Chapter 10
The sound that drags me up from the depths is a vibratin' buzz somewhere downstairs—insistent, repetitive, the kind of noise that crawls under your skin like midges on a hot day.
My phone.
Course it is. Probably been going off for the last hour while I was dead to the world.
I lie there in that gray space between sleepin' and wakin', brain still foggy, thoughts driftin' like smoke.
Humanity's fucked, isn't it? Whole species glued to the black mirror, scrollin' through other people's curated misery while our own piles up behind us like dirty dishes. We're all just moths battering ourselves against the screen's glow, pretendin' we're not slowly going blind.
The buzzing stops.
Thank Christ.
Another sound invades the quiet. Something breathier. Rhythmic.
Heavy breathin'?
I open my eyes, stare at the ceiling for a long moment.
Black paint. Bold choice for a ceiling, that—dramatic, a bit oppressive if I'm bein' honest. The kind of design decision you make when you're tryna project mystery, or darkness, or some other shite that probably reads better in a catalogue than it does when you're lyin' under it.
What time is it? Afternoon, if the slant of light through the curtains is tellin' me anythin'.
Not breathing.
Moaning.
I turn my head.
"Ah, fuck." The words come out in a rush of Irish curses—"Jaysis Christ, what in the name of—" I press the heels of my hands against my eyes, remembering exactly what the fuck happened over the last twenty-four hours.
Lorcan, mah boy, Father Patrick's voice drifts through my skull, thick with that familiar County Clare disapproval, only you could kidnap a woman and wake up more confused than when ya started.
Uncle Fearghus. The LaRiccia family's request for intel. Giovanni's estate. The security system I had my team install six months back. The girl—naked, collared, emergin' from the library like some Gothic nightmare made flesh.
The girl who's currently handcuffed to my headboard.
And she's naked again.
Which is somethin', considerin' she was wearin' my clothes when I fell asleep. The henley's pushed all the way up her arm, bunched at her wrist where the leather cuff circles. Sweatpants gone entirely—probably kicked off sometime during the night.
And she's kneeling.
Not sitting. Not lying down like a normal person who's been cuffed to a bed.
Kneeling.
Forehead pressed to the mattress, arse in the air, arms stretched out in front of her like she's reachin' for somethin' that isn't there. The position looks obscene and devotional all at once, her spine curved in a way that can't possibly be comfortable.
My irritation spikes—sharp and immediate.
"What the fuck," I snap, sitting up too fast. My head pounds in protest. "Are ya—are ya a freak? Why are ya doin' this?" I gesture at her, at the whole fucked-up tableau. "Just act normal, would ya?"
I'm still tired. Got maybe four hours of sleep after drivin' through the night with a kidnapped woman in my passenger seat.
My head's throbbing like someone's taken a mallet to it, and I don't want to deal with this fuckin' woman and whatever psycho-sexual conditionin' Giovanni's shoved into her brain.
I want to take her back.
I want to explain this shit to Giovanni—figure out what the hell I was thinkin' breaking into his house, what possessed me to shove her in my trunk like some sort of deranged savior.
But I've got to play this careful now.
Can't just roll up to Giovanni's estate and say, "Sorry mate, had a moment of temporary insanity, here's your slave back."
Not when Uncle Fearghus is waitin' for my report. Not when the LaRiccias are circlin' like sharks who've caught the scent of blood in the water.
The girl doesn't move.
Just stays in her position, and now she's muttering—low, rhythmic, like a prayer or an incantation.
"Yes, Sir. Yes, my King. Yours, my King. All yours."
Over and over. The words tumbling out in a breathless loop.
"Jesus Christ." I swing my legs out of bed, standin' up too quickly. The room tilts. "Would ya stop that? Ya sound like a mental patient."
She doesn't react. Doesn't lift her head, doesn't pause in her muttering.
"Yes, Sir. Yours, my King. How can I serve you, my King?"
"I'm not your fuckin' King," I say, louder this time, sharper. "I'm not Giovanni. Ya don't have to do this performance for me, because I don't care."
Nothing. Just that same position, same muttered litany, like I haven't spoken at all.
The phone downstairs starts buzzing again.
"Fuck." I scrub my hands through my hair, stalking toward the door. "Stay there. Don't—just don't do anything fuckin' weird while I'm gone."
As if she could do anything else, cuffed to the bed and lost inside whatever psychological programmin' Giovanni's installed.
I take the stairs two at a time, bare feet cold against the hardwood. The buzzing gets louder as I descend. My phone is on the foyer table where I dropped it when I emptied my pockets last night on habit.
Lorcan, Father Patrick murmurs, ya've really done it this time, haven't ya?
"Shut up, Father," I mutter under my breath, pickin' up the phone and squintin' at the screen.
Fearghus.
Of course it's Fearghus, Lorcan ma boy! He sent ya to break into Giovanni Bavga's estate to find evidence that he killed Rico LaRiccia.
"Shut up, Father Patrick! I'm workin' here!" I blow out a long breath, steeling myself before I tap accept. "Yeah. Ya got me."
"Ya got me?" Fearghus's voice explodes through the speaker, forcin' me to hold the phone away from my ear.
He's American through and through—spent his whole fuckin' life in South Boston, never set foot on Irish soil except for the occasional funeral. And right now that Southie accent is thick enough to cut with a knife, which means he's well past irritated and sailing straight into furious.
"Ya got me? Where the fuck are you? Where the hell have you been?
The LaRiccia's are slitherin' down my fuckin' neck like a bunch of goddamn pythons, Lorcan.
I've been calling you for hours. Ya know why I've been callin' you for hours?
Because they've been calling me for hours, that's why.
Every five fuckin' minutes my phone's lighting up with their bullshit, and you—you're nowhere to be found.
So how about you stop jerking me around and give me a fucking report! "
His voice carries that particular quality of controlled rage that comes from decades of commanding men—sharp enough to flay skin but measured enough not to waste energy on useless volume.
He's really more bark than he is bite, truth be told. But it generally takes about ten years of knowing the man to lose the visceral fear this six-foot-four giant instills in people the first time they meet him.
Which is precisely why he's in charge of the Boston operation, and precisely why I'm still standin' here at attention even though he can't see me, phone pressed to my ear like a chastened schoolboy.
I rub a hand down my face, words formin' in my head. I've planned this conversation. Thought about it the whole drive home. So I'm ready, I just need the proper amount of no-fucks-to-give in order to pull it off.
"Yeah, like I fuckin' told ya. I got nothin'. There is no fuckin' way Giovanni Bavga killed Rico LaRiccia, Fearghus. None. Zero. Zed. Hell would freeze over first. Giovanni is…"
I don't exhale my frustration. I can't afford to fuck up this lie. But I do pause before launchin' into the insult. Because this isn't true at all.
"Giovanni Bavga is the dog of the fuckin' entire Bavga empire. He runs Riverview where? Riverview who? He's been banished to the middle of fuckin' nowhere, Fearghus. It's not him. And I spent three hours in that mansion, looked through every fuckin' drawer, under every fuckin' mattress…"
I go on like this, describing pretty much every room in Giovanni's house.
The library with its first editions and museum-quality furniture.
The kitchen with its commercial-grade equipment that has probably never been used.
The ridiculous Gothic foyer with twenty-foot ceilings and antiques that belong in the fuckin' Met.
"There's nothin' there," I continue, pacing across my living room.
"No blood. No weapons. No sign of struggle.
No evidence of anythin' remotely suspicious beyond the fact that the man has terrible taste in interior design—all that dark wood and leather, Christ, it's like a funeral home had sex with a gentleman's club. "
That last bit's actually true. Giovanni's aesthetic is aggressively masculine in a way that reads as compensation for somethin', though I'm not entirely sure what.
"So you're tellin' me," Fearghus says slowly, and I can hear him breathin' heavy on the other end, "that you found absolutely nothin' to suggest Giovanni had any involvement with Rico's disappearance?"
"That's exactly what I'm tellin' ya." I keep my voice flat, bored even. "Rico LaRiccia went to the Philippines, yeah? Posted about it on Instagram. There's digital evidence, social media, the whole thing. Whatever the LaRiccias think happened, they're chasin' shadows."
Lorcan, mah boy, Father Patrick whispers in my head, how many Hail Marys for lyin' to yer uncle about a murder?
Not now, Father.
"The LaRiccias aren't gonna like this," Fearghus says after a long pause.
"The LaRiccias can go fuck themselves," I reply, injectin' just enough Irish temper into my voice to make it believable.
"They told you to investigate, I investigated, I found nothin'.
That's it. That's all there is. If they don't like the results, they can tell someone else to confirm what we already told them. "
Another pause. Longer this time.