29. Maeve
Chapter 29
Maeve
M y dreams are foggy, senseless. I come back to consciousness in degrees, wincing at the dull ache in my head and the stuffed-cotton sensation of the painkillers flooding my system.
Is my family here yet? Is Jaime okay?
Cruz, Maeve. His name is Cruz.
Tears slip from my eyes down to the sheet, wetting it. I turn from my side to face the ceiling, wiping my face carefully. Besides the mess of scrapes and multiple contusions all over my arms and face, I have a fractured cheekbone. They’ve got me on all kinds of drugs which is good because this pain is unlike anything I’ve ever felt. A memory of Bria in a hospital bed comes to mind. She’d looked so small, and I’d felt so helpless.
The nurses keep encouraging me to rest, but with my stats being checked every hour, the hospital is the least restful place there is. I finally stopped asking about Jaime because my questions are always dismissed with empty-sounding assurances that he’s receiving excellent care. I don’t know what to say or whom to ask. I have no idea if they know his true identity and aren’t authorized to say anything, or if they really don’t know. Maybe they’re not at liberty to discuss his condition because we’re not family .
“Maeve? You up?” asks a familiar voice.
My heart leaps to my chest. Lucky’s coming toward me, a sad smile underscoring the tired smudges beneath his eyes. “How are you here?” I whisper, trying not to cry. It’s useless.
“I’ve been here. Tristan and I got in last night. We were going to drive up to the house and check on you today, but …” His gray eyes darken. “I guess we were too late.”
“I’m sorry.” The words barely make it past my lips.
“Me too,” he says, pained.
I hear soft voices outside my room, and then my parents walk through the door. Tears fill Dad’s eyes as Mom rushes over, her hands over her mouth. “Mae, oh God. Mae!”
Seeing them so unexpectedly hits me in the gut with a force that steals my breath. I’ve missed them for so long, and I know they’ve missed me, too, that they’ve probably been worried about me. “Hey Mom,” I croak, squeezing her hand. Besides having cottonmouth from the medication, my throat hurts from all the screaming I did.
I still haven’t looked in a mirror, so while I can feel the extent of my facial injuries, I have no idea what they look like. Judging by my parents’ expressions, they’re pretty horrific. Dad sucks in a shuddering breath and comes closer, scanning me from head to toe. He looks like he’s aged a decade, and when I meet his glassy, devastated eyes, all the bratty things I said slam into me. “Hey, honey.”
“Hi, Daddy,” I whisper.
He pauses, swallowing. “We got here as soon as we could.”
“I’m really, really happy to see you guys.” I feel like I can breathe. Having everyone here means things are going to be okay. I reach my other hand to him, and he takes it.
“What time is it?” I ask.
“It’s around eight,” Dad says, glancing at his watch. “In the morning.”
“Lucky called us as soon as he and Tristan found out what was going on,” Mom says, gently stroking my hair with trembling fingers.
“We caught the first flight we could,” Dad says. Reaching to the bedside table, he pours me a cup of water from the pitcher sitting there.
“Where’s Tristan?”
“Grabbing something to eat downstairs.” Lucky folds his arms and leans against the wall. “We’ve been taking turns waiting for you to wake up.”
I pause to take a sip of water. The crying makes my headache worse, but I can’t stop. Besides the nightmare I just endured, there’s nearly a year’s worth of sadness and regret pouring out of me.
“I should’ve listened to my instincts,” he says, closing his eyes. I knew something was going on after that FaceTime.”
“I didn’t want you to get all wrapped up in this, Lucky. You have enough happening back home?—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “You know we take care of our own.”
“What do you think I was trying to do?” I sob.
Mom takes my hand again. “It’s okay?—”
“It’s not.” I squeeze my eyes shut. “Nothing’s okay.”
“Well, it will be,” Mom says firmly, slipping back into her usual self. “We’ll figure this out, okay?”
“I’m sorry I stayed away so long, and that I didn’t try harder to come home when I still could,” I say brokenly. “I’m sorry I chose him over you in the first place.”
“Sometimes we have to let our kids make mistakes,” she says. “We didn’t think he was good enough for you, but we never, ever imagined he was capable of …”
“What do you mean, ‘when you still could’?” asks Dad, zeroing in on my words like a hawk with its prey.
“He was making it really hard to leave in the end,” I admit, shame heating my skin.
He scowls, shaking his head. “That little fuck.”
Just then, there’s a soft knock on the door and one of the doctors who’s been tending to me walks in. “Glad to see you’re awake, Ms. Kelly.” He offers a kind smile before turning his attention to my family. “I’m Dr. Akana. I’ve been overseeing your daughter’s care.”
“Hi, Dr. Akana,” Mom says. “Thank you for … everything.”
“Of course.” He looks at me. “How’re you feeling?”
“My face hurts,” I murmur.
“Understandably,” he says. “It’s time for your next dose of meds.”
“How long do you think Maeve will have to stay?” Dad asks. “Would it be possible to bring her home to Boston?”
“Yes, she’s in the clear.” Dr. Akana nods, looking at me again. “ You’re probably still in a lot of pain due to that cheekbone fracture, but it will heal on its own. We didn’t have to do surgery, which is great.”
“Oh, good,” breathes Mom.
Dr. Akana comes closer, tapping something onto a small iPad before focusing on me. “CT scans and X-rays showed no signs of internal bleeding or brain injury, so you’re good to go. I recommend follow-up care with your physician in Boston, obviously, and I’ll write a script for pain management medication.”
“Sounds good.” I offer a wobbly smile. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” He cocks his head. “I’m glad you’re okay, Maeve. You’ve been through a lot. I’ll go ahead and sign off on this so the nurses can prep and submit your discharge paperwork.”
After he leaves, Dad looks down at me. “Have the cops been by to see you yet?”
“Yes, but I was too out of it. The nurse made them leave, told them to come back later.”
He nods thoughtfully. “They’ll want to question you.”
“I know,” I groan. Callum . Faint nausea washes over me.
“It’s all over the local news, too,” says Mom. “We saw it on the TV downstairs.”
That shouldn’t be as shocking as it is. Of course, it’s on the news—people died.
“The SWAT team showed up pretty quickly that night,” I muse. “Considering.”
“Callum was obviously involved in some heavy shit because the Feds had already scheduled a raid,” Lucky says, a knowing look on his face. “When calls started coming in about gunfire in the area, they moved right in.”
“Who were the attackers?” I ask.
“I think it’s too early to know.” My father rubs his chin. “At least, for the news to know. I’m sure we can find out. I’ll ask around.”
My battered heart skips a beat. “Is there any word on the guy I was with?”
“What guy?”
“My bodyguard, Jaime. He came back for me,” I say, my heart racing now. “He’s an undercover. Is he okay? ”
My parents glance at each other. “He’s an undercover?” Dad repeats.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Did he survive?”
Mom frowns, shaking her head. “We don’t know, honey.”
“He was going to get me out. We were supposed to leave the very next day, and then everything fell apart.” I squeeze my eyes shut, but the images only come harder and faster.
Mom squeezes my hand again. “He told you he was a cop?”
“Right at the very end, before everything went down.”
“God, I’m so glad he was there,” she says, trying not to cry.
“Me too.” I sniffle, wiping my nose. “We got really close. He was all I had. I need to know if he’s okay.”
“We’ll see what we can do, okay?” she promises, handing me a tissue.
“I’ll make a few calls,” Lucky adds. “There’s a lot of secrecy when it comes to that, for obvious reasons, but given our situation I think we can find out.”
“I … I shot Callum,” I whisper, shaking. Every time I think about that moment, it tears into me like a fresh wound. “I thought he was going to kill me.”
“I’m sorry you had to do that, honey.” Dad sighs, tears in his eyes as his hand lands feather-soft on my shoulder. “But you did what you had to do.”
Lucky rubs a hand over his face, then leans down to brush a kiss over my forehead. He looks like he’s been awake for days, because he probably has. “I’m gonna send Tristan up. We’ve been taking turns, waiting for you to wake up, so he’s gonna want to see you.”
Unfortunately, the cops descend before I get a chance to reunite with Tristan. Well, just one cop—a detective, by the looks of it. He seems very Law and Order .
“Hi, Ms. Kelly. I’m Detective Scott. You okay to talk?” he asks, seeming genuinely concerned. He’s got reddish hair and patient eyes, his gentle demeanor at odds with how huge he is.
“I guess.” I shrug a little. I feel better now that I’ve seen Lucky and my parents, and the latest dose of meds has taken most of my pain away. “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”
“We need to talk at some point, but you always have a choice when.” A shadow of a smile crosses his face, and he takes a seat beside my bed. “May I?”
“Sure.”
“So. You want to tell me what happened?”
“A lot of stuff happened.” I shut my eyes, trying to regain my composure. I can’t stop thinking about the second I took Callum’s life. The love was gone, for sure, but I’m not a murderer. I’m the girl that saves spiders from being crushed underfoot, who opens windows to release moths. When I was a kid, I brought an injured squirrel to the vet only to be told it was going to die anyway, and then I cried on the way home, feeling sorry for it.
The look on Callum’s face when he realized what I’d done will haunt me for the rest of my life.
“Ms. Kelly?”
“Maeve is fine.”
“Any information you can provide will be helpful, Maeve,” he says.
“I don’t know what to say. I suspected that Callum was dealing, but he never told me anything. Honestly, I thought he was at his uncle’s club most of the time.” A lie, obviously. I knew Callum was deep in the drug game. But his choices were never my choices, and I’m not getting mixed up in the dumb shit he did.
Besides, I don’t snitch. If they want info on Callum’s enterprises, they can dig up themselves.
Detective Scott nods. “Dario De Leon.”
“Yes.”
“What about when he traveled?—”
“When you said you had questions, I thought you meant about the other night,” I say, tired of the conversation already.
“All right, tell me about the other night,” he says.
“I woke up to get water and saw a dead body in the living room.” My heart skips a beat. “Mac. I—I went back to the room and then Jaime came to get me.” I look him in the eye. “You know Jaime, right? The man I was with when the cops showed up?”
He hums noncommittally .
I don’t know what that means, so I continue. “He was going to try and get me out of there, but Callum wouldn’t let us go. He kept saying it wasn’t safe, that there were more gunmen outside, but he was so high that he was acting crazy. He got angry at us and then …” A vivid image of Callum punching me plays in my brain, along with the memory of how badly it hurt. I look away, my stomach in knots. How do I move past this? Will I ever get used to it?
“We’ve reviewed the home’s security camera footage, so we have an idea of what went down,” he says after a moment. “I’d just like to hear it from your point of view.”
“He was going to kill Jaime.” I bite my lip, forcing back another wave of tears. “He would’ve killed me. It was self-defense.”
The detective nods, scanning the disaster that is my face. “Was there a history of physical abuse?”
“He would grab me sometimes, leave bruises.” I shrug, trying to push away the inexplicable shame rising inside. I can’t bring myself to mention Callum forcing himself on me. It’s hard for me to even call it what it was. Rape. “He hit me on Thanksgiving. Gave me a black eye.”
He jots something down.
“Is Jaime okay?” I ask. “Did he survive?”
“I don’t have any information on him at this time,” he says, still writing.
“Do you even know who he is?”
“Jaime Reyes? He’s a member of your boyfriend’s crew,” Scott says, finally meeting my gaze with neutral eyes. “He’s also been affiliated with another crime family, but I’m not at liberty to discuss it as it’s an ongoing case.”
I stare at him, wondering if he knows more than he’s letting on. Either he’s lying to me to preserve Cruz’s “Jaime” alias, or he’s not looped into the investigation because he’s local homicide and not a Fed.
“Will I be able to go home?” I ask. “To Boston?”
“It depends on whether or not charges are filed?—”
“But it was self-defense,” I cry. “What was I supposed to do, let Callum murder me?”
“No,” he says quietly. “But we have to investigate when someone is killed regardless of the circumstances. Like I said, we’ve reviewed the tapes and they do seem to support your version of events. That’s a good thing. Just sit tight for now.”
“I’m supposed to be released today. I want to go home,” I say peevishly. I’m just so over this bullshit. Why the fuck didn’t I leave before all of this went down? For the thousandth time, why ?
“I understand.” Detective Scott rises, pushing his chair back. He leaves a business card on the table and clears his throat. “We will be in touch. For now, please stay in the area until we can determine how this will be approached.”
“Wait. Can you please find out about Jaime?” I ask. “He’s a good guy, and I’d really like to know how he’s doing.”
He nods, but it’s obvious he’s already moved on. “I’ll see what I can do. Have a good day.”