A few days had passed since I screwed Aisling at her death clinic.
I was sick as a dog and wasn’t showing any signs of improvement.
My fever was up, I threw up everything I put inside my body, and could barely drag myself from my bed to the door to snatch the DoorDash delivery left there.
It was the first time I was seriously sick since I was nine. The luxury of being weak and dependable wasn’t something I allowed myself. In fact, I hadn’t taken one sick day from school or work since moving in with the Brennans. I’d always done my best to be worthy of their awe and admiration, a half-man, half-god. Unbreakable and stronger than steel.
This was why I never let my adoptive parents in. Not fully, anyway. Not into my apartment, my domain, my privacy.
My corner of the world was mine and mine alone—to lick my wounds, be less than perfect, quiet, uncertain.
I was content to visit Troy and Sparrow, treat them as family then retreat back to the shadows. The less they knew about me, the better. Living with them while I was a teen had been liking holding my breath underwater. Despite pretending I was going to go about my old ways and give them trouble the day I’d moved in with them, I tried hard not to fuck up.
I was the smartest, fastest, most ruthless soldier Troy had ever had, gave Sparrow jewelry for Christmas, and protected Sailor fiercely every step of the way.
And now this happened.
One and a half fucks with Aisling Fitzpatrick. That was all I needed to throw me off the rails. Rails? I was nowhere near the goddamn fucking train station at this point.
For a docile thing, she sure knew how to leave a lasting impression. But the raw, impossible sweetness of her called to me like a lighthouse in pitch fucking black.
Touching her was a mistake. One that had cost me more than I was willing to pay. Four days after I had her, and I still couldn’t look her brothers in the face. I’d neglected all responsibilities toward the Fitzpatricks. Of course, I still showed up at Badlands, found the time to slit a Bratva member’s throat for trying to sneak up on me after a business meeting downtown.
Things were heating up between the Russians and me, and I’d had to recruit more soldiers. Some of them were retired folks Troy used to work with. I needed to keep Brookline protected—and mine. Now was not the time to play house with the little doctor. Not when she could become a target, too.
On the fifth day of my feeling like a bag of steaming shit, I admitted defeat. Calling Aisling to provide me medical aid was like Johnnie Depp calling Amber Heard and asking her to be his character witness. It was time to hurl my ass into the nearest hospital and get the medical help I so obviously needed.
Reluctantly, I took a shower, jammed my feet into a pair of sneakers, and grabbed my keys, on my way to the door. I swung it open.
Aisling was standing on the other side, brown paper bags full to the brim with groceries in her arms.
I slammed the door in her face, but she was quick—or maybe I was goddamn slow—and slid her foot between the door and the frame. She let out a yelp, causing me to open the door immediately all the way and curse under my breath.
“Her name was Ms. Blanchet,” she peeped out.
I stared at her silently. She needed to elaborate for me to understand what the hell she was talking about. She dropped the groceries, cans and vegetables rolling onto the floor, and hugged her midriff.
“My governess. Her name was Ms. Blanchet. She died when I was seventeen. On the night I met you, actually, at the carnival. I drove there after I found her. She had cancer. Lung cancer. She battled it for three years. The last few months, she spent in a hospice but then decided she wanted to die at home and not in a strange place around people she didn’t know and meant nothing to her. So she moved back to her apartment in the West End. She was sick, Sam. So very sick. She couldn’t eat, or breathe, or laugh without feeling pain. She started peeing in her bed at night, voluntarily, after she’d woken up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom one time and fell in the hallway, breaking her hipbone.
“But she was a proud woman and refused to wear a diaper. Something had changed after she broke her hipbone. Whenever I came to visit her—not in the capacity of a student anymore; she couldn’t teach, but I would visit her to provide company, seeing as she had no one else in the States—she asked me to help her take her own life.”
There was a pause. Silence hung in the air. Reluctantly, I grabbed a fistful of her dress and pulled her in, shutting the door behind us. My penthouse was the only apartment on the floor, but I still didn’t want to take any chances of anyone listening to this. We left the groceries outside. Aisling twisted her fingers together, staring at her feet, determined to finish her confession.
“I said no. Of course, I said no! That was the right thing to say. My whole life I’d dreamed of becoming a doctor so I could help people survive, not kill them. But every time I left her apartment after watching her light dim, I felt guiltier for refusing her. It tore me to shreds. The idea that I was denying her something she wanted so badly. Something she truly desired. Helping her make the pain go away. And I began to wonder … wasn’t it patronizing of me to make the decision of her living in pain?”
“You were just a kid,” I said tersely, but she and I both knew it was bullshit. Life didn’t care about your age, bank account, or circumstances. Life just happened. I was thirteen when I assumed my role as Troy’s successor. I’d crushed skulls, put bullets in people’s heads, tortured, killed, manipulated, and kidnapped people. Because life happened to me, and to stay alive, I had to adapt.
“She begged and begged and begged. She was slipping away from me, I could feel it.” Aisling stood there, by my door, tears streaming down her face.
I made no move to console her. It wasn’t what she needed in that moment, even an emotionally stunted dirtbag like me could see it. She had to get this confession off her chest. “The woman I’d looked up to since I was four, the woman whom my parents had collected from Paris to shape me into a lady—she was witty, sassy, effortlessly elegant and chic, and a heavy smoker,” she said pointedly, eyeing me. “She’d become a shadow of her former self. I didn’t know what to do. Until, finally, Ms. Blanchet made the decision for me. We had a fight. She told me to stop coming. Not to visit her anymore. Said she wouldn’t answer if I visited. That was three days before I met you.”
Her throat bobbed with a swallow, and she raked her shaky fingers through her hair as she took a ragged breath.
“I didn’t listen. Maybe I should’ve, but I didn’t. I couldn’t not visit her. So I did. I knocked on the door, rang the bell. No one had answered. I went to a neighbor downstairs that I knew had her spare keys. An older gentleman she used to take tea with before she’d gotten too sick. He gave me the key. I opened her apartment. I found her in the bathtub…” she looked sideways then to the floor, closing her eyes “…she used whatever energy she had left to cut her wrists and bleed out. She was in a river of blood. That’s why she had this fight with me. That’s why she didn’t want me to come anymore. She made up her mind about taking her own life. And she did it in such a painful, lonely way.”
“Nix,” I said, my voice gravelly. Suddenly, I forgot about being sick. I forgot about existing in general. Her pain took over the room and everything else ceased to exist.
She shook her head, laughing bitterly.
“That’s why I was such a mess at the carnival. After I’d found her, I called my parents and 9-1-1. I gave a statement then drove home, put on something slutty, and started driving around until I saw the lights coming from the carnival.”
The carnival where I snatched her first kiss simply because she was too sweet not to take advantage of.
Where she saw me taking a life.
Aisling saw two dead people in less than twelve hours after living a too-sheltered life. It must have been a shock to the system.
“I saw what you did to that man that night…” her chin quivered “…and something weird happened inside me. I knew you would survive, wouldn’t let the guilt consume you. You looked young and healthy and intelligent. I trusted you slept well at night. Ate well. You were … oddly okay with taking lives.”
She looked up at me for confirmation, her eyes swimming with tears. I gave her a curt nod.
“I own up to who I am. I have no trouble eating or sleeping.”
Except for when I touch you … then I become a pussy-ass dipshit with a fever who can’t keep a damn meal down.
She nodded.
“That’s what I thought. But you have to understand, I went to an all-girls Catholic school. Euthanasia goes against every bone in my body.”
“You still do it,” I challenged. “Why?”
“Somehow, that night, you made it real. The possibility of taking a life. Even though our situation is vastly different. The only guilt I’ve felt was for not helping Ms. Blanchet when she’d needed me. Because she was too far gone, and I was far too selfish to burden myself with such guilt. I ended up feeling horrible anyway. Much worse than I would have had I helped her. That day changed my life. Our meeting was kismet. You made me realize what I needed to do. What I was put on this earth to do. And then it made me think about the rest of my relationships. The world surrounding me. You wanna know what I learned?” She sniffed.
I got it. All of it. Why she did what she did. How she had become who she was. A Nix. A gorgeous vision of a woman, hiding an enchanting monster underneath.
But I didn’t agree with her. She wasn’t put on this earth to kill people.
“What is that?” I asked softly.
“The thing I learned is sometimes we do very ugly things for the people we love. I do it for my mother. For my father. Even, sometimes, for myself.”
I said nothing. I’d never truly loved anyone, so it didn’t seem like I could contribute to that observation. She stepped toward me, the fog of death and mourning around her evaporating.
“I met Dr. Doyle in my second year of premed. By chance, if you could believe it. That clinic that you’ve seen? He lives in the apartment upstairs. Back then, he rented it to a few students. I was at a house-warming party there and couldn’t figure out why the basement was so firmly locked. There were no less than three locks on that thing. The guy who lived there said Dr. Doyle used it, and people were coming in and out often, but he’d never asked questions because frankly the rent was too cheap to get picky or vocal about it, and he was a med student—he was hardly at home anyway. My curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to get to the bottom of the situation. I’d scheduled a meeting with Dr. Doyle. Visited his office. The real one, in the nice part of town, where he worked as a dermatologist. He had plenty of pictures of his wife, but when I asked about her, he said that she had died two years earlier. She’d had a stroke that had left her with severe disabilities and brain damage. And by damage I mean, she couldn’t even eat or control her bladder. I questioned him about her death. I knew it was insensitive, but I still did it. I just had a feeling …”
“He killed her,” I said, staring her dead in the eye.
Nix nodded, walking briskly in the kitchen’s direction, popping cabinets open, taking out a chopping board then walking back to the door to retrieve her groceries.
“I knew I had to coax it out of him, so I told him about my story with Ms. Blanchet. It wasn’t easy to convince him, but finally, he agreed to take me under his wing. The minute I graduated, I started working with him full-time. Up until then, I’d studied his work. What he did after hours. He is committed to helping those who cannot be helped anywhere else. We’re not bad people, Sam.”
She collected the carrots, the celery, the chicken thighs, and the broth, chopping the vegetables and meat on the board and tossing them all into a pot for what I assumed was a chicken noodle soup.
“Euthanasia means good death in Greek. It is about letting life go peacefully, with dignity, on your own terms. But really, it is about ending excruciating suffering. We have some ground rules we abide by, though, Dr. Doyle and I, which is why we have very few patients. What we do is provide a service for the Ms. Blanchets of the world. Medical and prescription relief to people who don’t want to live in a hospice but spend their remaining time in their homes with their loved ones.”
“What are your ground rules?” I asked, propping my forearms on the kitchen island between us, intrigued.
I’d met many killers in my lifetime, but all of them were like me. Decadent and soulless. Selfish and cruel. They all did it for the bloodthirst. Not for altruistic reasons. Even those who had moral codes broke them often. What Aisling did had nothing to do with what I did for a living.
“For one thing, without getting into the bioethics of it, we only do voluntarily euthanasia. Which means that if we do not have the full consent of the patient for any reason, even if they are in a coma, we will not take on the patient. For another, we only take on patients at the very end of their lives. I am talking stage four cancer, people who have very few weeks to live. And even then, we don’t pull the plug, so to speak.” She put the pot of soup on the stove, turning up the heat, lost in her explanation. “We don’t perform the act of taking a life. No. We do something that is called palliative sedation. Basically, we keep the patient alive but under deep sedation when the time comes, until they pass away naturally. Such a thing is legal in many countries, including the Netherlands and France. It is not even considered euthanasia. Not really. But for these people—for my patients—it makes a huge difference.”
“And you only do it in their homes,” I said.
“Yes.” She put a lid on the chicken soup, tearing open a bag of egg noodles. “We make it possible for them to be surrounded by their friends and family.”
“Then what do you have the clinic for?”
“As I said, we try to prolong their lives as much as we can through medication and consultation.”
“On Thanksgiving …” I trailed off.
She bounced on her toes, looking sideways.
“Yes. And on Halloween, too.”
“Jesus, Ash.” I planted my forehead over the kitchen island, relishing its coolness.
“You really are my own angel of death.” She sighed. “Every time I do something like this, we have a moment together. But those were the only times I did it. I swear.”
“You could get into deep shit for doing this, know that?” I raised my head, pinning her with a look. Of course she knew that. Aisling wasn’t stupid.
She tilted her chin up, ignoring my words. “Cillian and Hunter say they haven’t been able to reach you the last few days. I put two and two together and figured you were sick and too proud to ask for help, so I came to nurse you back to health.”
“Listen to me…” I slammed my open palm against the marble between us, losing patience “…you can go to prison. This is first-degree murder. It is fucking intentional. Not even manslaughter. You need to stop.”
“I know you’re used to obedience, doing what you do…” Nix perched her purse on the counter and took out a thermometer, sauntering over to me and sticking it under my tongue “…but you can’t tell me what to do, Monster.”
I glared at her like she took a shit in my bed, waiting for the thermometer to beep. When it did, I spat it out back into her hand, and hissed, “This conversation is not over.”
“Please,” she snorted, rounding the kitchen island and taking a few pills from her purse, reaching over to hand them to me. “Don’t pretend like you care. We’re too old and too jaded for that. Here, take these.”
Eyeing her skeptically, I said, “I don’t know, Doc, you don’t have a glowing track record of bringing people back to health.”
She shrugged, about to withdraw her outstretched hand. I snatched the pills, shoving them into my mouth and swallowing without water.
“The soup will be ready in about forty-five minutes. Why don’t you lie down and tell me all about your brand of evil?”
Kicking her out wasn’t going to fly. Not when I could barely crawl to the door, let alone shove her out of it. And anyway, I was tired of fighting her off. She’d finally succeeded in worming her way into my life. I saw a distinction between her and Gerald. Between her and her brothers. Nix was finally her own person in my eyes.
And what a person that was.
Gorgeous, intelligent, and compassionate. Worst of all—someone who was blindly in love with me. She didn’t have to spell it out. It was radiating from every inch of her silken flesh.
I didn’t deserve her.
I could have her if I wanted.
I staggered to the couch and fell onto it. Nix balanced herself on the edge, right beside me, looking at me expectedly, like Rooney anticipating story time.
I ran my fingers through my damp hair.
“Where to start?”
“The beginning would be a good place.”
Rascal.
“I was born on a blistering August day—”
“Well, maybe not the very beginning. How about the middle? No. Third chapter. After the exposition, but before things get real juicy and turbulent.”
Eyeing her with new fondness I wasn’t even entirely sure I was capable of feeling, I chuckled.
“Things had been a shitty blur until I turned nine, after which it was all about the Brennans. I had a role to assume, and I did. I now make more than Troy did back in the day. I own more businesses, more properties, and I control more areas in Boston than he ever did.”
“But you are also messier than Troy was.” She ran her fingers through my hair, fixing whatever the hell I did to it, smiling. “You kill more people. You get injured. Crime rate is up. And it’s a well-known fact the Bratva is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. I read it in the news.”
“Reading something in the news doesn’t make it true,” I pointed out.
“What about the FBI? Cillian says they are after you, too.”
“They’ll never catch me.”
“Famous last words.” She sighed.
“Quote me on them, Nix.”
She smiled, dipping her hand into the bullet jar wistfully, slipping in the missing bullet she’d stolen from there.
“Thank you,” I croaked, closing my eyes.
“You are most welcome, my darling monster.”
I drifted off to sleep, even though I tried hard to stay awake. It reminded me of the first few Christmases I spent with the Brennans. The fight against exhaustion was like swimming against the stream, but something good was happening, and who the fuck knew when would be the next time I’d feel this elusive, intoxicating joy?
Aisling must’ve slept right beside me because I could still feel her heat when I woke up. Her scent of ginger and honey and my fucking undoing.
I yawned, stretching on the couch.
“Make coffee,” I growled, but there was no response.
I opened my eyes, looking around.
There was a bowl of steaming chicken noodle soup by my side, a bottle of water—uncapped—and some pills.
Aisling was gone.
The next day, I met with Barbara McAllister on the outskirts of Boston.
She was a hobo-looking woman, not in the hipster, bought-that-holed-shirt-for-three-hundred-bucks way, but in the seriously-need-a-sandwich way. You could tell that underneath the bleached hair, wrinkled face, and badly applied self-tan, she’d once been an attractive woman.
Barbara was the final blow I needed to bring Gerald down to his knees. The missing piece in Operation Destroy Gerald. She held some deep secrets he never wanted anyone to know, and for a healthy sum of money, she was willing to air them out to the world.
“But I need to make sure it’ll be worth my while. I’ll only do it for the right price. Can I borrow a cigarette?” Barbara asked when we’d met in a small coffee shop.
She wore a black mini-dress and a cheap trench coat, and it looked like the ‘right price’ for her would be twenty bucks and a McMeal. I silently offered her my open pack of cigarettes, keeping my expression blank.
I still soldiered through my plan for Gerald Fitzpatrick, but I was no longer gleeful about it. Somewhere along the road, hurting Aisling, which I knew I was bound to do, felt unnecessary. It wasn’t that I was going soft. It was that there was no need to be harsh to a woman as pliable as her.
So fucking pliable that she runs an underground death clinic and seeks you out.
Barbara lit up a cigarette, exhaling with a satisfied smile.
“How do you know I’ll even get a book deal? There isn’t exactly a shortage of women Gerald Fitzpatrick has dipped his dick into.” She eyed me skeptically.
“True, but you are the only one who’d lived in one of his apartments. You weren’t just a fuck, you were a mistress. He flew you places. Bought you expensive jewelry. I bet it’s just the tip of the iceberg.” I smirked at her, setting the bait to make her say more.
She grinned, her teeth unusually white for a smoker, and nodded enthusiastically.
“Oh, did he ever. Samuel, my boy, he adored me. Of course, I did my part, too. There were orgies. Massive orgies. He sometimes took us three at a time. I always thought it was peculiar Ger was so upset when his son, Hunter, did it. After all, he was the king of orgies back in the day.”
My jaw tensed. I didn’t need to hear about my brother-in-law’s sexcapades before he married my baby sister.
“What else?” I asked.
“There were drugs. A whole lot of them at those parties.” Barbara rubbed her chin. It struck me as interesting that although Gerald had put her on the list, too, when I asked about her, he’d lied to me. Some of the details he had given me were different from what I’d found when I conducted my own research. Addresses, where they’d met, her age. Nothing lined up, so I decided to dig deeper. I was glad I did.
“There were also a few abortions.” She cleared her throat. “Gerald did not like to use protection, but he also didn’t want any bastard children. He was actually adamant about that, as you could imagine. I, myself, knew better than to tempt fate. I was always on the pill. Didn’t have the ambition of getting knocked up with a billionaire’s kid. Too dangerous. Looking back, maybe I should’ve. Maybe I’d fare better than I do today.” She looked around the small coffee shop with the peeling wallpaper and dusty surfaces. She lived in a small, deserted town. It was obvious she wasn’t swimming in it.
“But I was privy to everything that happened behind the scenes. He was a monster, Samuel. A real monster. Ever met one?” She sucked on the cigarette I gave her greedily, ignoring the disturbed glances the barista behind the counter shot at her—though she didn’t approach us or tell her to put it out.
“Yeah,” I said easily. “I’ve met monsters before. Multiple times, actually. So, here’s how we are going to do this, Barbara. I’ll bring the lucrative tell-all book deal, you’ll bring the juice. But whatever happens, you must remember one thing—you never met me, never saw me, and never heard of me. Am I clear?”
She nodded, finishing off her cigarette and taking a sip of the stale coffee I’d bought her.
“Absolutely. May I have another cigarette?”
I laughed, standing up and tossing the pack in her lap before disappearing back into the white blizzard.
“Sure, sweetheart, take the whole fucking pack.”
