20. Hazel
Hazel
Istared at my parents in shock. They must be losing their touch, because as they recounted the ways that the Murphys turned people against them and then maneuvered them out of large sums of money, I couldn’t believe these were the same two people who’d run one of the most successful criminal empires in the country.
My parents had always seemed larger than life. Invincible. Now they seemed… old. But there was more to the story, I could sense it. Why would their closest allies double cross them years after I dumped their son? It didn’t make sense.
“What else is going on?” I demanded. “I know there’s more to this story.”
They exchanged a look and I could see the calculation pass between them.
“I want the truth,” I said firmly. “What’s the real story with the Rossis? I’ve been out of the life for years — why is everything happening now?”
I got up and started pacing the room. Movement always helped me think, and this conversation needed my full focus.
My father sighed, and for once didn’t stall before answering.
“We had a partnership with the Rossis two years back,” he said. “They wanted to expand their shipping routes through our territory, we wanted a cut of their northeast distribution. Seemed clean enough on paper.”
“What happened?” Marilee prompted.
“They set us up,” Colm said, a muscle working in his jaw.
“Fed us bad information, let us think we had the green light to move on a shipment that turned out to be a sting they’d arranged themselves.
By the time we figured out what was happening, they had proof that we’d stolen from them and the Murphys.
Real proof. It gave them exactly the excuse they needed. ”
“Excuse for what?”
“Old man Rossi’s been trying to swallow our territory for a decade,” my mother said. “He finally had a reason the other families would support.”
“So the bounty on my head is just about a territory dispute?” I asked. “That doesn’t explain Donny.”
My parents exchanged a look.
“Rossi and the Murphys have been in an alliance for years,” Colm said.
“When Donny started making noise about wanting an heir now that his first wife’s out of the picture, Rossi saw a way to get two things at once.
They could cripple us, and hand the Murphys exactly what they’d been asking for.
Bring you back, marry you off to Donny, and Rossi gets to play peacemaker between two families while we’re left with nothing. ”
“Well, this isn’t at all complicated,” Marilee muttered.
“Now everyone’s racing to see who delivers you to Donny first,” my mother added.
“The Rossis, us, whoever else has heard there’s a reward.
It’s going to be us. We won’t get the bounty of course, but it’ll get us back into the good graces of the Murphys so we can prove to them what the Rossis did. Then the Rossis will be ruined.”
“I’m not going back to Donny,” I said, exasperation thick in my voice. “I don’t know why he would even be interested in me after everything that went down between us.”
I resumed my pacing.
“Ego,” Marilee supplied. “He wants you to prove he’s got the upper hand again.”
My father might be older now, but he hadn’t lost his strength. He had his arm around my neck and a gun pointed at my head before I even realized that he’d moved.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother pointing a small handgun at Marilee.
“Stay right where you are, vampire,” Mam hissed. “I’ll burn you to a crisp.”
That’s when I realized that she was holding a wooden cross in her other hand, brandishing it at Marilee like a second weapon.
“That only works in movies,” I told her, rolling my eyes.
My father tightened his grip on my neck and hissed in my ear, “Be quiet.”
I knew how to get out of this hold. I’d escaped a similar hold in training dozens of times. But for some reason I was frozen in place, my mind going back to that scared little girl who would agree to anything to keep her parents off her case.
Fortunately Marilee had no such baggage.
She jumped forward, grabbing both the gun and the cross from my mother. She tucked the gun into the waistband of her jeans, then rolled the cross between her palms.
“Oh no!” she fake wailed in a high-pitched voice, “The cross is burning me. It hurts! Save me, I’m turning to dust.”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, I rolled my lips in, suppressing a laugh at her theatrics.
“Maybe if you add some holy water it’ll help.” Marilee continued mocking her. “We can do it on the balcony where the sun can hit me and then I’ll totally be dust, don’t worry.”
My mother huffed in annoyance, moving behind my father for protection.
By this time I’d had enough of both of them.
I sent Marilee a look, signaling my intent, then sprang into action.
I tucked my chin to protect my windpipe, then wrapped both hands around my father’s arm, pulling it downwards as I bent my knees to add more weight.
As his balance shifted, I reached one arm back, slamming my elbow into his midsection, then rotated my body until I slipped from his grasp.
Once I was free, I slammed my foot down on his as hard as I could.
He stumbled back, bellowing a string of Gaelic curses.
“You’re lucky she didn’t go for the balls,” Marilee told him. “I’ve seen her do it, and it’s not pretty. At least for people with balls.”
When Da just continued cursing, she turned her attention to me.
“Where’d you learn that?” Marilee asked, her eyes flashing with amusement.
“I told you, I’ve had a lot of self-defense training.”
“That was totally hot,” she said, moving closer. “By the way, do you want to see my new cross?”
She dangled the cross between us, and I surged forward to give her a quick kiss. At least that was my intention. But Marilee grabbed my shirt in her fist, holding me in place, and prolonged it just a little bit longer.
“Excuse me!” My mother’s voice clearly indicated that she was not amused by our antics – or the fact that we were both ignoring them. “What are we going to do about the Murphys?”
I looked at Marilee. “We need a plan. Not just for Donny Murphy, but also to get the Rossis off my back.”
“Yeah, I’m tired of people coming for you. It’s putting a serious cramp in my efforts to woo you.”
I cocked my head. “You’re trying to woo me?”
She winced. “If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m not doing a very good job of it.”
“You don’t need to woo anyone, vampire. Moira is going to marry her fiancé, the way she promised.”
“I never promised,” I shot back. “You told me it was going to happen. I told you I didn’t like him, I told you that I was attracted to women, I even told you that word on the street was he liked to hit his women, and still you insisted that I marry him.”
“Your parents are dicks,” Marilee said, repeating her words from the other day as if they weren’t standing right there.
“Believe me, I know.”
My mother hissed in outrage while my father went back to mumbling curses under his breath.
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
“Let’s go to Sapphic Security,” Marilee suggested. “We’ll pull the team together and come up with a plan to flush Murphy out and deal with the Italians too.”
“Sounds good. But what about them?” I asked, inclining my head in the direction of my parents.
“We’re going to need to bring them with us to the office.”
“What?” I squeaked.
“What?” my mother spoke just a half beat behind me.
“We ain’t going nowhere,” Da grumbled.
“You guys got us into this mess and you’re going to help us get out of it,” Marilee told him.
She and my father just glared at each other for several seconds, but I had a better idea. Taking a few steps back, I pounded on the wall and called, “Boris! Are you still there? We need some muscle.”
The words had scarcely left my mouth when Boris came crashing through the door to the adjoining room like the Kool Aid Man in those old commercials.
He zeroed in on my parents, stalking towards them.
I’d never in my life seen my father intimidated by anyone or anything, but when the hulking bear shifter moved towards him he flinched and took a step back before he could stop himself.
“You will come with me,” Boris intoned, his voice firm but soft. “We must go see boss wolf now.”
I guess he’d been listening on the other side of the wall.
He gripped each of my parents by the neck and marched them into the adjoining room. A few seconds later Allie stuck her head through the door.
“Sounds like you guys have been having fun in here, but Lois is going to shit a brick if we don’t get to the office.”
“Right behind you,” Marilee said.
We all ended up in the same elevator, Martha and Allie near the doors, me and Marilee in one corner, and Boris and my parents in the other. No one said a word as we made our way down to the garage, me and Marilee getting into one SUV, the rest of them taking the other.
The vehicles split up as soon as we exited the garage, each of us going in different directions in case we were being followed. Once Marilee was satisfied that we didn’t have a tail, she relaxed into her normal alert state instead of her hyper alert state.
“We haven’t talked about last night,” I ventured, immediately hating myself for it.
I wasn’t the ‘where is this going’ talk woman. At least I hadn’t been before now. But she hadn’t mentioned us being mates since she first told me about it, and some small, insecure part of me was worried that she’d changed her mind. Or been mistaken about it.
Marilee sent me a look before returning her attention to the road. “No, we haven’t.”
She paused, and I realized she was waiting for me to continue.
“It was… good.”
“Just good?” she asked incredulously. “Are you kidding me right now?”
“Well, better than good. But I shouldn’t have brought this up, so just ignore me.”
“Why shouldn’t you have brought it up?” she asked curiously.
“Because this is a job for you, I recognize that. It’s not the time or place for a personal discussion.”
She jerked the steering wheel, moving the SUV to the nearest parking space before turning to face me. Then she reached across the console and took my hand. Like every time we touched, a little current seemed to arc between our skin.
“What are you worried about?” she asked.
“I’m not worried,” I denied.
She released my hand and pressed her palm over my heart.
“Do you feel this?” she asked. “The bond growing between us? The way we’re starting to sense each other’s emotions?”
“You feel that too?” I asked in surprise. “I thought I was imagining it.”
“You’re not imagining it. When you find a mate, a fated mate, the bond grows the more time you spend together, and when the claiming happens, it becomes permanent.”
“The claiming?” I asked.
“Someday, when you’re ready, if you agree, I’ll bite you. Here.” She pressed one finger against the space where my neck and shoulder met. “It seals the bond and also tells every supernatural creature that you’re taken.”
“Am I? Taken?”
Marilee gave me a tender look. “I certainly hope so. I’ve been waiting for you to get there, but when you’re ready, I want us to mate officially.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” I asked. “Besides the sensing of emotions through the bond?”
“It means we’ve made a commitment to be together for the rest of our lives, to make a life together, to never be attracted to another person because we’ve dedicated our lives to each other, and only each other.”
Her words were like a vow, and I felt the seriousness of them right behind my sternum.
Somewhere in the recesses of my mind it registered that this was a bad idea, letting someone get close to me.
In my world, the world I’d grown up in and seemingly could not escape, loving someone was a liability for both of you.
But instead of putting a stop to this I said, “And you still think I’m your mate?”
She gave me an incredulous look. “I don’t think you’re my mate, I know it.”
We stared at each other for a long, charged moment before I finally whispered, “I know it too.”
It was true, although I couldn’t say why. Later I’d freak out about this conversation, but for now, I wanted to relax into the idea that this woman wanted me just for me and was asking nothing in return. It was a novel feeling but one I welcomed.
Her smile lit up her face, and I thought for sure she’d lean over and kiss me, but just then a text came in. Marilee pressed the button on the dash, and a robotic voice announced that there was a message from Lois.
“Where the hell are you, Martin? I don’t have all day. Get to the office now.”