Present.
The cobblestone sidewalk dug into my feet through my cheap shoes as I secured my bicycle to the bike rack.
Darkness washed the street in North End. Pub workers hurled fat, soggy trash bags into the jaws of industrial containers, chatting and laughing, ignoring the sheets of rain falling from the sky.
I said a silent prayer they’d stay on the street until I made it safely to my building. I hated coming home late but couldn’t say no to the babysitting gig I’d been offered after school hours. Collecting the hem of my wet dress, I hurried to my door. I pushed it open, pressing my back to it with a relieved sigh.
A hand shot to me in the dark, yanking my wrist and flinging me across the room. My back slammed against the stairway, and pain exploded from my tailbone to my neck.
“Mrs. Veitch. Fancy seeing you here.”
Even in the pitch black, I recognized Colin Byrne’s voice. It was smooth and low, a hint of mockery lilting his Southie accent.
“It’s Miss Penrose.” I rushed up to my feet, swatting strands of wet hair off my face and dusting my knees. I flipped the switch on. Yellow light pooled inside the hallway. Tom Kaminski—simply Kaminski to anyone who knew him—Byrne’s errand boy and muscle man, stood behind the lean, wrinkled loan shark with his burly arms crossed at his chest.
Byrne covered the distance between us, the strong scent of his cologne prickling my gag reflex.
“Penrose? Nah, that’s not the name on your driver’s license, Persy baby.”
“I asked for a divorce.” I took a step back from him, schooling my face.
“Well, I asked for a threesome with Demi Lovato and Taylor Swift. Looks like we both ain’t getting our wish, doll. The fact of the matter is, you’re married to Paxton Veitch, and Paxton Veitch owes me money. A shit-ton of it.”
“Exactly. Paxton owes you,” I said hotly, knowing I was entering a lost war. Byrne wouldn’t listen. He never did. “He was the one placing those bets. He was the one losing money at your joints. It’s his mess to fix, not mine.”
Colin lifted my left hand, rubbing at my naked wedding finger. The imprinted tan line where the ring used to be glared back at both of us, reminding me that my relationship with Pax wasn’t ancient history.
Not only was I still married to him but I also still honored my vows. I hadn’t dated anyone since Pax ran away. Hell, I still visited his grandma in the nursing home every week, bearing shortbread cookies and her favorite culinary magazines.
She was lonely, and it wasn’t her fault her grandson turned out to be a dick.
“Pax’s long gone now, and his pretty wife refuses to let me know where I can find him.” Byrne’s velvet voice pierced my thoughts while he played with my fingers.
“His wife doesn’t know where he is.” I tried to yank my hand away to no avail. “But she does know how to use pepper spray. Personal space here.”
I didn’t want Belle, who was upstairs, to hear the commotion in the hallway and come out of the apartment to investigate. She knew nothing about my situation, and I was pretty sure my savage sister would not hesitate to take out the Glock she owned and put a hole in each of these bastard’s heads if she walked into this scene.
I didn’t want to burden Belle with my problems. Not this particular problem, anyway. Not after everything she’d already done for me.
“Use your fine investigative skills to find out,” Byrne beamed. “After all, you managed to catch the lousiest husband in New England. You found him before, and you can do it again. Have a little faith.”
“We both know I haven’t the greenest clue where to start looking. His phone is dead, my emails are bouncing back, and his friends won’t talk to me. It’s not like I haven’t tried.” I used the hand Colin held to push his face away roughly.
He didn’t budge. Just wrapped his fingers tighter around mine.
“Then I’m afraid his debt is now yours. Whatever happened to in sickness and in health? For richer or poorer? How does the oath go?” Byrne snapped his fingers at Kaminski behind him.
Kaminski snorted, flashing a row of rotten teeth.
“Beats me, Boss. Never got hitched. Ain’t planning to, either.”
“Smart man.”
Byrne brought my hand to his mouth, pressing a cold kiss to the back of it, darting his tongue between my index and middle fingers, showing me what he wanted to do to the rest of my body. I swallowed a ball of puke and breathed through my nose. He was doing a great job of scaring the bejesus out of me, and he knew it. Byrne was a loan shark who was notorious for collecting his checks rain or shine, and my husband owed him over a hundred thousand dollars.
He rested my damp palm on his cheek, nuzzling against it.
“Sorry, Persephone. It’s nothing personal. I have a debt to collect, and if I don’t collect it soon, people are going to assume it’s okay to take money from me without paying me back. If you’re interested in reimbursing me through a different currency, I can stitch together a plan. I’m not an unreasonable man. But no matter how you look at it—you will pay your husband’s debt, and you better hurry, because the interest is stacking up nicely as the weeks tick by.”
“What are you insinuating?” My heart jackhammered its way through my rib cage, about to abandon ship and run out of the building without me.
This idea had never come up before in the months Byrne and Kaminski had been paying me weekly visits. I was a preschool teacher, for crying out loud. Where would I be able to find one hundred thousand dollars? Even my kidneys weren’t worth that much.
And yes, I was desperate enough to Google it.
“I’m saying if you can’t pay the outstanding balance, you’ll have to work for it.”
“Just spit it out, Byrne,” I hissed, every nerve in my body ready to reach for my purse, grab the pepper spray, and empty that bitch into both their eyes. As sleazy as he was, I doubted he would give up a hundred grand just to roll me between his sheets.
“Serving men who are less than hygienic and not much to look at.” Colin smiled apologetically. “You’re a good-looking gal, Veitch, even in those rags.” He tugged at the muddy, cheap dress I wore. “Six months working in my strip club doing double shifts every day, and we can call it even.”
“I’ll die before I dance on a pole,” I seethed, pushing my fingers into his eye sockets with the hand he held. He dodged the attack by rearing his head back, but I managed to put a few scratches on his cheek.
Kaminski stepped forward, about to interfere, but Byrne waved him off, laughing.
“You won’t be dancing,” he said, his eyes glinting with amusement. “You’ll be on your back in the VIP room. Although I can’t promise you won’t be on your hands and knees, too, if they’re willing to pay extra.”
The ball of puke in my throat tripled its size, blocking my windpipe. A cold film of sweat covered every inch of my body.
Byrne wanted to pimp me out if I didn’t come up with the money Paxton owed him. In the eight months Paxton had been gone, I’d stupidly hoped he would do the right thing and show up at the eleventh hour to deal with the shitstorm he’d created, leaving me in the eye of it.
That he’d grant me the divorce I’d begged him for in the days before his disappearance.
I’d held onto my anger, refusing to let it turn into resignation because that meant accepting this was my problem.
Now, I was finally coming to terms with the hard facts Byrne had already known:
Paxton was never coming back.
His problems were mine to deal with.
And I had to come up with a solution, fast.
“What if I don’t pay?” My jaw clenched. I wasn’t going to cry in front of them, no matter what. I may not have been as feisty and fierce as my older sister, but I was still a Southie original.
A sweet romantic—but a savage, nonetheless.
Byrne’s heavy boots clicked softly as he ambled toward the building’s entrance. “Then I’ll have to make an example out of you. Which, I assure you, Mrs. Veitch, would hurt me more than it would you. It is always a sad state of affairs when the wife has to take on the burden of her husband’s mistakes.” He stopped by the door and shook his head, wearing a faraway look on his face. “But if I let this slide, I’ll lose my street cred. You will pay. Either in money, with the thing between your legs, or with your blood. Catch you later, Persy.”
The door clicked shut behind the two men. Thunder rumbled, licking their shapes through the glass door in electric blue. They ran to a black Hummer parked across the street, slipping inside and gunning it back to the hellhole they came from.
I stumbled up the stairs to my sister’s apartment. I’d been staying with her since Paxton took off eight months ago. Shakily turning the key inside its hole, I pushed the door open.
I didn’t pay rent. Belle thought Pax stole all the money he and I had saved to buy a house when he ran away. That part wasn’t a lie. He did take our money. What she didn’t know was it wasn’t only that he spent my entire life’s savings in an underground casino—I was actually in debt because of him.
“Pers? Jeez, dude. There’s a thunderstorm outside.” Belle rubbed at her eyes, stretching on the couch. She wore a Fries Before Guys oversized shirt. A Korean drama danced across the flat TV screen, and a bag of peanut butter pretzels balanced on her flat stomach. A stab of jealousy pricked my chest as I watched her lying there. Trouble-free and relaxed.
She didn’t have to wonder if she would make it to next week alive without selling her body in a dingy Southie strip club.
She didn’t have her hand kissed, licked, and twisted by Colin Byrne, the scent of his cheap cologne lingering in her nostrils for days after each of his visits, making her stomach churn.
She didn’t toss and turn at night, wondering how to save herself from a gory death.
I hung my tattered windbreaker by the door. Emmabelle’s apartment was tiny but fashionable. A studio with hardwood flooring, trendy palm-tree wallpaper, deep green ceiling, and funky mismatched furniture. Everything she owned and wore dripped of her bold, sophisticated personality. We shared her twin bed.
“Sorry about that. Shannon’s parents went to a drive-in and must’ve gotten carried away. I didn’t even know drive-ins still existed. Did you?” I stepped out of my holed shoes at the entrance, concealing my despair with a smile.
Maybe I should admit defeat and do what Paxton did. Catch the next flight out of the States and disappear.
Only unlike Paxton, I was attached to the place where I grew up. I couldn’t imagine my life without my sister, my parents, my friends.
Paxton had been lonely. Orphaned at age three, he was raised by his grandmother Greta and various relatives. Tossed between houses whenever he got too difficult. That was what he told me when we first got together, and my heart went out to him.
“Drive-ins? Sure. Some of my favorite sexcapades happened at the Solano drive-in. But it’s been raining so hard, I doubt they could watch anything there. You really should’ve called me. I’d have picked you up. You know tonight is my night off.” She wiggled her toes under her throw.
Exactly. It was her night off. Who was I to take away the only free night she had for herself? She deserved to do exactly what she was doing. Binge on a TV show, junk food, and wear a discounted face mask from Ross.
“You already do too much for me.”
“That’s because that bastard, Pax, screwed you over. Remind me why you married him again?”
“Love?” Plopping down next to her on the mustard corduroy couch, I propped my chin on her shoulder with a sigh. “I thought I was respecting our pact.”
Once upon a time, when we were in college, Sailor, Emmabelle, Aisling, and I made a pact to only marry for love. Sailor was the first to keep her word. But she happened to fall for a man who worshipped the ground she walked upon, looked like a Hemsworth brother, and had enough money to start a new country.
I was the second in the gang to say I do. A few hasty kisses behind carefully trimmed bushes were all it took for me to make the biggest mistake of my life. Paxton Veitch was Colin’s previous Kaminski. A simple soldier who moonlighted as a security guy in the private sector. Paxton always maintained he was a bouncer at one of Colin’s bars. Said he was going to quit as soon as he found a more stable job.
Spoiler alert: he never looked for one. Not only did he love being a thug, but he also enjoyed losing the money Byrne paid him in his joints when he was off duty.
It wasn’t until I was too far gone that I found out Paxton wasn’t a bouncer. He broke hands, noses, and spines for a living, and had a police record thicker than Lord of the Rings. I’d never told Belle, Aisling, and Sailor that Pax was a low-grade mobster. They’d loved him almost as much as they loved Hunter, and I didn’t want to burst their bubble.
And anyway, Paxton wasn’t all bad. He was handsome, funny, and incredibly good-hearted at the beginning of our relationship. He left me love letters everywhere, packed my lunch box for me each night, sent me flowers for no reason at all, and arranged spontaneous Disney World vacations where we’d drive down to Florida in our beat-up car, eating crappy gas station junk, and singing to my Paula Abdul and Wham! playlist from the top of our lungs.
A stand-up guy who’d offered to paint my parents’ entire house for free before they sold it, bought me an engagement ring using every single cent he had to his name, and was always there when I needed him.
Until he wasn’t.
I thought I could help him get on the right path. That love would conquer all.
Turned out, it couldn’t conquer his gambling addiction.
“You still believe in that bitch?” Belle tilted the bag of pretzels in my direction in offering, pulling me out of my musings.
“In what?” I took a pretzel, munching on it without tasting it. I’d become scarily thin in the past few months. The side effect of inheriting Paxton’s weighty problems.
“Love.” Belle shot one eyebrow up. “Do you still believe in love after Pax took a dump all over the concept, then set it on fire?”
“Yeah.” I felt my ears pinking, masking my embarrassment with a chuckle. “Pathetic, right?”
My sister patted my thigh.
“Wanna talk about it?”
I shook my head.
“Wanna drink about it?”
I nodded. She laughed.
“I’ll heat some pizza, too.”
The thought of eating made me want to vomit. But I also knew Belle was becoming suspicious, what with my weight loss and inability to sleep.
“Pizza sounds great. Thanks.”
She stood and sashayed over to the kitchenette. I watched as she threw the fridge door open, shaking her butt to her off-key whistle.
“Belle?” I cleared my throat.
“Hmm?” She shoved a slice of pizza into the microwave, setting the timer for thirty seconds.
“What do you think is going to happen with Pax?” I grabbed a pillow and hugged it to my chest, pulling at a thread in it. “I can’t stay married to him forever, right? I’ll be relieved from this marriage at some point if he doesn’t show up?”
Belle plucked a can of Pepsi from the fridge, tapping her lips as she contemplated my question.
“Well, marriage is not a public restroom. I’m not sure you can be relieved from it, but you for sure can get out of this if you put your mind to it. The man hasn’t been around in almost a year. You need to save up, get a good lawyer, and finish with this mess.”
Me. Paying for legal representation. Right.
“You’ll have to do it at some point, you know,” my sister said, more quietly now. “Seek legal help. Take the bastard down.”
“With what money?” I sighed. “And please, don’t offer me another loan. I’m just going to refuse it.”
Belle was working as a club promoter for one of Boston’s most outrageous joints, Madame Mayhem. She was a genius in her field and brought in clientele that made the owners foam at the mouth, but she was nowhere near financially established. Plus, I knew she was saving up to chip in on Madame Mayhem’s looming remodel so she could become a partner.
“Let’s say you’re too proud to take money from me—your own sister, mind you—and still want legal representation. I would just go to Sailor and ask for a loan.” Her voice grew heated, desperate. “The Fitzpatricks have enough fuck-you money to build a dick-shaped statue the size of Lady Liberty. Sailor won’t be hard-pressed to get it back, you’ll have zero interest, and she knows you’re good for it. You’ll pay it eventually.”
“I can’t.” I shook my head.
“Why?” She took the pizza out of the microwave, put it on a paper plate, and sauntered over to the couch, dumping it on the pillow I was hugging. “Eat the whole thing, Pers. You’re skin and bones. Mom thinks you have an eating disorder.”
“I don’t have an eating disorder.” I frowned.
Belle rolled her eyes. “Bitch, I know. Your ass inhaled three Cheesecake Factory meals just eight months ago and washed it all down with margaritas, Tums, and regret. You’re going through something, and I want you to snap out of it. Ask Sailor for the money!”
“Are you insane?” I waved the soggy pizza in the air. “She doesn’t have time for my drama. She just told us she was pregnant.”
Three days ago, on our traditional weekly takeout night, Sailor dropped the bomb. There were a lot of squeaks and tears. Most of them Ash’s and mine while Sailor and Emmabelle stared at us blankly, waiting for us to get over our hysterics.
“And?” Belle cocked her head. “She can be preggo and give you money, you know. Women are known for multitasking.”
“She’ll get worried. Plus, I don’t want to be that loser friend.”
“It’s just a few thousand dollars.”
It’s a hundred thousand of them.
But my sister didn’t know that.
Which was the real reason I hadn’t asked Sailor.
“At least think about it. Even if it feels weird for you to turn to Sailor and Hunter, that sociopath Cillian would give you the money. Sure, he’d make you sweat for it—I swear, that asshole is as annoying as his face is sitable—but you’ll walk out of there with the money.”
Cillian.
After the suite incident, my friends and sister demanded to know what happened between us. I’d told them the truth. Most of it, anyway. About the bleeding heart and the steroid shot, omitting the part where I told him I was in love with him and put a curse on him.
Why get into the small details, right?
I’d managed to forget Cillian over time. Barely. Even the memory of him saving me faded and was washed away along with the Wish Upon a Cloud performance I was determined to suppress from my memory.
I hadn’t spoken to my Auntie Tilda since that day. That day, I stopped spotting lonely clouds in the sky and tried to move on with my life.
I fell in love.
Got married.
Almost got divorced.
Cillian, however, remained the same man who left that suite.
Ageless, timeless, and taciturn.
He was still single and as far as I knew, hadn’t dated anyone, seriously or otherwise, in the time since he’d rejected me on Sailor and Hunter’s wedding day.
Eight months ago—on the week Paxton had disappeared—Kill took the reins of Royal Pipelines, his father’s petroleum company, and officially became CEO.
How did I not think of him before?
Cillian “Kill” Fitzpatrick was my best shot at getting the money.
He had no loyalties to anyone but himself, was good at keeping secrets, and seeing people squirm was his favorite pastime.
He’d helped me before, and he’d do it again.
One hundred thousand bucks was pocket change to him. He would hand me the money if only to watch me turn into a hundred different shades of red as I slid pitiful monthly checks that meant nothing to him down his mailbox. I’d even agree to take back the curse where I’d told him he’d fall in love with me.
For the first time in a long time, I felt my mouth watering.
Not because of the pizza, but because of the solution I could practically feel grazing the tip of my fingers.
I had a plan.
An escape route.
The older Fitzpatrick brother was going to save me, again.
Unlike my husband, all I needed to do was play my cards right.
