Chapter 13 Elio #2
I head down the hall to a side entrance, stepping out into the brisk January cold, sucking in lungfuls of air.
I felt like I was fucking suffocating in there.
I lean back against the wall of the mansion, closing my eyes and fighting the urge to get in my car and go straight back to Annie.
I’m going to have to find an excuse to leave soon.
My chest feels tight, my breathing strangled. Loyalty. Guilt. Desire. Fear. They're all tangled together into a knot I can't seem to untie. I’m digging myself my own grave here, and I can’t seem to stop.
I don’t know what the right thing to do is. Only that she begged me, and I couldn’t say no, because…
Because I love her.
The thought startles me. I haven’t let myself think it in a long time, but it’s still true—as true as it was back then.
But I can’t allow myself to dwell on it. It won’t help anything. And it’s a pointless feeling. It always has been.
Still, as I try to take deep breaths and calm myself, I can’t help a memory that floods back from twelve—no, thirteen years ago, when Annie and I were both sixteen.
We’d just gone back to school, the private Catholic school where I was lucky enough to be able to be educated along with the O’Malley siblings and the other wealthy students.
I don’t remember exactly what happened—a boy threw a ball at Annie in gym class, I think—and she’d fled out to behind the building, white sneakers loudly slapping the echoing floor as she dashed out.
I followed her. I didn’t know what it was that I felt for her then, but I knew it was something more than just a crush. I had started to want her in a way that I didn’t understand then, that felt too visceral for my age, and that I knew was dangerous.
When I found her crying behind the gym building, I wanted to go back in and break every finger on that boy’s hands for making her shed a single tear.
A lot of the memory is fuzzy, as memories tend to become over time, but there are parts of it that I remember with vivid clarity.
My hand reaching out to thumb away a tear as it slid down Annie’s cheek.
Her luminescent blue eyes meeting mine. And the urge to kiss her that I was too young and too reckless to ignore.
It had been a chaste kiss. A soft, gentle meeting of lips.
But I’d felt as if I were on fire. Like my nerves were hot and cold at the same time, like I’d wanted to shout that I’d kissed Annie O’Malley from the top of my lungs and be sick from fear at the same time, because I knew I’d done something that was utterly, completely forbidden.
I didn’t do it again for another year.
Fuck. I let out a heavy breath, clenching and unclenching my fists.
I open my eyes when I hear the sound of a car in the courtyard, and I step around the corner to see a sleek Aston Martin pulling in.
The driver’s side door opens, and I see Desmond fucking Connelly step out, all polished and slick in his neatly pressed suit and swept-back hair. Except his face…
I frown. Even from this distance, I can see that something’s wrong with his face. Like he’s been injured.
My phone buzzes with a text from one of our contacts, making me jump and slide back around the side of the mansion before Desmond can see me. Nothing new, just another dead end to add to the pile. I delete it and head back inside, where Ronan is still hunched over the map on the table.
"Any luck?" he asks when he sees me.
"Not yet. But we'll keep looking,” I say firmly, glancing at the map of the city streets. The lie tastes like ash in my mouth.
Not a minute later, there’s a heavy knock on the door, and two of Ronan’s men show Desmond in.
It takes me a moment to register his appearance. I was right about him having been hurt—his face is a mess. Cuts and scratches all over his cheeks and jaw, a couple on his neck, and some, I see as I look him over on his hands. They all look fairly shallow, but he looks as if something clawed him.
Something… or someone? Annie? My stomach clenches, and I have to force myself to stay still, to not go at him and add a shiner to the mess of his face.
We don’t know that he had anything to do with Annie’s disappearance, and his injuries aren’t enough for me to attack him over, no matter how much I dislike him. But it’s awfully fucking coincidental.
Ronan’s face, when I look back at him, is thunderous.
“Desmond.” His voice is harsh and flat, and I can tell that he’s thinking the same thing I am—or in the same ballpark, anyway.
Desmond, as far as we know, was the last person to see Annie before she disappeared.
Ronan might not know what I do about the state she was in when she showed up at my apartment, but it’s still awfully fucking suspicious that he was the last one to see her, combined with the injuries on his face.
I’m sure Ronan knows better than I do that Annie isn’t a woman who’d let herself be hurt without fighting back.
“What’s all this about?” Desmond looks at the papers and map on the desk. “You said it was an emergency. What’s going on?”
Ronan’s jaw tightens. “Annie’s missing.”
To his credit, Desmond looks genuinely shocked. “Missing?” He looks between the two of us. “What do you mean, missing?”
“I mean exactly that,” Ronan growls. “And you were the last person to see her.” He flattens his palms on the table, leaning forward with a look in his eyes that I hope never to see directed at me. “Why were you out with my sister, Desmond?”
Desmond rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Well—” He lets out a sharp breath. “She didn’t want to tell you just yet. She wasn’t sure if it was more than a crush on both of our parts, and she thought it was better we keep it to ourselves for now—”
“Are you telling me—” Ronan’s voice is deadly quiet, “that you’re dating Annie?”
Desmond’s demeanor turns instantly defensive. “We’ve been out on a couple of dates, yes. Nothing official. Just feeling things out, seeing how it goes—”
“Annie O’Malley is not a woman that you just see how things go with! She is my sister! The only O’Malley daughter! She is—” Ronan sucks in a breath, and I see his hands fist on the table. “Who the hell do you think you are, Connelly, to date my sister without my permission?”
Desmond seems unaffected by the way the temperature seems to have dropped in the room.
He shoves his hands into his suit pockets, looking mildly at Ronan, though his Irish brogue thickens as he speaks, a clear sign he’s irritated.
“Well, I didn’t think I’d be needing your permission, exactly.
Your sister’s a grown woman, and promised to no one.
But she thought it’d be better to keep it quiet until we were sure we wanted to make something of it, given what happened with Siobhan—”
“Shut up.” The tendons in Ronan’s neck are standing out—his jaw is clenched so tightly. He straightens, every movement of his body stiff. “I don’t want to fucking talk about Siobhan.”
Desmond rocks forward on the balls of his feet. “Well, she was my sister. So I’ll speak about her if I wish. You ask me who I think I am, Ronan O’Malley, well, I was your brother-in-law once. And if my sister was good enough to marry you, I reckon I’m good enough for your sister.”
Ronan draws in a heavy breath and lets it out, his eyes flinty with anger. “I said I don’t want to fucking speak about Siobhan. That’s buried and done. What she did—”
“What she did?” Desmond’s eyes flash. “And if she’d had the proper security—”
“Don’t.” Ronan’s voice is ice-cold, and something in it stops Desmond in his tracks.
“If there’s something I can be doing to help, then let me know,” Desmond says, his voice turning cold, too. “But I’ll not stand here and be lectured about how I’m not fit for your sister when you were good enough for mine.”
“Your face.” I gesture toward him, unable to stay silent a moment longer.
It’s clear there are deep-seated issues between these two, but what I want to know is if there’s some connection to what happened to Annie.
Whatever feud there is between Desmond and Ronan over Ronan’s late wife, they can figure it out on their own time, as far as I’m concerned.
“How did that happen, Desmond? And when?”
“Last night,” Desmond says easily, and I stiffen, rage building.
“Last night,” I repeat carefully, and he nods. “How the fuck did you get wounds like that while out on a date with Annie?” Just saying that last part burns my tongue. I know I can’t have her, but fuck if I want this pompous ass to ever so much as lay a finger on her again, even with her permission.
“Maeve,” Desmond says simply, and I frown, gritting my teeth.
“You went out with another woman after—”
“No,” Ronan interrupts, his expression confused. “Maeve is Desmond’s little sister. How exactly—”
“She hasn’t been doing well since Siobhan passed,” Desmond says tightly.
“Stays in her room, doesn’t go out, doesn’t speak to anyone.
I got her a kitten, thought it might make things better.
Went to check on her last night when I came home after seeing Annie, and she couldn’t find the little bugger.
Was crying, looking everywhere. I finally found the wee thing under a dresser, but it scratched me all to hell getting it out.
” He touches one of the scratches gingerly.
“Worth it, to see Maeve’s face after I found the little beast, though. ”
“A kitten,” I repeat, and Desmond nods. I look at Ronan, and I’m so startled to see the look of sympathy that’s replaced the icy rage on his face that I flinch.
“I didn’t realize Maeve was having so hard a time,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry to hear it.”
“It’s not only your own family who had struggles after Siobhan died,” Desmond says flatly. “Though I know the O’Malleys have only ever been up their own arses.”