18. Tristian
Chapter eighteen
Tristian
The chain rattled, the sound echoing through the silent gym. Thud. Thud. Crack. My knuckles screamed, but I welcomed the pain.
Ingrid and I had spent the rest of the day together.
We’d stopped by the tattoo parlor just for a brief drop-in on James, check he hadn’t burned the place down in my and Kane’s absence.
That had got us talking about art. Ingrid had asked questions about how I’d first gotten into it, how I’d developed my skills.
Then she’d revealed that she was thinking of taking it up.
She didn’t have many avenues for self-expression, she said, though didn’t go into it further.
She didn’t need to. I knew fathers like hers: overbearing, controlling. Ingrid was under Samuel’s thumb.
So I took her to my favorite art supply store. The air tanged with cedarwood and turpentine, Ingrid had looked so small standing before a wall of charcoal and sketchpads, her fingers hovering over the expensive vellum like she didn’t think she was allowed to touch it.
“Get it,” I told her. “Anything you want.”
“I’m not sure I’d be any good,” she’d whispered. “It would be such a waste…”
“Ingrid.” I turned her toward me, stepped into her space, towering over her until she had no choice but to look up at me. “Trying something new is never a waste. And you’ll be good—no, you’ll be fucking amazing.”
“You really think so…”
“I wouldn’t be here telling you to take what you want if I didn’t already know you would be… Let me give you this, doll.”
After the afternoon we’d had at the gym, I felt a sense of relief as a genuine smile broke out on her face.
Half an hour later, we were at the park.
Armed with a sketchbook and a tin of dark graphite pencils, Ingrid had quizzed me over form and structure and how to translate what she saw onto the page.
She struggled to begin with—she was just too uneasy with herself—but then I pulled her between my legs, my arms bracketed around her body, her back against my chest. Her scent, all sweet, warm, distracted me while I guided her hands across the paper, helping her learn to imprint first the shape of a distant bandstand surrounded by trees, then the finer details.
“If you hold the pencil like this,” I murmured, low, into her ear, “then all it takes is the lightest movement of your wrist to capture these leaves. See?”
She choked out an unsteady, “I-I think so.”
I smirked. I didn’t think her attention was on the page at all. Hers, I suspected, was like mine: on the closeness of our bodies, the growing heat between us—the ease with which I could rotate her onto my lap, parting her legs to draw her low onto my hips, passersby be damned.
Somehow, I restrained myself. My arm wrapped around her as she attempted a sketch on her own, hand trailing down the length of her skirt as she leaned into me, her body warm against mine.
When the sun had set and turned the scenes Ingrid was trying to work through into muddy shadows, she said she’d better get home. She didn’t say why, but I knew already. Her father. That fucking asshole who’d put the string of dark bruises against her throat.
Which is how I found myself back at the gym again.
Nightfall upon the city, Ingrid locked up in that place with a monster she wouldn’t let me confront, wouldn’t even let me know about, I had needed to go somewhere to work off my rage.
So I found myself alone at the punching bag, fists slamming into the leather, every strike aimed at Samuel’s skull in my mind.
Because if I let myself be anywhere near that house tonight, I’d tear the man apart. Rip him open. Leave him unrecognizable.
Ingrid had asked for a peaceful night.
And the only way to give her that… was to stay the hell away.
At some point, the heavy door at the end of the hall groaned open. Footsteps—expensive leather soles on concrete. Too many of them.
I didn’t stop. I kept hitting the bag, my breath coming in hot bursts.
Then I saw him out of the corner of my eye, and my blood ran cold. All thought of Samuel was displaced by the man who now stood before me, mouth lifted sideways in a cruel smirk.
Darragh O’Malley.
He stood there, flanked by two shadows that looked more like brick walls than men. He always looked too clean for the fucked-up and dirty business he ran.
My gaze dropped instinctively to Darragh’s waist. He wasn’t wearing his jacket; it was draped over one shoulder, giving me a clear view of the belt cinched around his trousers.
The dark leather was embossed with a serpent-like dragon, its scales etched with cruel precision.
The silver clasp was thick, heavy, and polished to a mirror shine.
My skin fucking crawled. I could still feel the phantom sting of that buckle—the way the dragon’s head would catch the light just before the metal tore into my back, the cold silver meeting hot blood.
“Still got anger problems I see,” he cajoled, his Irish accent softened somewhat by the American twang gradually making its way in. “Tell me, lad… Who’re you pretending the bag is tonight? Your daddy?” He smirked, “Or me?”
I didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking him in the eye. I turned back to the bag, my heart hammering against my ribs.
“Leave me the hell alone,” I grumbled.
Darragh’s smirk lingered. But his eyes were hard.
“Speaking of the old man,” he went on, strutting around the punching bag to place himself back into my eye line, “how is he?” Then the smirk dropped into a hateful sneer, that fucking sick twisted look glinting in his eye. “How’s your mam?”
I froze. The mention of my mother was a knife across my throat.
Darragh tutted, shaking his head. “Terrible thing, that train accident… wonder who’s to blame.” He looked at me with an insincere quizzical expression, eyebrows raised. “You don’t happen to know, do you, Tristian?”
I felt sick. Bile rose in my throat, and with it, an upwelling of guilt and shame.
If anybody else had said this to me, I would have launched around the punching bag and fucking destroyed them.
But Darragh’s street dogs were huge, flanking him like statues ready to pounce the moment I shifted my weight onto my leading foot.
Pure rage fueled me, but that was nothing against their strength.
And then there was Darragh. Standing there, fluffed up and confident, thumbs hooked in the belt loops at his waist. The dragon pattern in the leather taunted me.
The buckle, heavy and sharp, glinted. Again, I felt an echo of its sting as a memory rose: me laid out on the floor, his goons overhead, and him tutting as he removed that belt, the way a cruel father did.
Him sliding it free from the loops, then curling it around a fist. “I warned you, Tristian,” he said in that Irish twang.
“I told you to do as I said. But you didn’t.
And now you have to face the consequences. ”
The belt flashed, silver catching the light.
The scars still burned across my back, hidden within the canvas of tattoos I’d filled my body with to hide this shame.
“Don’t mention my fucking family,” I spat at Darragh. “Now fuck off. I’m not playing this game.”
“You’re not playing this game?” Darragh echoed. He turned to his thugs. “He says he’s not playing the game! Can you believe it, boys?”
They chortled in agreement, never once taking their gaze off me.
When Darragh turned to me again, his eyes flashed with menace.
“Tristian, you’re already playing a game, not me.
You play like some tortured tattoo artist trying to make it on his own, break free of the shadows he has found himself in.
I have let you do that. But now, playtime is over.
Bossman is back calling the shots again. ”
He began to stroll once more, casual, turning a circle around me and the punching bag. His dogs followed, watching me for the slightest little hint of movement.
“You’re not happy about it, I know,” Darragh went on.
“You’ve been avoiding me. Usually when I put the feelers out, let their associates know I’m asking after them, they come to me and ask how high I want them to jump.
They know it’s for their own good. As did you, once.
But this time, you’ve been playing ignorant.
I’ve spoken to Kane, I’ve spoken to Brandon, and I know those things have gotten back to you—and yet nothing.
Hasn’t blown up my phone once, has he, boys? ”
Another grunt from the goons.
Darragh continued easily, “It’s been a while since we’ve worked together, so I’ll forgive this little infraction for now—but you won’t do it again, eh? As of tonight, you are working for me.”
“Fuck you,” I spat.
Darragh stopped. He looked at me with lifted eyebrows. “I think what you meant to say, Tristian, is how high?” He smirked. “It’s no good looking like that, lad. We’ve done well together in the past. Now it’s time to do it again.”
“I said fuck you.”
One of the goons clenched his knuckles, one fist in the other. They cracked. The other twisted his neck. Darragh opened his arms. “Tristian, sonny, you act like I’m asking you to put a bullet in someone! All I’m asking is for you to throw a few fights.”
“I win my fights now.” I sized him up, shoulders squaring despite his dogs lurking. “Every last one in the ring.”
He looked me up and down, smile wide and taunting.