He curses under his breath, frustration lacing his tone. “Okay,what?”
“Okay, I’ll go out with you.”
A soft crinkle sounds on the line, and I picture his sinister, panty-melting grin. “Good girl.” The term of endearment should bug me, should make my skin crawl, but there’s a perverse sense of accomplishment that washes over me when he says it that I can’t quite tamp down. “Now get the hell off my property, before I gut the person in the car with you and trap you inside here with me.”
He clicks off, and I let the phone fall from my fingers into my lap, stunned by the direction that interaction went. Luca shifts, twisting around to look at me, and furrows his brows. “Who was that?”
“No one,” I say, the lie harsh on my ears. But I can’t very well tell him I’ve just agreed to a date with a monster—what would Elia do if he found out? “Who were you talking to?”
Looking at me for a long moment, he finally sighs and turns back around, inserting his key into the ignition. “Gia asking about Crimson business. Nothing exciting.” He starts the car, flipping on the headlights, and takes one last glance at me. “You get a good enough feel for the lay of the land? I mean, we didn’t get out and scope tonight, but I think he was watching, anyway.”
“Yeah.” Nodding, he backs out of the little alcove we’re parked beneath and starts down the gravel roadway. Out the rear window, I watch the little cottage grow smaller as we approach the main road, getting obscured by trees, wondering what the hell I’ve just agreed to.
* * *
Kieran
My heart pounds against my ribcage as the town car disappears between the trees, elated that she agreed with only a little coercion. Not that I’d expected anything less—my sweet kitten isn’t used to being told what to do. Her instinct is to fight it, fightme, and act out.
Too bad she doesn’t know how fucking hard her defiance makes me. Doesn’t know how I dream of coaxing the brat out of her, turning her over my knee and giving her the discipline she clearly never received from another. How badly I want to tie her down, tease her until she’s crying with denied release, and fuck her so hard that she leaves a hole in my mattress.
Obviously, her showing up here tonight was unexpected; I have no clue how she knew where to find me. Murphy’s house isn’t listed anywhere, and I have no neighbors on the lake.
I suspect a Montalto accompanied her, since they’d be the first to access such sealed information. Probably that idiot cousin of hers, the blond one always sticking his nose into the Harrison sisters’ business.
Still, I can’t very well worry about that at the moment.
Walking to my kitchen sink, I turn the faucet on with my elbow and let the water steam, pulling the gloves I donned for my phone call off and dunking my bloodied hands beneath the spray. I scrub my nails into the stained skin, pumping soap into one palm and lathering it, washing the red off me.
This wasn’t a normal job; in fact, it wasn’t ajobat all. It was justice.
Scooping the pile of clothing off my table and into my arms, I grab a flashlight from my tool bench by the door and make my way to the back yard. Flipping on the light, I scan the fresh square of dirt just off the property line, making sure the body’s been covered fully.
Buried upright, a few inches beneath the soil, in case any cadaver dogs ever come looking. They get confused if it’s only a small patch of dirt.
My brother’s words of wisdom flash in my mind, and I shake them off, trying to burn the memory of his ghost as I toss the Stonemore County Fire Department T-shirt into the fire raging in the stone pit Murphy built years ago.
Reaching into my jacket pocket as I dump the man’s boots into the flames, I dig out the tiny USB flash drive I found on him, clenching my jaw. For a moment, I consider holding it for ransom, as a way to drive out the other assholes who dared record someone against their will, but at the last second, I flick it in, watching it melt slowly on top of the incinerating fabric.
The last of the incriminating evidence.
Chapter 8
Kieran
My father adjusts his glasses just as they slip off the edge of his nose, pushing them up his bridge with one finger. Leaning back in his oversized leather desk chair, he regards me with an unreadable expression, brown eyes burning a hole into my forehead.
“I think we need to talk about Murphy.” His expensive, custom-tailored gray suit almost shines under the fluorescent lighting in his office, the whiteness of Ivers International damn near blinding.
A place rife with sin and corruption hiding under a guise of purity.
Shifting in the plastic chair he keeps for guests—one of those blue school seats designed to be as uncomfortable as possible—I cross one leg over the other, fiddling with my cufflinks. I’ve known for days now that this subject was brewing in the back of his head, could see it in every glance he threw at me when I came home late at night, drenched in the scent of fresh death instead of its stale presence.
He knows I haven’t been going to the graveyard, knows I’m not atoning for my sins; of course, my brain knows it as well, and itches every day I force myself away, nerves eating at the veins threading my insides together.
For a superstitious, traditionally Catholic family, refusing to plead with our demons for forgiveness is on par with blasphemy, but I’ve been a bit too preoccupied with a certain enticing little creature to really give a shit whether Murphy rests well in the afterlife or not.
It’s not like he deserves my groveling.