I walked into Beck’s room a couple hours later and hurried to catch the burrito that was thrown at me.
“For someone who always tells me to announce myself, I can’t remember you ever knocking.” He lifted his brows and pointed a burrito at me before taking a bite of it.
“I’ll work on it,” I said as I shut the door behind me and entered his room. “What do you need to show me?”
He stopped chewing for a few seconds before continuing. Nodding toward the bed, he said, “Just sit, man. You don’t have to be so on all the time.”
I had a job to do. I wouldn’t relax until it was done. Couldn’t.
“I don’t eat when I’m working, Beck.”
“Don’t eat. Don’t sleep,” he murmured in a mocking tone. “Fucking robot.”
I wasn’t going to apologize for something I’d been trained to do my entire life.
“You know, it sucks,” he began, his vacant stare at a spot on the floor. “It sucks knowing the girl you love is getting paid to give herself to countless men. It destroys you when, after years of waiting for her to love you too, she falls for your best friend.”
I would’ve preferred he’d shot me.
Because this was slow and excruciating. And I couldn’t say sorry enough times for the pain in his voice when the girl he was talking about was a constant thrum in my veins.
Jessica, Jessica, Jessica.
Mine, mine, mine.
“But you know what the killer is?” he asked, finally looking up at me. “Is seeing how she’s changed you.”
I knew how she’d changed me. I’d just experienced it with her again. But I couldn’t think of what Beck had seen in the short time he’d been near us.
He gestured to the unopened burrito in my hand. “I’ve known you forever. I know you don’t eat when you have a job.” He shrugged and huffed. “I know. Jessica’s struggling right now and needed you. Yeah?”
I stared at him for a few seconds, wondering where he was going with this, then gave a faint nod.
“And you were there for her.” He shifted forward in his seat and dropped his voice. “When the fuck were you ever there for Lily when she needed you?”
I sucked in a breath, my mouth already curled in a sneer.
But before I could respond with what he already knew, the words caught in my throat.
I had a job.
“Yeah.” Beck nodded and fell back into the chair. “You were working. And if the job called, it didn’t matter if she begged you to stay, you walked. Every time.”
My jaw clenched as that old ache flared in my chest. As the reminder of how I’d failed was shoved in my face.
“I got it. Lily got it. We knew that was how you were. Not that it helped when shit went bad for you two . . .” He shrugged. “I never thought I’d see the day you pushed the job aside for someone. Never thought a girl could make you drop a name from your list.” His eyes narrowed. “And what the fuck were you thinking putting Dare on a kill list? I about lost my shit when Jess said that.”
“I know.”
“That would’ve ruined Lily.”
“Beck, I know.”
“Ruin my best friend, and I’ll fucking kill you.”
My mouth twitched. “You could try.”
His glare hardened for a few seconds before his chest jerked with a deep laugh. “I want to be mad at you, you fuck, let me be mad.”
I walked to the bed and sank down to it, and after a forced breath, opened the burrito and bit into it.
“One of these days, I will succeed in hitting you though,” he said through his own bite. “You won’t be able to dodge me forever.”
“Wait until I’m not looking.”
His eyes widened. “Will that work?”
I bit back a smirk and shook my head.
He seemed to think hard about that as he took another bite. “You wait, man. It’s coming.”
“I know, Beck. After everything”—I blew out a rough breath—“I know.”
He finished his food quickly, the silence pressing in on us uncomfortably as he opened his mouth at least a dozen times to say something.
I just waited.
“I don’t blame you for Aric,” he finally said.
I stilled. I hadn’t been prepared for the conversation to go in this direction. I’d been waiting for him to show me whatever I was here for, so I couldn’t see a connection to Aric.
“I never have, and honestly, I hated that you did. You weren’t even here when it happened. You couldn’t have stopped it. Just like you couldn’t have stopped Johnny from trying to kill Conor.”
I was on a job for Mickey both times. I was always on a job. All I ever did was work because we’d spent years trying to destroy him from the inside. And because I’d been trained to work. To never shift my focus.
And so many were hurt in the process.
“And Lily?” A breath of a laugh left him, and he rubbed at his jaw. “I was so damn mad at her when I found out she’d been seeing Dare. I’ve been mad at her this whole time for leaving.” He tilted his head and said, “But the other day, I felt like you’d stabbed me in the back. I wanted to take everything you blamed yourself for and hit you with it.”
“Couldn’t dodge that one,” I said numbly and tried to smirk, but it fell. “I understand. I’d even understand if you’d meant every word then.”
“You’re the only one who blames yourself for all that shit,” he said on a weighted breath. Pushing up from his chair, he pulled his phone from his pocket and walked to where I sat. “I’d already known for years that Jess didn’t want me. That she wouldn’t. Think there was a part of me that was holding out for the day that she would, and I lashed out when that hope died.”
Never expected an apology. His words then were more than I deserved.
I didn’t know how to respond to them.
“I—” I tensed when he shoved his phone in front of my face and cautiously looked from it to him. “What?”
“Take it.”
I set down the other half of my burrito as I took his phone. My eyes bounced over the screen, taking in names and numbers. “The hell is this?”
We all had bank accounts with a secondary person on the account. Accounts that weren’t tied to O’Sullivan Financial in any way.
It was just smart.
We were in the mob. People died a lot and we wanted to make sure the money went where it was supposed to.
Conor had one with Beck. Beck had one with me.
I’d had one with Aric and had switched it to Lily after his death. When she left, it had changed over to Beck.
But Beck had a spending problem. A bad one. So, what I was looking at didn’t add up. Because the account on the screen was in his name, with me as the secondary.
And it had over two hundred grand.
I knew he couldn’t hold on to that kind of money.
“It’s all of it,” he said gruffly. “Everything Jess ever paid me.”
I glanced at him then looked at the phone before slowly handing it over. “I don’t understand.”
“I took the money because I knew if I didn’t, Mickey would find out that I was giving product for free. I was already letting her mom take it because I thought it would keep her only coming to me . . . but someone had to pay. But every dollar she has ever paid me is in that account. I used my own money when I turned over my cut to Mickey.”
“And she doesn’t know about that?”
He shook his head roughly.
“Is any of that yours?”
“No, man. That’s ten years of coke.”
I dragged my hands over my face and rested my elbows on my knees. “Why didn’t you tell her?”
“I wanted to. I mean, fuck, I planned to.” He let out a groan and started pacing the length of his room. “I was going to save it until she was older. I thought it would be a way to help her get a start on a life away from her mom, or some shit. And then before that time came, I fell for her. So I thought it would be something I could show her after . . .” A frustrated grunt sounded in his chest and he flung his hands out. “Doesn’t matter. She hated me, so I never told her.”
“Tell her now,” I shouted, dropping my hands to look at him. “Damn it, Beck. You found out about AJ, and you didn’t tell her?”
“You think I didn’t want to?” he asked, turning mid-pace to face me. “But if I did, she wouldn’t take it. Not from me.”
Fuck if he wasn’t right.
She’s too proud. She’d laugh in his face and walk away.
“It’s been fucking with my head for years, how to make sure she gets it. But now . . . there’s you. I never had any reason to tell you about this. Jess wasn’t on your radar. But now that she is, I need you to know this is here. If she’s accepting your help, you can get her to take it.”
I studied him for a second before nodding.
“All I’ve ever wanted was to help her. And she’s right”—he backed up slowly until he hit the wall with a dull thud—“I’ve done nothing but hurt her.”
“I know how you feel.”
He nodded absentmindedly for long moments before a faint laugh came from him. “If we ever get out of this fucked-up life, maybe I’ll find someone. Someone who doesn’t know me as a mobster or drug dealer . . . yeah?”
One of my brows rose. “I don’t know. You’re a scary-looking son of a bitch.”
His next laugh was louder. “Says the assassin who can paralyze people with a look.”
I lifted a shoulder in a shrug of indifference.
“Well . . .” He drummed his hands on his legs and pushed from the wall. “Guess I should head out of here and get to my corner. If everything goes right, we’ll finally be done with all this shit by this time tomorrow.”
I dipped my head. “It will.”
It had to.
After all this time. After everything we’d done. We needed to finish this, and we needed to do it right.
“If not?” he asked with a smirk as he backed out of his room.
“I’ll see you in hell.”
“Fuck yeah, you will.”