Chapter 10 Leila
LEILA
Iset the tray down on the nearest side table and follow him.
I shouldn't. Every rational part of my brain is screaming at me to go back upstairs, to pretend I never saw the blood. I have no idea what prying into this could change between us, or how he’ll react—the man I saw standing there in the front doorway is not the kind man who promised to take care of my mother and insisted I eat.
But I can't. The image of his hands, the way his whole demeanor changed when I asked what he'd done—I need to know.
I find him in his study, standing with his back to me at the window that overlooks the back gardens, now covered for the winter and the pathways lined with snow.
The room is dark except for a single lamp on his desk, and the light from the fireplace casting long shadows across the walls lined with books and expensive-looking art.
He's poured himself a drink—what looks like whiskey in a crystal tumbler.
"You should go back upstairs, Leila."
His voice is quiet, but there's a warning in it. A finality that should make me turn around and leave. Instead, I step further into the room and close the door behind me.
"What did you do?" I ask again.
"Nothing you need to concern yourself with." His voice is hard, a command. The kind of command that expects to be obeyed.
"The blood on your hands suggests otherwise."
He turns then, and the look on his face makes my breath catch. There's something dangerous in his eyes, something cold and unforgiving. This is the man people are afraid of, I realize. This is the version of Ronan O'Malley that uses fear to get his way.
"You want to know?" he asks, his voice dropping to something almost conversational. Almost pleasant. Which somehow makes it infinitely more terrifying. "You really want to know what I did tonight?"
Something tells me that I don’t. That I shouldn’t. But I swallow hard, and nod.
“I went looking for Neil Sawyer.” He takes a sip of his drink, watching my face. "It wasn’t too hard to find him. He was at Flanagan’s, actually. Like he hadn’t done anything he needed to hide from. Business as usual. He thought he was safe.” Ronan's smile is cold, predatory. "He wasn’t.”
My stomach drops. "What did you do to him?"
"I asked him some questions first." He sets his glass down and begins rolling up his sleeves further, and I can see scratches on his forearms, bruises forming on his knuckles. "About you. About what he told De Luca. About how much he got for selling you."
The casual way he's talking about this should horrify me. It does horrify me. But there's something else underneath the horror, something I don't want to examine too closely.
"And then?" I whisper.
"And then I made sure he understood that taking advantage of vulnerable women, selling them in my territory, has consequences."
His territory. The way he says it, flat and cold, like he’s a king who rules part of Boston, makes something strange flutter through my stomach.
Something that’s answering to this darker, more violent part of him, that likes that he hurt someone who hurt me.
Something that likes his power, that wants to get closer to it.
A part of myself that I didn’t know existed until now.
"You tortured him."
"Yes." No hesitation. No attempt to soften it. "Until he gave me the answers I wanted, and then for a little while after. So he could understand the pain and fear he inflicted on others. So he could experience it, too."
I sink into one of the leather chairs facing the fireplace, my legs suddenly unable to hold me. "And then you killed him."
"Yes." Again, there’s no hesitation in his voice. He’s telling me what I said I wanted to hear now, whether I like it or not.
"Why are you telling me this?" My voice sounds strange, distant. "You obviously didn't want me to know."
He raises an eyebrow and tosses the rest of his whiskey back. "Because you followed me. Because you pushed." He shrugs, and his eyes are still hard. “You thought you could handle it. You said you wanted to know. So I told you. Neil Sawyer is no longer a problem for anyone.”
I swallow hard, unable to speak. Ronan pours himself another glass of whiskey and looks at me appraisingly.
“The look on your face right now tells me you're having some very complicated feelings about what I've just told you."
He's right, and I hate that he can read me so easily.
I should be disgusted. I should be terrified.
Instead, I'm thinking about Neil Sawyer's hands on me, the way he looked at me like I was nothing more than merchandise.
And now he's dead, killed by the man in front of me because he dared to touch me. Because he hurt me and manipulated me.
"You did it for me," I whisper, and it comes out more breathless than I intended.
Something flickers in Ronan's eyes. "I did it because men like him don't get to destroy women like you and walk away from it."
"But you did it for me."
"Leila—" He takes another drink. “Drop it. You should go to bed.”
"You tortured and killed a man because he hurt me." My voice sounds far away. “You—”
"Yes," he says, and his voice is rough now, strained. "And if you have any sense at all, you'll be terrified by that fact."
But I'm not terrified. I should be, but I'm not. Instead, I'm looking at this dangerous, beautiful man who got blood on his hands to make sure the man who violated me paid for it, and I feel something dark and warm unfurling in my chest.
"I should be," I admit. "But I'm not."
He stares at me for a long moment, something shifting in his expression. Then he straightens abruptly, putting distance between us as he walks to the shelves on the other side of the room.
“This isn’t a conversation we should be having. You should go to bed.”
My jaw tightens. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
"Go to bed, Leila. We'll pretend this conversation never happened."
I want to argue, want to push him further, but something in his posture tells me I've gotten all I'm going to get from him tonight. So I stand, finally, on shaky legs and head for the door, pausing only when I reach it.
"Thank you," I say quietly, my heart still beating too fast, loudly enough that I think he ought to be able to hear it in the quiet of the room.
He doesn't turn around. "For what?"
"For making him pay."
Ronan says nothing else. I step out of the study, into the hallway, and let out a long breath.
I should feel horror, fear, shock. But instead, all I feel is relief that the man who hurt me is gone. That he won’t take advantage of or hurt anyone else.
And I feel something else, too—something that makes me want to step back into that room, cross the distance between Ronan and me, and show him just how unafraid I am of what he did, how glad I am that he did it.
But instead, I go upstairs.
Because nothing good can come of complicating this more than it already is.
—
The next few days settle into an odd sort of routine.
Ronan works in his study, and I don’t see him for most of the day, though he usually shares at least one meal with me, typically dinner.
At first, we only talk about the care for my mother, about how he’s heard she’s doing and her prognosis from her doctors, about the nurse who’s taking care of her.
But that line of conversation runs out quickly, and before long, we start tentatively learning more about each other.
I learn that Ronan studied at Harvard, that he speaks three languages fluently, that he reads voraciously, and has strong opinions about everything from music to literature to politics.
He's intelligent in a way that surprises me, thoughtful and articulate when he's not being deliberately intimidating. I realize, a little ashamed of myself for it, that I assumed a mob boss would be brutish and a little stupid, but Ronan is neither. Capable of violence, yes, but there’s a sophistication and intelligence to him that surprises me. He’s a well-educated, well-read, well-traveled man, and I realize that I find him fascinating as well as attractive.
I tell him that I studied finance, that I had a job handling accounts before everything went sideways, that I love old movies and terrible reality TV equally, that I'm afraid of flying but dream of traveling anyway.
It feels almost normal, these conversations over dinner. Like we're just two people getting to know each other instead of a crime boss and his reluctant houseguest.
On Wednesday, Ronan's sister Annie comes for lunch.
I'm in the library when she arrives, curled up in one of the window seats with a mystery novel.
Through the window, I watch a sleek black car pull up the circular drive and a woman get out.
She's a little shorter than Ronan, with curly copper hair pulled back into a ponytail and the same gorgeous bone structure as her brother.
Even from a distance, I can see the family resemblance.
"That's Annie," Ronan says from the doorway, and I startle. I hadn't heard him come in.
"Your sister?"
"My sister." There's warmth in his voice, a softness I haven't heard before. "She handles the financial side of our operations. She's been curious about you."
Twenty minutes later, I'm sitting across the table from Annie O'Malley, Ronan at the head of it as usual, feeling completely out of my depth.
She's beautiful in a carefree, effortless way, wearing what looks like a cashmere sweater and perfectly tailored pants.
Everything about her screams wealth and sophistication, though something about her seems a little shyer than her brother, but her smile is genuine.
"So you're the accountant," she says, and I blink in surprise.
"Former accounts manager, actually. I was working at Brooks & Associates before..." I gesture vaguely, not sure how to finish that sentence.
“My brother told me a little of what happened,” Annie says quickly, clearly giving me an out to not have to explain. “What did you do there?” she asks, taking a sip of her wine.