“Not celibate,” Cam said, shutting the door, and glanced at me. “Just waiting for the right girl.”
“How noble.” Don Valentino sat down at the kitchen table and crossed his legs. I caught sight of a gun in a holster beneath his jacket. “You got some of that coffee? Smells good.”
“Sure.” Cam poured him some and slid the mug over before sitting down. “What can I do for you?”
Don Valentino glanced over at me then tugged at his jacket. “I heard there was some action last night,” he said.
“That’s right,” Cam said, and nodded toward me. “Pulled her from Ronan’s safe house.”
I grimaced and wished he hadn’t said that, but I knew he couldn’t keep it from the Don. He was a Valentino man, after all.
“Come sit over here,” Don Valentino said, waving at me. “Come on, it’s fine. How’d you end up in a Healy safe house?”
“Stole from them,” I said, taking the chair next to Cam.
Don Valentino’s eyebrows shot up. “No shit?”
“No shit,” I said, shrugging.
Cam laughed and put a hand on my leg underneath the table. I brushed him off, but he only smiled more. “She’s from the old neighborhood,” he said. “I guess we were raised better back then.”
Don Valentino laughed. “Must’ve been, if she’s got the balls to try to rip off Ronan Healy.” He whistled and shook his head. “Lucky Cam showed up then.”
“Lucky me,” I said, glancing at him.
“I hear he got away,” Don Valentino said, turning his attention back to Cam.
“Killed half his crew,” Cam said casually. The way he talked about murder sent my spine tingling.
I’d seen things. Watched one junkie stab another over some cash. Saw a girl no more than a couple years older than me frozen on a bad winter night with a syringe between her teeth. Watched two men in torn wool clothes fight over a fire out near the river. Saw worse: murder, theft, pain and violence. I’d been scared, been terrified.
But the way Cam talked about killing was on a different level. I saw the desperate actions of society’s castoffs, the most marginalized and forgotten people in the world.
Cam wasn’t any of that.
He didn’t look different, but he’d changed, that was for sure.
“Good man,” Don Valentino said, “but we need Ronan.”
“I’ll find him,” Cam said, leaning forward. “I promise you that, Don.”
Don Valentino watched Cam with his eyebrows knit forward, a shrewd frown on his lips, before nodding once. He stood and stared down at him.
“That’s your job then,” Don Valentino said. “I’ll handle Colm, and you’ll handle Ronan. Find him and end him for me. Help me win this war.”
“I will, Don Valentino,” Cam said, and the fervor in his voice took the wind from my throat. I’d never heard him talk like that before, not in all the years we knew each other back then.
“Good.” Don Valentino glanced at me and nodded. “Always nice to meet a thief willing to rip off the Healy family,” he said, and walked to the door.
He was gone a moment later.
I sat in silence as Cam stared after the Don. I wanted to know what he was thinking—he just got orders to find and murder a man, though killing didn’t seem to bother him.
I saw a lot of things on the street. I did things I wasn’t proud of: broke into homes and stole, lied and cheated, even pushed a girl out a first-floor window once to keep her from stabbing me with a broken bottle.
But I never killed. I never got so jaded that murder became okay.
Cam went down that road, and it scared me.
“You need new clothes,” he said suddenly, still staring at the door.
“Cam—”
“I’ll get you some stuff,” he said and stood. “I know you want to run away again, Irene, but I don’t want you dead out there. Ronan’s going to look for you.”
“I know,” I said.
He drifted over to the couch and grabbed the shirt he had on the night before. The bloodstain was a copper brown color, almost like paint. He pulled the shirt on over his head and grabbed his wallet from the coffee table.
“Stay here,” he said. “I want you to live long enough to run away again, you hear me?”
“I don’t plan on going anywhere,” I said, staring down at my hands.
I couldn’t meet his eyes with that shirt on.
“Good,” he said. “I’ll be back later. Stay here.” He left without another word.
Alone in his apartment, I finally let myself break.
The tears that refused to come ripped from my throat.
I came so close. Ronan was inches from killing me, the closest I’d come so far to dying.
And now I knew that my future hung in the balance.
But I couldn’t give up my freedom to Cam.
Not completely at least.
I waited twenty minutes before I looked through his stuff and found some money, a bundle of twenties in his sock drawer. It was almost like he wanted me to find it.