Chapter 12 Emory #2
The men ate like kings then retired to the basement lounge where they’d celebrate well into the night. Jack and Emory would join eventually but retreated to the parlor first, where Emory settled in his normal spot, a sofa against the far wall.
Across the room, Jack flopped into an armchair with his legs dangling over the side. They sat in companionable silence as the clock in the corner kept time.
“Thinking again?” Jack teased.
Emory nodded and chewed his lip. Everyone had invisible tripwires, the things that set them off. Like all else, he laid his down in parallel pattern easy for others to heed. Those lines were in disarray, a crisscrossed mess that tied him up in knots.
Jack tip-toed the line and went in easy.
“You think Amelia will talk?”
Emory exhaled a laugh so caustic, he was liable to choke on it, and he’d snap his jaw if it clenched any tighter. All the fucking mess—the agony, the explanations, the logistics to pull it off on a goddamn whim—and for what? For her to sit there with her haughty recalcitrance.
Emory boiled on the inside but put a pin in it.
“She’s lying to me.”
“I’m sure you can get her to open up,” Jack said with a wink and a bawdy smile.
If Amelia had intended to melt into Dauer’s wallpaper and go unnoticed, she’d done a piss-poor job of it. Emory had noticed her immediately. What wasn’t there to notice?
Long legs, perfect body, gorgeous face with big brown eyes and pouty lips.
As Emory got his looks, Jack had savored delivering a bit of trivia—the smoke show across the room was Cal Havick’s daughter. Just his luck, but not entirely a lost cause. Amelia Havick had a reputation, after all.
At eighteen, she’d unknowingly met a few Moriarty street soldiers at a house party. They all said the same thing about her—a daydream doll-baby, sweet as a slice of cherry pie. She was an easy target if Cal ever got too close.
Liam had put his foot down, though. Going after the children of their enemies was dirty business, and Emory, not quite chief then, had argued the risks outweighed any benefit.
But Emory was nothing if not a man of his word, even the ones he had to eat. And he did, one after the next, because he’d been dead wrong. Sweet Amelia wasn’t the docile little darling he thought she’d be, and she got her licks in well and truly.
Jack sat up and planted his feet on the floor. “Don’t you think it’s strange how quickly Richard threw her under the bus?”
Threw was a generous understatement. Hurled was more apt and on par for a coward. Emory only had to bloody Rich’s nose for him to divulge that Amelia had what he was after.
“I think he would’ve sold her out to the Velascos too. We just got to him first. Why else would he know when and why she’s leaving Portland and where she’s going? I think he planned to weaponize that information if push came to shove.”
“If the Velascos wanted her, why not something targeted?” Jack asked. The same question hounded Emory. “They could’ve nabbed her on the street or waited ’til she left town. What was the point of a massacre? And we were there too, man. They could’ve lit us up and called it collateral.”
Emory scanned the door to the hall and leaned forward. Delicate light swathed the room, and faint laughter filtered from the basement lounge below. Jack matched the move toward secrecy.
“It wasn’t a courtesy that they didn’t,” Emory said as quiet as his deep voice could manage. “It was a message—what they’re capable of, the risks they’re willing to take, how far they’ll go. Whoever is at the helm of the Velascos now, last night marked his arrival on the scene.”
A chill spread down Emory’s spine and hollowed out his belly. Jack slumped deeper into his seat. They both felt it—the haunt in the corner, the shadows creeping in.
The Velasco-Moriarty ceasefire was just a shaky gentlemen’s agreement forged between Philippe and Liam a decade ago.
With the old guard of Velasco leadership missing, dead, or exiled, the agreement crumbled with blood-soaked spats, and the Moriartys backslid into an all-out war with an enemy they no longer knew.
The Velascos ousted Philippe and welcomed in his place depravity Emory couldn’t reason with. Prickly bastard though he was, Philippe understood where to draw the line to keep the peace. Their new chief—whoever he was—clearly did not.
Jack flicked the wheel of his lighter and stared at the flame. “This is just the beginning.”
Emory nodded. “Undoubtedly, yes.”
Liam wandered in then, smelling like campfire and nursing a drink. Perched at the wood mantle, he struck a match and held the flame to his cigar. When it took, he flicked the match into the fireplace and turned to Emory.
“About earlier,” he said between puffs, “who handled Damon?”
Emory peered at Liam from beneath his brow. “I did.”
The first rule of conduct—Emory owned the blood on his hands. Tucked in his sock drawer were tally marks of kills neatly penned in a pocket-sized notebook.
It wasn’t about conquest, but inventory. Every so often, he looked over the count. He owed apologies to some and remembered the faces of a few. It kept him honest, he reasoned, accountable for the lives he took.
Maybe Amelia Havick might like to know that. Maybe she’d shut that beautiful mouth of hers if she saw the count, far fewer than the heaps of souls she assumed he reaped. She’d think twice then about calling him a monster.
“Next time, hands off,” Liam said. “Let the captains or their men handle business. We don’t need you wrapped up because you can’t control your temper.”
“I control it just fine.”
Liam slapped his knee with a forceful laugh, more a guffaw, really. Another puff of the cigar wiped his smile clean and his gaze sharpened.
“The whole room watched you blow his kneecaps out. And for what, huh?” He looked at Jack but jabbed a thumb in Emory’s direction. “Getta load of Em the tough guy. Big fuckin’ brute.”
Emory’s back peeled from the sofa, but he withheld heat to snub the bait and prove a point. Liam kept a keen eye on him with a Cheshire smile shrouded in smoke.
“You forget how I came up,” Emory said coolly, “hands on and they’re bloody. I wanted a job done clean. It’s not what I got. I can and will still handle business myself. Don’t ever forget that.”
Liam pointed at Emory and stared down his finger like the barrel of a gun. “Keep your head. It’s the last I’ll say.”
“The last you’ll say,” Emory chuckled. “Not likely.”
In the foyer, Mirabelle hurried barefoot past the parlor door. She carried a dustpan and, by the sound of it, a bag of broken glass.
“What happened?” Emory hollered.
At the sound of his voice, she stopped and padded into the room. With a terse smile, she rustled the bag’s shattered contents.
“The girl’s got some fire to her.”
Fingers laced behind his head, Jack broke with hearty laughter. The humor was lost on Emory. His shoulders tensed, and dull pain radiated down his back.
“Where is she?” he asked.
Mirabelle frowned and picked at the bag’s plastic handle looped around her finger.
“She’s so scared, Em. She just wants to go home.”
Funny how Mirabelle had swept up Amelia’s mess and argued on her behalf. She answered the wrong question, though. Emory didn’t give a fuck how the girl was.
“She can’t go home. Where is she?”
“She ate a little and fell asleep in the bedroom across from yours.”
“Good. She’ll stay there until she tells the truth.”
Emory left no margin for discussion, but Mirabelle didn’t need him to carve out that space. She crouched at his feet with a plea.
“You need to tell her you’re not going to hurt her, that no one here is going to hurt her.”
“I’ll deal with it.”
Liam ashed his cigar in the fireplace and stepped from the mantle.
“Don’t forget you have business in Vegas tomorrow. You need to figure out how you want to handle that.”
Emory hadn’t forgotten but also hadn’t expected such a disastrous detour. Second rule of conduct—business was handled in the order it came and delegated accordingly. Vegas wasn’t a matter he could hand off to someone else.
“We need to postpone until things cool down,” Emory said. “I guarantee the Velascos are hot that we swooped in on their target.”
Jack cracked a smile. “Works in our favor. They fuck with us, we fuck with them.”
Emory nodded. “If nothing else, she’s a bargaining chip.”
Horrified, Mirabelle gaped at him. He could deal with her anger but not her disgust. It was the price of doing business around her. She’d see the way he slipped skins into a ruthless man.
“I thought you were protecting her,” Mirabelle said, her voice breathy with disbelief. “You didn’t say anything about using her to bargain with.”
“I’ll keep her safe, but she’s here to give me answers,” Emory reminded. “I need you to get that in her head, Miri. I won’t tolerate her being obstinate.” He pointed to the bag. “I won’t tolerate this shit either.”
Mirabelle crossed her arms and sat back on her heels. “You’re gonna have a hell of a time with her.”
“How so?”
“She’s as stubborn as you are.”
Emory shrugged. “I’ll get what I want.”
Jack cut him a lecherous glance. If it were him, he’d play the hand dirty; smooth talk until Amelia parted her thighs and spilled her secrets.
It wasn’t as if Emory didn’t want that from her too. Amelia was sugar-spun straight from his sweetest fantasies, but his charm didn’t work that way and, even if it did, they were too far gone for him to romance her into compliance.
He’d planned to take Amelia himself and even pulled her from the pile of bodies at Rich’s party, but his good intentions went awry, as they often did. He had no choice now but to play the part of the beast.
“Eventually, we need to deal with the Vegas issue,” Liam interjected again. “When we do, Amelia will have to come with us.”
Emory firmly shook his head.
“Absolutely not. Havick’s daughter has no business coming with us. I don’t want her involved.”
“We can’t split up our men on her account,” Liam said.
“Whenever we go, if she’s still here, she’ll have to come,” Jack agreed. “It’s too risky not to.”
“No!” Mirabelle protested and sprung from the floor. “Emory, no. She’s scared out of her mind. The last thing she needs is to be dragged along while you take care of business.”
Outnumbered by Liam and Jack, that was that. The third rule of conduct—Emory listened hard to advice received twice and always asked for ground truth. Sycophants would let him ride off to ruin. If he was wrong, he wanted to know.
He glanced at Mirabelle on the verge of tears. Her bleeding heart would get the best of her someday.
“It’s not up to you.”
Mirabelle took the ground she was given and dug in again. “No, but it is up to you. I’m your sister, and I’m telling you I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
She only stated their relation in these moments, as if the reminder grounded him when spoken out loud. All too often, it did.
“Fine. We’ll give it a few weeks and let things settle, then see where we’re at. If she does come, I want you there to look after her.” Emory grinned as he stood and motioned to the plastic bag. “Besides, she seems to like you.”
Mirabelle rolled her eyes. “Oh, fuck you.”
“I’ll be outside. Bring her to me,” Emory said on the way to the foyer, but Mirabelle got the last word as he reached the door.
“Emory Holt, I swear to God you better be sweet.”
Emory did an about-face. Slack-jawed with nothing to say, he stood there dumbfounded as they all stared at him—Jack with a shit-eating grin, Liam who seemed to agree, and Mirabelle with her hands planted on her hips.
“What the fuck do you mean be sweet? I’ve been perfectly civil.” Emory pointed to Liam bailing for the back hall. “You were there. Was I not mostly respectful?”
Mostly. Not hardly. Didn’t really try. Amelia wasn’t there for him to brush her hair and dry her tears; for hush little baby, don’t say a word.
Liam declined a response, just puffed on his cigar that shit ash to the floor.
“I heard you tell her to sit on your face,” Mirabelle said, “that you’re great at eating pussy.”
Emory laughed; so too did Jack and Liam. He hadn’t known why he’d said—to test the waters or see the girl squirm. Maybe both. Mirabelle folded her arms over her chest with a pointed stare.
“I am great at it,” Emory said matter-of-factly. “If she plays her cards right, maybe she’ll see for herself.”
Mirabelle’s nose wrinkled with disgust. “That’s gross, Emory.”
“Point is,” Liam interjected on his way out the door, “listen to your sister and keep your head.”
Jack saluted Emory before trailing after Liam. Mirabelle flashed a vindicated smile and followed the other two out.
They got him again with advice received thrice.
Be sweet.
He’d do his best.