Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
EMORY
In the basement lounge, echoes of Emory’s past cut deep. The fearsome four, as they were once called—Emory, Jack, Corey, and Pete—swapped stories at the far end of the table.
Jack hooted with laughter until tears streaked his cheeks.
Corey deadpanned tales from their early years, and Pete filled in the blanks for Zulu.
Barely twenty-two, the kid kept his black hair shaved close to the sides, all but the top that was hard parted and slicked back.
Tattoos crept down his arms to the knuckles.
He mostly stayed quiet, seemingly enamored with the lore circling the table.
In the years before Emory and Jack’s rise to the top, Pete and Corey were their equals. The hierarchy hadn’t busted them apart yet or hidden Corey’s dry wit and Pete’s goofy humor behind a wall of deference. Emory missed the days when Corey spoke freely and Pete could still be himself.
Nostalgia didn’t just sting, though. Sharp as a knife, it cut Emory to shreds when he tried to hold on.
By early evening, he excused himself to the great room when the reminiscence felt too much like grieving the past. Vacuous despite oversized furniture and minimalist in its absence of decorative flourishes, the space was simple and secluded.
After a while, Jack drifted in and flopped down in the chaise lounge.
“I’m going stir crazy. I don’t know how Liam does it.”
“I think he likes being a recluse these days,” Emory replied, insight gleaned through observation.
Liam had had his time in the sun and basked in that light as long as he could, but it drained him. In his early-sixties, the man wanted his oasis in the desert and mundane delights—reality TV, a hot-house garden, afternoon naps with yesterday’s newspaper draped over his chest.
“I’d forgotten so many of those stories,” Jack said. “It really was a better time.”
Emory picked a bit of lint off his black jeans and crossed his arms. “There were hard times too.”
Hindsight was shaded like grenadine and tasted just as sweet. But there were nights when Corey screamed for help in his sleep. Emory would rush into his bedroom and shake him awake. “It’s just a dream,” Corey would say and climb from sweat-dampened sheets, partly embarrassed but mostly sorry.
“Where are you going after all this?” Jack asked. “Back home to Vegas?”
After all this. A mournful smile played on Emory’s lips.
Time in the Moriartys was a continuum. All origins before were wiped clean and everything after was endless, expansive, and consuming. There was no “after this,” but Emory knew what Jack meant; after Ivan was dealt with, after the dust settled and they fell into a familiar rhythm again.
Necessity, not glamor, drew Emory to Vegas, and it’d be a frigid day in blistering hell before he ever called it home.
Home would always be Northern California.
His place there sat high on a bluff that overlooked the craggy coast and was nestled amongst a grove of cypress and pine.
He toiled over the house he’d built, raising it from his own vision of what a true home should be. Irony of ironies, he never stayed long.
“What I really want is to go home, back north.”
Emory cleared a catch in his throat and let the rest go unsaid; that it’d be a one-way trip. He’d take Amelia, and they’d start over there, construct a life worth living and mark his time in the Moriartys as a strange interlude.
Jack cast dodgy eyes to an empty hall and lowered his voice, a precaution against blasphemy perhaps.
“It’s okay to be tired of this life sometimes, Em. I can’t imagine Liam loved it every second.”
Emory shook his head. “I wouldn’t underestimate him. This is his namesake, his legacy.”
“It’s your legacy too. You’ll do right by it. You always have.”
For Emory, it wasn’t about love or legacy but duty.
He chained himself to the organization and gave Liam his word that he’d usher the Moriartys into a new era.
Love was reserved for family, but they were his family.
In that way, the line blurred and competing instincts were braided too tight to unwind.
“Don’t you get tired of it?” Emory asked.
Jack flashed a smile that left Emory awash in childhood memories. Brave Jack—riding his bike like a madman with busted up knees—every so often had a thoughtful streak. He’d look to the sky with wanderlust and speak slow and soft with a dazed grin.
“Not really, but I do wonder what we’d be doing if it weren’t for this.
Maybe we’d still live in that same neighborhood in Sacramento, right next door to each other.
We’d have some gig turning wrenches or fitting pipes.
We’d end up with beautiful women. Make babies and they’d grow up together.
Barbecues, camping trips, holiday parties. ”
A dull ache ripped through Emory. He grieved for a life he’d never live and dealt with the loss of something he never had in the first place.
He yearned for a future he could stamp his name to, a legacy that would make his father proud.
Shame filled him up something fierce whenever he dwelled on what his old man might think of his life.
Emory subdued it lest it spread like wildfire, but a thought rose with dawn that morning and gained importance throughout the day. His father would’ve adored Amelia, would’ve told Emory she was right and to listen well and good to a woman like her, to hold her tight and not let her slip away.
“Sounds like heaven,” Emory said, though he and Jack both knew the truth. If not for the Moriartys, they’d both be dead; Emory from Ivan and Jack from trouble to be found.
“Does that make this hell then?” Jack asked.
Emory watched him in peaceful repose, soaking up the sun like a cat that got the cream.
It was easy living for Jack, lobbing jabs from the high ground and waltzing in there like Emory could forget last night.
He’d slept on what Amelia said and found it more concrete in the morning.
Meanwhile, Jack’s last stand seemed toothless in comparison, and now he was the emblem of quiet dissent, the mouthpiece for whatever stirred in the ranks.
“You can call it whatever you want,” Emory said, “but you were the one with a choice, not me. Don’t ever forget that.”
He delivered the barbed remark with an icy stare. Jack took the blow on a stiff chin and shifted to the edge of the chaise.
“I haven’t. We don’t talk about it much, but after you and Miri left, my world fell apart, not that I had much of one to begin with.”
Jack licked his lips and ran his fingers through greasy hair. He only ever told the story with whiskey on his breath. He’d erupt with laughter and tell the tale of the shit-stain who married his mother.
For some, starting over meant wiping the slate clean.
When his mom learned about the baby girl growing in her belly, she’d sent Jack to live with his grandmother in Nevada and washed her hands of him.
He’d found Emory again and talked as if he’d orchestrated it all.
In reality, he’d begged and pleaded to follow Emory into the Moriartys.
It wasn’t about brotherhood or belonging but righting the wrong of being unwanted.
“Life here makes sense,” Jack said. “There ain’t shit for me if I ever left. But if you or Mirabelle left, it’d feel like the end of the world again, and I tend to go crazy when I think about that.”
Jack stopped short of apologizing, but the sentiment still shaded his words. Emory accepted it and repaid the gesture with a little white lie.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“For now.”
“For now,” Emory agreed and reached for his phone vibrating in his pocket.
Mirabelle calling…
Emory answered and went to speak, but a hiccupped sob cut him off.
“Mirabelle, breathe,” he said and shot from his seat. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
“She’s gone! Amelia’s gone.”