When I step out of the black SUV, my legs feel like jelly. Hell, my entire body feels like it has been put through the wringer.

“You okay, ma’am?” asks Will.

He’s my new bodyguard – Declan insisted. He said there was no way that his woman was going to be walking around town without a gun by her side. When I said that the only time I had ever shot anything was at summer camp, and that had only been a water pistol … well, you get the picture.

“Are you as good a shot as Declan claims?” I ask in reply.

Given the memories of Declan tossing my body around like a rag doll that it brings up, I figure that if I try and actually answer Will’s question, my cheeks will turn as red as my bodyguard’s fiery hair.

He flushes, and I find it quite endearing. He’s six foot two, apparently the best shot in Declan’s gang, and yet he gets embarrassed by a simple compliment.

“If the boss thinks so, ma’am …” He says. Will’s eyes never stop darting, and I see why Declan chose him. I don’t think anything’s going to get past him.

We head towards the nearest boutique. Declan told me that anything I want, I just have to put it on the account. I don’t even know what that means. I have never put something on any account in my entire life. Hell, I guess there’s a first time for everything.

The truth is, I need this shopping trip. Except for the funeral, I’ve been wearing the same black jeans ever since I met my new … boyfriend? Whatever we’re calling it, the fact remains – I need some wardrobe essentials.

“It’s so good to have you shopping with us today, ma’am!” says a cheery, blonde, shop assistant who welcomes me into the high-end clothes store. I give her a funny look, and then realize that this must be what life is like when you’re rich. Up until now, I’ve been more Wal-Mart than Gucci. “Can I take your coat?”

“Coat?”, I stammered, flustered. “No – I guess I’m fine, thanks.”

I regret the decision a second later, because the heating is on full blast, but I’m too embarrassed to go back on it. I’m just taking out a selection of outfits to try on, when Will barrels towards me.

“Ma’am,” he pants, “I’m sorry – we got a problem. We gotta go – now.”

I look up, and my attention focuses on a black SUV pulling up to the store – tyres screeching. It looks just like the one Will drove here, but judging by the look on his face, it’s anything but friendly. Two men jump out, both dressed the same: suits, covered by black overcoats. One looks like he’s reaching for a weapon.

“What’s going on?”

“Hell if I know,” he says. “It’s not a Morello car. I don’t think …”

There’s a click, and I realize that he’s drawn his weapon. The blonde shop assistant yells out with alarm, and Will turns and tells her to “shut the hell up, won’t ya?” She cowers in a corner, behind a rack of five hundred dollar winter coats. I want to join her.

The two overcoats come storming through the glass doors, screaming. “Put your weapon down! Put your weapon down!”

I sense Will tensing. He’s getting ready to rise over the rack of clothing and start firing. For some reason, I feel totally calm. Maybe it’s simple: that after all the crap I’ve lived through in my life, at least I got a few days of happiness. I look down at my fingers and they’re completely still.

“Boston PD! I said drop your fucking weapon!”

* * *

The little, gray concrete, interrogation cell is cold: so cold I think that it must be intentional. I cast my mind back to the civics class I had to take in high school, and wonder if this counts as cruel and unusual punishment?

Maybe not.

I lean back in the metal chair, ignoring the pain as its edges bite into my back, and rest my feet on the table. It probably looks like a show of sad, defiant bravado, but it’s not – really.

I know that I’ve done nothing wrong, and that even now Declan is probably sending his top lawyer here to come get me out. So, this whole show they’re putting on just feels a bit ridiculous.

I look directly at the tinted glass window and, with a smile curling across my lips, say. “Are you coming in, or what? I haven’t got all day …”

Five minutes pass, or thereabouts. It’s hard to tell exactly how long without access to my watch or phone, but soon enough the door clicks open and one of the detectives who apprehended me walks in.

“So – you heard me then,” I say.

“Huh?” The detective grunts, but the flash of annoyance that flickers across his face tells me that his studied show of indifference is just that – an act. He’s older than Declan. Probably in his mid-forties, and his hair’s already gone gray.

He pulls a chair from the wall, and the metal legs scrape across the concrete floor. It sounds like cat claws sliding slowly down a chalkboard, and I have to resist cringing.

“Do you know what kind of man your boyfriend is, Ms. Samuels?”

Boyfriend: there’s that word again.

“It’s a hard world. What can I call you, detective?”

“Mackey. John Mackey.”

“You’re Irish,” I say. This time the surprise in my voice is real, not affected. “I thought you guys liked to stick together?”

He slams his palm down on the table. “Enough!”

I try to lift my palms in front of my face, but the handcuff chain links are clipped together against the metal chair behind my back, and stop me.

“I’m sorry, John,” I say. “What were we talking about? My –,” I pause, “boyfriend being a bad man?”

He nods curtly.

“It’s a hard world, John. I guess we’ve all got to make a tough choice from time to time. He’s made his, and so have I.”

The detective looks at me with a question twinkling in his eye. But it feels like just an act.

“Oh…” He says, stretching the word out in an exaggerated manner. “You mean the felonies. Sure – everyone knows about those. But that’s not why we’re here, Casey. I can call you Casey, can’t I?”

He stares me straight in the eye, and this time it’s my turn to feel uncomfortable. He looks as sure of himself as I did a few minutes ago, and I get the awful impression that the ground’s shifting beneath me. I grip the metal chair for comfort, ignoring the bite of the handcuffs against my wrists. It doesn’t help.

“I’d like to show you something,” the detective says. He stands up, chair scraping behind him, and lays out a couple of pieces of paper, face down, on the metal interrogation table. It takes a couple of seconds for him to sit down; an act that – of course - is accompanied by a metallic screech that echoes off the concrete walls. I wince.

He points at his props and smiles. “I can turn those over for you, if you like?”

I say nothing. I know the game he’s trying to play, and I know that he’s trying to play me. But I don’t like it, and I refuse to play into his hands.

“Okay then,” he says, relaxing back in the chair and threading his hands behind his head. “Perhaps I’ll tell you a story about a man, a woman, and a naïve little girl who stumbled into something that she’s far from equipped to handle.”

I grimace. I know precisely who he is referring to when he says little girl, and I don’t like it. I wish I could put my hands over my ears and block him out, because the gray haired detective’s voice is poison, and I don’t want it polluting me. I have no doubt that whatever comes out of his viper-like mouth, I won’t want to hear it.

Unfortunately, with my hands cuffed behind my back, it’s not like I have a choice.

“A man who meets a woman, and they have an affair. It’s the kind of affair that raises eyebrows, because the man is a wild child – and if you can believe it, the woman is even worse. But, as these things tend to do, the affair burns itself out.”

I stare daggers at the detective, and he repays me with a grin.

“But, as things sometimes play out, this time it didn’t just end with goodbye; or maybe, in this case, fuck you.”

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that Mackey’s talking about Declan; I know for sure that the woman isn’t me.

I never had time for any wild flings. Still, I don’t get why he’s telling me. It’s not a surprise that Declan’s slept his way around Boston; not with a body like that. I can’t deny, though, that the detective is getting under my skin.

“So why are you telling me any of this?” I spit furiously. I kick myself almost the second the words escape my mouth, and the chain rattles behind my back. I’m playing into his hands and I know it. I press my lips so tightly together that they go white.

“So you are interested,” Mackey says with an evil grin. “I thought you might be. Where was I? Ah, yes – fuck you.”

When he says it, it’s with venom and he’s staring directly into my eyes. I can’t help but flinch at the hatred that lies in his eyes, like black, inky pools. You could drown in that much disgust.

He leans over the table and places his fingers on the first of the two pieces of paper. “Nine months or so later,” he grins, slowly turning the sheet over, “the woman brings a little bundle of joy into the world. It’s a miracle really, given how much powder she snorts up her nose, that there’s nothing wrong with the kid.”

He lays the piece of paper flat on the table, and I see a picture of a toddler: a girl. The picture’s a printout, and it looks like it has been taken from an official computer system. Up in the top right, it’s marked – CPS – internal use only. I want to close my eyes and block it all out, but I can’t. I keep staring. I try and convince myself that I’m not seeing what I’m seeing, but the battle is already lost.

She’s a gorgeous little girl; and she’s got a patch of white hair running across her left temple.

“Didn’t tell you, did he?” Mackey grins.

I grit my teeth. “So he has a kid,” I spit, hiding how truly distraught I really am. “We all have things we’re hiding.”

“He didn’t tell you about the kid?” Mackey asks with affected surprise. “I thought, at least –”

The detective reaches forward and turns the other piece of paper over. It’s a surveillance shot, this time, of a man I know too well, and the woman I don’t know at all.

“Vince?” I say, the words falling out of my mouth under their own power this time, “Vince Amari? So, he’s with some girl. Why are you showing me this?”

In the background, the door to the interrogation cell clatters open, but I don’t even look up. I can’t. It’s like I’m engrossed in a gory car crash that’s happening in front of my eyes.

“Not just any girl,” Mackey finishes with a triumphant smile. He taps the picture of the toddler with his forefinger. “Kelly Granger: the mother of little Carla here.”

The floor falls out from beneath me.

“Not another word!” A balding man in a smart suit shouts. “Not another goddamn word. Until someone shows me a charge sheet with my client’s name on it, I’m going to consider every goddamn minute you spent here unconstitutional.

I can’t tear my eyes off Mackey. “Don’t worry,” he says with a smug grin. “I think I’ve got what I wanted.”

He stands behind me and I feel his hands dancing across the handcuffs as he unlocks them. He leans in and whispers into my ear. “You can keep those. I made copies.”