Chapter 42
42
SAMANTHA
B raiden cranks the heat in the Jaguar, as high as it will go. I lean back against the headrest. My eyes are closed. I’m safe here. I’m going home.
Every inch of my body is exhausted, and my brain is full. I feel like I’ve been on a too-long vacation, like we’re late getting home. After a good night’s sleep, I’ll be able to call all my friends and tell them entertaining stories.
But no night of sleep will make me forget my terror in that tent. There was nothing entertaining about that man and his gun. I don’t have a single friend I can talk to about any of this.
As long as we’re in this car, though, I don’t have to think about a thing. I can listen to the tires rolling over the interstate. I can breathe in the scent of Braiden’s cedar and spice. I can feel the heat radiating off his body.
The closer we get to Thornfield, though, the more I know none of that is enough. Braiden saved me at the freeport. I owe him my life.
I owe him words.
I owe him all the things I’ve been thinking for the past five weeks, all the things I’ve learned. Braiden and I said horrible things to each other at the Rittenhouse. When we were angry, when we were stressed, we went straight for each other’s most vulnerable parts. We fought to wound each other as deeply and as cruelly as possible.
We need to talk, both of us. But not while he’s driving.
The Jaguar doesn’t stop until we reach Thornfield’s gate. Braiden rolls down the window, greeting the man on duty. He doesn’t bother putting the car in the garage; instead, he parks just a few steps from the front door.
Now. I have to say something now. Because if he doesn’t feel the way I do, if his killing that man at the freeport was merely a reflex, an instinct like a dog pissing on its territory, I need to know now. I’ll have to pack up my broken heart and leave.
He’s about to open his car door when I say, “Wait.”
He turns to me, worry tightening his face. I see him scan my body, as if he’s searching for an injury he missed, a wound that needs immediate medical attention.
I am wounded. We both are. And the only way to heal is by speaking.
“That night,” I say. “At the Rittenhouse.”
He sighs and sinks back into the driver’s seat. Staring out over the steering wheel, he says, “The summit fucked with my mind. Fiona Ingram playing General. Handing over territory to Russo. Losing the shipment.”
It takes every ounce of my legal training to keep my voice even. “And you thought it was all my doing. Me, working for Russo.”
He grips the wheel with both hands. “I didn’t know what to think. Madden said?—”
“Madden!”
“He heard Russo talking in the jacks. He heard the gobshite say you were in his bed. You were working for Russo.”
“And you believed him?” My voice cracks.
“He’s my Clan Chief. It’s his job to keep me safe.”
“I’m your wife .”
His throat works. He starts to say something. Stops. The carbon-fiber steering wheel looks like it might splinter beneath his hands. “I felt trapped, Samantha. Like a fucking mad dog. I was losing so much of Fishtown. And when I started losing you too, something just snapped inside my skull. I can’t explain.”
“But it was Russo .” Just saying his name coats my tongue in bitter metal. “You honestly thought I’d work for him?”
“I wasn’t thinking at all. I was just feeling. And we both know how that shitehawk works. If he had leverage on you, anything at all?—”
“He did have leverage! And I didn’t let him use it. He released the truth about that that night on the mountain because I didn’t give in.”
“I see that now. I understand. All I can say is I wasn’t thinking straight. I was desperate because I was afraid I’d lose everything. But the things I said… Throwing you out of the room… I lost the only thing that mattered. I lost you.”
His voice shakes and he closes his eyes, touching his forehead to his fist on the wheel. “I’m so, so sorry,” he says, as if he’s taking a vow. “I’m not that type of man. God knows, I’m not that type of Dom.”
I wince, because that last part is the wound I gave him. I called him a fucking animal, which was never fair. When Braiden has me in my collar, he’s the furthest thing from an animal. He’s calculating. He’s measured. He’s one hundred percent in control.
“I was wrong,” I say. “I had no right to bring sex into it. That wasn’t fair.”
He shakes his head. “I trapped you against that door.”
“I knew, even then, you’d never hurt me.”
“But I did. I threw the car crash in your face.”
“I meant?—”
“I know what you meant. But of all the things we said to each other, all the things I did… That’s what I regret most. You made a mistake eleven years ago, and three people died. But I had no right to use that against you. Christ, I have enough blood on my hands.”
I stare at his hands. They’re literally splashed with the blood of the man he killed for me. For the first time, I realize his shirt is torn; the sleeve is ripped open. A shallow wound oozes dark blood down the length of his forearm.
I gasp. “You’re bleeding!”
“I’m fine.”
I reach toward his wound. I won’t touch it; I won’t cause him more pain. But I can’t help but trace the jagged scar beneath this fresh injury. “What happened to you? Before tonight. How did you get your scar?”
He doesn’t want to tell me. I see the set of his shoulders, the iron that wires his jaw. But we’re sharing truths here. And I watch him decide to give in.
“You’ve heard about the St. Ann shooting?”
Of course I have. It was one of the worst days in Philadelphia’s history. Seventeen children and five nuns were killed by a madman. I nod.
“I was there. I was six years old. In first grade. Sister Mary Margaret hid us in a closet. She was praying her rosary when she died.” So many years later, and his face his still haunted, as if he’s watching the attack on a wide-screen TV.
“You must have been terrified.”
He shakes his head, a single tight toss. “I was a coward.”
“You were just a little boy!”
His chin juts forward. “I should have done something. I could have saved everyone.”
I nestle my palm against his jaw, forcing him to look at me. “Braiden. You were a child. Not a man, like tonight. You’re not afraid of anyone anymore. You saved me .”
He swallows hard. “When that fucker dropped his tray tonight… When I realized he had a gun…”
I shudder. I’m afraid I would have frozen if I’d seen the threat. All my self-defense training, all my practice on shooting ranges… None of it would have mattered when I realized I was the target.
Taking a breath that shakes with equal parts of relief and frustration, I say, “I can’t believe Russo was so brazen.”
“Russo?” Braiden sounds surprised. “That shitehawk wasn’t from Russo.”
“How do you know?”
“We’re under a truce. After the summit, we both swore to back off.”
“And you think that will last forever? Someone always fires first.”
“Not the someone who has the financial upper hand. Russo has everything to gain from the new state of things. He wouldn’t risk Scuderi getting involved.”
The entire drive home, I’ve been terrified by the notion that Russo put out a contract on my life. Braiden’s words open me up to an entirely new kind of horror. “But if Russo didn’t hire that man, then who did?”
Braiden’s eyes narrow. “I don’t know. Maybe someone who’s been following the news about that night on the mountain. The family of the man who died? Someone looking to avenge your cousins?”
I shake my head. “There isn’t anyone. The man was homeless, a vagrant. He had no ID, nothing. And my cousins… Eliza was my last remaining family.”
“Then maybe it was someone taking the law into their own hands. Someone who doesn’t want to wait for the courts to decide what happens to you.”
That doesn’t make sense either. “Most people don’t have hitmen on their contact lists.”
Braiden doesn’t contradict me, even though I’m sure his own phone has listings for more numerous killers. “I should have waited,” he says. “I should have gotten more information.”
I close my eyes, hearing the man scream as Braiden tore his ear. I hear the gun rattle against his teeth. I hear the explosion as the back of his head is blown away.
“Samantha,” Braiden breathes, turning the three syllables of my name into an entire encyclopedia of apology. He’s the only person who calls me Samantha—to the rest of the world I’m Sam . I love the way my name sounds on his lips. He makes me complete. Makes me whole.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. The weight of those three words tells me he’s apologizing for so much more than killing the man who targeted me. He’s sorry for the last five weeks of tortured loneliness. He’s sorry for throwing me out of the Rittenhouse suite. He’s sorry for all the things he said.
I cover his hand with mine. “I’m sorry too.”
He closes his eyes for a moment as if he’s praying. Or as if I just answered his prayer. When he looks at me again, he’s an ocean of newfound calm. “Come inside?”
I don’t have to. He’d take me to the Rittenhouse right now, if I asked him to. He’d drive me all the way back to Delaware.
But I think of that moment in the freeport tent when he stepped away from me, when he thought I was rejecting him forever. I think of the chill as his body left mine. I think of the darkness, when I realized he was leaving.
I nod. “Let’s go.”
I’m steady enough to manage my own car door. He gestures me into the house as if I’m an honored guest arriving for the very first time. He lets me lead the way upstairs. I feel the heat of his hand, hovering over the small of my back, ready to catch me if I slip, if I fall.
The door to Aiofe’s room is closed. I wonder how late it is. How long she’s been asleep.
I hesitate outside the guest room. Braiden and I are both exhausted. He’s bleeding. I’m barely able to stay on my feet. We’ve spent five weeks apart. What’s one night more?
“Not on your feckin’ life,” Braiden says, lacing his fingers between mine.
So I walk with him into our bedroom.