Chapter 21
21
FIONA
F ather Colin holds the chalice, waiting for me to sip the wine, but when I raise the silver rim to my lips, the liquid inside is blood. Frantic, I look at the priest, but his face is a mangled mass—eyes burst, nose shattered, jaw hanging from a thread.
My knees ache as I stand, and my ears are filled with the howling of wild dogs. They’re snarling around me, cutting me off, driving me into a dark stone corner.
I’m bowled over by the stink of incense and the sulfur smell of snuffed out candles. Blood fills the chapel, soaking my plaid uniform skirt, rising until it covers my chin, until it covers my lips, until I’m drowning…
I wake up screaming.
For one solid week, I slept without nightmares. Seven precious nights of feeling safe and protected, of knowing no one could harm me.
Now, everything’s back to the horror of normal . My throat aches. My eyes are gritty. My head pounds like I’m coming off a one-week drunk.
Patrick is gone.
His pillow is cool to the touch. I don’t hear him in the bathroom, or in the kitchen, or in the living room.
I hate the feeling of panic that surges through me. I shouldn’t have called him Daddy. I shouldn’t have dropped to my knees in the kitchen. I shouldn’t have let him tie me to the bed.
“Patrick?” I call out, my voice shakier than I’ll ever admit.
Silence.
“Patrick!” I try again, louder this time.
Nothing. Goddammit. He’s gone.
Bunbun. That’s all I had to say. He gave me a fucking safeword. If I’d used it, I wouldn’t be trying to swallow this beach ball of shame.
Furious with myself, I rub my hand from my forehead to my chin, trying to scrub away memories of last night. I nearly retch when I smell my fingers. He held my hand while he finger-fucked me in the middle of the night. He whispered lies to me in the darkness, and I believed him, because my body isn’t smart enough to understand facts my mind knows all too well.
He’s a grown man dealing with his own ration of shit. I don’t know why the Crew call him Cujo. I don’t know why he left Boston. I don’t know what the fuck he thought he was doing, bringing me back from Philadelphia, but I never should have let myself lean on him.
I’m so fucked up. I called him Daddy . I never wanted to fuck my father. That’s disgusting. I just wanted a man to keep me safe. Someone to take care of me, after Madden fucked me over.
Jesus Christ. I shouldn’t have let any man distract me, not for a minute. Not when it will take every ounce of concentration I have to get control over the Old Colony Crew.
Rónnad. She’s supposed to deliver a hundred grand today, but she doesn’t have the number for my bank account yet .
Goddammit! I should have just given her my own phone number. The only way she has to reach me is through Patrick’s burner.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I am so fucking stupid.
I throw back the covers. Going into the bathroom, I run water in the sink, letting it get so hot steam curls from the faucet. I wash my hands with five pumps of soap, dripping lather onto the counter. I’m brutal as I rub my fingers dry on a towel.
At least I don’t smell like middle-of-the-night fucking anymore.
I don’t realize how sore I am until I head to the kitchen. My shoulders ache like some giant tried to pull them from their sockets. My thighs protest every step I take down the hallway. The soles of my feet ache, like I spent all of yesterday wearing my highest heels.
He has a lot to answer for, Patrick Motherfucking Mor?—
There’s a note on the counter, pinned under a corner of the coffee maker.
Gone to get coffee.
Don’t forget to send your account info.
P
His burner sits next to the empty bag of dark roast beans.
Patrick isn’t gone.
My fingers shake as I dig in the bowl on the counter, shoving aside the menus, digging beneath the pens and notepads. At the very bottom is a fake leather wallet. I can’t remember the last time I wrote a check, but the account numbers are printed there, like some ancient computer spit them out at the dawn of time.
Patrick isn’t gone.
The burner phone doesn’t have a password, so I go straight to the text screen. I find the message from Rónnad’s phone. Carefully, double-checking before I hit Send , I type in the numbers for my account.
Patrick isn’t gone.
My knees are doing something tricky. I’m not sure I can stay on my feet. I need to sit down before I fall down.
Patrick isn’t gone.
I hear footsteps on the stairs. A key in the lock. I look up, and he’s framed in the doorway, his silvering hair scrambled like it’s windy outside. He’s carrying a grocery bag in one hand and a box of donuts in the other.
“You’re awake,” he says.
I nod.
“I picked up a few things,” he says.
I nod again.
“Did you send the account number?”
I nod one more time and finally make myself speak: “No word back from her yet.” My voice sounds like I’ve just inhaled an entire box of saltines.
My phone is in the bedroom, charging on the nightstand, which gives me a convenient excuse to escape Patrick’s curious gaze. I take longer than I need to, retrieving my cell, and when I come back to the kitchen Patrick is almost through loading groceries into the fridge. There’s cheddar cheese, the white kind that’s so sharp my mouth waters when I look at the package. Perfectly round apples, their red peels speckled with gold. A bag of bright orange clementines, pushing against their red netting. He leaves a bag of Ghirardelli chocolate squares on the counter.
Blushing for no good reason, I sign into my bank account and tap the screen to check my balance. There’s no change—just the couple of hundred dollars I expect to see.
I refresh the screen. Again. Again.
The balance changes.
“Holy shit,” I say.
Patrick looks up from the ground coffee he’s loading into the machine. “What? ”
“She did it.” I blink several times, as if that might make the numbers disappear. “She actually fucking did it.”
One hundred thousand dollars. A pending deposit from an anonymous string of letters and numbers.
Patrick holds out his hand. Once I give him my phone, he drags his fingers across the glass, zooming out to make the numbers bigger. He shakes his head, like he doesn’t really believe what he’s seeing.
And then he reaches for his burner. He puts it on speaker and punches the screen to call Rónnad’s number.
She answers on the first ring. “You got my gift?” Her Boston accent sounds fake, like she’s an actor in some black-and-white movie, probably something Patrick would like.
“What the fuck’re ya doin’?” he demands, his accent gone thick. “Where’re ya gettin’ th’ dosh?”
She clicks her tongue, like a mother schooling a child. “I’m not working for you.”
“Ya may not’ve put yer dirty money into my account, but yer answerin’ t’ me all the same.”
“I made my promise to the girl.”
“’N’ I made my promises t’ that same girl.”
That’s news to me. Sure, Patrick brought me to Boston. And he stayed by my side as I buried my da. But a promise?
I look at the box of donuts on the counter, next to the golden bag of chocolates. I think about the groceries he just put away—apples and cheese and clementines, like he lives here. Like he belongs here.
They say something, the food he’s brought home. Just like the words he directs to his phone, his brogue thicker than ever. “Speak, ol’ woman. Or I’ll hunt ya down. I’ll find ya in th’ middle o’ th’ night. I’ll drag ya t’ my car, ’n’ I’ll take ya to a place where no one’ll hear ya scream, ’n’ I’ll cut th’ words outta ya, right b’fore I break yer fuckin’ neck.”
He delivers his threats in a low voice, with a deadly certainty that turns my veins to ice—a million times more terrifying than if he shouted. He won’t act in passion. He won’t be fast. He won’t offer a shred of mercy.
He’ll be an enforcer, striking a blow for his clan.
No. Not for his clan.
For me.
He’s a savage, taking aim at a crazy old lady, and I can barely swallow because I’m so fucking turned on.
When Rónnad finally answers, her words flow fast. “I’ve got my boys stealing cars. I have customers overseas, in Dubai and Doha and Riyadh. Every month, they send me a shopping list, the cars they want. High end, some of them, Mercedes and Lexus and such. But other cars too, Toyotas and Hondas and Hyundais. My boys find the make. They find the color. They take the cars off the streets, most of them. Encourage the owners with a little…direct pressure, when necessary. I have contacts at the Boston port. And New York too. Philadelphia. Baltimore. There’s almost no risk, after the containers are sealed.”
“’N’ what’re ya takin’ out o’ th’ middle?” Patrick asks.
“Five percent! That’s all! Just five percent off the top. I pass on all the rest.”
“Five percent.” I can tell from his tone that he doesn’t believe her.
He makes her go over all the details again. How many cars are on her shopping list . How many men are on her team. The ports, the containers, the bribes she’s paid up and down the Eastern seaboard.
Whenever she balks, he reminds her of his threats. He never raises his voice. He merely makes promises with the crystal clarity of a man who never needs to lie.
I could duplicate her system if I had my own team. But I’m not in charge of the Old Colony Crew—yet. If I took this game to my father’s men now, they might not do the work for me.
In fact, it makes no sense—Rónnad doing this for only five percent. The number of cars she’ll have to boost… The number of containers she’ll have to commandeer…
Patrick sees that too, of course. “Why?” he finally demands. “Why take th’ risk fer Fiona?”
“The sunglasses!” Rónnad says. “She gave me her sunglasses!”
He rattles something under his breath, words that end with motherfucking sunglasses.
But no matter how hard he presses, she won’t give him any other explanation. The money is mine. No strings attached. It’s a gift, from one woman to another. Like the sunglasses were, from me to her.
Patrick finally gives up and ends the call.
Rónnad is certain she can steal the cars. And I’m certain I need the funds. So I decide to continue working with her.
And just like that, a week goes by. Rónnad keeps her end of the bargain. Seven days after her first pay-out, I receive one million dollars.
I can’t just let the money sit there forever. I withdraw fifty thousand dollars in crisp hundred-dollar bills, half-expecting the transaction to draw unwelcome attention from the feds. But no one at the bank blinks an eye. I stash the money in my safe in the closet, feeling like I’m paying Aunt S back for something.
The second million comes in even faster, only three days later. The third arrives two days after that.
And then Uncle Aran calls, demanding that I meet him at the dún.