Jhene #2
He steps back and finishes changing into his gym clothes.
I pretend I’m peeling back the covers on the bed, secretly still distracted by the night’s events. It still feels as if this could go wrong in more ways than one and I won’t be able to stop it. Even as I remind myself my focus is Eva, it occurs to me that this could backfire.
Fedorov could respond to the Callahans’ retaliation by hurting my sister…
Over the next week, we’re dealing with the aftermath of the fire.
Tom spends days in the hospital while his burns heal and the doctors monitor his lungs for any lasting smoke inhalation damage.
I visit him when I can, bringing cheap bodega flowers and sitting by his bedside while he grumbles about the terrible food and the nurses who won’t let him have a proper drink.
He’s going to be okay. That’s what the doctors say anyway. Second-degree burns are painful but survivable, and his lungs are clearing up better than expected for a man his age. He’ll have scars, both physical and otherwise, but he’ll live.
The Banshee isn’t so lucky.
I stand outside the ruined pub on the third day after the fire, staring at what’s left of the place that gave me my first real job.
The skeleton of the building remains—the brick structure and charred doorframes, even the twisted, now-slightly-melted sign that spells “The B_nsh_e.”
But the inside is a total mess.
Ash and rubble and blackened wood are everywhere you look. The smell of smoke lingers, thick and pungent in the air. The furnishings have been reduced to splintered hunks of wood and melted leather.
Bridget and the other servers show up to help clear debris, though there’s not much we can actually do.
Mostly we stand around looking lost, picking through the wreckage for anything salvageable and trying not to think about the fact that we’re out of work for the foreseeable future.
Killian contacts Ronan on his honeymoon to deliver the news. I don’t hear the conversation, but I witness it from a close distance—the tight set of Killian’s jaw and how his knuckles go white around his phone.
Whatever Ronan says, it isn’t gentle.
Still, apparently the family approves funds for repairs. The pub will be rebuilt… eventually.
Tom’s too stubborn to let it stay dead, and the Callahans have too much pride to let the Russians claim a permanent victory on their turf.
In the meantime, the police investigate.
I watch them pick through the rubble, snapping photographs and collecting samples, pretending to care about finding whoever did this.
But I know better. I’ve seen how this works from the other side. The cops in this part of Brooklyn are on Fedorov’s payroll. They have been for years. Even if they find evidence pointing directly at the Bratva, nothing will come of it.
No arrests or charges. Damn sure no justice.
Just paperwork and shrugged shoulders and a case that quietly goes cold.
The thought should make me angry. Instead it serves as a reminder how far Fedorov’s reach is.
A man so powerful he is almost god-like.
But that doesn’t mean Killian and the Callahan clan plan to let up anytime soon. They fully intend on getting revenge.
At the studio, me and the boneman orbit each other like two planets caught in the same gravitational pull, close enough to feel the heat but careful not to collide.
He’s wrapped up in dealing with the fallout from the firebombing, which means meetings with the buttonmen, late-night phone calls, and other work that has him coming back with blood on his clothes.
I keep my head down and try to make myself useful. Helping clear rubble at the Banshee. Visiting Tom at the hospital. Watching old reruns on TV when stuck at Killian’s apartment to keep my mind off everything else.
But the tension goes nowhere.
The awareness hums under my skin whenever he’s in the room. Whenever his deep blue gaze meets mine, I’m left with a funny flutter in my stomach and a pulse that beats way too hard.
Sometimes I catch him watching me, expression unreadable, and I have to look away before we’re forced to address the matter.
I can’t be the only one who senses the tension. The only one who feels a jolt run through me when our arms accidentally brush in the kitchen or when we catch a glimpse of the other’s body.
His sleep schedule gets worse. He comes and goes at all hours, slipping out of the apartment in the middle of the night and returning at dawn only to change into gym clothes and leave again.
His training at the gym has suffered now that the war between the Callahan clan and the Bratva has picked up.
One evening I’m curled up on the bed pretending to read when I hear him on the phone with his manager.
“I told you, Dez, I don’t have time for this shit right now.”
He pauses long enough for Dez to answer him, then grows louder and angrier.
“I don’t give a fuck if the fight’s tomorrow. More important things’ve come up. Things more important than your fucking bottom line.”
He hangs up and then storms over to the dresser to grab clothes to change. He’s headed off to the gym again, this time for a late-evening session.
It’s minutes before midnight the next time he comes back. I’m only half asleep when I hear him moving in the dark.
He goes straight to the bathroom for a shower, and I assume it means he’ll crash on the rollaway bed next.
Instead, when he emerges minutes later, he’s dressed to head out again.
I sit up, blinking in the dark. “Where are you going?”
“Go back to sleep,” he answers cryptically.
“I wasn’t asleep.”
“Then pretend you were.” He’s slid his feet into his sneakers and shoved his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans.
I push the covers away and swing my legs to the side of the bed. “Are you conducting more mob business?”
“What have I told you about knowing your place, girl?” he rumbles moodily. Despite the heavy shadows filling up the studio, I can tell he’s scowling. His brow has furrowed and his jaw’s pulled tighter.
“I know my place,” I answer. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t get curious. That I don’t have a right to know things.”
His head snaps in my direction, gaze piercing me even in the dark. I hold my next breath as my shoulders stiffen and I prepare for his lecture.
Him telling me to pipe down and shut the fuck up.
Know your place.
“The movies,” he grunts instead. “Headed to go see one.”
I eye him skeptically. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Killer. You really expect me to believe you’re heading out at one in the morning on a Wednesday to go see a movie?”
“The Rialto on Thirty-Fifth and Grand. One-thirty showing of Dog Day Afternoon. That enough info for your nosy little ass?”
“Okay…” I say slowly. “I admit I wasn’t expecting you to have the exact movie title and show time for your alibi, but...”
“The Rialto shows old movies twenty-four-seven. Sometimes I go there when I can’t sleep. Clears my head and beats dealing with assholes and groupies at other bars around the city.”
I’m taken aback enough to forget what else I was going to say. Admittedly, I wasn’t expecting it out of him.
Mostly because Killian doesn’t strike me as a movie buff or someone who would opt to go see a movie over hitting up a bar for more drinks or prowling the streets for a fight.
But I know of the Rialto. Even considered crashing there one of the nights after I escaped the shelter but before Tom hired me.
The only reason I didn’t was because the five-dollar ticket was too expensive for someone as cash strapped as I am, even if it would mean a dark and secluded place to fall asleep.
“I want to come with you,” I blurt out.
“Go back to sleep. Last time I’m telling you.”
“You know I’ll follow you, right?”
His scowl deepens. “Are you determined to be a pain in the ass?”
“I can’t sleep either.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I stand up from the bed and push my glasses onto my face. “I haven’t been to the movies in over a decade.”
That seems to get him.
His jaw screws shut, still rigid and hard, as he studies me as if assessing how truthful I’m being. But I have nothing to hide—this time—as I await his verdict.
“I’m serious,” I add on. “I can’t sleep, and the last movie I saw in theaters was Suicide Squad. I was fourteen.”
“Never heard of it,” he grumbles.
“Point is, I’d rather go with you. I don’t like being here alone either.”
He regards me a second longer, hands clenching at his sides, then huffs out a sigh. “Fine. But don’t think you’ll complain if the movie’s boring.”
“Anything’s better than staring off into the dark listening to the cats in the alley dig through the trash.”
“Put some shoes on.”
The walk to the Rialto takes about ten minutes from start to finish. The entire way we’re silent, and it once again takes some effort to keep up with Killian’s stride.
But I wouldn’t say the silence between us is hostile. It’s actually settled.
More like we’re both aware the other person prefers it. Neither of us are big talkers. Both of us seem to prefer our own company.
Just now we’re indulging in our own company together.
…if that’s even a thing.
The Rialto emerges among the other dark and closed businesses on a side street away from heavy traffic.
The marquee on the front of the building is a relic of an era long past, advertising the double feature of Dog Day Afternoon and another film I don’t recognize.
We make it to the cramped little box that’s the ticket booth, behind which a teenager watches TikToks on his phone. He glances up only to sell Killian two tickets for Dog Day.
Inside, I’m amazed by how thick the crushed velvet carpeting is—except in certain areas where it grows weird and patchy, another sign of how old the theater really is.
It smells of stale butter popcorn and has posters plastering the walls from decades before I was born. Noir films from the forties. Musicals from the fifties. Even blaxploitation flicks dating back to the seventies.
My head’s on a swivel as I study them all, intrigued and overwhelmed at the same time.
Killian knows his way around the theater. He leads the way to screening room five without any direction.