Tara
Rory and Angus—another one of Kellen’s friends and fellow gangster-asshole—meet us back at the mansion and follow me to my cottage in theory to help me get my things together. “Try to pack light,” Rory says, grinning jovially. Angus seems much more subdued and laid-back and only watches me with a scowl. “I don’t think Kellen wants you bringing too much.”
“This place is a wreck,” Angus grumbles.
I glare at him and decide the grumpy one can be easily ignored.
“Great, I guess I’ll leave my entire shoe collection behind,” I say and roll my eyes as I start shoving clothes into a bag. “It’s not like I’m going too far away. I can always come back.”
“You can,” Rory agrees. “This little dump can be like your giant walk-in closet.”
“It’s not a dump, asshole,” I mumble, focusing on grabbing the necessities. Angus helps by making himself some tea and Rory follows me around, chatting the whole time. It takes about twenty minutes to get all my stuff together and the boys fortunately carry my bags for me, which is the extent of their “help.”
I’m sweating and trembling when we get into the main house, and practically apoplectic when we reach Kellen’s room.
“A lot nicer, huh?” Rory asks as he opens the door, and I hate to admit it, but he’s right.
We walk into a main living room. It’s attached to a kitchen and a dining area, and there’s a hallway leading back to bedrooms and bathrooms. It’s a full apartment tucked into the back of the building, and though it’s furnished and decorated in a pretty generic style, with mostly mid-century prints and abstract art, I spot a few things that make this place unique to Kellen: his clothes, bottles of whiskey on a drinks table, a signed Babe Ruth baseball in a glass case displayed prominently on a shelf, shoes tossed in a corner, and a gun broken down and covered in grease with an old rag holding its various component pieces on the kitchen table.
“Where is he?” I ask as Rory and Angus put my stuff in the bedroom.
“He’ll be back shortly. Go ahead and get settled.” Rory grins at me one last time before he steps outside.
“Good luck,” Angus says, the first words he’s spoken that weren’t some kind of veiled or not-so-veiled insult, and he disappears after Rory.
I’m alone in a strange room in the big house and I feel so lost, like a little girl trapped in an empty shopping mall. It’s been years since I was in this place as anything other than an employee, ever since Cait died, and now here I am moving into one of the rooms.
With Kellen, of all people.
My new husband.
It’s hard to imagine living in this place. The main house has been off limits to me for years. I’ve been inside obviously, mostly to meet with Orin to discuss changes I want to make to the garden and to collect my pay, but otherwise it’s been this strange, distant world that looms over me all the time yet was impossible to enter. Now I’m supposed to live in it, and I’m having a hard time picturing how.
I shiver as I drift into the rooms. There’s only one bed, in the master, which means he wasn’t kidding about sleeping together. The other two extra rooms are empty, just empty husks, all potential and nothing more. When I finish my self-guided tour, I return to the main living room to find Kellen sitting on the couch, legs crossed, drink in hand, watching me.
“How long have you been here?”
“Just a minute or two. What do you think?”
“It’s nice, but this whole place gives me the creeps.” I drift toward the couch but stop myself from sitting down. “Reminds me too much of back then.”
“You’ll get used to it.” He looks away and sips his drink. “It hasn’t been pleasant for me, being in this place.”
“Why are you back here, anyway?”
“My father died.”
“I know that, but why come back at all?” I hesitate, uncertain, but I’m his wife now and I feel like that means I get to ask questions, even if they’re questions he doesn’t want to hear. “You built your own crew with your loyal guys. You have a life out there beyond all this. Why come back when it’s clear most of these people don’t want you?”
He doesn’t react at first. He sips his drink and looks across the room at the wall before clearing his throat. The tension is so heavy I feel like it might crush me, but if I give up and back down already, then this whole marriage is going to be one long nightmare of him getting his way on everything, so I say nothing and wait for him to answer, even if his brooding quiet is killing me.
“This is my birthright,” he says finally, which is such bullshit, but he keeps going. “It’s more than that, though. I loved this family when I was younger. I looked up to my uncles and older cousins and all the captains and lieutenants that came through this house all the time. I wanted to be like them one day, but as I got older and the abuse never stopped, I began to wonder if I could justify keeping it all running and if this family was worth saving.” He stops and swirls his drink.
“Is it?” I ask quietly.
He shakes his head and meets my eye. “No, it’s not. I want to burn it to the fucking ground, Tara. You’re going to help me do that. Once it’s all gone, stripped clean and scorched, then I’ll start over and make something better. Not good, because I don’t do good, but better. That’s why I’m back.”
He stands and finishes his drink. I watch the line of his jaw and his throat work as he walks away and puts the glass on the table beside his disassembled gun. He heads toward the bedroom but pauses in the doorway.