.” Then his tune changes, gets leery. “I wasn’t expecting you. Mr. C gives a holler if someone’s coming down.”

“We wanted to show our daughter what she’ll be inheriting someday.”

This is the exact right time to play the spoiled brat. I lean over my mother’s lap. “You can go ahead and call my dad if you want to. I don’t think he’ll be very happy with your insubordination. You’ll be lucky if all he does is fire you.” For good measure, I flip my hair.

My mom plays along. “He’s in a meeting at the moment. Surely, it won’t be necessary to disturb him?”

The man is wide-eyed. “No, no, certainly not. You come on in, take a look around. Stay as long as you’d like.”

Mom rolls up the window and grins at me. “Hell of a team we make.” If gaslighting were a profession, we’d be the best in the business. It’s not a wholesome skill to possess, but it’s useful.

“Alright,” she says, “let’s go.”

The building is like the Tardis, in that it’s much larger on the inside than it seems from the outside. Coincidentally, it’s the same color as the police box, but that’s unimportant. What’s important is the sheer number of wooden and metal crates lining the countless pallet racks. There must be hundreds.

“These can’t all be drugs and handguns,” I say.

“Would you like to find out?”

I would and I wouldn’t. Once I’ve seen his wares, I become accountable for his crimes. As it stands, I have plausible deniability. But I need to know. That’s who I am—curious to a fault. The saying goes “curiosity killed the cat,” although that’s not it in its entirety. The rest is “but satisfaction brought it back.”

I spy a crowbar leaning against the wall a few feet from me.

“Yes, I would.”