“Very sure,” I said. “Hyde wasn’t going to lie to me in that moment. He was desperate.”
“All right,” Dean said. “Keep doing what you have to do.”
“How’s the Don?”
There was a short silence. Something muffled Dean’s receiver at his end, and I thought I heard him walking somewhere. A door shut in the background. “Holding in there,” he said. “He’s old, you know? Doesn’t heal as well. But everyone’s coming in all the time, paying tribute and keeping him involved. I think he’ll pull through.”
“He better,” I said, and meant it. “I’m going to kill Colm for him.”
“I know you will.” He let out a soft laugh, but there wasn’t much behind it.
“I’ve got to ask you something,” I said after a pause, and glanced toward the hallway where Tara was hiding back in her room. I thought about the look on her face, pale white and drawn and terrified as I pulled her away from where Franz lay bleeding on the ground.
She kept pushing me about being a better person, and I hoped she’d come to realize that I was a monster, and maybe she’d run after all.
“Yeah, man, what’s up?” Dean asked and he sounded slightly distracted.
“Why does your father want me to marry Tara?”
Short silence. “Loyalty test,” he said. “You know that.”
“No,” I said, letting my voice drift down. “Why does he really want me to marry her?”
Another longer silence. “Shit, Ewan,” he said. “Do you really want to know?”
I leaned up against the counter and stared at my ceiling. So it was fucking true. They wanted Tara to give them her father’s secrets.
“Your father knows how I feel about the sex trade,” I said, desperate and angry and feeling betrayed. “He knows what that would do to me.”
“I know,” Dean said, almost pleading. “I’ve been trying to push back. It’s not my thing either, man, and we’ve got plenty of money and power, and there are other markets to grow into.”
“Why’s he doing this then?” I asked. “Why the hell would he use me for it?”
“You know my dad,” he said, and sounded genuinely tired. “Games within games. I think the loyalty thing is real, but I think the real test is whether or not you’ll help him start up his trafficking business.”
I felt like my heart was going to break. The bastards knew about my mother, they knew that I wouldn’t cross this line. I thought my family would never ask this of me, and now it was obvious that I was just another body to them.
“I’m not going to do it,” I said, gripping my phone tight. “I don’t care what the Don says. I won’t get into trafficking. I’ll marry Tara, but I won’t do that.”
“I know you won’t,” Dean said. “I’m talking to him. I’m trying to work this out.”
“Get him to drop the business,” Ewan said. “I mean it, Dean. Otherwise, I’m done.”
“Ewan—”
I hung up the phone and threw it down onto the counter. It clattered away and smashed up against the drainboard. I stared at the ceiling and felt like it was falling in on me, like it would crumble and crush me into bones and dust.
I heard a noise and looked to my right. Tara stood in the hallway, watching me. “You okay?” she asked.
“How much did you hear?”
“Most,” she said. “I was right then.”
“You were right.” I looked at the floor. I couldn’t meet her gaze. “They know how I feel about it, and they’re still going ahead.”
“Does Dean agree?” she asked.
“He thinks he can talk his father out of it, but that’s never happened before, and I don’t know why it would happen now.” I pushed away from the counter and stalked into the living room. Tara’s eyes followed me, but she didn’t get closer.
I couldn’t blame her. I was an animal, a wild beast, willing to shoot men in the stomach for information, all for a family that didn’t give a shit about me. Colm Healy and the Don weren’t so different, not really. Maybe the Don was slow to get into sex trafficking, but he’d do it sooner or later if it meant more money, regardless of how his most loyal lieutenant felt.
“What are you going to do?” Tara asked, and drifted closer.
I looked at her and shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“I can’t give them what they want,” she said softly. “You know that, right?”
“I know,” I said. “You don’t have to worry. I won’t let them come near you.”
She grimaced and shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. When I can’t help them, they’ll go looking for someone else. If your Don wants this trafficking thing bad enough, he’ll make it happen.”
“Whether I like it or not,” I said.
She walked to me and reached up. Her fingers touched my cheek. “I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“Is that what you’ve been doing in there?” I asked, smirking slightly, trying to lighten my horrible mood.
She smiled in return. “I think you got lost, Ewan. You fell into something, and now you don’t know how you get back.”
“I think I was always like this,” I said, and took her hand in mine. “Broken and bruised.”
“I don’t know,” she said, tilting her head. “I’m afraid of you. Is that bad?”
“You should be afraid,” I said softly. “You’d be crazy not to be.”
“But I’m still here. I mean, I can run whenever, right? And the Don might come after me, or he might not. The Healys could hunt me, or maybe I’m not worth the trouble. I could go find out, and instead, I’m staying in here, with you.”
“With the monster,” I said, and pulled her tight against me.
“What’s wrong with me?” she asked. “Am I broken like you? Broken in the same way?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe not the same way, but maybe that makes this work.”
“I’m afraid,” she whispered.
I kissed her, and didn’t give a damn about anything else.
The Don, the family, trafficking girls,
