Sparrow (22 page)

The look on his face told me everything I needed to know. He loved his daughter, even though he was a monster. I’d broken him. He had lost everything he’d worked for. He was going to die a poor man, leave nothing to his only family. He was going to pay his debt.

“You are worse than your father, Brennan.”

I smiled in agreement and fished out my phone. “I’ll call a lawyer and have him draw up the papers right away. And you can start by signing this Power of Attorney. Don’t worry,
boyo
, I brought a pen.”

SPARROW

FROM MY CAB
at the end of the block, I watched Troy walking up to the Spanish-style house. Once he was out of sight, I instructed my driver to wait and slowly strolled up the sidewalk, noting his idling cab. His driver was busy with his cell phone and didn’t seem to notice me.

I eyed the stucco mailbox at the end of the driveway. Who was Troy visiting? What was so important at this house? Maybe Daisy was right. Maybe he
did
take his dick on a tour and was now visiting another mistress.

There was a house number on the mailbox but no name. I doubted I’d recognize the name anyway, but what the hell. I’d come this far. Trying to look casual, like I belonged, like this wasn’t illegal, I pulled open the mailbox, hoping to find a letter with a name. I got far more than I bargained for. I read the address on the first envelope, and my breath caught in my throat, and I froze.

It said “Patrick Rowan.”

Patrick Rowan.
Paddy.
The man who molested me.

Troy Brennan was at my molester’s house. My husband and the only person I’d ever told about my dark, awful secret.

Stupid girl.

I stumbled back from the mailbox, like a nest of snakes was inside. My heart pumped wildly against my ribcage. Maybe he’d come here to kill him. After all, everyone said he’d killed before. Maybe he would punish this vile man the way I never could.

I forced my gaze back to the house, just as a girl in a maid’s uniform hurried down the drive toward me, looking flushed and concerned. For a moment, I was afraid she was going to confront me, but instead she glanced right and left, like she was the one who was afraid. The girl made her way to a bus stop further up the street, hugging herself defensively and looking around every now and again.

When she was out of sight, I got my shit together and jogged to a spot behind a square bush. I watched the courtyard at the front of the house intently.

Twenty minutes after he arrived, Troy left the premises.

He had a stack of documents under his armpit and an easy expression. A few seconds later, a thin, frail man appeared beside him in the entry to the courtyard. He looked sick and old, nothing like the Paddy Rowan I knew and remembered, but then I saw his eyes and choked. It was him.

They shook hands and nodded at each other. I couldn’t see Troy’s face, but I heard him laugh before he walked back to his cab. He climbed right into its backseat, leaving Rowan very much alive.

I’d seen all I needed to see, and I wished I could unsee it.

The asshole was here for business. He didn’t give a damn about what this man did to me.

I threw up between the bushes, feeling the bile bubbling in my throat like poison.

I hated them. Hated them both. But I knew one thing for sure. I wasn’t going to give Troy the pleasure of knowing that I knew he was still in business with the man who molested me. Especially not after he disrespected me by having sex with someone else in our bedroom.

There was nothing I could do to get back at him, so I might as well not let him know that I was privy to his atrocious deeds.

No. I would hate my husband quietly, pretend like it never happened—and would never, ever let him touch me or get to me again.

Troy Brennan was dead to me. This time for good.

TROY

AS MY CAB
pulled away from Paddy’s house, I let out a groan and eased my head back, rubbing my palms against my eye sockets. It was difficult to come to terms with not being able to kill the person who assaulted Red, and probably other girls, too. I wasn’t a saint, but like all criminals, I, too, had my individual, custom-made moral codes. And those codes were strict about molestation and sexual harassment.

Those people deserved to die.

Fuck, I even felt a little guilty about playing with her like that the night of our wedding. Sure, I knew she wanted it, saw it in her eyes, felt it in the way her body arched into mine, begging, writhing, but she’d been broken before. I didn’t want to break her again.

Well, at least not this part of her soul.

My phone buzzed in my pocket and made me open my eyes. I had an incoming call from George Van Horn.

“Crap,” I muttered as I placed it near my ear. Van Horn was business. A real estate mogul turned politician who really fucking wanted to become mayor, and was about to run over his whole family to get to his goal. His campaign was absurdly aggressive and, since he had more skeletons in his closet than in a fucking graveyard, he’d hired me to keep his name clean.

Shit had to be handled, and I was the one handling it. I waited wordlessly for him to speak first. It was a good habit if you wanted people to cut to the chase.

“Brennan,” he barked, “I need you to take care of a package for me.”

“This’ll have to wait until Friday,” I said calmly. “I’ll be back in Boston then.”

“It can’t wait until Friday.”

“I’m on my honeymoon, George.”

He gave a humorless laugh. “And let me take a wild guess, it’s not exactly a Motel 6 in the middle of fuck-knows-where, and your wife ain’t bargain shopping at T.J. Maxx, right? Yeah. That’s because people like me pay people like you a good buck to work for us. It’s not a nine-to-five job, Brennan. Get your ass back here. Now.”

I answered with silence, knowing it would drive him mad. He should thank me. If I told him what I was really thinking, the words would cut so deep he’d be the first person in the world to be seriously injured by a telephone call.

“Brennan? Brennan! God-fucking-dammit…” He took a deep breath. “Look, okay, I get it. It’s your honeymoon. But it’s also an emergency. My package needs to be delivered somewhere discreet ASAP. I can’t have it sitting around in the house any more. This could sway my voters and stain my image.”

Another beat of silence on my end. If you wanted to win a negotiation, rule number one was to talk less. Show minimal interest. Let the other person sweat it.

I heard Van Horn hit something hard and curse in pain
. Yup, definitely sweating it.

“Dammit. How much?”

“Double the amount you’re paying me now.”

“You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

“I wish I were.” I fumbled for a toothpick and stuck one in my mouth. “But I’m afraid I have a terrible sense of humor.”

“Whatever. Fine. And you’ll cut your honeymoon short?”

It wasn’t like Sparrow and I were enjoying the sun, alcohol and the deluxe king-size bed the hotel had to offer. And I fucking hated Miami anyway. Too lively for my taste.

“I’ll be on my way as soon as I can. I have to take care of one minor matter first.”

I heard him lighting up one of his rancid cigars. “Some lucky wife, you got yourself.”

“Leave my wife out of this. I don’t want you mentioning her or even thinking about her. As far as you’re concerned, she doesn’t exist.”

“Ah, so he has a soft spot after all.” Van Horn said.

I almost gave a mocking laugh, but I tightened my jaw, clamping hard on the toothpick between my teeth. “I’ll have my business associate Brock Greystone send you the new payment terms by tomorrow morning.”

Click,
and the line went dead, and so did any good thought I had about George Van Horn.

RED WASN’T THERE
when I got back to the hotel suite. Not that it surprised me. She was more independent than I pegged her to be. She was also a pain in the ass, and from what I’d noticed, hadn’t touched my credit card even once. Consequently, Red was broke as hell. I had no idea how she managed to walk around without spending a penny, but she did it and hadn’t complained about it even once.

She was stirring some very fucking strange shit in me—shit I wasn’t prepared to deal with. Not when I still had to find the missing person on my list, my impending revenge hovering over our lives like a black cloud of suffocating smoke. I took the crumpled note out of my pocket again just to remind myself I had a goal in life, something bigger. Something that didn’t involve money or ass.

1 – Billy Crupti

2 – Father McGregor

3 – The asshole who hired Billy?

I kicked off my shoes and walked into the bathroom, turning on the faucet and taking off my clothes. The heat and humidity killed me. Summer was my idea of hell. I was dark, cold person who enjoyed dark, cold weather. That’s why Boston was my kingdom, my home. The unseasonable cold in the city this June suited me perfectly.

But the weather was the least of my worries after meeting with Paddy.

The important thing was that tomorrow morning Paddy’s lawyer showed up with a check for Sparrow. Then I was going to get the fuck away from this place and back home to deal with the George Van Horn problem. Sparrow would enjoy a fat payment for her suffering all those years ago, and maybe she’d feel a little less reluctant to spend the bastard’s money than she did mine. Though this money wasn’t only for Sparrow, I kept reminding myself.

It was also for my dad.

I took a quick shower and by the time I got out, my wife was back. I was always hypersensitive to the presence of other people. Especially when I couldn’t see them. A survival instinct I’d inherited from my father, I guessed, though it had failed him in the end. She didn’t make much noise—she never did—but I heard her shuffling about, and the sound of her soft footfalls on the carpeted hallway filled the quiet presidential suite.

I walked out with the towel wrapped around my waist, not thinking much of it. She already seen me in my underwear dozens of times and didn’t seem to mind. Most of the time, she even sent hungry looks my way. Leaning my hip against the doorframe of the double doors leading from the bedroom to the suite’s foyer, I watched her intently.

Of course, she was still wearing the same pair of baggy jeans and tight blue-and-white striped tee she’d worn on the plane. I knew her play. She wasn’t going to wear anything special tonight just to spite me. Red was standing on the balcony, her back to me, staring out at the turquoise ocean and tall palm trees. It was late, the sun was setting, and pink, orange and yellow hues smeared the sky like a perfect painting.

“Your resistance is growing old, you know that?” I spoke softly, pushing off the doorframe and walking toward the balcony’s sliding door. There was a beat of silence before she answered.

“Then do us both a favor and let me go.”

Stopping a few inches from her back, I placed my hands on the railing she was leaning against, caging her with my arms, my chin on top of her head. “That’s not what you said when I was eating you like a seven course meal at an Italian wedding.”