Ten hours after being balls deep inside Aisling Fitzpatrick, I got a call that Catalina Greystone, AKA Mother Dearest, had finally (and uneventfully) kicked the bucket.
“Just thought y’all should know. What with the fact that they’re gonna knock the whole thang down next week. Not that the property’s worth a dime, mind you. But I thought, why not let her son know?” Cat’s neighbor, Mrs. Masterson, munched on something crunchy in my ear via a particularly annoying phone call.
Because I don’t care, I was tempted to reply.
Catalina’s death was new to me but not something I was interested in finding out more about.
She caught me at my personal trainer’s, flipping a truck tire that weighed almost as much as I did. I put her on speaker, tossing the phone on the foam floor as I continued flipping.
“How’d you get my number?” I grumbled, not mentioning the special code it required to get through to my line.
“Your daddy gave it to me. Troy somethin’.”
So Troy knew she was dead, too. I was surprised he didn’t show up at my door this morning with a bottle of champagne.
“Well, I appreciate the heads-up, but I can’t imagine there’s anything in this house of value to me.”
Other than my fucking long-lost childhood and memories of drug and alcohol abuse.
Cat had tried reconnecting with me over the years since dropping me off at the Brennans’ with nothing but a duffel bag and bad memories, but the truth of the matter was, I’d rather get fucked by a cactus—raw—than exchange a word with her.
Hell, I’d marry the goddamn cactus if it meant never seeing her wretched face.
Fortunately, being the garbage human that she was, Cat hadn’t gone through extreme lengths to try to reach out. She sent me letters periodically and tried to call every now and again, especially when she had money troubles, which—cue the surprise act—was fucking always.
As if giving a fuck was on the menu for me. By the address on the letters (that went straight into the trash—unless it was wintertime, in which case straight into the fireplace), I figured she spent the last half decade on the outskirts of Atlanta, sucking soggy cock to fund her drug and designer bag problems.
One especially slow night at Badlands I even Google-mapped her address and wasn’t surprised to see she lived in a place I wouldn’t even store my shoes. A rickety wooden thing any wolf could blow over and knock down.
If I cared enough for revenge, I’d have gone there to do exactly that. Made her homeless. As it happened, not enough time had passed for me to think of her as an afterthought, let alone an enemy.
“Aren’t you gonna ask how she passed away?” The woman on the other line continued nagging. My trainer, Mitchell, a man who looked like a rock (not to be confused with The Rock), handed me a fresh towel, offering me a what-the-hell look.
He wasn’t used to me giving strangers the time of day.
“Air bike and ropes next. You’ve got sixty seconds to recover, Monster,” he mouthed, offering me a fist pump I refused to reciprocate on the grounds I wasn’t fucking five, before scurrying behind a black curtain to allow me some privacy.
“Hello? You still there?” the Southern woman on the other line demanded, her nasal voice grating.
I picked up the phone from the floor.
“Listen, Mrs. Masterson, I appreciate your motherly concern, but to say Cat and I weren’t close would be the understatement of the fucking century. There’s nothing I need from her place. I’m a busy man. I don’t have time to go down to Georgia.”
But I had every fucking intention of going down on Aisling tonight, and that was a problem. A pleasant shiver prickled my skin. Who would have thought little Nix had it in her? To con, deceive, and weasel her way into my club—into my pants—and give me the fuck of a lifetime?
Not me, that was for sure, but I was happy to give her a replay and finally get her out of my system. See all the tricks she picked up in med school and mar that pale, milky skin of hers with my nails and teeth. She was swan-like. Elegant and aristocratic. And it made fucking her so much more pleasing than my usual flavor of pointy long nails, botoxed lips, and ass implants.
There was something simply not as exciting about being buried in a woman that had already seen more dicks than a urologist. Experienced or not, I could tell by the ice princess’ touch she didn’t give it out so easily.
She couldn’t have.
She was hopelessly fucking obsessed with me.
And fuck, for the first time in a decade, that little fact made me proud rather than annoyed.
“Drugs. She had an overdose. That’s how she passed away,” Mrs. Masterson continued, unconcerned with my lack of interest in the conversation. “Poor thang. Girl Scouts found her. Came to try to sell her some cookies. Would you believe? They looked through the window. Saw her lying on the floor and called 9-1-1. Poor children. No one ought to see somethin’ like that, let alone kiddies. They say she’d been like that for days. Maybe a week. No one came to check on her. Her phone log said no one even called. She was a lonely woman, your mother.”
I was hardly surprised. Cat was about as lovable as an SS soldier and just about as endearing. When she was younger, she had her looks to save her. Once her beauty had faded, she became just another haggard junkie, and life tended to be harder on those people.
“Look, I know you two weren’t exactly thick as thieves…” the old woman on the other line sighed “…still, son, you should be here.”
“I’m not—”
“Boy, I don’t know how to be clearer than I am. There’s something of hers you should see,” she cut me off briskly. “Let’s leave it at that, shall we? She told me you were a rich man. That means you can afford to take the time off work and get your ass down here, mister. I know I’m old, but I ain’t stupid. I don’t mean you should come here to pick up some Walmart china or family albums. There are some things you need to see.”
I started to hate her less despite myself. “Like what?”
“I ain’t tellin’.”
“You’re an infuriating woman, Mrs. Masterson. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“All the damn time.” She cackled, and I could tell by her cough she was a heavy smoker like me. “So, is that a yes, little Greystone?”
“Brennan,” I corrected, clenching my jaw, staring at an invisible spot on the wall. The same wall I looked at day in and day out when I did my hundred chin-ups five times a week.
Should I or shouldn’t I entertain my fucked-up, morbid curiosity about Cat’s life or whatever was left of it?
The answer was simple. No. She was a complete stranger at this point. Twenty-six years had passed since I’d last seen her. And still, like a fly to a pile of shit, something compelled me to get a closer look at the mess she’d created for herself. That, paired with the idea of relishing Cat’s failure at the most basic human thing—survival—was something I wanted a front-row seat to.
“I’ll be there by tomorrow morning.”
“Smart move, boy.”
I hung up and called my travel agent, giving him the details. I heard him typing away on his keyboard.
“There’s actually a flight going out of Boston Logan Airport in a few hours. Better catch that one, ’cause there’s thunderstorms rolling in tomorrow and there could be delays.”
“Book it,” I ordered.
I was going to stand Aisling Fitzpatrick up, but that wasn’t a problem. If there was one thing I knew for certain, it was that Nix—little monster—would never turn me down.
She would be there next week. And the week after that.
To be used, abused, and devoured.
She’d always been mine.
That was what made her so dangerous and why I stayed the fuck away all these years. The fact that she was at my disposal. Just one horny mistake away from calamity. An unconditional woman was nothing foreign to me, but they usually wanted something. My money, my power, the glow of being under the dark wings of Boston’s underground king.
Aisling, however, I couldn’t figure out. She had more money than she knew how to count. She was more of the reforming type than the women who wanted the bad boy, and her motives always seemed disturbingly genuine.
I didn’t know what her angle was, and it didn’t matter.
Her family was my biggest client, and I wasn’t going to fuck up my job for any woman, not even one as sweet as her.
Mitchell sauntered back in. His beefy body in that small gym top gave the appearance of trying to stuff my fat cock into a normal-sized condom.
“Ready?” He raised his fist for another pump.
I ignored it, once again, sauntering toward the ropes.
“Always.”
Hours later, I was standing in Cat’s living room or whatever the fuck you wanted to call the small, dingy rathole she used to occupy.
Mrs. Masterson gave me the key, but not before feeding me a questionable apple pie and sweetened iced tea that tasted suspiciously like the store-bought Costco brand.
Cat’s house was about the size of my spare room back in Boston. Most of her furniture was hand-me-downs and crap you’d drag from a street corner’s curb. Her bathroom cabinet had enough prescription drugs to restock a fucking pharmacy. The house exhibited all the usual signs of a shitty life: plastic bags full of useless things strewn everywhere, outstanding bills pinned to a board, half-full beer cans scattered about, and a bunch of used condoms in her bedroom’s trash can.
She died a hooker. It probably should have saddened me, but it didn’t. She lost all pity privileges when she made me an alcoholic and cocaine user before I knew how to wipe my own ass properly.
I rolled up my sleeves and got to work immediately, peeling wallpaper to see if there was something interesting hiding behind it, sifting through the hoarder-type garbage, and opening every cabinet and drawer in the damn place. I flipped the house upside down, even yanked out the leaking faucet from its place, but for the life of me I couldn’t find that thing Mrs. Masterson was talking about that would make it worth my while to visit.
I knew asking the old hag was pointless. She’d just shove more half-frozen apple pie down my throat and tell me Cat wanted me to find it for myself.
You could always count on Cat to make things harder for me, even from the fucking grave.
Usually, I was good at extracting information in not-so-nice ways, but even I had my limits, and I drew them at physically attacking eighty-five-year-old women who were half deaf and possibly fully blind.
I decided to call Sparrow, whom I considered my de facto mother. True, she hadn’t pushed me out of her vagina, but she sure as shit was there to get me out of trouble while I was at school. She fed me, fought my battles, and celebrated my wins.
She loved me more fiercely than any mother would her child, but the damage had been done. My soul was broken, my eyes were open, and my heart was frozen.
“What’s up, Sam?” Sparrow asked on the other line. I could practically imagine her rolling dough in the kitchen, red hair snaking everywhere like medusa, an apron with a witty phrase wrapped around her waist—which was still boyish and slender.
“Sparrow. I’m at Cat’s place in Georgia. She died of an overdose.”
“Troy said,” she answered quietly, and I could sense she was about to launch into her condolences, so I talked fast.
“I think there’s something here I should see, but I’m not sure where to find it.”
I was good at raiding places, but I usually found weapons under the mattresses and between cracks. Cat’s secrets, wherever they were, weren’t anywhere obvious.
The good thing about Sparrow was that she thought like a criminal. Maybe because she married one. So instead of asking nagging questions, she said, “Check the nightstand drawers or the little nooks in her closet. That’s where women usually stash their secrets.”
“Done, and also duly noted. Nothing.”
“Ripped the carpets and floor up?”
“Every inch of them,” I answered, flicking books off the shelf by her bedroom window. All four of them. “Any other ideas?”
“Are there any pictures hanging there?”
I looked around, about to say no, when I found one.
Cat always had one picture hanging up everywhere she lived.
It was in the bathroom, of all places. A lone sole picture of Troy Brennan, my adoptive father and Cat’s ex. Catalina Greystone had never gotten over Troy Brennan, and I couldn’t blame her. No one else could measure up to the man so feared and loved his name was whispered on the streets of Boston.
“One,” I said distractedly, refraining from adding who was in the picture.
“Rip it. It’ll be behind it,” Sparrow said with conviction.
“This is why I don’t trust women.”
“That’s okay. We don’t trust men right back. Oh and, Sam?” she asked before I hung up.
Here we go.
“Mmm?” I casually flicked the picture to the floor. Sure enough, there was a square-shaped hole in the wall behind it. Just big enough for me to shove my hand into.
“I’m sorry for your loss. And I know you don’t see it as a loss, I do, but I cannot find joy in knowing the woman who created you has passed away. Because at the end of the day—she gave me you. And I love you so very much, son.”
An unpleasant shudder ran through me. Sparrow wasn’t the emotional type, but she sure as shit had her biannual little speeches that made me want to vomit.
I hung up and pulled the shoebox Cat had stashed inside that hole, ripping it open.
The ice around my frozen heart cracked, just an inch.
Letters.
Two hours after finding the letters, I was still sitting on the floor, looking like Gulliver in a Barbie house—the junkie, whore edition—reading through them again and again and a-motherfucking-gain, digesting what I’d just learned.
Apparently, Catalina made Mrs. Masterson promise she’d make sure I’d find these letters, and she had a damn good reason for it.
My estranged mother wanted me to know her life story. At least a part of it. Question was—why?
Even as I read the letters for the hundredth time, I still couldn’t figure out if she wanted sympathy, revenge, or to give an explanation for her behavior.
All twenty-three letters were addressed to Gerald Fitzpatrick, then CEO of the oil company Royal Pipelines and the man I currently worked for on retainer as a fixer.
Coincidentally, he was also the father of Hunter Fitzpatrick, my sister Sailor’s husband, and Aisling Fitzpatrick, the woman I had fucked hours ago. I could still feel her sweet warmth wrapped around my cock whenever I thought about it. I pushed the memory away bitterly.
What I’d read in those letters changed the entire course of my life.
My dearest Gerald,
Thank you for bringing new hope into my life. For making me see that there is more than what I was left with after Brock passed away.
The word ‘mistress’ rings licentious and cheap, doesn’t it? It doesn’t do justice to what I am to you, my dear. To how I feel about you.
I know you’ll never leave Jane for me. I’m not stupid. I’ve learned to live with the burden of being the other woman. All I ask is for a part of your heart. It could be small. A fraction of what you gave to her.
Could you offer me a chunk of that organ that beats inside your chest?
Thank you for inspiring me to become a better person, a better mother, a better lover.
Yours forever,
—Cat.
My dearest Gerald,
We are having a baby! Can you believe it? I sure can’t.
I’m so excited. I know it wasn’t in your plan. Trust me when I say it wasn’t in mine, either. Not when Sam is practically a little boy. A pre-teen. Look, Gerald, I know you and I haven’t been together for very long, and here I thought the diaper-changing days were behind me, but I really think it’s a sign. I guess life has its way of showing us our paths.
I included our pregnancy test. Would you like to come with me to my first OB-GYN appointment? No pressure, but I would love that.
Oh, and by the way, I would absolutely adore it if you could bring me some prenatal vitamins from the store next time we see each other. Gotta keep the little one healthy and strong!
Yours forever,
—Cat.
Dear Gerald,
I did not appreciate it today when you breezed past me when I came to see you at your office. You may be done with me, that much you have made abundantly clear, but you are definitely NOT done with the baby growing inside of me. I am not getting rid of him (YES, HIM) for any price in the world, much less the amount you have offered me to have an abortion.
You can ignore me all you want. For weeks, for months, for eternity. At the end of the day, this baby is coming out of me, and it is yours. You are going to have to face this reality, one day or the other.
Call me back. You know my number.
Yours sometimes,
—Cat.
Gerald,
I want you to know I will never forgive you for what you did to me. To us.
You are a killer. A murderer. I had a son. Jacob. He was inside me. I was pregnant. He kicked and rolled and always moved in pleasure whenever he listened to his big bother’s voice.
He was your child.
I understand that this posed a complication to your perfect life. But it was still the one thing I looked forward to and made me push through my bleak life.
I also understand you own an oil company, that you already have heirs, that the battle over your will, when you die, is going to be a vicious one.
BUT HE WAS YOUR SON.
He was your son and you yanked him out of my body cruelly. You hit me. You threw me around. You pried him out of me. You beat me so badly, you left no room for doubt what was going to happen next.
I had a miscarriage after what went down between us yesterday. That was your plan, wasn’t it? To beat him out of me? Well, it worked.
I bled and bled and bled until I had to run to the hospital, where they told me I lost him.
I was five months pregnant, Gerald. Which meant I had to go through a still birth. Did you know I was three months sober? Had been since I found out we were pregnant.
I wanted to give this baby a new, fresh start. To raise Jacob and Samuel together, and give them the opportunity to fulfill their potential. To turn over a new leaf.
To atone for all my sins.
Now all of that is gone. I am back to square one, confused and lost as ever.
And you, of course, are still not answering. You got what you wanted. My complete destruction so I won’t be a threat to you anymore.
As I’m writing this to you, I’ve found the bag of crack you left at my doorstep. I know it was you who asked the drugs to be delivered. You always loved me more when I was high, even if it meant I wasn’t there for Sam.
Fuck Sam, right? If push comes to shove, we can always give him a little something to subdue him, too. That was your idea. To drug him so he would be quiet. So we could talk on the phone. Well, it stopped working once he was old enough to fight back, and we all know how that turned out. He’d almost bit my skin off the last time I tried to drug him.
Don’t worry, Gerald, I’ll take the drugs. I’ll fall down the rabbit hole. I’ll become a useless body, an empty container that’s only good for one thing—giving you pleasure.
And again, the cycle goes.
Drugs. Alcohol. Rehab. Rock bottom. Repeat.
This is all your fault, and if they ever take Sam away from me, I hope you know it’ll be on your conscience.
Forever not yours,
—Cat.
Gerald,
As I said on our phone call yesterday, I am not going to leave you alone until you pay me for my silence.
You made me miscarry our unborn son. The media is going to know who you really are and what you’re capable of unless you pay up.
And no, I am definitely not going to take your measly 50k and move away, especially as you and I both know that’ll mean having to leave Sam behind. No way am I going to be able to raise him on my own, and it’s not like Troy and Sparrow are going to let me take him away anyway.
300k will allow us a fresh start. A good rehab center. An apartment in a decent school district. Do the right thing, Gerald. I have people I know in California who could help me. Pay up and make this nightmare disappear.
With hate,
—Cat.
Gerald,
Fine. 150k it is.
When I pointed out 300k would mean I could take Sam with me, you laughed in my face and said the boy wasn’t your problem. It’s on you that I left my son behind, not me.
You have plans for him, don’t you? You said so yourself. Broken, impressionable men from the wrong side of the tracks make good soldiers. The rich thrive on the poor. Well, think again, because Troy Brennan took him under his wing, and if there is one person in Boston who is stronger than you, it’s Troy. I trust he would protect Sam from you, although I don’t entirely trust you not to get your claws on Sam anyway. Use him and drain him of anything good and worthy he possesses, like you did to me.
I don’t know how far 150k is going to get me, but I know it’s not going to be far enough away from you.
I will never forgive you.
For throwing me back into the arms of drugs.
For making me miscarry Jacob.
For making me leave Sam.
You are a monster, Gerald. And monsters are born to be slayed.
You tore my family apart, and one day, the same will be done to you.
Samuel has Troy now, and Troy is the one man you cannot push around.
For the last time,
—Cat.
I dropped the last of the letters on the floor, raking my fingers through my hair.
Apparently, Cat and Gerald had had an affair. Not only that, but that affair had resulted in a child. An unborn son named Jacob. Gerald objected to Jacob’s birth so badly that when he realized Cat was keeping him, he’d decided to beat him out of her.
He got her hooked back on drugs then paid her off to move away and leave me behind.
There were holes the size of the fucking White House in this story.
For one thing, the woman in the letters sounded nothing like Cat. Catalina was cynical, ill-tempered, and about as motherly as a studded dildo. Either she put on one hell of an Oscar-worthy act for Gerry Fitzpatrick or she really had been on the brink of changing. My bet was on the former.
I doubted he was the one who had told her to drug me. The timeline didn’t add up. There was no way they’d been lovers for that long.
Other than that, it seemed legit. The details lined up.
Cat did have a spell of sobriety a few months prior to skipping town, followed by a few, erratic weeks of binging on drugs and spiraling downhill.
I also had the misfortune of knowing Gerald personally, so I happened to be privy to the fact he was a notorious adulterer who’d yet to find one pussy he didn’t want to stick his cock in.
I didn’t know him to be violent, but I didn’t know him to be nonviolent either. The circumstantial evidence against him was substantial, and I didn’t put it past him to commit a crime of passion if he needed to save his own skin.
He and Jane Fitzpatrick were a match made in upper class hell. They both came from rich families, were of the same cultural background, and had a lot to gain by marrying one another. They also had another thing in common: they were both intolerable—to the point of not being able to stand each other.
Over the years, the old man had cheated on his wife more days than I could count. It wasn’t farfetched to believe that Cat, whose favorite flavor of dick was married, had managed to land herself a fat wallet for a lover in Gerald Fitzpatrick.
The letters were all addressed to Gerald’s then bachelor pad, another telltale sign that they were genuine. I knew all of the Fitzpatricks’ properties like the palm of my hand, and the address Catalina had sent the letters to before they bounced back was the same address Gerald had used to meet his mistresses, before gifting the property to Sailor and Hunter as a wedding gift.
There were also pictures attached to the letters.
Polaroids of Cat perched in Gerald’s lap, kissing his cheek. Pictures of them in exotic locations. On vacations. Birthdays. And a pregnancy test so old the two pink lines were faint and weak.
Not only did all the facts line up immaculately, but I remembered.
Remembered her brief period of soberness.
Remembered the day Cat came home looking like a train wreck, bleeding and bruised.
Her brokenness, so pathetic, so whole, even I couldn’t hate her in that moment.
How she crawled inside her bed, balling up and crying uncontrollably, shaking like a leaf, and I found myself helpless, torn between helping her and hating her for yet again failing to feed me.
How in the middle of the night she had skulked to my grandmother’s bedside—Grandma Maria and I had shared a room the size of a closet—and croaked, “Call an ambulance. I have to get to the hospital. Now.”
The betrayal was overwhelming.
Gerald knew I was Catalina’s biological son all along, and he still used my services.
According to her, he’d been distantly grooming me for the job I was doing today.
He had driven my mother to drugs and alcohol.
Impregnated her then beat her to a point of miscarriage.
Then made her leave me.
I could’ve had a different life.
A better life.
He deprived me of a fair, second chance and wasn’t even man enough to come clean about it when our paths crossed again.
Gerald Fitzpatrick robbed me out of a future, my family, my unborn brother.
For that, he was going to pay.
With his blood.
With his tears.
With his goddamn miserable fucking life.
I’d been Boston’s fixer my entire adult life. Since Troy had decided to retire from the gig when I turned twenty-two and turned to more lucrative and legal businesses. I’d always viewed it as his birthday gift to me. I took over the family business, tackling each problem the rich and influential people of Boston came to me with, no matter how wildly unorthodox it was.
By twenty-two, I’d broken enough bones and crushed enough skulls to be feared and respected everywhere I went, both by the criminals and the law.
Troy was playing house with Sparrow, running their restaurants and staying away from the heat by the time my name hit the FBI’s most wanted list. He knew I was different—a few shades darker with an appetite for blood—and had long given up on taming me.
My whole life, I’d fixed things for other people.
It was time to allow myself the luxury of one, uncalculated destruction.
Kill everything Gerald Fitzpatrick loved and cherished, just as he did to me.
Karma never lost an address.
And I was going to make sure his would arrive in a timely fucking manner.
Catalina Greystone’s tombstone was black.
Irony was a bitch, but it sure had a decent sense of humor.
I didn’t know how or why Cat had been buried in a cemetery in Atlanta but had an inkling my adoptive mother had everything to do with it.
Sparrow was a practical yet inconveniently sentimental person. Even though she wasn’t religious, the vein of Catholic virtue ran thick and full in her body.
She couldn’t bear knowing Catalina would get cremated then thrown into a trash can when no one claimed her ashes. Sparrow couldn’t chance the slight unlikely scenario in which I’d ever want to go visit her grave.
I spent the next couple days in my hotel room in Atlanta, ignoring phone calls, taking discreet meetings with local gang leaders and drug lords, and plotting my revenge on Gerald. On day three, I checked out and went to Catalina’s tombstone. Mrs. Masterson called to let me know they already put the stone up and asked if I wanted to go see it with her. I declined politely—there was only so much shitty apple pie and idle conversation a man could tolerate—but I still decided to make a pit stop at the cemetery before heading to the airport and back to Boston, mostly to ensure the bitch was six feet under and very much dead.
The mossy earth sank beneath my loafers as I buried my fists inside the pockets of my black pea coat, strolling toward the tombstone—smooth, fresh, and shiny, a memorial to my broken childhood.
I stopped when I reached it, smirking grimly when I noticed Sparrow had omitted the word ‘mother’ from Cat’s short list of titles. Guess it was petty o’clock when she placed the order for it.
The air was bitingly cold, unusually so for Georgia, the wind lashing against my face. I lit a cigarette between numb fingers, smirking around it as I used the tip of my loafer to smear a smudge of mud over the glossy stone, dirtying it up a little.
“Good riddance, sweetheart.”
I crouched down, touching the gravestone with the hand that held my cigarette, marveling at how brief human life was. One century at best was hardly enough time to enjoy what this planet had to offer.
“You know, Cat, I thought about killing you often enough. Every other month, maybe. There is something poetic in taking a life from the person who gave you one,” I tsked, surprised to discover I wasn’t as happy as I thought I’d be about her finally being gone. “But then it all boiled down to the same thing: killing a person is taking a risk. You were never worth the risk. That’s your life story in a nutshell, isn’t it, Catalina? Never more than an afterthought. So many lovers, and fake friends, and fiancés, and even a husband, yet no one has ever visited your grave. Only an eighty-five-year-old neighbor who would find Stalin lovable. I guess it’s goodbye.” I stood up, taking one last drag from my cigarette, flicking it over the tombstone then spitting on the lit ember to snuff it out.
I turned around without looking back.
Another one bites the dust.
